Ephesians Half and Half

Ephesians falls nicely into two halves, yes. There’s a strong pivot to ethics at 4:1 (“therefore walk worthy”). But “halves” is a loose way to put it, & only applies to the number of chapters. Note that chapters 1-3 have 66 verses, while 4-6 have 88 verses. 1-3 are only about 43% of Eph. Put visually:

This is a minor point, just a warning not to let chapter allocations overdetermine your mental map. (My corrective stats are still loose. I could be more precise by counting words or characters in Greek. Also, the phrasing in 1-3 is denser, more compact than most of 4-6.)

Here’s another way to slice the chapter/verse info. If every chapter of Ephesians were 22 verses long (the average length of 1-3), then the 88 verses of 4-6 would have a surplus 22 verses, and we’d have a 7-chapter book of Ephesians. Ephesians 4-7 would be “walk worthy” topics.

I swear I do not have a major point to make. I’m going to keep talking about the two halves of Ephesians, because it’s accurate even though it’s not precise. I treat it a case where “bigger half” is not an oxymoron.

Oh, you could also ignore chapter divisions and take a fresh look at natural divisions in the text. Those breaks are clearer in the first half (nice, half-chapter sized units). After 4:1 the sizes & edges of the various units are harder to discern; less consensus on them.