Beware of Your Deceivers (5:7–12)

Galatians 3:1–5:12

Argument Especially from Scripture (3:1–5:12)

Galatians 3–4 offers Paul’s postnarrative “proofs,” as would be expected in much rhetorical argumentation. A series of rhetorical questions, as in 3:1–5, commonly characterized forensic rhetoric and its imitations, in defenses or accusations, though they were hardly limited to it. A string of rhetorical questions can feel threatening to those addressed, but this is appropriate in a letter of rebuke. Scholars often compare Paul’s opening argument in this section, with its barrage of six rhetorical questions, with diatribe, a conventional pedagogic style. (This style may have also influenced some Jewish sources, especially the more hellenized ones.) What we call diatribe style (with various features, esp. rhetorical interlocutors) was widespread, but the range of pedagogic elements was not limited to a particular ancient, especially Cynic, style with the “diatribe” label. Such rhetorical questions presupposed that the hearers would agree with the speaker on the points raised.

The point of this section of the letter is that the Galatians already have all that Paul’s opponents claim to offer them through circumcision; having received the Spirit (3:2), the Galatians are already Abraham’s heirs (3:14), making the outward covenant sign superfluous. Their reception of the Spirit (3:2–3, 5, 14; 4:6, 29; cf. 5:5) is a major theme in this section, bolstered by “references to promise (3:14, 16, 18, 19, 22, 29), inheritance (3:18, 29; 4:1, 7), and divine sonship (3:26; 4:5–7).” Just as Paul appealed to his own experience in 1:13–2:21, so now, before launching into an argument from Scripture, he appeals to their own incontrovertible experience of the Spirit, an experience they cannot deny. Their experience of the Spirit (3:2–5) continues Paul’s emphasis on Christ living in a believer (2:20) and foreshadows his teaching on the Spirit as the dynamic principle empowering believers to live the ethical reality of the Law (5:13–25).

His opponents presumably argued from Scripture, and Paul does the same in two different ways, in 3:6–4:7 and, probably engaging his opponents’ arguments even more directly, in 4:21–31. In both sections the argument starts from Abraham, with any other texts (as in 3:10–13) being applied midrashically to expound the foundational text (3:6). Paul naturally appeals especially to Abraham because the reason for any Jewish proselytizers urging gentiles to adopt circumcision was to bring them into the people descended from Abraham. That Paul does not simply deny the importance of gentiles being grafted into Abraham’s family, however, shows that he also regards Abrahamic descent as important.

One foundational argument in antiquity was the argument from authority, often citing earlier sources; Paul naturally cites authoritative Scripture, the authority of which was accepted by all parties in the dispute. Luke depicts Paul as emphasizing the right reading of the prophets even in his first preaching in a synagogue in this region (Acts 13:27).

Trading God’s Presence for Rules (3:1–5)

3:1

1You foolish Galatians! Who cast a spell on you? You, in whose very sight Jesus Christ was depicted as crucified!

The opening verse of this new section turns from addressing Peter to addressing the Galatians directly. Breaking from a general address to challenge someone in the crowd (or an imaginary interlocutor) was a common attention-holding practice in speeches, one that rhetoricians called “apostrophe” (in Paul, cf. Rom. 2:3; 9:20; 1 Cor. 15:36). In written form, one could also address a genuine adversary not actually present. An orator would sometimes use a similar exclamation, or ἐπιφώνημα (epiphōnēma), to drive home a point. The opening Greek word Ω (Ō), translated here as You (but also preserved in some earlier English forms of direct address), was sometimes, as in this verse, used to introduce a rebuke, though it also appears in direct address more generally.

Because Paul addresses the hearers as “Galatians,” some scholars argue that the addressees must be ethnic Gauls, thus residents of north Galatia. This conclusion, however, neglects Paul’s style elsewhere. Only a provincial title would link together the disparate peoples of south Galatia, and Paul normally uses geographic and provincial designations. He speaks, for example, of Macedonians in 2 Cor. 9:2, 4. More importantly, in direct address he speaks to the “Corinthians” (using a geographic, not ethnic, designation in direct address) in 2 Cor. 6:11, and to “Philippians” in Phil. 4:15. If Paul were using his more usual ethnic designations, he would probably call them “Greeks.” (See further argument in “North or South Galatia?” in the introduction.) Whether an ethnic or provincial title, however, foolish Galatians could evoke widespread, embarrassing stereotypes of Galatians. That Paul also labels them foolish (3:1, 3) makes clear that he is rebuking them, as already in 1:6.

In 1 Cor. 15:36 Paul denounces an imaginary interlocutor as a fool, but here he denounces his entire audience as such! When seeking to persuade hearers, orators rarely denounced them as fools; but moralists did not mind offering such pointed rebukes. (Nor, it should be pointed out, did the biblical prophetic tradition.) While such reproofs may be characteristic of “a Hellenistic letter of rebuke,” they appear far more widely. Later interpreters tried to conform Paul’s denunciation here to Matt. 5:22 by noting that this is a necessary reproof from love; that is probably a correct observation (see Gal. 4:12, 19–20), though even in Matthew the warning was hyperbole (Matt. 23:17; cf. Luke 11:40; 12:20; 24:25).

Paul appears appalled here (3:1; cf. 1:6). How could his converts who have already experienced the Spirit (3:2) revert to seeking by fleshly means something they already received by trusting the gospel (3:3)? Paul offers a rhetorically ironic explanation: surely someone must have cast a spell on them! This was simply a sarcastic way of reiterating their foolishness—how otherwise could they be this foolish? Even if they are so foolish, their witnessing Christ crucified virtually with their “eyes” (3:1) should have been able “to avert or counter any evil spirit” or the “evil eye” against them.

The term translated as cast a spell, βασκαίνω (baskainō), referred to an evil eye most often in the simple sense of envy, but sometimes more specifically in terms of an envious eye wishing and casting a curse. One might normally prefer the first, wider sense, but since another’s mere envy of the Galatians’ spiritual station would not have wrought their current spiritual confusion, most commentators believe that Paul describes the Galatians as bewitched by the “evil eye.” This was also how some early Greek commentators took it; Chrysostom thinks that the Galatians’ devotion produced envy and now the assault of a demon.

Some scholars suggest that the Galatians in the beginning recognized that Paul himself did not have the evil eye, refusing to “spit” (a possible translation instead of reject in 4:14)—a normal way to avert the evil eye’s power—when they saw him. Now, however, they viewed him more suspiciously (4:16–18). It is, however, his envious rivals who have drawn the Galatians’ affections away, perhaps by means of such an evil eye! Paul in fact has no need of an evil eye; he curses his opponents explicitly in Gal. 1:8–9. (Some interpreters even connect this form of cursing here with the curse of the law [3:10, 13], citing the use of βασκαίνω [baskainō] in the curses of LXX Deut. 28:54, 56.)

Through history, some interpreters have seen Paul’s question as a reference to real witchcraft here; others have regarded it merely as a figurative expression. The latter may well be the case, especially since others also used various expressions for witchcraft figuratively for what deceives.

Nevertheless, Paul did recognize that some people practiced harmful magic (Gal. 5:20; cf. Acts 13:8–11), a very common practice in his day. Paul believed in the existence of a dangerous devil and demons (1 Cor. 10:20; 2 Cor. 4:4), believed that Satan deceived people (2 Cor. 2:11; 11:14), and believed that some false teachers acted as Satan’s servants (2 Cor. 11:13–15; cf. 2 Thess. 2:9; 1 Tim. 4:1). Some scholars also contend that Paul envisioned the Galatians being ensnared by real demonic powers (Gal. 4:3, 8). Paul might thus genuinely believe that his opponents had persuaded the Galatians by demonic influence. What we today call magic often invoked spirits, and Jewish sources regarded this “genuine,” suprahuman form of magic (in contrast to illusionism) as evil.

A CLOSER LOOK: MAGIC

Resort to malevolent forms of sorcery was common in Paul’s era. (In various forms, it is, contrary to naïve popular Western assumptions, also practiced in many societies today.) Curse invocations were central to ancient magic. Virtually anything harmful could be attributed to magic. Both genders utilized erotic charms in attempts to secure others’ sexual attentions. Some used spells to curse adversaries in sports—for example, a spell to overturn and wreck chariots. Tombstones sometimes invoked divine vengeance against those thought to have killed through sorcery. Others employed spells defensively for protection—for example, in childbirth. Often in Greco-Roman antiquity magicians were thought to manipulate spirits, hence (from a strict monotheistic perspective) to traffic in demons.

Magical ideas in the wider world impacted Jewish people as well. Jewish sources recognized the dangerous efficacy of curses. Greco-Egyptian magical practices influenced Jewish magic and possibly even Hekhalot texts. Jews in fact became well known for producing some adept practitioners of magic (cf. Acts 13:6; 19:13–14). Ancients often associated Moses with powerful magic. Jewish angels are invoked in some magical texts, especially prevalent after the third century.

Nevertheless, in general Jewish practitioners themselves apparently remained monotheistic and did not claim to manipulate God. Many public sources in early Judaism also condemned magic, not suprisingly, given the death penalty assigned to its practitioners in the Torah (Exod. 22:18; cf. Deut. 13:10; 18:10). Seeking to reduce capital offenses, rabbis assigned this penalty only to genuine sorcerers, not just performers of tricks. Given the frequent association between magic and spirits in paganism, however, it is not surprising that Jewish sources sometimes associate it with fallen angels or Satan.

Although the forms differ from one culture to the next, persons in many cultures do seek to manipulate spirits or nature to harm others. Practitioners typically believe that their spiritual activity is effective, although some are also known to kill others by natural means to secure more spiritual power. Even missionaries, importing modern Western assumptions, have sometimes been insensitive to abuses or dangers locally associated with malevolent witchcraft. In many societies, African traditional religion opposes witchcraft as harmful rather than helpful. Some cultures employ divination to identify sorcery or witchcraft, and many traditional African healing practices are directed against them.

One of the harmful consequences of such curse practices today, however, is the flourishing of false witchcraft accusations and suspicions. Voodoo deaths, associated with spirits, are a real phenomenon, although Western observers, usually seeking psychological rather than spiritual explanations, typically associate them with terror.

How could the Galatians fall so far, when Christ was crucified in their very sight? Orators and storytellers sought to present their accounts so vividly that hearers imagined that they were at the place described or as if the events unfolded before them. Often this vividness is described as presenting the case before their hearers’ eyes. This technique was so common that Roman professors of rhetoric gave it a title: “ocular demonstration.” For example, Gaius Caesar’s bloody garment, brought to court, conjured up such vivid images “that Caesar seemed not to have been murdered, but to be being murdered before their very eyes.” One could also speak of imagining other matters so vividly that they could be described as if one were seeing them, and one could also lead readers to “see” vivid images through books or letters. Thus the sixteenth-century commentator Heinrich Bullinger suggests here that Paul “preached his message in such a clear and lively way that his hearers could picture what he was saying with their own eyes.”

The term προγράφω (prographō, here translated as depicted) can mean “depict,” “show forth,” or “write beforehand.” Although Paul sometimes employs the verb with the last meaning (see Rom. 15:4; Eph. 3:3), nothing in the context suggests that he refers here to prophets foretelling Christ’s death (though it may be relevant that in the context Scripture does foresee; Gal. 3:8; cf. 1 Pet. 1:11). In this context, since this was presented in their very sight, scholars typically deem more relevant the term’s other common meanings, “show forth” and “depict.” Sometimes the verb even means “to placard publicly, set forth in a public proclamation so that all may read.”

How then was Christ’s crucifixion depicted before their eyes? Aristotle remarked that people pity only sufferings that they feel close to them; thus speakers “who contribute to the effect by gestures, voice, dress, and dramatic action generally . . . make the evil appear close at hand, setting it before our eyes as either future or past.” One could be influenced by what one read, but it was more influential when provided orally with appropriate delivery. Theatrical effects could make one’s delivery more powerful; oral communication was something like “a performing art.” True eloquence included “appropriate elocution and suitable bodily movement,” charming the eyes as well as the ears. Occasionally speakers even displayed painted scenes of crimes or other visual aids.

In Paul’s case, the Galatians may have witnessed Christ’s crucifixion not only in Paul’s preaching but also in Paul’s own life; Paul has just noted that he was crucified with Christ (2:19–20). Apostolic sufferings meant sharing Christ’s death (2 Cor. 1:5; 4:10; Phil. 3:10; Col. 1:24), and we have reason to believe that many south Galatian believers witnessed Paul’s sufferings (Gal. 5:11; Acts 13:50; 14:5, 19, 22; 2 Tim. 3:11). Speakers sometimes showed their wounds in order to display their loyalty (see comment on Gal. 6:17); Paul may have done so when he first preached to the Galatians (cf. 6:17). If so, this would have been quite an effective visual aid. Vivid portrayal was meant to arouse emotion, and Paul’s suffering apparently did so (cf. Gal. 4:13–15). Paul may have described Jesus’s passion in detail (cf. 1 Cor. 11:23–26) as well as illustrated it in his own experience.

In any case, the message is the same that Paul preached elsewhere: Christ crucified (1 Cor. 1:23; 2:2). The Galatians should understand that Christ’s death for them (Gal. 1:4; 2:20; 3:13) was sufficient without circumcision.

3:2–5

Paul frames 3:2–14 with the Galatians’ reception of the promised Spirit (3:2, 14). God had promised the Spirit to his people for the time of their coming restoration (e.g., Isa. 32:15; 42:1; 44:3; 59:21; 61:1; Ezek. 36:27; 37:1–14; 39:29; Joel 2:28–29; Zech. 12:10). That they had already received the Spirit, then, meant that they had already been welcomed into God’s people, purely by trusting the message about Jesus Christ. To seek some other method to receive the Spirit, then, was to deny their own conversion experience and to abandon their trust in Christ.

3:2

2I just want to learn this from you: Did you receive the Spirit by law-works? Or by the message that invites faith?

The Galatians’ own experience of the Spirit (3:2) demonstrates that they have the blessing of Abraham (3:14); why would they regress from that blessing, promised before the law and fulfilled after the law (3:16–25), to the interim curse (3:10–13)? Granted, the full promise included inheritance of the land (Gen. 13:15–17; 15:7, 18; 17:8), understood by Paul and his contemporaries more globally (Rom. 4:13), but the Spirit is believers’ foretaste of the coming world (Gal. 5:5; Rom. 8:23; 2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5). Because the Spirit is divine, receiving the Spirit means God dwelling among them (Exod. 25:8; 29:45–46; Lev. 26:11; Num. 35:34; Ezek. 37:27; 2 Cor. 6:16), thus constituting a dwelling place even greater than the land by itself.

In Gal. 3:2, Paul challenges believers to remember how they received the Spirit, and he regards the soteriological corollary of this experience as self-evident. The Spirit is the nonnegotiable mark of true followers of Jesus, as members of God’s eschatological people. As in Luke’s account of Cornelius in Acts 10–11, so here too the gift of the Spirit to gentiles confirms that God has already accepted them (Acts 15:7–9). Though the detractors in Jerusalem may not have all been persuaded as quickly as Luke’s summary in Acts 11:18 might suggest, the Spirit remains the mark of faith throughout the early Christian sources that address the issue.

