Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Ephesians 5:16

ἐξαγοραζόμενοι τὸν καιρόν : buying up for yourselves the opportunity. Definition of the ὡς σοφοί, specifying the way in which they were to give token of the quality of wisdom. The expression occurs only once again in the NT (in Colossians 4:5); and there are but few proper parallels to it. The phrase as used in Daniel 2:8 has rather the sense of gaining time, delaying. The classical phrase καιρὸν πρίασθαι (used, e.g., by Demosthenes) has the plain meaning of purchasing for money. Even the κερδαντέον τὸ παρόν cited from Anton., vi., 26, and the καιρὸν ἁρπάζειν of Plut. (Philop., 15) are but partial analogies. In the NT the verb ἐξαγοράζειν has at times the sense of redeeming, ransoming one from another by payment of a price, and so it is applied to Christ's vicarious death (Galatians 3:13; Galatians 4:5). It has the sense of ransoming occasionally in profane Greek (e.g., Diodor., 36, 1, p. 530). Hence some take the idea here to be that of redeeming, as from the power of Satan (Calv.), or from the power of evil men (Beng.); the sacrifice of earthly things being taken by some (Chrys. Theophyl., Oec., etc.) to be the purchase-price. But it is doubtful whether any such technical or metaphorical sense can be attached to the word here, where the subject in view is the plain duty of a careful Christian walk. The simpler sense of buying is more appropriate to the context. The ἐξ - probably has its intensive force, although Ellicott takes it to refer merely to the “undefined time or circumstances, out of which, in each particular case, the καιρός is to be bought”. Giving the Middle also its proper sense, we get the sense of “buying up for yourselves”. The thing to be “bought up” is the καιρός, not “the time,” but “the fit time,” the “opportunity,” and the purchase-money implied in the figure is left undefined, but may be the careful heed expended on their walk. Thus the sense comes to be this the character of wisdom by which their walk was to be distinguished was to show itself in the prompt and discerning zeal with which they made every opportunity their own, and suffered no fitting season for the fulfilment of Christian duty to pass unused. Luther's “suit yourselves to the time” would require some such phrase as δουλεύειν τῷ καιρῷ (Romans 12:11), and is otherwise inappropriate. Other explanations, such as Harless's supposition that the matter in view is the fit time for letting the ἔλεγξις break in upon the darkness of sin, are remote from the immediate subject or impart ideas which are not in the text. The RV gives “redeeming the time” in the text, and “buying up the opportunity” in the margin. ὅτι αἱ ἡμέραι πονηραί εἰσι : because the days are evil. Statement of motive for buying up the opportunity, viz., the evil of the time. The context makes it clear that what is in view is the moral evil of the days, not merely as, e.g., in Genesis 47:9, their difficulties and troubles (Beza, etc.). The fact that the times in which they lived were morally so corrupt was a strong reason for making every opportunity for good, which such times might offer, their own.

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Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Ephesians 5:16

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