Ephesians 5:11,12 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

And have no fellowship No society, no participation with wicked men in the unfruitful works of darkness Works which bring no advantage, but mischief, (Romans 6:23,) and called works of darkness, because they usually proceed from ignorance, Acts 3:17; are contrary to the light of the word, John 3:20; are usually committed in the dark, 1 Thessalonians 5:7; and bring those who live and die in the commission of them to utter and eternal darkness, Matthew 25:30; but rather reprove them Show your disapprobation of them by seasonable and suitable reproof, (Leviticus 19:17; Matthew 18:15,) and especially by the holiness of your conversation. Observe, reader, to avoid such things is not sufficient. For it is a shame even to speak of those things Except in the way of reproof; which are done of them in secret That is, says Dr. Whitby, “in their mysteries, which therefore were styled απορρητα μυστηρια, (mysteries not to be spoken of,) none being permitted to divulge them upon pain of death. Hence even the word μυστηριον (mystery) hath its name, say grammarians, from μυειν το στομα, to stop the mouth. The Eleusinian mysteries were performed in the night, agreeably to the deeds of darkness committed in them; so were the Bacchanalia; and they were both full of detestable iniquity; and upon that account, says Livy, “were banished out of the Roman senate and Italy.” These quotations, with many others which might be added to them, plainly prove, as Dr. Doddridge observes, that if the lower sort of mysteries among the heathens were first intended, as some have supposed, to impress the minds of the people with the belief of future rewards and punishments, and the higher sort of them to instruct persons of more reflection and penetration than the rest, in the knowledge of the true God, and the other great principles of natural religion, they were, long before the apostle's time, greatly corrupted, and degraded to the most detestable purposes. Monsieur Saurin thinks there is a sarcasm in this verse, as if the apostle said, “The heathens call these things απορρητα, things not to be spoken of; true, they are properly so; things not too sacred, but too infamous to be mentioned.”