Verse 12 describes in detail the spiritual situation of the readers before they knew Christ. At that time takes up the “at one time” (Revised Standard Version) in verse 11.

(1) They were apart from Christ; that is, they had no knowledge of him nor did they even hope for the coming of Messiah, as did the Jews. A literal translation of you were apart from Christ might suggest mere physical separation. What is important here is to indicate that “you had no relationship with Christ,” expressed in some languages as “there was nothing which bound you to Christ.” And a literal translation of “without Christ” (Revised Standard Version) may leave the impression that the readers did not possess Christ, but someone else did. “You did not know Christ” or “You did not know who Christ was” would be better.

(2) The readers were also “alienated from (citizenship in) the community of Israel.” The Greek verb is used also in 4.18 and Colossians 1.21, and nowhere else in the New Testament. It is from an adjective meaning “stranger, foreigner” (see Matt 17.25-26; Heb 11.19). There is no implication that the condition was the breakup of an original union (as Revised Standard Version “alienated” might imply), nor does the writer assign anyone the responsibility for this estrangement; he simply states a fact. Good News Translation has expressed the meaning here by You were foreigners and did not belong to God’s chosen people, while Revised Standard Version says “(you were) alienated from the commonwealth of Israel.” The name “Israel” is the covenant name of the Jewish people. The statement You were foreigners is somewhat ambiguous and obscure, because everyone is a foreigner to someone or to some people. It may be better therefore to invert the statement in the second sentence of verse 12: “You did not belong to God’s chosen people and so were foreigners.”

(3) The readers were also “strangers to the covenants of promise” (Revised Standard Version; Good News Translation You had no part in the covenants, which were based on God’s promises to his people); this is closely related to the previous statement. The community of Israel was brought into being by the covenants that God made with the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob) and with the people of Israel at Mount Sinai. The word covenant carries the idea of “contract, agreement, pact,” and the Greek word for this is sunthēkē (the preposition sun “with” and a form derived from the verb tithēmi “to place, put down”). But the Greek Bible uses the noun diathēkē, which is more of a “testament” or “will” (see the play on the word in Heb 9.16-18) which represents the decision and will of one person. This better expresses the essential nature of the Hebrew word for “covenant” which is God’s decision that he communicated to his people and which imposed certain obligations on them. The biblical “covenant” was not the result of a bargaining session between God and Israel; it was completely God’s act, God’s decision. The Old Testament covenants were “of promise” (Revised Standard Version); that is, they were based on God’s promises to his people.

You had no part in the covenants may be expressed as “You were not included in the covenants that God made” or “You were not included in the way in which God bound himself to his people” or “… the way God and his people were bound together.” The whole statement may be rephrased as follows: “You had no part in the covenants (or, agreements) which God made with his people and which were based on his promises to them.”

The clause which were based on God’s promises to his people must be made a separate sentence in some languages, for example, “It was God’s promises to his people that bound him to them.”

(4) The readers had no hope and (5) were without God “in the world” (Revised Standard Version). The phrase “in the world” characterizes both conditions (Good News Translation you lived in this world; also Translator’s New Testament; New English Bible is good: “Your world was a world without hope and without God”). Hope probably has the broadest sense possible; it is doubtful that it is restricted to “hope in the Messiah,” as some think (see “without hope” also in 1 Thes 4.13). You lived … without hope may be expressed as “you lived without anything good to look forward to” or “you lived without being able to imagine that any good would come to you.” Without God here means that though pagans have their own gods they do not have the knowledge of and relation with the one true God, the God of Israel; there is no implication in the Greek word that God abandoned or rejected them. The Greek word atheos (from which English “atheist” comes) appears nowhere else in the Greek Bible; the translation “atheist” would be wrong, since the English word means one who denies the existence of God.

You lived … without God may be expressed as “you lived without knowing God” or “… without being related to God.” It would be wrong to translate in such a way as to suggest that people could live without any reference whatsoever to God, since obviously God is described as creator and sustainer of all life.

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert C. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1982. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .