Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Ephesians 6:18-24, An ambassador in chains, and the man who carried the letter
Paul asks for prayer that he may speak boldly, calling himself an ambassador in chains, and sends Tychicus to carry the letter and tell them his news.
Ephesians 6:18-24, in every translation this tool compares.
Paul asks the believers to keep praying at all times, for all God's people and for him, so that he can speak the gospel boldly though he is in chains as Christ's ambassador. He is sending Tychicus, who will carry the letter, give them his news and encourage them. He ends by wishing them peace, love and grace.
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- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/roman-custody\/","n":"Prison, chains and Roman custody","s":"Roman prisons held people until trial or execution; they were not a punishment in themselves. How a prisoner was kept, in the stocks of an inner cell or lightly chained to one soldier, depended on his rank.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/orators-and-sophists\/","n":"Orators, rhetoric and boasting","s":"Public speaking was the great skill of the Greek city. Traveling orators performed for crowds and gathered paying students, audiences judged them on voice and gesture as well as argument, and the fans of rival speakers boasted of their own man against the rest.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/letters-and-letter-carriers\/","n":"Letters, scribes and carriers","s":"Letters were usually dictated to scribes, carried by trusted travelers because there was no public post, and read aloud to the people they were sent to.","r":""}
Chains, and being seen with anyone in chains, were humiliating (the cultural backgrounds notes). Envoys were to be received with the respect due to their sender, and as heralds "they were to be immune from hostility even if they represented an enemy kingdom" (Keener); chaining an envoy normally invited war (the cultural backgrounds notes). Wright calls the chained ambassador a deliberately bizarre picture: "An ambassador ought to be free to come and go." Philosophers prized frank speech (Keener and his notes), and Wright notes that Paul's word for boldly could almost mean brazenly. Mail traveled with travelers, and some news was safer spoken than written (Keener and his notes). Letters were usually carried by someone known to both sides who could explain them (the ESV Study Bible). Tychicus, a delegate of the province of Asia with the collection (Acts 20:4; the Zondervan dictionary), probably carried Ephesians and Colossians together, since the lines about him nearly match Colossians 4:7-8 (the CSB Study Bible; Wright); a circular, Carson, Moo and Morris note, would be filled out by his own comments. Wright pictures him on a round trip through the churches of the Lycus valley.
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Ephesians 6:18-19, 6:20, 6:21-22 and 6:23-24
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Ephesians 6:18 and 6:20
- ESV Study Bible, Introduction to Ephesians, Author and Title
- CSB Study Bible, Introduction to Ephesians, Background
- N. T. Wright, Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters, comment on Ephesians 6:18-24
- J. D. Douglas and Merrill C. Tenney, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary, entry Tychicus
- D. A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo and Leon Morris, An Introduction to the New Testament, ch. 11, Ephesians, Destination