Early Christian interpreters recognized that pneumatology has ecclesiological implications; thus Justin Martyr insisted to Trypho, “For the prophetical gifts remain with us, even to the present time. And hence you ought to understand that [the gifts] formerly among your nation have been transferred to us.” By contrast, Paul’s opponents probably envisioned biblical prophecy differently: the Spirit should enable God’s people to keep the law, as in Ezek. 11:19–20; 36:26–27. Paul might agree, but he envisioned the law in a very different way, by a very different, specifically christocentric hermeneutic (cf. Gal. 5:14, 16–18, 22–23; 6:1–2).

As already noted, the experience of the Spirit was so tangible that Paul expects no dissent from the Galatian believers about their experience. Some scholars thus contend that this experience was associated with ecstatic manifestations, such as tongues, prophecy, and crying, “Abba!” Earlier in history, Ambrosiaster inferred tongues and interpretation here, comparing Acts 19:1–7. So did Haimo of Auxerre in the ninth century. Calvin rightly applies Gal. 3:2 to regeneration, but 3:5 to “the other gifts of the Spirit.”

We do not know what specific manifestations followed the Galatians’ reception of the Spirit, but at least in Pisidian Antioch they were apparently noteworthy enough for Luke to specify them. There the experience was somehow notably associated with joy (Acts 13:52), although in a perhaps less dramatic manner than was expected to characterize early Christian experience in general. Paul’s interest in Gal. 3:5 could be simply the continuing experience of the Spirit delineated in 5:16–25, which includes joy and other expressions of the Spirit in 5:22–23.

One striking feature of the passage is its implication that the Spirit is a gift, conferred by God’s grace in Christ rather than by human worth. Some Jewish circles recognized that the Spirit, like wisdom, was God’s gift. Others, however, associated the Spirit only with great piety. They regarded the Spirit or God’s presence as reserved in this age only for extremely rare cases of piety (and sometimes not even in those cases, due to the unworthiness of their generation). Here, however, the Spirit is given—to gentiles, whom the strictest Jews would deem “sinners” (Gal. 2:15).

Paul here contrasts the message of faith with law-works (on which, see “A Closer Look: Law-Works,” p. 183). They received the Spirit solely through believing the message. Paul’s ἀκοὴ πίστεως (akoē pisteōs, “message of faith”) probably means “the message that elicits faith.” Some argue that such antitheses characterize sectarian movements distinguishing themselves from a larger movement, hence Pauline Christianity already separating from Judaism. Such language is surely anachronistic when describing Paul, but his approach does clearly demarcate his gospel from that of his rivals.

3:3

3Are you really so foolish as this? After you began with the Spirit, are you now completing yourselves with flesh?

The contrast between Spirit and flesh in 3:3 (cf. also 4:29) will play a fuller role in 5:16–23 and 6:8. Philo, whose thinking both reflected and was influential in Diaspora Jewish thought, contrasts people who live by the divine spirit and reason with those who live by the pleasure of the flesh. Philo’s usage is informative; although Paul uses the terms differently than Philo, the language could be familiar in a Hellenistic Jewish context.

In light of Gal. 6:12–13, however, Paul may also hint here about circumcision, the covenant “in the flesh” (Gen. 17:11, 14, 23–25; Lev. 12:3; Sir. 44:20; Jub. 15:26, 33; cf. Rom. 2:28; Eph. 2:11; Phil. 3:3; Col. 2:11). This sense was evident already to some readers in antiquity; Chrysostom complained that the Galatians, “beginning from great things,” were “carried back to less . . . from performing spiritual signs [3:5] back to practicing fleshly circumcision.”

Some think that in circumcision Paul’s opponents promised to “complete” the work that Paul had begun; this hypothesis is possible, but the evidence is too slender for any certainty. In any case, Paul expects that, having begun with the Spirit, they will continue by the Spirit, for which purpose God continues to supply them with the Spirit (3:5). Paul’s theology of the Spirit describes not a one-off experience but rather a continued welcoming of this connection with the living God.

3:4

4Did you experience so many things pointlessly? If it was really pointlessly?

Scholars debate whether πάσχω (paschō), the Greek term that the NRSV in 3:4 renders as “experience,” refers to the same experience of the Spirit indicated in 3:2–3, 5, or speaks of what they have suffered for the gospel. All other Pauline and NT uses of paschō imply suffering, and Paul suffered in Galatia (Acts 13:50; 14:5, 19), as, perhaps, did the Galatians (Gal. 4:29). Although context largely determines a word’s meaning in a specific place, the lexical evidence in this case strongly favors the meaning “suffer.” Still, experience fits both the term’s potential semantic range and the immediate context, probably weighting matters in favor of the NRSV’s neutral translation here, with a positive reference to their experience of the Spirit. What else would Paul mean by so many things (τοσαῦτα, tosauta, a demonstrative pronoun that presumably refers to something that appears already in the context)?

Although Paul rejects here the idea that his converts are already apostate, he recognizes the possibility that some could follow Christ pointlessly (3:4), or “in vain,” and that his labor for them could be in vain, if they failed to persevere (2:2; 4:11; cf. 1 Cor. 15:2; 2 Cor. 6:1; Phil. 2:16; 1 Thess. 2:1; 3:5).

3:5

5So the God who supplies you with the Spirit and performs miracles among you—is that by law-works or by the message that invites faith?

In Greek, 3:5 lacks an indicative verb, but the sense (my is that) is easy enough to reconstruct: God acts in response to their faith, not their law-works. Luke reports miracles through Paul’s ministry in what Paul calls Galatia (Acts 14:3, 9–10, 19–20). In Gal. 3:5, however, Paul probably speaks of continuing miracles, acts of power (δυνάμεις, dunameis), among them, as he expected elsewhere (1 Cor. 12:10). Continuing miracles do not validate the new doctrine, but rather the gospel that the Galatians embraced at the beginning; if they suppress the gospel and so the Spirit, eventually they will be without real miracles as well. Paul plays on cognate words here (cf., similarly, Gal. 6:10; Rom. 2:7; Col. 1:10); God works (ἐνεργῶν, energōn) miracles among them, and does it not by the works (ἔργων, ergōn) of the law.

Here God also still supplies you with the Spirit, matching Paul’s interest not merely in an initial experience but in a continuing life in the Spirit (as in Gal. 5:16–18, 22–23, 25). (Similarly, Paul also speaks of the current, rather than past, supply of the Spirit for himself in Phil. 1:19.) The mention of the supply of the Spirit may be meant partly to imply the source of the miracles here (cf. 1 Cor. 12:8, 10).

Either Abraham’s Blessing or the Law’s Curse (3:6–14)

Although 3:6 starts a new section, it is certainly connected with the preceding section. In the same way (καθώς, kathōs) connects the Galatians’ faith (3:5) with Abraham’s (3:6), and perhaps connects the message they heard with God’s promise that Abraham believed (Gen. 15:5). By believing, the Galatians received the Spirit (Gal. 3:2; cf. 3:5); Abraham believed and was reckoned righteous (3:6), so those who believe are his descendants (3:7). Paul is thus equating Abraham being reckoned righteous with believers receiving the Spirit (cf. 4:6–7), since God’s promise of the Spirit was for God’s righteous eschatological people. Likewise, Paul identifies the blessing for faithful gentiles in faithful Abraham (3:8–9) with being reckoned righteous (3:6) and the blessing of the Spirit (3:14). The promise of the Spirit (3:5, 14) thus frames 3:6–13.

Because quotation from authoritative sources functioned as an argument, the cluster of quotations in 3:6–13 is not surprising in an argumentative section such as Gal. 3–4. Paul evokes Scripture widely, but he quotes it explicitly most often in polemical or argumentative contexts. Elite gentile authors typically displayed their learning by peppering their works with classical citations; Paul naturally cites Scripture, the classical source for believers in Israel’s God. Writers often used such sources as examples or paradigms, as does Paul elsewhere—for example, in his typological approach in 1 Cor. 10:1–11. Abraham is no mere illustration, however; he is paradigmatic as the beginning of the history of his people, with whom God entered into covenant.

Paul links verses here on the basis of common key terms or elements. (For simplicity’s sake, I include here only the conspicuous quotations, omitting the secondary allusions implied by his adaptations in the primary quotations.)

Although proposed chiastic structures are typically too asymmetric to be convincing, a basic chiastic structure may dominate here:

A blessed are the gentiles in Abraham (3:8–9)

B cursed are those who disobey the law (3:10)

C shall live by faith (3:11)

C′ shall live by works of the law (3:12)

B′ cursed is the one hanged on a tree (3:13)

A′ blessed are the gentiles in Abraham (3:14)

Although it sacrifices some symmetry, one further level of framing is probable: receiving the Spirit by faith (3:2–5, 14b).

3:6

6In the same way, Abraham “put his faith in God, and it was accounted to him as being righted with God.”

Paul’s argument based on Abraham seems to be on exegetical ground first initiated by his rivals, who would find the association of the covenant with circumcision (Gen. 17:9–14) congenial for their purposes. (Indeed, most of Paul’s texts in this section, especially Deut. 27:26 and Lev. 18:5, seem so counterintuitive that most scholars believe that Paul is probably responding to his opponents’ use of them.) This does not suggest that when Paul had been with the Galatians he had never mentioned Abraham, who loomed large in Jewish thought; probably, however, he had not spoken much about them belonging to Abraham’s covenant.

Some scholars suggest that Paul’s opponents conceded that these gentiles were Abraham’s children, yet only as spiritual Ishmaelites until they were circumcised (cf. Gal. 4:24–25). This would seem a curious argument, since Ishmael was in fact circumcised (Gen. 17:23–26). The distinction, however, is that Isaac rather than Ishmael was heir (Gal. 4:30). Paul’s opponents doubted, and Paul must demonstrate, that all believers in Jesus are Abraham’s children and heirs (3:29; 4:7).

Abraham is foundational and provides warrant for Paul’s claim of justifying faith before circumcision. Five of six quotations that Paul offers here are from the Pentateuch, establishing the foundational character of his claim; the other texts, however, are subsidiary to Gen. 15:6, the first one that he quotes and one that is earlier and more foundational in his canon and in salvation history than most of the others.

The context in Genesis at this point simply addresses Abraham trusting God’s promise; faith was trust that could grow in the living context of a relationship with the God who reveals himself. Abram’s faith was sufficient for this stage though far from perfect. This relationship of trust was more foundational than the later stipulations of the law. That it existed before the law and even before circumcision (cf. Rom. 4:10) demonstrates that it can exist without those features.

The faith associated with the promise is basic faith, though it becomes deeper faith through testing. Because faith ultimately demands action consistent with it, it is evident that Abram’s faith was hardly complete at this stage. Although God already gave him a promise of seed and land in Gen. 12:1–2, Abram questions the promise of seed in Gen. 15:2–3. After God confirms the promise (15:4–5), Abram believes, and God accounts his faith as righteousness (15:6). God also assures him about the land (15:7; cf. 12:1), but Abram asks for a sign to confirm this promise (15:8); after all, he has been waiting a long time, and the promise is, in natural terms, incredible. God provides the sign (15:9–21). Eventually, however, Abram and Sarai, depending on a cultural convention, look to Hagar to supply children (16:1–4), a continuation of the narrative to which Paul will turn in Gal. 4:21–31.

Abram’s early faith was imperfect, though most readers can sympathize with him if they try to identify with his experience. The narrative is thus also about a God who is faithful, who accepts Abram’s basic faith but patiently cultivates it over the years. Abraham eventually embraces the covenant requirement of circumcision (emphasized by Paul’s rivals) and ultimately even offers the fruit of the promise back to God in obedience in Gen. 22:1–19 (cf. Heb. 11:17–19; James 2:21–23). But Paul’s focus here is on Abram’s early faith.

Nevertheless, Judeans who cited Gen. 15:6 often argued, as Paul’s rivals probably did, that it referred to Abraham’s faithfulness as obedience. Later rabbis considered faith, including that of Abraham, meritorious; they saw it as a work rather than opposing it to works. God rewarded Abraham’s meritorious faith with the coming age. Judean texts regularly praise Abraham’s faith or faithfulness in enduring testing, but most often well after Gen. 15:6. Despite its expansiveness, Genesis Rabbah almost entirely overlooks Abraham’s faith in Gen. 15:6. Diaspora Jews may have made more use of the text; Philo often notes that Abraham believed or trusted God.

For Paul, Abraham’s works expressed his faith in and dependence on God’s covenant faithfulness; it was not simply a work in which Abraham depended on himself. Paul’s opponents may have pushed back, reiterating the association of circumcision with the covenant, so that Paul later made explicit (in Rom. 4:10) what he probably here simply takes for granted: Abraham’s justifying faith (Gen. 15:6) preceded the covenant by at least thirteen years (16:16; 17:24–25). Abraham, like the Galatians, was in fact a gentile when he was justified by faith (Rom. 4:5–8). It is therefore relevant here that Jewish tradition already understood Abraham as the first and model proselyte to faith in the true God, and contended that he converted many other gentiles. In this sense, gentile believers in particular follow in Abraham’s steps (cf. Rom. 4:12).

A CLOSER LOOK: RIGHTEOUS ABRAHAM IN JEWISH TRADITION

Jewish people regularly spoke of “our father Abraham” and of themselves as his children.

Later rabbis emphasized the role of patriarchal merits in God’s blessings on Israel, including the deliverance of Israel from Egypt and the sea. Even earlier, some Jewish traditions sought God’s blessings on Israel on the basis of his covenant with the patriarchs; the first benediction of the Amidah appealed to ancestral deeds when praying for a redeemer. Scripture itself already recounted God blessing Israel for Abraham’s sake, and Moses entreating God on that basis. But God had also warned against depending on that heritage.

Many believed that Abraham kept all of God’s law. Abraham often appears as an example in early Jewish literature, including as a model of righteousness, particularly hospitality and, relevantly here, faith or faithfulness.

The Gospels also contest sufficiency of descent from Abraham for salvation (Matt. 3:9 // Luke 3:8; Matt. 8:11–12 // Luke 13:28; John 8:33–39). Dependence on ethnic solidarity with Abraham was perhaps less a formal doctrine than a presumed religious legacy similar to that among nominal churchgoers during Christendom.

Scholars debate the nature of Abraham’s righteousness here. Paul’s focus on the Genesis passage’s accounted (λογίζομαι, logizomai) in his later letter to the Romans (Rom. 4:3–11, 22–24) suggests that he was probably already interested in this concept in Gal. 3:6, which in turn suggests a forensic emphasis. Although the focus here may be forensic, it is very unlikely that Paul intended his audience to take his message as exclusively forensic, since this would have played into his opponents’ hands. Even if gentiles were saved by grace, the opponents could argue for completion by law to make them moral. Paul’s interest is not in forensic rightness separated from a new life; he links it with the gift of the Spirit in 3:2, 5, and thus with being born from the Spirit (4:29) and a life fruitful from God’s Spirit in 5:16–25. That is, whatever conclusions one might draw on the lexical matters, Paul expects faith to begin to produce transformation.

3:7

7So recognize that the faith-people are the ones who are Abraham’s children.

