to surpass: to go past the mark something else set, outdoing it
The picture behind this word is a throw that lands past the mark. In the Greek games it described a spear or a stone that flew beyond every other competitor's marker, and from there it spread outward: ships rounding a headland, an army crossing a mountain range, a river running over its banks, a life stretching past a hundred years, a bidder going past everyone else's price. What is always in view is a limit that something else set, and something going past it.
In the New Testament only Paul uses this verb, five times, and always to describe something that belongs to God: a glory, a grace, a power, riches, a love. Two of those five say outright what is outdone. The glory of the new covenant outshines the glory Moses carried, and the love of Christ runs past knowing. In the other three the thing outdone is left for the surrounding verses to supply, so the word reads as an unmeasured superlative, which is why English Bibles render it "immeasurable" or "incomparable" as readily as "surpassing."
The comparison is not only about degree. Where Paul names what is outdone, the thing outdone is not merely beaten but eclipsed: the glory Moses had was real, yet set beside the greater glory it counts as no glory at all. That is what separates this word from ordinary praise. Paul is not exaggerating for effect; he is saying that what God does runs past the measurements available for it. Other words in his letters do neighboring work: ὑπερέχω for standing higher than everything else, περισσεύω for overflowing past what is needed, and the noun of this same family (ὑπερβολή) for the surpassing degree itself.
Nuances
How the love of Christ can be known if it surpasses knowledge (Eph 3:19).
- majorityThe love exceeds conceptual comprehension (γνῶσις) but is genuinely available to relational, experiential knowing (γνῶναι), so that however much is grasped there is always more to know and experience.; Harold W. Hoehner, Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary (Baker, 2002), 486-91; Peter T. O'Brien, The Letter to the Ephesians (PNTC; Eerdmans, 1999), 264ff.; Frank Thielman, Ephesians (BECNT; Baker, 2010), ad loc.; Andrew T. Lincoln, Ephesians (WBC 42; Word, 1990), ad loc.
- minorityThe clause is a deliberately unresolvable Pauline superlative that functions doxologically rather than as a statement to be systematized; the lexical distinction between the verb and the noun for knowing should not be pressed.; Ernest Best, Ephesians (ICC; T&T Clark, 1998), ad loc.; Stephen E. Fowl, Ephesians (NTL; WJK, 2012), ad loc.
- minorityThe phrase marks an ontological transcendence: a divine reality that in principle exceeds finite cognition, accessible through faith rather than cognition, which Barth renders concessively as the love of Christ "though it surpasses knowledge."; Markus Barth, Ephesians (AB 34A; Doubleday, 1974), ad loc.; Rudolf Schnackenburg, Ephesians (ET T&T Clark, 1991), ad loc.