Ephesians 6:12

12. Wrestle The wrestle is to us. But as the wrestle requires no armour, St. Paul uses the word in the more extended sense of struggle.

Flesh and blood Of which human bodies are composed, and which metal weapons mar and destroy. The real battle is super-earthly, in which men are the prizes of the victor, Christ or Satan. And St. Paul, in this picture of the war, looks upon men not as the true enemies, but as the proper objects, of salvation. The wrestle is not with physical bodies any more than with material weapons.

Principalities The same terms as in Romans 8:38; there applied to the holy dominances, here designating their unholy adversaries.

Rulers… of this world A single powerful term, κοσμοκρατορας , cosmocrators, (the English language has not naturalized cosmocrat as it has democrat and autocrat,) world-rulers. The Rabbies adopted the expressive Greek word in Hebrew characters and said: “Three kings were cosmocrators, ruling the world from one extremity to the other, Nebuchadnezzar, Evilmerodach, and Belshazzar.” And as this wrestle is not with men, but with higher powers in whose hands men are but mere instruments, so these cosmocrators are diabolic powers, extending their infernal power over our world.

Rulers of the darkness of this world The true reading unquestionably is, The world-rulers of this darkness. The term cosmocrators expresses the extent of their rule, and the phrase this darkness, the limitation of their territory and the moral nature of their realm. This darkness need not be rendered this “state of darkness” with Afford; but, if we mistake not, it is Paul’s appellation, simple and literal, for this world, just as in Ephesians 5:8, the unregenerate world is called darkness. There may be many darknesses in the universe of worlds; and our own world is this darkness overruled by its own world-rulers.

Spiritual wickedness Literally, The spiritual (the word being a plural adjective, requiring a plural substantive to be supplied) of wickedness. As the substantive after spiritual Alford supplies “armies,” Braune “hosts.” As comprehending these and more we should rather propose forces, the spiritual forces of wickedness.

High places The word high is an unsuitable rendering for the same word as is rendered heavenly in Ephesians 1:3, where see note, and notes on Ephesians 2:2; Ephesians 2:6, and 2 Corinthians 12:2-4. High here signifies super-earthly or supernal; and here specifically intends that region in the supernal in which the spirits of good and the spirits of evil have their range. St. Paul uses the very generic Greek word rendered by us supernal, to include, specifically, either the “third heaven,” as in Ephesians 2:6, or the “aerial heaven,” ( the air, of Ephesians 2:2,) as here; just as a European might, under the generic term America, specifically intend what takes place either in New York or New Orleans.

Paul’s terse description in this verse of the entire hostile array may therefore be rendered, principalities, powers, the world-rulers of this darkness, the spiritual forces of evil in the aerial regions.