Ephesians 6:12 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

We wrestle not; not only, or not principally. Against flesh and blood; men, consisting of flesh and blood, Matthew 16:17 Galatians 1:16. But against principalities, against powers; devils, Colossians 2:15: see Ephesians 1:21. Against the rulers of the darkness of this world; either that rule in the dark air, where God permits them to be for the punishment of men; see Ephesians 2:2: or rather, that rule in the dark places of the earth, the dark minds of men, and have their rule over them by reason of the darkness that is in them; in which respect the devil is called the god of this world, 2 Corinthians 4:4, and the prince of it, 1 Thessalonians 14:30. So that the dark world here seems to be opposed to children of light, Ephesians 5:8. Against spiritual wickedness; either wicked spirits, or, emphatically, spiritual wickednesses, for wickedncsses of the highest kind; implying the intenseness of wickedness in those angelical substances, which are so much the more wicked, by how much the more excellent in themselves their natures are. In high places; or heavenly, taking heaven for the whole expansum, or spreading out of the air, between the earth and the stars, the air being the place from whence the devils assault us, as Ephesians 2:2. Or rather, in for about heavenly places or things, in the same sense as the word rendered heavenly is taken four times before in this Epistle, Ephesians 1:3,20 Ephesians 2:6 3:10; being in none of them taken for the air; and then the sense must be, that we wrestle about heavenly places or things, not with flesh and blood, but with principalities, with powers, &c. Objection. The Greek preposition will not bear this construction. Answer. Let Chrysostom and other Greeks answer for that. They understood their language best, and they give this interpretation.