Second, wives are to submit to their husbands “as to the Lord” (ὡς τῷ κυρίῳ, hōs tō kyriō). This phrase is ambiguous. A few earlier interpreters thought that the term κύριος here meant “master” and that Paul was telling wives to view their husbands as their masters.9 That would have required the plural rather than the singular, however, and is not consistent with 6:5, 7, where Paul tells slaves to render obedience to their masters “as to Christ” and “as for the Lord and not for human beings.”