then are we all unequal since we are to submit to one another? Plus, compared to other marriage manuals of Paul’s day, this passage is radically egalitarian.17 Paul never says that wives are inferior to their husbands, and the overwhelming emphasis in the passage is on the husband’s self-giving, self-sacrificial, unconditional service toward his wife. No one in Paul’s day would have read this passage and thought he was demeaning women. They would have been shocked, actually, at his excessive demands of the husband.