That all believers are Abraham’s children (3:7) is the thesis of this new section, which concludes on the same point (3:29). Paul argues against his rivals by showing that those who already trust in Christ do not need to adopt circumcision in order to belong to Abraham’s covenant and to receive the promised blessing (3:8, 14). The faith-people is literally “those who are of faith” (3:7, 9); Abraham’s children are necessarily “of faith” because it is through Abraham’s faith, not in an abstract way, but in God’s promise (Gen. 15:5–6), that they came to exist (Gal. 4:23, 28–29). In the new phase of salvation history in Paul’s day, Abraham’s descendants must continue to embrace God’s promise, now of Abraham’s ultimate seed in Christ (3:16). Gentiles could hope to come no other way, so the promise to those “of faith” (3:7, 9) applies to them (3:8).

Gentile believers are thus grafted into the patriarchal tree to become members of the covenant people (Rom. 11:17), though Paul is still able to distinguish them from “natural” branches (11:17–23). Just as adoption (cf. Gal. 4:5) provides descendants equal to genetic ones, people sometimes spoke of figurative or spiritual descendants as well as genetic ones. (Ancients often employed fictive kinship terminology in an honorary manner, sometimes in direct address, sometimes for teachers and their disciples, for benefactors, for generals, for rulers, including Rome’s emperor, and for senators.) Thus one could attribute fictitious negative ancestry to someone who behaved badly; when people did not act like their ancestors, others could deny that they were genuine descendants in what mattered. Descent from Abraham was no different; thus courageous Jewish martyrs, for example, were deemed children of Abraham (4 Macc. 9:21; 15:28; 17:6; 18:23).

3:8

8And the Scripture saw in advance that God would right gentiles with him by faith. Therefore the Scripture announced the good news in advance to Abraham, by saying: “All the nations/gentiles will be blessed in you.”

By declaring that the Scripture saw in advance and declaring the good news in advance (3:8), Paul uses personification, a familiar graphic rhetorical technique for holding attention. Paul personifies Scripture also in Gal. 3:22; 4:30; and Rom. 9:17; against his law-affirming opponents, Paul thus evidences his own respect for (as well as knowledge of) Scripture.

Normally when Paul speaks of Scripture in the singular, he refers to a particular passage; here he refers to the promise initially given in Gen. 12:3, before Abraham’s circumcision, and then reiterated in 18:18, from which Paul derives the Greek word here translated nations/gentiles. All the nations/gentiles will be blessed in you is a legitimate way to translate these promises. Interestingly, for all the attention to detail valued by ancient Jewish interpreters, they generally placed little emphasis on this foundational biblical promise for the gentiles.

Because Jewish interpreters linked related texts, and because consistent readers can observe a work’s themes, the more biblically literate would recognize that the promised blessing to gentiles in Abraham was also in Abraham’s offspring/descendants (see Gen. 22:18; cf. 26:4; 28:14); this explicit aspect of the promise follows Abraham’s faithful sacrifice of Isaac. God’s promise of offspring in Gen. 15:5 is what Abram believes in 15:6, which Paul addresses in Gal. 3:6, and now in Abraham’s offspring the gentiles are blessed in 3:8.

For Paul, Abraham’s immediate offspring Isaac might simply prefigure their ultimate offspring, the Messiah, in whom believers are blessed (3:16). Indeed, in a later letter Paul suggests that Abraham’s trust regarding the promised seed involved belief in something virtually analogous to Jesus’s resurrection from among the dead (Rom. 4:17, 19). Genesis declares that “all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in” Abraham (Gen. 18:18), but via the use of the traditional Jewish technique of linking similar texts, this was a short stretch to the narrower prayer that all nations be blessed in David’s royal line (Ps. 72:17). Paul’s mind is probably already thinking forward to the specific, messianic seed in Gal. 3:16.

That the good news preached to Abraham here includes blessing for the gentiles is consistent with Paul’s commission to preach the gospel among gentiles (Gal. 1:16; 2:7). (Indeed, Paul’s key text for “gospel” language, Isa. 52:7, also goes on to speak of nations hearing the message, 52:15.)

3:9

9Thus the faith-people will be blessed with Abraham, the one who had faith.

In 3:9, Paul explains the reason why gentiles can be blessed in Abraham (3:8): they follow his model of faith. Abraham is blessed by faith, so those who are also of faith are the ones who are blessed with him.

3:10

10For all the law-works people stand under a curse. This is clear because the Bible says, “Cursed is everybody who doesn’t keep doing everything written in the book of the law!”

Subverting expectations and undoubtedly shocking his audiences, Paul reverses traditional expectations. Whereas Jewish people understood from Scripture that they were blessed and those who walked in the ways of gentiles were cursed, Paul argues from Scripture that some gentiles were blessed (Gal. 3:8, citing Gen. 12:3) and that those under the law (or under the law in the wrong way) are cursed (Gal. 3:10, citing Deut. 27:26). Likewise, whereas the faith-people (lit., those who were “of faith,” in 3:9) are Abraham’s children, the law-works people (those who are “of works with respect to the law”) stand under a curse (3:10).

This apparent antithesis between faith and works is apparently Paul’s innovation, needed to address his rivals’ insistence on law-works already suggested in 3:2, 5, and prefigured in 2:16. (“Obeying” or “doing” what the law commands in 3:10, 12 is equated with law-works in the first clause of 3:10.) Nevertheless, Paul’s antithesis between faith and works makes sense if his point is the antithesis between dependence on God (such as Abraham modeled) and dependence on anything else.

The other presumed antithesis, between Abraham and his allies being blessed, on one hand, and, on the other, his adversaries being cursed, goes back to Gen. 12:3 (with Israel taking the place of Abraham in Gen. 27:29; Num. 22:6; 24:9). Paul has already cited part of Gen. 12:3 in Gal. 3:7. Genesis 12:3 promises all the families of the earth being blessed in Abraham, suggesting that at least some from all nations will be blessed with him. This passage speaks, however, of curses as well as blessings, inviting Paul to invoke another text to specify to whom such curses apply.

Paul introduces Deut. 27:26 with a Scripture citation formula familiar in his letters (the Bible says; lit., “it has been written”) and more generally. Paul can introduce Deut. 27:26 precisely because he assumes an implicit gezerah shevah, an implicit connection with the not-directly-quoted, yet assumed, remainder of Gen. 12:3, a well-enough-known text right at the beginning of the Abraham account. This verse is, again, the key text from which Paul has just quoted in Gal. 3:8; it addresses curses as well as blessings. Jewish interpretive traditions naturally linked the more developed blessings and curses of Deuteronomy with Abraham’s blessing. Whereas Paul’s opponents may have linked law-works with Deuteronomy’s blessings, Paul appeals to the same context for the curses. These curses apply to those under the law (a hermeneutical principle that Paul later invokes in Rom. 3:19) who fail to keep it. Paul’s introduction of curse in 3:10 in contrast with blessing in 3:8, therefore, is anything but arbitrary.

That those who believe, like Abraham, are blessed with him makes sense; for those who are of the law to be cursed, however, takes for granted that they are not of faith. This assumption in turn sheds light on what Paul means by being of the law: not simply trying to keep the law, but trying to keep it without faith. Surely, one might object, nearly all law-keepers believe in God. But from Paul’s perspective, they do not depend on God’s grace, now revealed in his saving gift in Christ. Works of law cannot justify (2:16), nor were they meant to (2:21; 3:21); what matters for being put right with God is Christ-faith (2:16). Paul later clarifies that one can approach the law either with faith (rightly) or (wrongly) on the basis of one’s (inadequate) works (Rom. 3:27; 9:31–32), from God’s Spirit or from mere flesh (8:2).

Although few Jews in Paul’s day violated any of the specific prescriptions in Deut. 27:15–25, Paul’s wording borrows from Deuteronomic passages that are more encompassing. Many Jews presumably violated some of Deuteronomy’s most fundamental commandments (e.g., the prohibition of coveting in Deut. 5:21; cf. Rom. 7:7), even in Deuteronomy’s day (Deut. 5:29). More importantly, this entire section of Deuteronomy warns of Israel’s apostasy and their being scattered because of the curses (28:63–65, 68), as well as predicts their ultimate turning back to God (30:1–10) (this is a belief that Paul also shares in Rom. 11:25–27). Some interpreters contend that Paul’s Jewish contemporaries in fact understood themselves as experiencing even the continuing curse of exile. Although this premise is debated, it is difficult to deny that most Jewish thinkers did at least anticipate an eschatological regathering of the scattered tribes, which indicates the belief that some tribes remained scattered at this time. Moreover, Paul was by no means obligated to understand texts about judgments in only the ways that his contemporaries did; he could argue that his people remained subject to curses even if he were the only one to argue this (and he was not).

This larger context in Deuteronomy includes another passage or two from which Paul takes the words written in the book of, Deut. 28:58 and/or 29:20–21 (LXX 29:19–20), both of which refer to curses for disobedience. The former was a familiar passage possibly made all the more familiar to Paul if it was recited during his synagogue beatings (2 Cor. 11:24), as somewhat later Jewish tradition could suggest. Paul’s quotations in Gal. 3:10, 12 highlight adherence to the law’s many individual stipulations rather than rejecting appreciation for the law as a whole or what we might call the spirit of the law.

Scholars often suggest, probably rightly, that Paul here reframes his opponents’ proof-texts. Scholars argue this both because Paul nowhere else uses this terminology for curse and because the usual face-value reading of Deut. 27:26 would support his opponents’ emphasis on keeping the law. Paul’s rivals may have emphasized “observing” (lit., doing) the law in Deut. 27:26 (for “doing” the law, see also, e.g., Exod. 18:20; Lev. 19:37; Deut. 29:29), but Paul emphasizes the word “all”: one must do all the works of the law (see 5:3). Although “all” is merely implicit in the Hebrew text of this verse, it is explicit in the standard Greek rendering that Paul shared with his audience. More importantly, “all” appears in some other passages in this section of Deuteronomy, some of the other wording of which Paul incorporates into his citation. In Deut. 28:58 and its context, curses would come on Israel if they did “not diligently observe all the words of this law.”

Although many scholars doubt that Paul’s argument here presupposes the impossibility of keeping the law, a probably larger number of scholars maintain, I believe correctly, the more traditional view that Paul presupposes here that no one perfectly keeps the law. The question here is not what most Jews believed—though most Jews did believe that virtually everyone sinned—but whether Paul believed that no one kept it adequately (or whether any human action could be adequate of itself) to merit God’s favor. As for keeping all the law, Paul was well aware that not every prescription of the Torah could be or was kept in the Diaspora; certainly, few Diaspora Jews would make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times a year (Exod. 23:17; 34:23–24; Deut. 16:16).

At the very least, those under the law remain under the threat of a curse due to nonfulfillment. Whether or not Paul regarded perfect observance as impossible in principle, he at least warns his audience not to place themselves in the position of having to find out (cf. Gal. 5:3). Many Jews would have assumed that provisions in the law for atonement resolved the sins that they did commit. Paul, however, finds atonement elsewhere (Gal. 1:4; Rom. 3:25; 8:3). Moreover, and in the ultimate analysis, the law was never intended for justification anyway (Gal. 2:21; 3:21).

Critics cannot reasonably object that, because such a premise is not explicit, Paul does not assume it. Paul and other ancient writers often used enthymemes, syllogisms with an obvious minor premise suppressed rather than explicitly stated. Rabbis also often compressed their argumentation by simply assuming premises that their biblically literate peers shared. Today, relevance theory amply illustrates that even in ordinary communication many assumptions are taken for granted and therefore not explicitly stated.

Paul here probably thus assumes a premise that he elsewhere clearly states—namely, that no one keeps all the law—or, relevantly here, at least that the people of the law, Israel, had not done so. This premise needed little argument (though Paul dutifully supplies argumentation in Rom. 1:18–3:21) precisely because Jewish tradition already understood that everyone sinned. Paul can also take for granted that his fellow Jewish believers, including Peter, recognize that there is no justification apart from Christ (Gal. 2:16). (Some of Paul’s assumed premises may have been evident to the Galatians also from his earlier preaching to them.)

Not only so, but Paul may well read even his main specific texts (Deut. 27:26 and Lev. 18:5) in light of their development in the prophetic tradition, which regularly charged Israel for their failure to keep the law’s precepts. The warning in Jer. 11:3 recalls Deut. 27:26; Ezek. 20 uses Lev. 18:5 to show Israel’s historic apostasy. In such passages, Israel’s apostasy from the law justifies God’s judgment on them. Because Paul reads Lev. 18:5 “through the lens of Ezekiel,” Sigurd Grindheim notes, it now “has associations, not of life, but of forfeited life, and, consequently, death.” More generally, various Second Temple Jewish texts lamented Israel’s continuing failure.

Curses were meant to divinely enforce laws that could not be fully enforced humanly. Paul’s opponents probably warned the Galatians that whoever broke the laws would experience the curse; they should therefore keep the law. Paul, however, turns the warning back on the Galatians: by accepting circumcision, they would obligate themselves to the entire law (5:3), which they would not perfectly observe, and they would thereby incur the curse. Yet, contrary to what Paul’s opponents may have been saying, the law’s curse applied only to those under the law, whereas, Paul says, believing gentiles are already blessed in Abraham (3:7–8).

Paul may also here imply that his opponents in particular are, despite their pretense (cf. 2:13), law-breaking apostates who merit the law’s curse (cf. 1:7–9). Paul clearly believed that his opponents did not keep all the law (6:13), and some interpreters contend that his words about law-breakers in this verse apply especially to his opponents.

Bridging Horizons

Any Christian who looks down on members of another faith or looks down on anyone because of sins that he or she has committed misses the point of Paul’s understanding of Jesus. Paul does not see himself as preaching a new world religion meant as superior to other religions. Paul sees himself as proclaiming God’s saving act for humanity. Those who receive this gift do not do so because of any innate intellectual superiority, social status, or moral merit (Rom. 3:23; 1 Cor. 1:23–29), and certainly not on the basis of ethnic superiority (Gal. 3:28). Rather than envisioning themselves as superior to others, those who truly trust in Jesus should welcome others and share with others the astonishingly good news of this unmerited gift in Christ that they themselves have experienced.

Truly following Jesus is not about finding ways to establish our status over nonbelievers, still less about establishing it over fellow believers (whether because of our subsequent spiritual experiences, correct doctrine, or cultural values). It is about God’s gracious invasion of undeserving humanity with an opportunity to be brought back to right relationship with him, an invitation that cost God the death of his own Son. When we embrace God’s grace rather than insisting on our own worthiness, we can freely offer others secure hope without regard to their own prior status before God.

In a relativistic context that renders all beliefs equivalent, even such an offer may sound arrogant, as if Christians alone have the truth. This offense was felt no less in Paul’s day: a polytheistic world found Jewish monotheism intolerant, and Christian insistence on Jesus as the only way to Jews’ one true God (e.g., John 14:6; Acts 4:12; Gal. 2:21) as more intolerant still. But relativism that makes itself an absolute is philosophically self-defeating, and in effect neuters the claims not only of the Christian faith but of all religious movements that claim any absolutes.

For Paul, faith in Jesus was an intellectual demand as well as the welcoming of a gift. It was not additional insurance for the afterlife just in case it was true; genuine faith in Jesus demanded the abandonment of other gods (Gal. 5:20; 1 Cor. 5:10–11; 6:9; 8:1–10; 10:7, 14; 2 Cor. 6:16; 1 Thess. 1:9; cf. Acts 14:15; 17:29–30). It invites us to abandon faith in ourselves as well. We stake our lives, both in this age and the next, completely on God’s gift in Jesus Christ.

