Ephesians 2:14

αὐτὸς γάρ ἐστιν ἡ εἰρήνη ἡμῶν : for He is our Peace. As most commentators notice, the emphasis is on the αὐτός “He and no other”. But there is probably more in it than that. The selection of the abstract εἰρήνη, instead of the simple εἰρηνοποιός, suggests that the point of the αὐτός is not only “He alone,” but “He in His own person ”. It is not only that the peace was made by Christ and ranks as His achievement, but that it is so identified with Him that were He away it would also fail, so dependent on Him that apart from Him we cannot have it. And He is thus for us “ the Peace” (ἡ εἰρήνη), Peace in the absolute sense to the exclusion of all other. Peace, the peace of the Messianic age, the peace that is to come by Messiah, is a frequent note in OT prophecy (Isaiah 9:5-6; Isaiah 52:7; Isaiah 53:5; Isaiah 57:19; Micah 5:5; Haggai 2:9; Zechariah 9:10). Here, as the next sentence shows, the peace especially in view is that between Jew and Gentile, ὁ ποιήσας τὰ ἀμφότερα ἕν : who made both one. Not “hath made,” but “made,” with reference to the definite act of His death, as suggested by the ἐν τῷ αἵματι. The ἀμφότερα is the abstract neuter the two parties or classes. The sing. neut. ἕν (= one thing, one organism) expresses the idea of the unity, the new unity which the two long separate and antagonistic parties became; cf. the ἕν used even of the relation between Christ and God in John 10:16, and for the unity here in view, cf. Romans 10:12; 1 Corinthians 12:13; Galatians 3:28; Colossians 3:11. καὶ τὸ μεσότοιχον τοῦ φραγμοῦ λύσας : and broke down the middle wall of the partition. The former clause began the explanation of how Christ became our Peace. That explanation is continued in this clause and in the following. The καί, therefore, is epexegetic = to wit, or in that (cf. Win.-Moult., p. 545). The gen. φραγμοῦ is not a mere equivalent to an adject. or a partic., as if = τὸ μεσότοιχον διαφράσσον (Grot., Rosenm., etc.), nor is it the gen. of quality, = “the middle wall whose character it is to divide”; but either (a) the appos. gen. or gen. of identity, = “the middle wall that is (or, consists in) the partition,” or (b) the posses. gen., = “the wall pertaining to the partition”. On the latter view of the gen. the μεσότοιχον (a word found only this once in the NT and of rare occurrence elsewhere) becomes the more definite and specific term, the φραγμός the more general, the former being, indeed, a part of the latter. That is to say, the φραγμός is the whole system of things that kept Jew and Gentile apart, and the μεσότοιχον is the thing in the system that most conspicuously divided them, and that constituted the “enmity,” viz., the Law. It is best, however, to take the terms μεσότοιχον and φραγμός in the simple, literal sense of division and separation, which are not explained to be the Law till the νόμος is actually introduced in the subsequent clause; and, therefore, the former view of the gen. appears to be preferable. It is suggested that what Paul really expresses then is the fact that the legal system, which was meant primarily to protect the Jewish people against the corruption of heathen idolatry, became the bitter root of Jewish exclusiveness in relation to the Gentiles. This is to give the φραγμός here the sense of something that fences in or encloses, which it occasionally has (Soph., Œd. Tyr., 1387). But that is a rare sense, and the idea seems to be simpler. It is doubtful, too, whether Paul had in view here any material partition with which he was familiar. It could scarcely be the veil of the Temple that was rent at the Crucifixion; for that veil did not serve to separate the Gentile from the Jew. It might rather be (as Anselm, Bengel, and many more have thought) the wall or screen that divided the court of the Gentiles from the sanctuary proper, and of which Josephus tells us that it bore an inscription forbidding any Gentile from penetrating further (Jew. Wars, v., 5, 2; vi., 2, 4; Antiq., viii., 3, 2; xv., 11, 5). But even this is questionable, and all the more so as the wall was still standing at the time when this was written. For the use of λύσας cf. John 2:19.