Invoking his apostolic authority, In the Lord’s name (literally “in the Lord” as in 4.1), the writer solemnly begins: “This, then, I say and affirm”; the second verb has weight to it: “affirm, urge, insist” (also 1 Thes 2.12).

In a number of languages the phrase In the Lord’s name means practically nothing. But it may be possible to translate this phrase as “As the one who represents the Lord” or “As one who speaks for the Lord” or “As one who is related closely to the Lord” or “On the Lord’s authority.”

Since the exhortation involves what people should not do, it is perfectly appropriate to use a term such as warn. But one could also use a verb meaning “to urge” or “to insist strongly.”

To live translates “to walk” (see 2.2, 10; 4.1). The heathen translates the noun translated Gentiles in 2.11; 3.1, 6, 8. The admonition do not continue to live like the heathen may be rendered as “you must no longer live like those who do not trust God” or “… who do not live as God says they should.” Here the implication of the Greek term often translated “Gentiles” means much more then merely non-Jews. They are characterized as “walking in the emptiness of their mind,” which means that their thinking, their reasoning, is worthless.

The clause whose thoughts are worthless may be rendered as “what they think has no value” or “what they think means nothing.”

The following (verse 18) and whose minds are in the dark is similar in meaning and emphasizes the inability of the heathen to comprehend spiritual truth. Thoughts translates the Greek word for “mind, intellect, thinking” (also verse 23), and minds translates the Greek word for “understanding, perception, reasoning” (also 2.3). The language is similar to that in Romans 1.21 “they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened” (Revised Standard Version).

In a number of languages a statement such as whose minds are in the dark does not mean much. In fact, it may mean nothing more than “they think in the dark.” It may therefore be more appropriate to say “they cannot understand anything” or “what they think has no meaning.”

They have no part translates the perfect passive participle of a Greek verb meaning “to be an alien, a stranger” (see 2.12 apart from Christ). “The life of God” (Revised Standard Version), a phrase that occurs nowhere else in the New Testament, is in this context the life that God offers mankind; Abbott “the life that proceeds from God.”

Many translations will be able to keep the image of the Greek text of being an alien or stranger: “As for the life that God gives, they are strangers,” or “They are foreigners to the life that comes from God.” But a more or less literal translation of They have no part in the life that God gives might be taken to apply to physical life. It may therefore be possible to translate this statement as “they have no part of the new (or, true) life that God makes possible” or “… that God gives to people.”

The reason for their intellectual and spiritual condition is given in two “on account of” clauses which seem to be parallel: “on account of the ignorance that is in them” and “on account of the hardening of their heart”; or, the second one could be read as the reason for the first one (as New International Version does). In the first clause the Greek word for “lack of understanding, ignorance” has an element of willfulness in it; it describes unwillingness to learn, refusal to admit the truth (compare Barth: “their inherent refusal to know [God]”). “Hardening of the heart” is a Semitic phrase for stubbornness (compare the identical phrase “the hardening of their heart” in Mark 3.5, and see “their minds were hardened” in 2 Cor 3.14). Good News Translation has combined the two clauses into one: for they are completely ignorant and stubborn; also Translator’s New Testament “they are utterly ignorant and insensitive.” The noun “hardness” indicates a condition of insensitivity, lack of feeling, inability or unwillingness to respond or to react; Beare defines it as “a deliberate steeling of the will against every good impulse.”

An equivalent for they are completely ignorant and stubborn may be “they do not know anything, and they don’t want to know anything.” In a number of instances, however, stubborn is translated by an idiom, for example, “they have stopped up their ears” or “they refuse to listen” or “their heads are like stone” or “their mouths are always saying, No.”

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 .