A CLOSER LOOK: EARLY JEWISH SOTERIOLOGY

Today most scholars, following the epochal work of E. P. Sanders, recognize that Jewish teaching in antiquity stressed God’s gracious choice of Israel, and many apply this to the question of individuals’ salvation. Jewish people expressed confidence in their relationship with God in comparison to that of the gentiles (though this may not be saying much, given many views of gentiles’ sinfulness). Deuteronomy’s message that God chose Israel because he loved their ancestors, rather than because of their righteousness (Deut. 7:8; 9:5), continued to be valued. Many early Christian sources recognize that many Jewish people took for granted that being descendants of Abraham gave them a place in the world to come, not unlike many Christians on their own affiliation. But ancestral chosenness covered Jews, not converts.

Jewish teachers valued inward love for God and the intention of the heart. Psalms of Solomon, which reflects some mainstream Jewish (and possibly Pharisaic) thought in the first century BCE, recognizes the need for God’s grace when one is judged. Qumran prayers delight in God’s mercy. The legal emphasis of much later rabbinic material is because the rabbis’ work often involved understanding and applying law. This focus does differ from that of the earliest Jesus movement, if not from later Christian canon law, but other ancient Jewish material offers a wider range for comparison.

Sanders recognized works-righteousness in 4 Ezra, despite the theme of election there, but thought it rarer elsewhere. Some, however, argue that Sanders projected a pattern of covenant grace in rabbinic sources onto other Jewish sources where it does not fit—for example, in apocalyptic literature and the Qumran scrolls. Some even complain that he imported categories from Paul onto the rabbis; since his objective was to understand Paul, however, some comparable categories were necessary.

Many critics today find elements of righteousness by works in various ancient Jewish sources. (Reward for deeds, of course, also appears in the NT [e.g., Matt. 5:12, 46; Rom. 2:6; Rev. 22:12].) Although not typically in the context of inheriting the coming world, many expected judgment to match the crime. Josephus may associate obedience with salvation, including in Abraham’s case. He also may depict Essenes and Pharisees as supporting this approach. Others find works-righteousness not only in 4 Ezra, like Sanders, but also in the somewhat similar 2 Baruch. One could speak of those whose works are in truth being cleansed from guilt and judged by God’s grace and forgiveness (1QHa 14.11–12). Many also find works-righteousness alongside grace in rabbinic materials. God graciously provided laws, for example, as opportunity for merit.

In some rabbinic collections even the corporate redemption of Israel sometimes appears as conditional on subsequent obedience. Often it depends on merit, but ancestral rather than current merit. Later rabbis attributed to patriarchal merits Israel’s exodus from Egypt and sometimes other blessings on Israel, though some other later rabbis emphasized personal merit more highly. Even in the second century, some biblical principles could militate against merit theology, and most merit theology involved corporate blessings on Israel. Nevertheless, in some passages obeying or violating commandments affected one’s status in the coming age. Apparently Paul’s “works of the law” were associated with “merits” only in the patristic period.

Although Jewish sources do not always depict disinclination to obey the law, many of them do depict just that. Certainly, Jewish sources recognized that nearly all people sin, sometimes excepting a few great figures of the past. Authors of Qumran scrolls viewed themselves as “perfect” in the law yet also as completely dependent on God’s mercy.

Some argue that Sanders’s relegation of such statements to the status of anomalies merely categorizes away evidence that does not fit his thesis. Like early Christianity but on a larger scale, ancient Jewish thought was diverse on many issues and probably does not lend itself to simple systematization. Thus, for example, in Hellenistic Judaism, loving righteousness may lead to immortality, but Philo may have viewed grace and works as in competition. Rabbis spoke both of works that merited the coming age and of salvation by membership in the covenant people. Sanders himself did not ignore such statements; he observes that most rabbinic statements are ad hoc, though he rightly finds some widespread elements.

But even if all ancient Jews saw their works only as the fruit of God’s saving grace, should we expect that to eliminate some legalism or boasting in religious achievements any more than does the Christian doctrine of grace in churches? Indeed, some later rabbis expressly criticized some earlier Pharisees for treating merits and sins as a mere accounting project.

Even Sanders’s critics rightly recognize that he properly critiqued the previously dominant Christian view of a graceless Judaism. Moreover, they sometimes neglect the nuance already present in his own statements. While emphasizing grace, Sanders does not neglect the role of obedience in maintaining the covenant; he acknowledges that rabbis saw no contradiction between grace and merit. Some differences thus reflect semantic differences in classification or divergent corrective emphases. Nevertheless, evidence suggests variety in early Judaism rather than systematic consistency on the matter: both grace/election and the necessity of obedience.

A CLOSER LOOK: THE NEW PERSPECTIVE ON PAUL

E. P. Sanders’s work Paul and Judaism effected a major shift in Christian scholars’ understanding of Judaism. As noted above in the excursus “A Closer Look: Early Jewish Soteriology,” almost all scholars now agree that the older Christian depiction of Judaism as graceless is incorrect. Within this current understanding, however, is a range of perspectives on both Judaism and Paul. The point of this excursus is merely to summarize some of these perspectives; I surveyed “law-works” and “Christ-faith” further at Gal. 2:16 (pp. 177–88).

Sanders’s reevaluation of Judaism also invited a reevaluation of how Paul responds to Judaism. Some are quick to allege contradictions within Paul; however, while he naturally creates different arguments for different settings, it is methodologically more sound to start with how a writer’s various claims may relate to one another. As a first-century Pharisee (Phil. 3:5), Paul certainly knew Pharisaic thought of his day better than we do, which means that if Christian scholarship misunderstood ancient Judaism through the lens of Paul, it presumably also misunderstood Paul. This may be partly because Paul’s target was not actually a monolithic “Judaism” but rather some of Paul’s fellow Jewish Christians, influenced by some currents in Judean thought; it may also be because he employs first-century polemical conventions rather than providing a dispassionate explanation of his opponents’ beliefs.

James D. G. Dunn and N. T. Wright have become major voices for the “New Perspective,” although these voices differ on various points (e.g., regarding πίστις Χριστοῦ [pistis Christou] in Gal. 2:16). Although the New Perspective has many detractors, it is hardly monolithic itself, as it includes a significant range of new perspectives.

Following Dunn, many argue that Paul’s law-works (Gal. 2:16) targets especially “boundary markers” such as circumcision, food laws, and holy days that marked ethnic Israel off from gentiles (cf. 2:3, 7–9, 11; 4:10; 5:2–6, 11; 6:12–15). Critics of the New Perspective generally reject this view, rightly pointing out that the phrase can have a wider meaning while sometimes conceding that Paul might have circumcision most in view.

Sanders emphasized Jewish hope in the restoration of the tribes of Israel, and N. T. Wright has developed the argument in terms of Israel’s continuing exile. (Many OT texts that early Christian writers such as Paul apply to salvation plainly refer, in their original context, to Israel’s restoration [e.g., Rom. 10:13; 2 Cor. 6:2, 17, citing Joel 2:32; Isa. 49:8; 52:11]. This observation is important if Paul thought about original contexts, which he at least sometimes surely did.) Others have critiqued an emphasis on Israel’s continuing exile or at least rejected its presence in Paul. Sanders himself suggests “that the term exile or the various forms of dissatisfaction that we see in the Second Temple period is inappropriate.” As noted earlier, however, most Jewish thinkers did at least anticipate an eschatological regathering of the scattered tribes.

A newer approach suggests that the typical New Perspective approach remains too anti-Judaic; it wrongly sets Christianity as universalistic in opposition to Judaism as being ethnically particular. But although Jewish faith certainly had its universalistic strands, in Judea it remained predominantly ethnic in at least the same way that Russian or Armenian or Syrian Orthodox churches are in their homelands, so that participation entailed some embrace of a culture and heritage as well as a shared deity. Especially to Judeans but also to some Diaspora Jews, Paul’s apparent dismissal of key boundary markers, maintained at great cost despite centuries of hostility, would appear akin to betrayal of one’s people.

Nevertheless, this approach to Paul within Judaism is an important and fuller corrective of older approaches that viewed Paul as leading a new religion. Paul understood the influx of gentiles in the context of biblical promises (Rom. 4:17–18; 15:9–12). If some other Jews deemed him a bad Jew, and if he deemed them rebels against the Jewish Messiah, this conflict no more extracts him from first-century Judaism than it does the authors of the Qumran scrolls (which often depict the rest of Israel in even less flattering terms).

3:11

11And it’s clear that no one will be righted with God by the law, because “The righteous one will live by faith.”

Paul already affirmed in 2:16 (on the basis of Ps. 143) that no one will be righted with God by (the works of) the law; now he argues it on the basis of the alternative in Hab. 2:4. Although Paul probably borrowed his citation in Gal. 3:10 (Deut. 27:26) from his opponents, the case is less clear for his citation of Hab. 2:4 in Gal. 3:11. If Paul’s opponents did employ it, however, they presumably would have expected it to support their position. Non-Christian Judean sources generally applied it to human faithfulness to the Torah. Nevertheless, Paul’s application to trusting God in the face of judgment may come closer to Habakkuk’s meaning (cf. Hab. 3:17–18). Faith rather than the law was the basis for the original covenant.

Arguing against opponents who valued Jewish traditional interpretations, Paul uses to his advantage the Jewish exegetical techniques that he had absorbed in his past training (cf. Gal. 1:14; Phil. 3:5; Acts 22:3). In a common method traditionally called gezerah shevah, interpreters linked passages, even by different authors, that used shared vocabulary or themes. Paul knew Scripture so well that he readily linked with Gen. 15:6 (cited in Gal. 3:6) the one other passage that explicitly and relevantly linked righteousness with faith: Hab. 2:4. Indeed, some scholars argue plausibly that the lexical connections between the two OT passages may even suggest that Hab. 2:4 deliberately echoes Gen. 15:6. This passage may supply the template for Paul’s language “from faith” (ἐκ πίστεως, ek pisteōs, as in the Greek text of Gal. 2:16; 3:2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 22, 24; 5:5); in Romans, designed with greater forethought, Paul quotes Hab. 2:4 before reusing the phrase (Rom. 1:17; 3:26, 30; 4:16; 5:1; 9:30, 32; 10:6; 14:23).

A number of capable scholars have argued that Paul deploys Hab. 2:4 not with reference to Abraham’s faith (Gal. 3:6, 9) or that of other believers (3:7–9; cf. Rom. 1:16) but rather with reference to Christ’s faithfulness. The most common version of the LXX speaks of “my” faith—that is, of God’s faithfulness—and Paul often applies texts about YHWH to Christ. Further, some interpret the righteous one in Paul’s use of Habakkuk as Christ, so that “his faith” refers to Christ’s faithfulness, though Paul omits the possessive pronoun. This argument can appeal to corporate personality and Paul’s participationist logic later in Gal. 3: those in faithful Abraham are compared to those in faithful Christ.

Certainly, Paul does argue elsewhere from those in Adam to those in Christ (Rom. 5:12–6:11), but does he argue for corporate (ethnic) identity in Abraham, or does he precisely counter such an argument from his rivals by emphasizing those who have faith like Abraham? While Paul would certainly agree that Christ’s obedience to the point of death saves believers (Rom. 5:19; cf. Phil. 2:8), it seems very unlikely that he designates Christ’s obedience as “faith” (though cf. Heb. 12:2), especially in Galatians. Both here and in Rom. 1:17, Paul omits the pronoun “my” modifying “faith” in LXX Hab. 2:4. Paul undoubtedly recognizes that the original, Hebrew text reads differently: “his faith,” that is, the faith of the righteous person. Paul’s deletion of the pronoun that appears in the version most familiar to his audience suggests that, although he may not take space to explain it here, he refers not to God’s faith but to that of human beings.

Since Heb. 10:38 also moves the LXX “my” so that it now modifies “righteous one” rather than “faith,” and the author of Hebrews reflects no direct knowledge of Hebrew, this change is certainly not coincidental. This dependence on the Hebrew text probably reflects either an interpretive tradition going back to the Jerusalem church or the dependence of Hebrews on an argument circulated by Paul. Interestingly, a Judean wilderness sect interpreted “faith” in the Hebrew text of Habakkuk with reference to faithfulness or allegiance to their teacher, although they, unlike Paul, would have connected this faith with obedience to the Torah.

Moreover, Christ is not the subject of any verbs in this section until Gal. 3:13; he is therefore a quite unlikely subject here. Given the use of the both the noun and cognate verb in the context in Galatians, believers’ faith seems likely in view. One might argue the original context in Hab. 2:4 either way, but its immediate contrast with the spirit of the proud earlier in the verse also suggests, as does the Hebrew pronomial suffix, reference to the believer’s faith.

Luke reports Paul preaching from Habakkuk in the chief synagogue of the region (Acts 13:41). That Paul in the context of that sermon preaches being righted by faith (13:39) may suggest that Luke condensed a longer source that expounded more of the context in Habakkuk.

Grammatically, it might be better to read Gal. 3:11 as saying, “Because no one will be righted with God by the law, it’s clear that . . .” instead of placing it’s clear that toward the beginning of the sentence. Another syntactical question has generated more dispute. Many prefer to understand Paul as saying, “The righteous one will live by faith,” a reading that seems simpler grammatically and perhaps more in keeping with Habakkuk’s context. It also fits the structural parallel between Hab. 2:4 and Lev. 18:5: living through faith versus living through them (the works of the law).

Others prefer “The one righteous-by-faith will live,” which seems to better fit Paul’s theology. Paul’s contrast with justification by the law probably means that he speaks here of being righteous by faith. Paul has been connecting faith with righteousness (Gal. 3:6), not with resurrection from the dead; the latter is, however, promised to the righteous (cf. Rom. 8:10–13; 1 Cor. 6:14; 15:12–54; 2 Cor. 4:14; Phil. 3:21; 1 Thess. 4:14). Still, he does connect living with faith in 2:20, so the decision here remains difficult.

As with 3:10 and sometimes 3:11, interpreters often contend that Paul borrowed LXX Lev. 18:5 (in Gal. 3:12) from his opponents’ textual arsenal. This contention is probably correct, but Paul has prepared for it with matching texts that make this citation an obvious choice here. It contains ποιέω (poieō) and αὐτά (auta; plus ἐν, en) like Deut. 27:26 (Gal. 3:10), and ζήσεται (zēsetai) like Hab. 2:4 (Gal. 3:11). Thus Paul can use “Lev. 18:5 as the (positive) summary of the latter part of Deut. 27:26” as well as the antithesis of Hab. 2:4.

Early Jewish sources associate both wisdom (cf. Prov. 3:18; 13:14) and Torah with life. Although biblical promises of living if one obeyed the Torah (Lev. 18:5; Deut. 30:6, 19) referred to long life on the land (Deut. 4:1, 40; 5:33; 8:1; 30:16, 19–20), it was natural to extrapolate from them (as some later rabbis did), by means of qal wahomer, an application to the world to come, as scholars often note. Scripture already promised eschatological resurrection life through the Spirit, a corporate event associated with the restoration of God’s people (Ezek. 37:6, 14). That is, if life on the promised land depended on obeying the covenant, why should life in the world to come be any different? Qumran’s Damascus Document applies Lev. 18:5 to eternal life; Pss. Sol. 14:1–2, 4 Ezra 7:21, and Luke 10:25, 28 probably do the same.

