HistoricalChristian.Faith

Ephesians 4:8 and Psalm 68:18: “he gave gifts unto men” — a targumic text-form, or Paul’s own reversal?

Type: supporting argument (off-timeline) · Assessment: the catalog’s neither / free / targumic tag on this row is sound (the citation matches neither the Masoretic Hebrew nor the Septuagint, and shares its distinctive “gave” with the Aramaic Targum and the Syriac Peshitta); the stronger sub-claim — that the reading witnesses a pre-existing targumic Vorlage the author depended on — is contested, and on the better reading the reversal is an interpretive adaptation shaped by the argument (the ascended Christ distributing the spoils, set up for the “he gave some, apostles” of v. 11). When Ephesians 4:8 proves that grace is given “according to the measure of the gift of Christ” from Psalm 68:18, it quotes the verse as “he gave gifts unto men” — exactly reversing the “thou hast received gifts among men” that stands in both received texts. Jerome, Theodoret, and Chrysostom each noticed the switch and harmonized it theologically; the modern question is whether the “gave” came to the author from a variant text-tradition or from his own hand.

See also: the closest kin in this doctrine is Isaiah 28:11–12 at 1 Corinthians 14:21 (assessment contested) — the same shape, a secure non-received text-form over a genuinely open mechanism (a pre-existing Hebraizing/variant Greek versus the apostle’s own rendering); and the other “neither / free / targumic” source-puzzle, 1 Corinthians 2:9 (“eye hath not seen,” assessment contested). The row’s home is the summary’s catalog and Arguments section.

The claim

“And elegantly, he placed here, ‘he gave gifts to men,’ whereas in the Psalter it is written, ‘he received gifts from men’ (Ps. LXVII, 19). But there, because it had not yet happened, but was promised for the future, it is said, ‘he received.’ Here, however, since the Apostle writes that he had already given, and the Church was established throughout the world, he does not write ‘received,’ but ‘gave.’”

— Jerome, Commentary on Ephesians 4:8 (c. 386), historicalchristian.faith.¹ Jerome is the earliest surviving writer to flag the reversal in so many words; the interpretation this page adjudicates is the catalog’s classification of the row — that Ephesians 4:8 is a targumic/interpretive text-form, agreeing with neither the Masoretic Hebrew nor the Septuagint but with the “gave” of the Aramaic and Syriac tradition — and the further, contested claim that the reading is dependent on a pre-existing targumic Vorlage rather than the author’s own midrashic reversal.

Who advances it

That Ephesians reverses the Psalter’s verb is agreed by everyone who has looked; the dispute is over the mechanism. The pre-existing variant reading — that the author drew “gave” from an already-circulating Aramaic/targumic text-tradition — is pressed by Richard Rubinkiewicz (“Ps LXVIII 19 (= Eph IV 8): Another Textual Tradition or Targum?,” Novum Testamentum 17 [1975]) and, most fully, by Richard A. Taylor, who argues from the Syriac that a “gave” text-form was current “in the early Christian period (and no doubt earlier as well).” The interpretive-adaptation reading — that the change is the author’s own, driven by Psalm 68’s Divine-Warrior logic and the argument of Ephesians 4 — is pressed by Timothy G. Gombis (“Cosmic Lordship and Divine Gift-Giving,” Novum Testamentum 47 [2005]) and Jonathan Lunde & John Anthony Dunne (Westminster Theological Journal 74 [2012]). Most commentators blend the two: Andrew T. Lincoln (Word Biblical Commentary), Frank Thielman (in Beale & Carson’s Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament), and W. Hall Harris III (The Descent of Christ) hold that the “gave” coheres with a known Jewish exegetical current — the Moses-ascent reading of the psalm — but that the Targum is too late to be the direct source.² The ancient church simply noticed and harmonized the switch: John Chrysostom (“The Prophet saith… ‘Thou hast received gifts among men’ whereas the Apostle saith, ‘He gave gifts unto men.’ The one is the same as the other”), Theodoret of Cyrus (“the psalm says, ‘He received gifts among men’; but he himself gave them… Both of these things have been done”), Theophylact, and Thomas Aquinas (“he as God bestows the gifts which he as man receives in the faithful who are his members”) all read receiving and giving as two faces of one act — a theological, not a text-critical, resolution.³

The evidence for

The reversal is real, and it runs against both received texts. The Masoretic Psalm 68:19 (Heb. versification) reads לָקַחְתָּ מַתָּנוֹת בָּאָדָם — lāqaḥtā mattānôt bā-ʾādām, “you received/took (lāqaḥ) gifts among men.” The Septuagint (Ps 67:19) follows it exactly: ἔλαβες δόματα ἐν ἀνθρώπῳ, “you received (ἔλαβες) gifts among man.” Ephesians 4:8 has ἔδωκεν δόματα τοῖς ἀνθρώποις, “he gave (ἔδωκεν) gifts to men.” Three changes stack up: the verb flips from “received” to “gave”; “among man” (ἐν ἀνθρώπῳ) becomes “to men” (τοῖς ἀνθρώποις, a dative of recipient — a give-to construction); and the whole is shifted from second-person address (“you ascended”) to third-person recitation about Christ (“he ascended”). So the tag holds on its face: the citation reproduces neither the Hebrew nor the Greek at the one point they part company from it.⁴

