Exodus 20:12-17 – Paul’s Use of the 5th Commandment
Paul’s use of the Old Testament is a fascinating and complex topic. Many volumes have been written on the subject (to name a standout: Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, by Richard B. Hays. He also wrote a follow-up called The Conversion of the Imagination). Paul’s quote of the 5th Commandment in Ephesians 6 is a great example of the complexity and fun that can be had digging into this field of study.
Before you invest yourself in any further reading, let me warn you: this one gets complicated, fast. You can (hopefully) follow it, but it will take effort and concentration. So good luck!
Let’s start with the original commandment. According to the New American Standard Version, it says, “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the LORD your God gives you” (Ex 20:12).
Now let’s move on to Paul’s quote. He says, “HONOR YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER (which is the first commandment with a promise), 3 SO THAT IT MAY BE WELL WITH YOU, AND THAT YOU MAY LIVE LONG ON THE EARTH” (Eph 6:2-3. Notice that NASB capitalizes their quotations).
Let’s play a game. Remember Highlights magazine? Can you spot the differences?
If you were good at that old Highlights game, “Spot the Differences,” then you should have no problem picking up many of the differences here. Paul drops the second “your” in Ephesians 6:2 and he adds a parenthesis about this being the first commandment with a promise. We can see how Paul also got “and that you may live long on the earth” by combining the statements in Exodus, “that your days may be prolonged” and “in the land.” But what we notice is that Paul adds another statement, “so that it may be well with you,” and removes reference to “which Yahweh your God gives you.”
Quite a few differences, but none are outside the realm of the liberties other authors take when quoting the OT. After all, when you quote something, is it always perfect? (It’s not, “Luke, I am your father!” It’s, “No… I am your father!” It’s not, “Do you feel lucky, punk?” It’s, “You’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?” See what I mean?)
But there’s another possibility. What if Paul wasn’t actually quoting Exodus 20:12? The 10 Commandments show up in at least one other place in Scripture: Deuteronomy 5. Let’s compare the NASB version of the 5th Commandment in Deuteronomy with Paul’s words in Ephesians (minus the parenthesis this time):
Notice how this seems to match up a bit more exactly with the Deuteronomy text than it does the Exodus text. Unlike in Exodus, we have a nearly-exact match of “so that it may be well with you” in Deuteronomy/Ephesians. And just like in Exodus, the phrase, “that you may live long on the earth” is a combination of the Deuteronomy phrases, “that your days may be prolonged” and “on the land.”
If all we had was the English text, we would conclude that Paul was actually quoting from Deuteronomy, not Exodus.
But we don’t just have the English.
Now it’s time to dig deeper, and things become more complicated (it’s not too late to turn back!). Paul was writing in Greek. The Old Testament – both Exodus and Deuteronomy – were originally written in Hebrew. Our English texts of the Old Testament are generally based on the Hebrew version of the Old Testament.
So obviously a “quote” from the Hebrew written in Greek would be expected to look a little different, since languages never translate over word for word.
However, Paul may not have been directly using the Hebrew to translate his quote. The Bible of the early Church was what we call the Septuagint (abbreviated LXX), which is a Greek translation of the Hebrew. It is not usually what we base our English translations of the Old Testament on, but it was what most of the Greek writers of the New Testament based their quotes on. So when we are translating a quote of Paul’s from the OT, what we have is (take a deep breath…) an English translation of the Greek writer’s quote of a Greek translation of the Hebrew of the Old Testament (though when we translate the original OT quote from the OT we do so from the Hebrew, not the Greek!).
That’s confusing.
Let’s take a look at how the LXX (Greek) compares with Paul’s quote (and it’s OK if you don’t read Greek – you can still see compare what’s going on):
When we compare the Greek in Ephesians with the Greek translation of the 5th Commandment in Exodus and Deuteronomy, what we find is quite the opposite of a comparison of the English version. If Paul indeed did quote from the Greek version instead of translating from the Hebrew version of the 10 Commandments, his quote is actually much closer to Exodus 20:12 than Deuteronomy 5:16.
If I lost you, let me English-ize it for you and maybe that will help clarify.
Notice that Paul omits the second “your” when quoting from the 5th Commandment. Both Hebrew versions of the 5th Commandment contain two “your”s in the text.
Look now at an English translation of the Greek:
Aha! Do you see it now? So one little word – “your” – gives us evidence that Paul is not translating his quote from the Hebrew (otherwise he would’ve written two “your”s). The Greek version of Deuteronomy also has a second “your.” But the Greek version of Exodus does not, matching it exactly with Paul’s quote in Ephesians.
In the box above where I have the triple comparison in Greek, the yellow highlight represents the same word highlighted yellow here: your = σου. The green highlighted text represents what is added by the Greek version of Deuteronomy, another indication that Paul is not quoting from that.
Therefore: it seems best to conclude that Paul is not translation from the Hebrew, but is quoting from the Greek version of Exodus 20:12. The reason it looks like he’s quoting Deuteronomy when looking only at the English is because the English translations are based on the Hebrew, not the Greek.
I told you this would be confusing.
What does all this add up to? Does it really matter?
I’m not so sure it amounts to something worthy of shouting from the rooftops. You’ll probably forget about this whole post as soon as you leave it (it might be better that way…). But this is an important step in biblical theology and exegesis. We must know where the quote is coming from and how (if at all) it has been modified when it’s appropriated into the New Testament.
For instance, one of the ways Paul modifies his quote of Ex 20:12 LXX is by changing ἵνα μακροχρόνιος γένῃ (in order that / long-lived / you might be [aorist middle subjunctive 2nd person singular]) to ἔσῃ μακροχρόνιος (you will be [future middle indicative 2nd person singular] / long-lived). Both basically say the same thing, but Paul’s switch takes the statement from the realm of possibility/probability to the realm of certainty (from an subjunctive to an indicative). “You will be long-lived” instead of “You will probably be long-lived.” In my understanding, this is more in line with the Hebrew.
For the average pew-goer, all this is not terribly important. For the scholar or person who is doing serious work in the quotes of Paul, it becomes quite important.
But for me this week, this was just fun.