Given the failings of human obedience, Paul much prefers—as more practical than this approach to Lev. 18:5—Hab. 2:4, already cited in Gal. 3:11. For Paul, the life that he is discussing here is “eternal life” (see comment at 6:8).

Jesus also associated keeping the commandments with eternal life (Mark 10:17, 19, followed by Matthew and Luke), a point probably known to Paul’s opponents. Yet even before Jesus’s interlocutor professed obedience to all these commandments (10:20), Jesus warned that only God was truly good (10:18)—in Pauline language, all are sinners. Jesus then demands that his inquirer give everything to the poor and follow him (10:21), a demand at which the professedly righteous inquirer balks (10:22). “Eternal life” recurs in Jesus’s ensuing dialogue with his disciples, the only other use of the full phrase in Mark: it is promised to those ready to abandon everything for Jesus and his good news of the kingdom (10:29–30). Similarly, for Paul, Jesus himself is the sine qua non of eternal life; one must trust in, hence entrust oneself to, him (Gal. 2:16; 3:22).

3:12

12But the law isn’t based on faith; on the contrary: “One who does these things will live by them.”

Despite some significant differences between the contexts of Rom. 10:5 and Gal. 3:12, they offer similar lines of argument. In one case Paul uses Deut. 30 to qualify the possible meaning of Lev. 18:5 (Rom. 10:5–8), whereas here Paul uses Hab. 2:4 to qualify it. Laying two texts against each other, using the second to qualify the meaning of the first, was a common midrashic method (on which see further comment below).

One rare argument that could explain the flow of thought both in this passage and, to a lesser extent, in Rom. 10:5 is that Paul applies Lev. 18:5 to Christ. Just as some scholars interpret Hab. 2:4 as a messianic text in Gal. 3, so also some have offered, no less ingeniously, a christocentric reading of Lev. 18:5. Paul would certainly affirm that Christ did fulfill the law (Gal. 4:4) and could become a sacrifice for others’ sin because of his sinlessness (Rom. 8:3; cf. 1 Cor. 5:7; 2 Cor. 5:21; Heb. 9:14). But did Christ “live” because he was sinless, or did he live because the Father raised him (Gal. 1:4; Rom. 1:4; 6:4; 8:11; 1 Cor. 15:15)? And while Paul surely would have conceded that Christ kept the law (Gal. 4:4), enabling him to exchange status with us (3:13; 4:5), the preceding context lacks sufficient clues to inform Paul’s audience that he expects them to read 3:12 christologically. As in Rom. 1–3, Paul is willing to belabor the obvious before developing his case: all people sin, and therefore all people need new life in Christ.

As one received a curse for breaking the law (Deut. 27:26 in Gal. 3:10), one would receive life for keeping it (Lev. 18:5 in Gal. 3:12)—assuming that one could. Paul quotes Lev. 18:5 only now that he has already made Hab. 2:4 a more foundational text that, on his antithetical argument, rules it out in practice. He might also respond to his opponents’ misapplication of Lev. 18:5 rather than to its actual meaning. In any case, Paul’s antithesis is surely deliberate.

Paul again links (and in this case contrasts) texts by common key words: one could live by faith (Gal. 3:11) or one could live by doing the law (3:12). Paul probably continues to assume as common knowledge that no one perfectly observes the law (see comment on 3:10). As at 3:10, many commentators understand Paul as assuming here that no one is able to keep all the law, although others demur. Although Paul would agree that no one keeps all the law, his main point is that mere adherence to the law in terms of obeying its precepts isn’t based on faith.

Although the antithesis between faith and law-works may not seem obvious on the surface, Paul can make use of a well-known principle in contemporary forensic rhetoric, that of leges contrariae, typically used for playing one law off against another. That the law isn’t based on faith (3:12a) rules it out as a means of salvation in light of the righteous living by faith (3:11), underlining the reality that justification is not the purpose of the law (2:21; 3:21).

Jewish interpreters often cited one text against another, sometimes citing a third text to break the tie. As some second-century rabbis opined, “Two passages which contradict each other [cannot be reconciled] unless a third passage comes and decides between them.” Gentiles also sometimes cited one authoritative text against another proposed by someone else, particularly in (as often with the rabbis) legal argumentation.

The context of Lev. 18:5 is one of avoiding the practices of the gentiles (18:3, 24), keeping God’s practices instead (18:4). Jews did almost entirely abstain from the (mostly sexual) practices in 18:6–23, which they deemed more characteristic of pagans (18:3, 24), and they rightly expected foreigners among them to keep the same rules (18:26). Failure to keep these laws would lead to Israel being spewed out of the land (18:28), as pagans were (18:24). Any transgressor would be cut off from the covenant and from God’s people (18:29). Paul himself certainly insisted on this minimal standard of morality for God-fearing gentiles (Gal. 5:19–20; 1 Cor. 5:1; 6:9–20). But Lev. 18:5 speaks more generally of “my [the LORD’s] statutes and ordinances,” a phrase that ultimately encompasses all the law (Lev. 18:4–5, 26; 19:37; 20:22; 25:18; 26:15, 43, 46). Paul is thus presumably applying it to everything written in the book of the law (3:10)—hence, for example, the NRSV’s translation of “these things” as “the works of the law” (also NET).

Leviticus 18:5 continued to have a life in subsequent Scripture and early Judaism; indeed, its very familiarity may be one reason why Paul can cite it without any introductory formula (such as “as it is written” in 3:10). Nehemiah refers to this passage as he confesses Israel’s sin (Neh. 9:29). Ezekiel recycles it in the context of Israel’s disobedience and consequent impending judgment (Ezek. 20:11, 13, 21). The Dead Sea Scrolls also place the promise (CD 3.16) in the context of Israel’s disobedience (3.11–12, 14) but offer hope for the righteous priestly community (3.18–4.1); Pss. Sol. 14 similarly condemns violators of Lev. 18:5. As David deSilva notes, “Israel’s collective experience down to the time of Paul (and all the more in the decades after!) is a testimony to the Sinaitic covenant essentially ensuring a fairly consistent state of ‘curse’ for Israel.” Subjected to other peoples time and again, Israel rarely experienced the promised blessings of the covenant.

Paul slightly changes the wording of the standard LXX version: he substitutes One who does these things (Greek ὁ ποιήσας αὐτὰ [ho poiēsas auta], “the one who does these things”) for the standard LXX version’s “person [ἄνθρωπος, anthrōpos] who does these things” (which renders the Hebrew text slightly more literally). When explaining Lev. 18:5, later rabbis sometimes focused on the word “person,” suggesting that anyone, even a gentile, who studies the law is equivalent to the high priest. Some scholars suggest that Paul’s opponents may have shared this same tradition. Although this is possible, the change could also simply reflect the usual ancient practice of paraphrase.

Abraham’s descendants should be blessed (Gal. 3:8–9), but the law has introduced for them the possibility (realized repeatedly in Israel’s history) of a curse. Yet the law cannot annul the earlier and more foundational promise to and through Abraham (3:17–18). Thus Christ has endured the curse for us (3:13), and Abraham’s spiritual descendants are blessed in Abraham and his seed, especially Christ (3:16, 29).

3:13

13Christ purchased our deliverance from the above-mentioned curse of the law, by becoming a curse on our behalf. This is because the Bible says, “Everyone who was hanged on a tree is cursed.”

In Gal. 3:13 Paul returns to the thought of 3:10. Again linking texts by shared terminology, Paul offers a second “curse” text from Deuteronomy: if the sufferings ascribed to curses in Deut. 27 represent judgments, then the same could be understood of Jesus’s suffering of crucifixion, since it too is a cursed state in Deuteronomy. Paul slightly changes the Greek wording of Deut. 21:23 to match the cursed in 27:26 (cited in Gal. 3:10), thus making the connection easier to catch.

In Deuteronomy, what was hanged was the corpse, adding posthumous shame to the execution. Later, however, some peoples would hang a person to death on a stake, a custom adopted widely by Rome. Crucifixion could take a variety of forms, but in Jesus’s case was a †-shape, with room for an inscription over his head. Even one noted Jewish ruler hanged his enemies in this way, and some Jewish interpreters viewed this action in light of Deut. 21:23. Thus Paul was certainly not the first author to apply Deut. 21:23 to crucifixion. The Qumran sectarians deemed the biblical punishment appropriate for capital crimes even while the condemned person remained alive. By changing the word sequence in Deut. 21, they also clearly applied the text to hanging before rather than after death.

Jews would not think someone necessarily cursed by God simply for having been crucified by the Romans. This association may have originated directly from some of Paul’s interlocutors in synagogues that emphasized the Sanhedrin’s verdict against Jesus (cf. Acts 13:27–28), or possibly from Paul’s own preconversion polemic based on the same premise. (Paul’s rivals probably invoke the curse of the law; Paul’s detractors debating him in synagogues may have associated that curse with the cross.) But good argumentation turned the perceived advantages of opponents to one’s own advantage.

Luke presents Paul as depicting the cross as a “tree” also in Paul’s preaching in this region (Acts 13:29; but also in Peter’s preaching in 5:30; 10:39; cf. 1 Pet. 2:24), perhaps evoking Deut. 21:22–23 (the description appears also in Joshua and elsewhere). There is no suggested association with a curse in Luke’s references, however.

Paul indicates that if his hearers want to view matters purely under the law, then they will have to proclaim Jesus accursed (an ungodly declaration, 1 Cor. 12:3)! But even though Jesus was innocent (Acts 13:28), there was a sense in which, under the law (cf. Gal. 4:4), he did embrace the curse, to free others from it (3:13). His Father then, of course, vindicated him by raising him.

How could Jesus become a “curse”? This idea was so problematic that Jerome tried to correct Paul on the assumption that Paul misunderstood the Hebrew text. But Christ became a curse presumably the way that he became sin in 2 Cor. 5:21: as a representative of sin, and therefore a sin offering. God condemned sin in Christ’s flesh (Rom. 8:3). Under the law, guilt could be transferred to a lamb or a goat (e.g., Lev. 4:24; 5:6; 8:14; 9:15; 16:21; Num. 8:12); here it is transferred to Christ. Abraham and surely Christ, his ultimate seed, were blessed; Jesus, who did not merit the curse, experienced it in others’ place. Many understand being a curse as figurative for being accursed (as in the Deuteronomy text that Paul cites).

Perhaps in another sense Jesus could become a curse literally—in the same sense that his enemies could count him accursed (1 Cor. 12:3). Making someone “a curse” or “for a curse” meant using that person’s accursed condition as an analogy of wretchedness: “May you be cursed like so-and-so” (cf. Jer. 29:22 [LXX 36:22]). (The noun κατάρα (katara) and cognate verb ἐπικαταράομαι (epikataraomai) appear together in Mal. 2:2.) Thus Jesus, who was accursed (by virtue of hanging on the cross), could be said to be for a curse; people could thus curse others by saying, “Let them be accursed like Jesus,” who was hanged on a cross.

The context of Deut. 21:23 refers to one condemned for a capital crime (21:22); this person, since accursed before God, must be buried the same day (presumably meaning: the person is accursed while on the cross; therefore do not overdo the punishment by leaving the person on the cross). Leaving one on the cross would defile the land, like other activities that led to the land vomiting out its former inhabitants (Lev. 18:25, 28; Num. 35:34).

Paul’s term for purchased deliverance here (ἐξαγοράζω, exagorazō) can refer to paying off claims and so satisfying someone wronged, to gaining something, to “buying back” (the term’s etymology), or, as probably here, to securing someone’s deliverance. Paul employs this term in this way only here and in Gal. 4:5, and in that context liberation from subjection seems fairly clear. If, as thus appears likely, Paul uses the term in a manner similar to how the noun ἀπολύτρωσις (apolutrōsis), “redemption,” was used (Rom. 3:24; 8:23; 1 Cor. 1:30; Col. 1:14), he draws on a semantic domain rich with connotations.

Jewish people spoke of how God “purchased freedom” for, or redeemed, his people from captivity in Egypt. Israel was thus the Lord’s redeemed people, different in this respect from other peoples. They also looked for when he would again redeem them in the future time. This semantic domain does not always involve buying a slave’s freedom, but the context of Galatians suggests that Paul may use it that way here (cf. Gal. 4:1–3, 8–10). In the phrase a curse on our behalf, the words on our behalf (ὑπέρ ἡμῶν, huper hēmōn) imply “for our sake” and, sometimes more specifically, “in our stead,” which the context here and probably the similar usage in 1:4; 2:20 implies.

Paul here claims that Jesus redeemed us from the curse by experiencing it in our stead. Paul soon after speaks again of redeeming those under the law, that we should receive the adoption (Gal. 4:5). But who is Paul’s “we” here? Some contend that it refers only to Jews, since only they were under the law and therefore only they were possibly subject to its curse. Others (a majority of scholars), noting that Paul’s use of the first-person plural is not consistent in Galatians, argue that he intends the first-person plural to include his primarily gentile Christian audience, since they too were redeemed. That Paul does not clarify the point probably suggests that he allows “we” to include anyone. Specifically it does encompass here anyone who could be subject to the law’s curse, but merely as a specific case in Paul’s fuller theology, in which Christ redeemed all.

3:14

14This was so that in Christ Jesus the blessing promised to Abraham might come to the gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

Having addressed the curse in 3:10 and 3:13, Paul now returns to Abraham’s blessing for the nations (3:8) in 3:14. Paul’s rivals insist that circumcision is required for those who would join God’s people, a position consistent with wider Jewish belief. Paul, by contrast, responds that the Galatian believers’ reception of the Spirit demonstrates that they are already God’s people, among whom God dwells. Although Paul has been addressing Abraham’s faith in God’s promise since 3:6, in verse 14 Paul begins to use the explicit language of promise that will dominate much of his following exposition (3:16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 29) and will help connect this biblical argument with his next one (4:23, 28).

Paul’s special focus here is one aspect of the promise: the nations blessed in Abraham (3:8). Genesis depicts a dual promise to Abraham, of land and of seed. Against some, Paul has not abandoned this conception, though the land element is now subsumed under eschatological inheritance (3:18, 29; 5:21). He develops the concept of seed further in this chapter (3:16, 19, 29). The OT narrows the motif of the promised seed from Abraham’s seed to David’s (2 Sam. 7:12; Pss. 89:4; 132:11), so for Paul this promise climaxes naturally in the ultimate seed of promise, Jesus the Messiah.

Paul does not develop the land aspect of inheritance here, but elsewhere he agrees with the early Jewish expansion of that promise to embrace the entire world (Rom. 4:13; cf. 5:17; 8:21, 32). As OT passages spoke of Israel inheriting the land, Paul speaks of inheriting God’s kingdom (1 Cor. 6:9–10; 15:50; Gal. 5:21; Eph. 5:5). As noted above, he has just used other passages that speak in context of life on the land and sinners’ expulsion from the land (Gal. 3:12). Israel’s inheritance came from a covenant, not a will, but Paul will speak of a will (3:15) as he plays on the idea that an inheritance is given to offspring (3:29).