The distinctive “gave” is shared with the Aramaic Targum and the Syriac Peshitta. This is what earns the row its “targumic” label rather than a bare “free.” The Targum on the Psalms renders v. 19: “You ascended to the firmament, O prophet Moses; you captured captives, you taught the words of Torah, you gave gifts to the sons of men.” The Peshitta likewise reads “you gave gifts to the sons of men.” Both carry the very verb Ephesians has and neither received text does. The Aramaic tradition sits inside a uniform Jewish reading of the psalm: as W. Hall Harris put it, “every time Psalm 68:19 is mentioned in the rabbinic literature, it is (without exception) interpreted of Moses and his ascent to heaven to receive the Torah” — ascend, receive the Torah, bring it down and give it to Israel. The pivot from receiving to giving is already latent in that Moses-Sinai frame, and the Targum takes the last step of writing “gave” into the verse itself.⁵

The verb is picked up as the hinge of the passage. The ἔδωκεν (“he gave”) of v. 8 is deliberately resumed in v. 11: καὶ αὐτὸς ἔδωκεν — “and he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets…” (Ephesians 4:11). The quotation is doing structural work: a gift-giving Christ in the proof-text sets up the gift-giving Christ who distributes the ministries of the church three verses later. On any account of where the “gave” came from, it is the word the argument needs — which is itself a strong reason to read the reversal as motivated, not accidental.⁶

Adversarial assessment

What holds. The catalog’s text-form classification is correct and is not in serious dispute. Ephesians 4:8 matches neither the Masoretic Hebrew nor the Septuagint at the point they diverge from it, and its distinctive “gave” is the reading of the Aramaic Targum and the Syriac Peshitta — so “neither / free / targumic” is the right tag, and this is the Pauline corpus’s clearest instance of a citation whose wording tracks the interpretive (targumic) tradition rather than either received text. That much Jerome, Theodoret, and Chrysostom already saw.

What is overstated, so the “targumic” tag is not over-read.

1. “Targumic text-form” must not slide into “the author quoted the Targum.” The Targum on the Psalms (Targum Tehillim) is late — the tradition is generally placed in the fourth to sixth centuries (a scholarly range of roughly 200–600), centuries after Ephesians. It cannot be the source of the quotation; at most it is a later crystallization of an exegetical current that may predate Paul. Thielman states the guard exactly: the Targum texts “were composed centuries after” Ephesians but “give witness to an older textual tradition” — and even that older tradition is inferred, not documented. So the honest form of the tag is that the reading agrees with the tradition the Targum later fixed, not that a targumic Vorlage lay open on the author’s desk.⁷

2. The Peshitta’s “gave” is contested evidence, not a clean second witness. Taylor treats the Syriac as attesting an independent early “gave” text-form; but the Syriac Psalter is itself demonstrably influenced by the New Testament at points, and Lincoln (after Lindars) notes that “the reading at this point in the Peshitta may be a corruption” — an assimilation to Ephesians rather than a survival from before it. The direction of influence cannot be fixed, so the Peshitta neither proves a pre-Pauline variant nor is worthless: it is genuinely underdetermined, which is precisely why the mechanism is contested and not sound.⁸

3. The rabbinic parallel is a red herring for the verb. The Bavli (Shabbat 88b–89a), the fullest rabbinic treatment, keeps “you took/received gifts” (with the Hebrew) even as it tells the story of Moses receiving the Torah and the angels handing him gifts. It is the Targum, not the Talmud, that writes “gave” into the verse. So the uniform Moses-ascent tradition supplies the frame in which a receiving can become a giving, but it does not by itself supply a pre-Pauline text that reads “gave” — that step is attested only in sources (Targum, Peshitta) whose date or direction of influence is in question.⁵

4. The better positive account is interpretive adaptation — and it does not need a lost Vorlage. Gombis and Lunde–Dunne show that Psalm 68 is a Divine-Warrior hymn whose own logic is that the victorious, ascending God distributes the spoils of conquest; read against the whole psalm rather than one clause, a giving Christ is the natural fulfilment, and the shift from “received” to “gave” expresses the movement the author is already tracing (ascent → captives led → gifts disbursed), then set up for v. 11. On this reading the reversal is the author’s own contextual, midrashic move — of a piece with the way he adapts the person and prepositions — and the agreement with the Targum/Peshitta is convergence on the same obvious interpretive step, not evidence of copying. This is why most weigh the two mechanisms together and lean toward adaptation: a documented pre-Pauline “gave” text is not in hand, and the change is fully explained without one.⁶

Assessment

Text-form sound; the pre-existing-targumic-Vorlage mechanism contested. The catalog’s neither / free / targumic tag on Ephesians 4:8 is sound: the citation reverses the “received gifts among men” of both the Masoretic Hebrew and the Septuagint to “gave gifts to men,” and that “gave” is the distinctive reading of the Aramaic Targum and the Syriac Peshitta — the Pauline corpus’s clearest citation shaped by the interpretive (targumic) tradition rather than either received text, a switch the Fathers themselves flagged. What is contested is the sub-claim that the wording came to the author from a pre-existing targumic Vorlage: the Targum of the Psalms is centuries too late to be the source (it witnesses at most an older tradition that is inferred, not documented), the Peshitta’s agreement may be a corruption assimilated to Ephesians rather than an independent early variant, and the fullest rabbinic treatment keeps “received.” The stronger positive account — advanced by Gombis and Lunde–Dunne and folded into the mediating verdicts of Lincoln, Thielman, and Harris — is that the reversal is the author’s own interpretive adaptation, licensed by Psalm 68’s Divine-Warrior logic (the ascending conqueror distributes the spoils) and cued by the ἔδωκεν of v. 11, and it needs no lost text to work. So: trust the text-form (a genuine targumic-tradition reading, matching neither received text); hold loosely the mechanism (a documented variant Vorlage is possible but unproven, and the balance favours a motivated, context-driven change). This patterns with Isaiah 28:11–12 at 1 Corinthians 14:21 — secure non-received text-form, open mechanism — not with the tighter cases where the source itself is in doubt.

Sources