Why then does Paul equate the promise with the Spirit? For Paul, the Spirit is the foretaste of the future promise (Gal. 5:5; 1 Cor. 2:9–10; cf. Heb. 6:4–5), the first fruits (Rom. 8:23) and actual down payment of the future inheritance (2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5; Eph. 1:3, 13–14). Given OT promises of God pouring out his Spirit when he restored his people and their land, early Christians not surprisingly associated the Spirit with promise (Acts 1:4–5; 2:33, 38–39; Eph. 1:13). Because the Spirit is divine, receiving the Spirit is also itself the greatest gift—God dwelling among his people (e.g., Exod. 29:45–46).

Paul can readily connect the Spirit with blessing because of his knowledge of Scripture; in parallel lines, Isa. 44:3 announces that God will pour out his Spirit and his blessing on the seed/children of Israel. Those gentiles who now receive the Spirit in Christ belong, with Christ, to the promised seed (cf. Gal. 3:16, 29). Paul may even highlight gentiles here (in keeping with 3:8) by placing to the gentiles first in the Greek clause that contains it.

The prophets associated God’s Spirit among his people with the time of restoration (Isa. 32:15; 44:3; 59:21; Ezek. 36:27; 37:14; 39:29; Joel 2:28–29; cf. Hag. 2:5), so those who have received the Spirit (including the Galatian gentile believers, Gal. 3:2, 5) are the heirs of the full promise. In short, believing gentiles, as spiritual proselytes marked not by the outward symbol of circumcision but rather by the greater sign of the Spirit, share in the eschatological promise of the coming world centered in the new Jerusalem (Gal. 4:26). The seal of the Spirit made them heirs (3:14; 4:7). In Scripture, God promised Israel that they would “inherit” the promised land, an image that subsequent tradition extended to the entire earth.

Stick with the First Agreement (3:15–20)

3:15

15Brothers and sisters, I’m giving you now an analogy on the human level. This is like the case of a human testament that has been validated: nobody nullifies it or adds to it.

Paul develops a new but related line of thought in 3:15. Where there is an inheritance there is often a will, but God promised his people an inheritance in his covenant with them. Many scholars argue on firm grounds that διαθήκη (diathēkē, testament) here means “will” (as in “testament”; so NRSV); many others argue on equally firm grounds that it must mean “covenant.”

The entire context of this passage addresses being children of Abraham and the promised inheritance (3:6–29), making the meaning “will” here virtually indisputable. This was the normal Greek meaning—the one Paul’s usually predominantly gentile audiences would assume unless influenced by the LXX—and the one used by other first-century Jews such as Josephus. Paul’s vocabulary in 3:15–17 employs Greek legal terminology not found in typical Jewish discussions of the covenant.

At the same time, διαθήκη is the LXX term for “covenant,” which is also how Paul uses the term elsewhere; Paul has been addressing God’s covenant with Abraham, so this sense also seems indisputable. Although studies of early Judaism often emphasize Jewish teaching about the covenant and Paul’s revised understanding of it, early Jewish sources reveal a wide range of understandings of the covenant.

Undoubtedly, then, Paul intends both senses of the term here, using human wills as analogies for the biblical covenant with Abraham. Much of Paul’s Galatian audience may not have known the difference, but even his Torah-educated opponents could not easily object to his method of argument. Ancient writers and speakers often argued from (or cleverly punned with) wordplays. In this case, since Paul argues in Greek, he is not even playing on different words, but simply on a wider sense of the Greek word diathēkē than is conveyed by the Hebrew term for “covenant” in the OT (cf. also his argument from senses of a term in the following verse, Gal. 3:16). (Ancient interpreters, if they were consistent, would find it difficult to challenge Paul’s argument on the grounds that it works only in Greek; rabbis often chose whichever version—including Greek versions—best suited their argument.) The argument functions a fortiori from a human will to a divine covenant.

One can well understand, however, why Paul prefaces this argument with the warning that he gives an analogy on the human level—literally, “speaks according to human [reasoning]” (3:15; cf. similar expressions to this effect in Rom. 3:5; 6:19). He does not, then, place this argument on the same level as his gospel, which is not from human origin (Gal. 1:1, 12, 16). This approach resembles what rhetoricians called an “artificial proof,” and it supplements the stronger divine proofs that Paul has given from the Galatians’ experience in 3:1–5 and from Scripture in 3:6–14. As Chrysostom explains, Paul here “proceeds to common usages,” making a point more homiletically (“to sweeten his discourse”) rather than according to more rational persuasion.

Court cases often turned on the intention of the testator in a will, so Paul here explores the intention of the divine author of the covenant with Abraham. If a patron designated a client as heir, one could assume that the patron had found the client trustworthy—that is, faithful. It may also be relevant that one form of Greek διαθήκη also specified inheritance through adoption (Gal. 4:5).

Paul’s play on different senses may run into trouble with nobody nullifies it or adds to it. Wills were changed all the time; Paul here presumably alludes again to the covenant, which could not be changed once sworn by oath. So this will, which is in the form of a covenant, cannot be added to or annulled. The breaking of oaths surrounding a covenant would initiate the severe curses of the covenant.

The likeliest of other, perhaps supplemental solutions so far proposed are two. First, the death of the testator validated (i.e., ratified) (3:15) the will, making it unchangeable; no one disputed that a testator (or anyone else) could not alter the will after the testator’s death! (Moreover, despite some exceptions, in testamentary adoption the will was ratified and became irrevocable by the heir’s official acceptance.) The more common suggestion is that Paul’s point is that no one other than a testator could change his will. This suggestion requires of Paul’s audience little specific legal knowledge but suggests that Paul could have explained his point more clearly.

Other suggested options seem less probable. Jewish jurisprudence did develop a sort of irrevocable inheritance practice known more widely, but this was offered before the father’s death and is not equivalent to what Greeks called a will (διαθήκη), which was always revocable.

A CLOSER LOOK: ANCIENT WILLS

Wills provide for heirs to receive their inheritance, matters to which Paul quickly turns (Gal. 3:18, 29; 4:1, 7, 30; 5:21). Greek wills appear from the Ptolemaic through the Byzantine periods. Inheritance usually went to the nearest of kin. William Ramsay argued that Paul referred here to Greek wills, which were irrevocable, even if one might supplement them with codicils. One could not, he contends, renege on what the will essentially promised. A later will could not be accepted if it interfered with a will already publicly ratified and placed on deposit. That Greek wills were fully irrevocable, however, may be questioned.

Some argue that Greek wills did not substantially influence their Roman analogue, since the Roman practice of wills originated in Rome’s earliest period. Early Romans reportedly simply named their heirs in the presence of witnesses. Some Romans also knew of societies in which children inherited automatically without a will. Nevertheless, leaving a will became seen as a moral duty, regardless of how little wealth one had to pass on. A Roman Stoic noted that Nature dictates care for posterity, so when one is dying one makes a will and chooses guardians for children (cf. Gal. 4:2). These wills were opened only on the testator’s death, sometimes surprising those who were not named.

Roman jurists discussed what to do when someone died intestate. Roman law regularly followed specified procedures. Although people of means usually specified in wills the distribution of their property, the property was divided equally among all the children regardless of gender. Romans tried their best to find heirs before passing property to the state. Sometimes officials could void a will—for example, if it designated money for a reprehensible activity or did not mention a child whom the father had not explicitly disinherited. Still, officials practiced such interference fairly sparingly.

As noted, fathers sometimes disinherited children, although this situation may appear disproportionately in hypothetical declamations because it brought respected principles into conflict. By Paul’s day, Roman law allowed disinherited children to challenge the grounds for disinheritance. When a testator made two wills, the named heirs in each could sometimes debate the legitimacy of the other will. Inheritance became a frequent source of debate in courts, sometimes dividing relatives; even Jesus once was approached as a legal authority to rule on such matters (Luke 12:13).

Wills could be changed. They could be revoked through the maker’s request and official action. Under Roman law, “a later will, properly made, nullifies an earlier one.” Unfortunately, this made the accusation of forged wills a very common issue, with parties contesting which wills were authentic. Fraudulent wills would have to employ fraudulent witnesses. Romans prosecuted forgery of wills as a very serious crime. One could also contest a will by questioning the testator’s sanity at the time of the will’s writing. One could also argue that the testator planned to annul a will but died before completing the process.

3:16

16The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his progeny. It doesn’t say “and to progenies,” as if it referred to many people. No! Rather, it says “and to your progeny,” as to one person: namely, Christ.

Paul’s argument in 3:16 from the grammatically singular form of progeny is not the way we would normally argue today. Progeny (σπέρμα [sperma], “seed”) can include many offspring as well as one, so even some ancient interpreters suggested that in this verse Paul is still offering limited rhetorical arguments rather than arguing from logic (his speaking in merely human terms in 3:15). On the whole, though, it was an intelligible argument for Paul’s contemporaries. Rabbis could distinguish between singular and plural meanings as needed for whatever argument they were making at the time. Greeks also were ready to exploit any conceivable ambiguities in laws that could be read more than one way, even from different accenting or syllable division.

Indeed, rabbis sometimes made a move quite like Paul’s here. Commentators note m. Šabb. 9:2: “It is not said ‘its seed,’ but ‘its seeds.’” Similarly, Judean teachers inferred from the plural of “blood” in the Hebrew text of Gen. 4:10 the moral that the blood of the descendants is included. Likewise, the double yod in a word in Gen. 2:7 offered rabbis an exegetical basis for God creating humans with two contrary impulses. Women were exempt from certain duties because the biblical text said “sons,” even though this was a generic masculine in Hebrew. Rabbis would often argue like Paul here, “Not X is written, but Y.” One later rabbi even concluded regarding Lot’s daughters who planned to commit incest, “It is not written, that we may preserve a child of our father, but, THAT WE MAY PRESERVE SEED OF OUR FATHER: viz. the seed that comes from a different source, which is the King Messiah.”

Nevertheless, there may be a more consistent method in Paul’s apparent madness here. Grammar itself does not highlight the singularity of the seed, but the exclusion of Ishmael’s line (Gal. 4:21–31, esp. 4:30) indicates that the line of promise does not include all of Abraham’s physical descendants, a point that Paul develops more thoroughly elsewhere (Rom. 9:6–13). Paul undoubtedly knows that Gen. 22:2, where God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, describes Isaac as his “only” (Heb. yaḥîd) son (cf. also 22:16). Paul can make a long-range analogy with Christ as the ultimate singular seed of promise, who is also God’s Son (Gal. 4:6).

In Genesis, God made promises to Abraham and to his “seed” (Hebrew zeraʿ, generally translated as σπέρμα in the LXX; here as “progeny”):

The condition in 17:9–14 includes circumcision; the promises are ratified once Abraham passes the test of offering back to God the promised seed in Gen. 22.

“Progeny” referred not to merely any line of descent through Abraham, however; “it is through Isaac that progeny [σπέρμα, sperma] shall be named for you” (21:12; cf. Rom. 9:7; Heb. 11:18). Rightly or wrongly, a number of scholars argue that one or more of these promise texts (esp. Gen. 22:18; 24:7) refer in the first place to a singular seed (sperma)—namely, Isaac. Interpretations limiting Abraham’s seed were not unique to Paul; some others interpreted the seed at times as a particular individual, especially Isaac, and later rabbis restricted his seed to those who believe in a future age.

It is possible, though by no means certain, that Paul’s rivals were emphasizing Isaac as the true seed (cf. Gal. 4:21–31). Whereas they may have viewed the genetic/ethnic line of Isaac as the seed, Paul emphasizes that one becomes part of Abraham’s family through spiritual solidarity with Christ, Abraham’s ultimate seed (the promise of which is mentioned again in 3:19). If some of Paul’s audience understood the contemporary Roman practice of a testator being able to will an inheritance not only to an immediate successor but also to another after that, that understanding could have provided a further connection for grasping Paul’s idea of a specific seed beyond Isaac.

Rather than using an arbitrary approach, Paul probably envisioned a particular connection between Abraham’s seed and Christ. Just as in Rom. 4:19–20 Abraham had the same kind of faith as Jesus-believers—resurrection faith—so also here, Abraham’s faith in God’s promise of seed (in the short run, Isaac and the people of Israel) points toward the ultimate promise of Christ. Christ was the ultimate seed through whom gentiles were being blessed (Gal. 3:8), as is evident in the fruit of Paul’s gentile mission in obedience to Christ (cf. Rom. 1:5–6; 15:8–12).

For Paul, drawing on the wider scope of the biblical historical narrative, the promise of a specific seed was applied again more specifically to David’s descendants (2 Sam. 7:12–16; 22:51; Pss. 18:50; 89:4, 29, 36; 132:11–12). Richard Hays is probably right to suggest here Paul’s “linkage of the catchword seed to God’s promise to David in 2 Sam. 7:12–14.” Although that passage probably refers to David’s royal lineage, 4Q174 shows that it was also applied to the expected Davidic ruler par excellence.

Some also see “Christ” in 3:16 as a corporate figure (cf. 1 Cor. 12:12), so that those who are in him are also Abraham’s seed (Gal. 3:27–29), as those in God’s Son are God’s sons and daughters (4:4–7).

Richard Hays brilliantly parallels Christ’s faith with Abraham’s, so that the nations are blessed in Christ as they were in Abraham; but this may demand too much symmetry in Paul’s typology (symmetry conspicuously lacking at some points in 4:21–31).

3:17

17What my analogy means is this: the law, which came 430 years later, does not invalidate a covenant that God has already validated, and thus negate the promise.

God ratified his covenant with Abraham (Gal. 3:15; cf. Gen. 22:16–18), confirming it with an oath (Gen. 22:16); nothing, therefore, could supersede this arrangement. If Abraham was justified by faith (Gen. 15:6 in Gal. 3:6), the subsequent law of Moses could not do away with this way of justification (cf. Rom. 10:6–10). Indeed, with 430 years between the promise to Abraham and the law, faith in God’s promise clearly remained sufficient already during a long era.

Insofar as the promise involved all peoples being blessed in Abraham (the explicit promise cited in Gal. 3:8), it revealed God’s ideal plan, which could not be fulfilled in the era of Israel’s civil law, which separated Israel from other peoples to restrict pagan influence. Israel’s predilection to sin necessitated law (3:19), but though foreigners could join Israel, the law also obligated Israel to purge the land, destroying pagan populations (as Paul well knew; 1:13–14). The Lord’s covenant with Abraham and his descendants also involved blessing his children among the nations (Gen. 17:4).

In any case, Paul is not saying that once the law came it was unnecessary to obey it; rather, he is claiming that justification remained by faith even once the law was initiated. The prelaw models demonstrate that the form of obedience that faith took under the law was not the only form that God could prescribe for all eras. Against Jewish tradition but more in keeping with Genesis itself, Paul does not regard the law as already in effect in Abraham’s era. (Had someone protested that neither had Christ yet come in Abraham’s era, Paul would have rejoined that faith was Christward, in the coming seed that eventuated in Christ; Gal. 3:16.)

Various Jewish thinkers emphasized various covenants more than others, though nearly all other Jews would have found Paul’s approach to the law shocking. Psalms of Solomon notes Abraham’s (9:9–10; 18:3) and Moses’s (10:4) covenants but highlights especially God’s covenant with David (chaps. 17–18). In extant sources, only the Dead Sea Scrolls and early Christian thinkers emphasize the new covenant.

Other Jewish writers of this period generally emphasized the continuity between the covenants of Abraham’s and Moses’s eras; they also could draw distinctions, but never by regarding the Mosaic covenant as temporary. Paul’s rivals probably followed the common approach of blending the covenants together, whereas Paul is at pains to distinguish them in this context (see also Gal. 4:24). Alongside similarities, genuine differences among biblical covenants existed; thus among those between God and people, some emphasized divine initiative (such as God’s covenant with Noah) and others human responsibility. The Mosaic covenant, with its numerous covenant stipulations, heavily underlined the latter.

Paul was on good grounds in that the covenant with Abraham was an eternal covenant (Gen. 17:7, 19; 1 Chron. 16:16–17; Ps. 105:9–10). Perhaps critics later reminded Paul that this covenant was in Abraham’s flesh, confirmed through circumcision (Gen. 17:10, 13), inviting Paul’s later rejoinder that God justified Abraham, confirmed by faith, many years before he was circumcised (Rom. 4:10).

Playing off the law and the promise against each other may be more a rhetorical strategy than an exegetical conclusion; as noted at Gal. 2:16, rhetoricians could pose exclusive alternatives that not everyone viewed as genuinely exclusive. Rhetoricians challenging a law could compare it with older ones to show that it violated them. But insofar as the law required some level of separation from gentiles (cf. Gal. 2:12; Lev. 20:24) and the promise (cited explicitly in Gal. 3:8) involved blessing them, the law would interfere with the promise.

In this passage, Paul presents the law’s function as temporary (Gal. 3:19, 23–25; 4:4–5), but he refers here only to the law’s function addressed in the context: as a guide to bring us to Christ and/or to guard Israel until its fullness in Christ. Paul’s entire theology of the law cannot be properly extrapolated from a single (polemical) passage. But he does insist that the law, the purpose of which was never justification to begin with (3:21), does not contradict and thus cannot render inoperative the promise, which does provide such justification and membership in God’s people.

For Paul, the law offers valuable moral instruction (e.g., 1 Cor. 9:8), though even ethics is deepened in Christ toward God’s ideal purpose (Gal. 5:14, 22–23; 6:2). The law provided basic ethical boundaries to limit Israel’s sin until Christ’s coming (cf. perhaps 3:23–24), which brings a new way of righteousness by the indwelling of the Spirit (Gal. 5:16–23; cf. Ezek. 36:25–26). Paul here also emphasizes another divinely given role of the law: its testimony to the coming Christ and the way of faith (Gal. 3:6, 11, 21–22; cf. 1 Cor. 10:4). (That “law” here includes all the Pentateuch, thus the example of Abraham’s faith in Gal. 3:6; compare how the law testifying to faith in Rom. 3:21, 31 is fleshed out in Paul’s exposition of Gen. 15:6 in Rom. 4:1–5:11.)

Yet Paul also reveals another use of the law, which actually contradicts the christocentric use just mentioned. Paul’s detractors in synagogue disputes undoubtedly claimed that they were satisfied with the way of the law apart from Paul’s Christ. In Paul’s wider theology, including in Galatians, this last use of the law is actually an abuse, leading away from Christ instead of to him. The law was never intended to be a means of justification before God on its own, simply by observance (Gal. 2:21; 3:21). The law in fact testifies that all are under sin (Gal. 3:22; cf. Rom. 3:10–20). Those who use the law to reject Christ, to whom the law testifies, are thus under its curse (Gal. 3:13).

A CLOSER LOOK: PAUL AND THE LAW

Against Marcion’s rejection of the law, many church fathers found in Paul an appreciation for the continued moral value of the law, even while treating its ritual and civil uses as having already filled their purpose. Most scholars in more recent times have also seen Paul as embracing some aspects of the law while treating others as fulfilled. Although some passages allow some scholars to argue that Paul opposed the law or even caricatured it, the larger framework of Paul’s letters provides a more nuanced theology of the law. Following are some more nuanced approaches to Paul and the law:

For Paul, the law as Scripture is good (Rom. 7:12, 16) and inspired (7:14); it can provide moral guidance (1 Cor. 9:8–9) and points to the promise in Christ (Rom. 3:21, 27, 31; Gal. 3:21; 4:21). Nevertheless, it is inadequate as a meritorious marker of achievement or zeal (Rom. 2:12; 1 Cor. 15:56; Gal. 3:11–12; Phil. 3:6, 9), because of human failings (Rom. 7:25; 8:3, 7; Gal. 3:10). The law was never meant to justify (Gal. 2:21; 3:21), any more than any other civil law does that. Like other public laws, it restrained sin (3:23–24), but apart from God’s Spirit it could not transform the heart. Using it without trusting God’s promised deliverance in Christ is antithetical to depending on God’s grace in Christ (Rom. 3:27; 8:2; 9:31–32; 10:5–10; Gal. 3:11–13, 18; 5:4; Phil. 3:9). The law thus can mark transgression (Rom. 3:19–20; 4:15; 5:20; 7:7–9; Gal. 3:19), but only its giver can forgive.

Fulfilling the promise of Jer. 31:31–34 and Ezek. 11:19–20; 36:25–27, God’s Spirit inscribes the transcultural moral objective of the law in believers’ hearts (Rom. 8:2–4; 2 Cor. 3:3–6; Gal. 5:16–18, 22–23; 6:2). Covenants often had stipulations, and the old covenant’s stipulations, which in many respects resembled other ancient Middle Eastern laws, were a means, not an end; the end or goal was found in Christ, the climactic revelation of God’s plan in which the law played only a role (Rom. 10:4; Gal. 3:17, 19, 23–24).

Paul is not against obeying the law (cf. Gal. 5:14, 23; 6:2) but rather against depending on one’s obedience for justification or honor. Some contend that Paul agreed with other Jews on obedience in response to grace (cf. Rom. 1:5; 6:17; 16:25), differing primarily in what obedience looked like (i.e., trusting in and fidelity to Christ). While Paul shared his contemporaries’ biblical belief in the priority of divine grace, however, he develops much further an emphasis on the incongruity of grace. Certainly for Paul, faith in Christ and the present eschatological experience of the Spirit go far beyond the claims of his contemporaries. (W. D. Davies and E. P. Sanders already rightly noted that what most distinguishes early Christian soteriology from other ancient approaches is Christ.) As Aristotle addressed various kinds of causation, Paul could attribute salvation to grace, faith, and its expression in good works without recognizing any contradiction.

Because Jewish people grew up following the law, it remained their usual custom; observing it did not thereby entail seeking to be justified by it any more than any culture’s observance of honorable customs does. By making it a salvific or ecclesial requirement for gentiles who had already submitted to Christ and the Spirit, however, one treated Christ and the Spirit as insufficient for these purposes. Theologically, this was legalism; socially, it was ethnocentrism. For Paul, the law that God gave, and the subsequent prophetic summons to the law’s heart, pointed more toward their messianic fulfillment in Jesus and his Spirit-empowered church than to the detailed focus on law embodied in Pharisaism.

As commentators regularly note, Jewish tradition viewed the law not as ruling a temporary era but as eternal. Indeed, some aspects of the Torah claim an eternal aspect; the Sabbath, modeled by God well before the law (Exod. 31:17), was an everlasting covenant with Israel (Lev. 24:8); so also were festival activities (e.g., Lev. 16:29–31; 23:14, 21, 31) and holy offerings to the Lord. Some aspects of the Torah, however, could be fulfilled only in the land, only in an agrarian society, and so forth; that is, their principles might need to be recontextualized in a new setting. Indeed, some aspects of the law were concessions to human weakness that fell short of God’s ultimate ideals (cf. Mark 10:5).

Far from placing the law 430 years after Abraham, Jewish people often regarded divine Wisdom or the law as God’s first creation, formed before the world. In contrast to the portrayal in Genesis of patriarchs who sometimes violated prohibitions later articulated in the law, Jewish tradition claimed that the Torah existed before Sinai. In Jubilees, the patriarchs observe the law in advance. Still, even Jubilees, where the patriarchs kept the law in advance, recognizes different periods in the function of the law (Jub. 1:4). Paul obviously disagrees about the preexistence of the law, a tradition not articulated in the law itself. The patriarchs were righteous without the law.

Paul is undoubtedly more interested in the intervening centuries than in how he calculates the specific figure. Exodus has Israel in Egypt for 430 years (Exod. 12:40–41), whereas Genesis offers a rounder 400 years for their oppression (Gen. 15:13; Acts 7:6); more literalistic interpreters tried to resolve the discrepancy in various ways. Jubilees apparently places the giving of the law 430 years after Isaac’s birth. Many rabbis understood the 400 years as the literal time in Egypt and the 430 as the time between the covenant with Abraham and the law. More relevantly, the LXX of Exod. 12:40, followed by Josephus, includes the time spent not only in Egypt but also in Canaan, covering the patriarchs’ sojourn in Canaan as well as Israel’s time in Egypt. But as James Dunn notes, Paul’s point does not rest on, and his interest is not in, such chronological precision.

3:18

18For if the inheritance is based on the law, it no longer rests on a promise. But God clearly gave it to Abraham through a promise.

In 3:18, Paul forces a choice: the inheritance either rests on promise—that is, God’s initiative—or on (keeping) the law. Possibly Paul appeals to a wider principle to offer an analogy. Wills (as in 3:15) designated heirs; one could approach such a designation as either benevolent promise or a legal document to be exploited (for disputes over wills, see the excursus “A Closer Look: Ancient Wills”). Alternatively, Paul is again reasoning by contraries, here specifically regarding the promise to Abraham and the law—although other Jewish thinkers often sought to associate the promise with the law. Paul’s rivals may have emphasized that Scripture promised Israel an “inheritance” (e.g., Num. 33:54; 34:2; Deut. 25:19; 26:1); this textual promise, however, began with God’s personal word to Abraham (Gen. 15:7–8). Moreover, the promise of Gal. 3:8 involves all nations, something made difficult by the law. That God “gave” (κεχάρισται, kecharistai) the promise (Gal. 3:18) underlines again that it is from grace (χάρις, charis; cf. 1:6, 15; 2:21; 5:4), from God’s initiative.

Jewish tradition widely reapplied the language of inheritance to eschatology, in ways similar to Paul’s language of “inheriting” the kingdom (1 Cor. 6:9–10; 15:50; Gal. 5:21; Eph. 5:5). Tradition tended to identify “promise” and “inheritance.” The righteous expected to “inherit” God’s “promises” and to “inherit” eternal life. The promise of inheriting the “land” (e.g., Pss. 25:13; 37:9, 11, 22, 29, 34) came to be understood as inheriting the “earth” (the same Hebrew term); Paul himself believed that the righteous would inherit all the world to come (Rom. 4:13). Jewish tradition most often associated inheriting the world to come with one of two conditions: being Jewish or studying the Torah.

3:19

19So what was the point of the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the progeny would come concerning whom the promise was made. The law was appointed through angels by means of a mediator.

So what was the point of the law? (lit., “Why then the law?”) is a question form often used by Paul elsewhere: he employs the same Greek expression (τί οὐν [ti oun], “What then?” or “Why then?”) sixteen times (e.g., Rom. 3:1, 9; 4:1; 6:1), roughly half the NT occurrences. Asking and answering questions that might occur to the reader or that allow one to develop one’s argument was part of sound pedagogy, characterizing, though not limited to, diatribe style.

As noted earlier, Paul views the law as temporary in the sense of its roles depicted in the present context, belonging to a period between the initiation of the promise (the era beginning with Abraham) and the promise’s fulfillment in Christ. The law’s restraint of sin (Gal. 3:24–25) was necessary, like any set of civil laws for a society, but it is no longer needed for those who live and walk by the Spirit (cf. 5:16, 18, 23).

The NRSV translation about the seed “to whom the promise had been made” (cf. KJV, ASV, NASB, ESV, LSG) may not fit the context as well as the NIV translation here: “the Seed to whom the promise referred”; hence my concerning whom the promise was made. Still, the former translation may be simpler grammatically.

Paul notes that the law was added because of transgressions, but his lack of immediate explication of this clause has given rise to a range of interpretations. The word translated as because can also mean “for the sake of.” One might argue that the law was added in order to imprison “all things under the power of sin” (3:22), or that the law was meant to restrain sin (3:24–25), or that in principle it showed how to restrain sin but its effect was to imprison people under what they would know is sin.

Five of the more significant explanations offered are as follows:

Clearly, the law was not meant to give life (Gal. 3:21). That the law was meant at least partly to address the problem of sin (view 1) is undoubtedly true but not the focus of the present context. That the law was meant to restrain sin (view 2) would fit the normal use of law, a possible understanding of the pedagogue’s role in 3:24–25, and Paul’s larger theology. Still, the law by itself was never able to make one right (3:21). That the law was given to provoke or increase sin (view 3) may fit the law’s activity in Rom. 4:15; 5:13, 20; and 7:5, 8, but not necessarily its intention. That the law was given to separate Jew from gentile (view 4) fits one OT function of the law and would explain why the law in this sense was temporary (between the promise to Abraham of blessing the nations and its fulfillment in the good news of Christ). It also fits the Pauline understanding that the law divides Jew from gentile (Eph. 2:11–16, esp. 2:15), but it does not so easily account for “because of transgressions.” Fitting the fifth view, divine law virtually by definition does define sin and so transforms it into transgression, fitting Rom. 4:15; 5:20.

The last view has much to commend it, if Paul intends to be that specific here. Yet Paul may have had more than one of these particulars in view, speaking more generally. Had there been no sin, there would have been no need for the law. The law, then, does not belong to God’s eternal ideal, direct purpose in the way that the promise does. God initiated both the promise and the law because of his gracious purpose, but the need to address sin (whether to prevent it, atone for it, or identify it) was what required the law until God would address it more fully in Christ.

Paul argues that, whereas the promise came directly from God to Abraham and to those reckoned with him, God mediated the law through angels and Moses. Building on some limited evidence in Scripture (Deut. 33:2, explicitly in the LXX; cf. Exod. 3:2; Ps. 68:17), Jewish tradition already emphasized that God gave the law through angels. Whereas this tradition was meant to glorify the law, and may have been so used by Paul’s rivals, Paul turns it to opposite effect here.

Some scholars have read too much into Paul’s treatment of the law’s mediation and contended that Paul denied that God himself authored the law; but his language (through angels) strongly implies that the angels mediated the law rather than authored it. Certainly, Paul does not think of evil angels, which he explicitly calls “demons” rather than “angels” elsewhere. His use of appointed for the Greek term διατάσσω (diatassō; only here in Galatians) recalls its cognate in 3:15, where no one “adds to” (ἐπιδιατάσσομαι [epidiatassomai], only here in the NT) the original covenant, thus making clear that this “ordained” law cannot be “added to” the promise, thereby ensuring its completion once the promise would be fulfilled.

In addition to Paul, some other Jews may have recognized angelic mediation as potentially subordinating the law; thus one tradition insists that Moses received the Torah “not from the mouth of an angel and not from the mouth of a Seraph, but from the mouth of the King over the king of kings.” Perhaps similarly, some Jewish traditions contended that God set angels over other peoples but ruled Israel directly. Paul’s older contemporary Philo of Alexandria used secondary powers “to distance (but not wholly dissociate) God from the creation of fallible humanity.” Philo represents at least one significant sample of Hellenistic Judaism, and he emphasizes mediation through powers subordinate to God for most lesser tasks.

For Paul, Jesus is greater than the angels who mediated the law. Hebrews reflects a similar argument (Heb. 1:4–2:4), perhaps learned from Paul’s circle (cf. 13:23) or a wider argument in early Christianity.

Moses appears widely in early Judaism as the mediator of the law, and scholars today nearly always see him as the second mediator here (besides the angels). (In one probably later line of Jewish tradition, God gave the law only to Moses, but Moses was generous enough to share it with Israel.) Although English translations naturally prefer more idiomatic English, Paul more literally speaks of the law given “by the hand of a mediator,” which echoes the LXX phrase that could also be rendered as “by the hand(s) of Moses.” (Alternatively, the phrase could suggest the Ten Commandments, brought by Moses’s hands.) Mediators could be valuable, but God’s direct action appears as superior here.

3:20

20But a mediator isn’t for just a single person; yet God is one.

The basic point of 3:20 is clear enough: the law’s mediation reduces its claim to authority. The details, however, strike many as obscure. Paul’s meaning in 3:20 is either so poorly expressed or so contextually loaded with information no longer available to us that it has generated a plethora of interpretations—according to one count already in the nineteenth century, 250 or 300! These views are sometimes classified in three to five main categories:

The last two of these are likeliest. The one God (3:20) acts directly for the single progeny (3:16), whereas the law involved God delegating multiple layers of mediation for the people (cf. Rev. 1:1).

Jewish people regularly recited the Shema (Deut. 6:4), confessing God’s oneness. God’s oneness was the foundational doctrine of Judaism, and this is not the only time that Paul appeals to it to prove a theological point (cf. 1 Cor. 8:5–6). Perhaps more relevantly here, in Rom. 3:30 Paul argues from God’s oneness for the conclusion that he must be the God of Jew and gentile alike. Some Greek thinkers also connected the deity’s or life’s oneness with that of humanity. Others drew conclusions from God’s oneness such as the necessary oneness of God’s people, of the law, of God’s temple, and of his treasuries of good things. Christians continued Jewish veneration of the one true God, but they were distinct in including Jesus in their veneration.

The Formal Law as a Stopgap (3:21–25)

The next section (Gal. 3:21–4:11) shifts the imagery from justification to images of subjection and liberation. Prior mention of inheritance (3:18) and being children of Abraham (3:7) are now developed here. Inheritance (3:29; 4:1, 7; cf. 4:30; 5:21) normally belongs to children rather than to slaves, and believers are Abraham’s and God’s children rather than slaves (3:26; 4:6–7; cf. 4:28, 31). Paul’s previous relevant use of ὑπό [hupo], under (under a curse, 3:10) reinforces the subjugation imagery of this section:

Paralleling sin (3:22) and the law (3:23, 25; 4:4–5) does not make the law sin (cf. Rom. 7:7), but it does line up the law in the sin column (see discussion of corresponds at Gal. 4:25–26), since the law had to be added to the promise only because of transgressions (3:19). Paul thus depicts “the period of the Law (from Moses to Christ) [as] a time of confinement and restraint, a period of minority that limited the freedom of those under it.”

3:21

21Does this mean that the law is in opposition to God’s promises? No way! For if a law had been given that really was able to give life, then being righted certainly would have been based on law.

Paul begins 3:21 with a rhetorical question, which he answers with his standard severe negation, “Certainly not!” (see comment on 2:17). Contrary to some modern interpretations of 3:19, Paul did not reject the God-given character of the law. In 3:21, Paul makes clear, despite his agenda, that the law is not against God’s promises. If any law could have given life or righteousness, it surely would have been the law that God gave his people. But this law simply was not meant to give life or righteousness, because it could not give them (cf. Gal. 2:20–21; Rom. 7:10). In principle the law provided both life and righteousness (Deut. 6:24–25), but Paul has already argued that in practice it fails to do so because of human sin (Gal. 3:10, 13, 22; cf. Rom. 8:3). As an ancient Christian writer observed, “Law without grace, then, can expose disease but cannot heal.”

Nearly all streams of early Judaism define righteousness in terms of the Torah. By contrast, Paul looks to Christ, whom God would not have delivered over for death had righteousness been available through the law (2:21); righteousness was by faith (3:6). Life here evokes Paul’s earlier argument: those who do the law’s work will have life (3:12), but they instead come under its curse for violating it (3:10). Life instead comes by faith (3:11), specifically in God’s Son (2:20).

3:22

22Instead, the Scripture has locked up everything under sin’s power, so that the promise might be given to those who have faith, on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ.

In 3:22, Paul contends that the Scripture has locked up everything under sin’s power, so that none would achieve life by their own power and so that the promise then would come instead to those who believe (as in 3:14; cf. Rom. 4:14–16). Many scholars contend that the Scripture here refers to a particular passage—namely, Deut. 27:26, cited in Gal. 3:10. A very persuasive reason for this contention is that Paul elsewhere refers to a particular passage when in Greek he uses a definite article with the singular of “Scripture” (Rom. 4:3; 9:17; 10:11; 11:2; Gal. 3:8; 4:30).

Paul may indeed have this verse in mind in particular, yet he might think of this verse as simply representative of the wider witness of Scripture. By Scripture Paul might refer to the law (cf. Rom. 3:31 with 4:3; Gal. 4:21–22), which can bring curses but not life (Gal. 3:10, 21). In this case, he speaks of Scripture in a general way, which is also the case if he refers to the testimony of Scripture in general to human sinfulness (e.g., 1 Kings 8:46).

In support of this understanding, Paul elsewhere marshals Scripture to show that all have sinned (Rom. 3:10–18), and he later speaks of God’s similar activity without specifying particular references (Rom. 11:32). Those who knew Scripture would know that even God’s own people had repeatedly disobeyed his law and warranted judgment rather than blessing. Moreover, some argue that the appeal to a particular text about curses in the preceding context (Deut. 27:26 in Gal. 3:10) would not make logical sense, since gentiles cannot be under the law’s curse. More importantly, 3:10 is twelve verses earlier, with three quotations and other allusions intervening, so the connection with that verse is less than obvious. Still, Paul might think of this verse more than of other potential ones.

Paul uses similar language again in Rom. 11:32, suggesting that Paul may have preached this way on multiple occasions. Marion Soards and Darrell Pursiful observe the parallels:

Gal. 3:22

Rom. 11:32

Scripture

God

locked up

locked up

all things

all people

under sin

in disobedience

in order that

in order that

“the promise from the faith of Jesus Christ may be given to those who believe.”

“he may show mercy to all.”

The NRSV is right to translate the neuter plural πάντα (panta) in 3:22 as “all things” (my everything), but the neuter plural could also evoke Paul’s only other use of this form in Galatians: “all peoples” (NRSV: “the Gentiles”) in 3:8 (cf. Rom. 1:5; 15:11; 16:26). Thus Gal. 3:22’s reference to the promise . . . to those who have faith applies to the promise of blessing to the gentiles who believe in 3:8.

Some view being locked up as wholly positive here, meaning “guarded and hemmed in” in order to protect God’s people from sin. Protecting them from sin and pagan surroundings is undoubtedly part of Paul’s meaning; pedagogues restricted boys, protecting them morally. Nevertheless, the vocabulary that he employs for this puts a negative spin on this positive concept perhaps employed particularly positively by Paul’s rivals. Moreover, imprisoning all under sin’s power in 3:22 is hardly a positive image, and this image affects how we hear what follows.

Even though Paul will immediately explain his reference to being under the law (3:23) simply as akin to being under a pedagogue (3:24–25), he later compares this situation to being treated as a slave (4:1–3). Jewish sources speak of a fence around the law, but if a fence is envisioned here, it is the law around God’s people, separating them from paganism, as in the earlier Hellenistic Jewish document Letter of Aristeas.

Yet the law that was designed to keep Israel from sin also reveals sin (3:19) so that all peoples may be condemned and thus recognize the need for Christ (cf. Rom. 3:19–20). “In effect,” Richard Longenecker notes, “it was, as Lutheran theologians often call it, ‘God’s strange work’ instituted in order to bring us to ‘God’s proper work.’”

3:23–24

23–24Until this way of faith came, we’d been kept guarded and locked up under the law, until the way of faith would be revealed. This situation existed so that the law became our guardian until Christ, so that we would be righted with God on the basis of faith.

In God’s purpose, this particular role of the law ended for God’s children when a more adequate means of fulfilling the promise arrived—namely, when this way of faith came (3:23, 25), when Christ came (3:24). Faith was already part of God’s plan before the law (3:6), but now that the promise is fulfilled in Christ, faith has been revealed (3:23). Paul’s term for revealed (ἀποκαλύπτω, apokaluptō) is the same term he used for God’s Son being revealed in him in 1:16, as the revelation of Jesus Christ in 1:12. Paul speaks here not of individuals’ experience but rather of the course of salvation history. Faith refers to trusting God for salvation, rather than referring to “the faith” as a title for the Christian message or beliefs per se. Again, this experience is not novel in salvation history (3:6), but its total sufficiency, because of the completed revelation of its object, Jesus Christ and his salvific work, has supplanted any interim arrangements.

The language of under the law is significant here. It might reflect the language of Paul’s rivals. One could speak of conversion to Judaism, surmounting prior ethnic ties, as consenting to live “under [ὑπό, hupo] the same laws” as Jews. In a context where Paul also uses hupo for unpleasant subordination, however, the phrase takes on negative overtones, as Paul, if he uses his opponents’ language, turns their language against them.

As in 2:15–17, “we” in 3:23–25 and 4:1–5 refers to those under the law, whereas in 3:26–29 and 4:6–10, “you” addresses the Galatians. Nevertheless, both 3:14 and 4:5–6 suggest that Paul’s usage is more complex than simply applying “we” to Jews and “you” to gentiles in all of Galatians. Although that ethnic distinction may apply to much of Paul’s usage in Galatians, at some points the usage becomes more ambiguous because some of what Paul says applies directly to those under the law but some applies (and Paul makes all of it relevant in principle) to everyone or to all believers.

A CLOSER LOOK: PEDAGOGUES

Although a translation occasionally renders παιδαγωγός (paidagōgos) as “disciplinarian” (NRSV), this is not the primary feature of a pedagogue’s responsibilities that Paul emphasizes. Pedagogues were sometimes harsh, keeping their charges in line with corporal punishments, but they were often gentle and well loved. The image is not a negative one per se; pedagogues’ wards often continued a fond relationship with them after reaching maturity, sometimes even manumitting them. If some children resented their pedagogues for correcting them, they displayed the same attitude toward teachers. But wrong-minded pedagogues and teachers could also instruct in vice.

More generally, pedagogues were (usually) slaves who escorted boys, especially to school, carrying their bags and keeping them out of trouble along the way. Pederasty was widespread, so pedagogues remained with the child en route to and during school to ward off potential molesters. Pedagogues were guards (φρουροί, phrouroi) and protectors of youths, just as Gal. 3:23 depicts the law as having guarded (εφρουρούμεθα, ephrouroumetha) God’s people in their youth. They were usually older men, perhaps so chosen to reduce pederastic temptation but also to avoid wasting a young, healthy slave whose services might be better directed elsewhere.

Sometimes pedagogues walked behind their wards, but both texts and artwork reveal that they also sometimes would literally lead (ἄγω, agō) younger boys—hence the name παιδαγωγός. One might contrast Paul’s understanding of the law as pedagogue with the Spirit’s leading in the current era in Gal. 5:18, although Paul ultimately has stronger reasons for his choice of words in 5:18 (see comment there).

A pedagogue ruled the youth, keeping him in check morally. Pedagogues were proud and received compliments when the boys did well, and were criticized when the boys performed poorly. Many ancient thinkers stressed age-appropriate moral instruction; adolescents required special attention, so that they would continue to pursue reason rather than passion once they were free from the pedagogue. Just as pedagogues protected boys from sexual predators, one of the law’s roles was to protect God’s people from pagan practice around them; the mature could discern more critically with less oversight.

Although pedagogues sometimes cared even for babies, usually they took charge of a boy from his nurse around age six. Ancient sources often emphasize that the pedagogue’s role was temporary, lasting only until the boy became a young man after puberty. Once reaching maturity, a young man was no longer under the pedagogue’s authority. The young man now followed “his own laws.” Norman Young’s research on ancient pedagogues concludes that Gal. 3:24–25 highlights two important aspects of the role of pedagogues: it was temporary, and it included restrictive guarding of the boy.

There may be more. The author who can play on multiple Greek senses of διαθήκη (diathēkē) as both “will” and “covenant” in 3:15 surely can consider multiple roles of a παιδαγωγός (paidagōgos) here. In view of the parallel with guardians in 4:2, the restrictive role should also include a protective dimension. Moreover, Paul emphasizes in 4:1 that heirs who are youths are no different from slaves, so he undoubtedly also considers the usual slave status of pedagogues. In a famous passage in Plato, Socrates highlights the irony of the free son being controlled by the pedagogue, a slave!

Some Greek thinkers also envisioned law as a custodian. A later Stoic emperor compares a wise sage to a pedagogue. Hellenistic Jews regarded the law as an instructor rather than a mere pedagogue, although Judeans were ready to apply the image more freely. In contrast to Paul’s claim that the Torah was to guard Israel only until maturity—that is, Christ’s coming—some Jewish traditions depicted Israel’s maturity as the time when Israel received the Torah.

Pedagogues did sometimes play a role in youths’ basic education, at least in Roman circles. By accompanying the master’s son to his school, a pedagogue could learn and become proficient in the subjects himself. Certainly, everywhere they influenced children. If Paul envisions anything of that character here, his contrast elsewhere between fathers and pedagogues (1 Cor. 4:15) is apropos; Paul probably viewed even his own earlier, “advanced” training in the law (Gal. 1:14–15) as merely elementary learning associated with slavery when compared with the advanced and experiential revelation available for those free in Christ (cf. Philo’s approach to Hagar and Sarah in the comment on Gal. 4:24–25).

3:25

25But now that the way of faith has arrived, we’re no longer under the guardian.

Like a pedagogue, the law (here personified) was an appropriate master during its proper time; afterward, however, it would hold a different role. For Paul, the coming of Christ (3:24) and the era of faith (3:23, 25) marked the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham of gentiles being blessed (3:8). The pedagogue was therefore no longer necessary to protect God’s people from gentile paganism or to restrict their behavior. Modern studies of moral development note children’s need for rules, before they develop their own moral reasoning. With Christ’s sacrifice, God’s people now reached a phase of maturity, doing right because of new hearts by the Spirit rather than because of ancient rules (Gal. 5:18–23; cf. Jer. 31:33; Ezek. 36:26–27; 2 Cor. 3:3).

You Are All Heirs Already (3:26–29)

Paul shifts from “we” in 3:23–25, which must at least include the Jewish people, to “you” in 3:26–29, preaching directly to the predominantly gentile audience. Just as “all” peoples were under sin (3:22), so are “all” of the Galatian believers now God’s children (3:26). Following are statements about their new identity in Christ:

In 3:26–29, Paul reinforces the point that gentile believers are full members of God’s people, in the following ways:

In the Greek text of 3:26, the inclusion of gentiles is more conspicuously emphatic than in English translation; “all” (πάντες, pantes) appears first in the sentence, underlining its priority. After the postpositive conjunction gar (γάρ, “for”), which by the rules of Greek grammar normally goes second in a sentence or clause, Paul declares, “sons of God you are.” Although Paul includes both genders (see explicitly 3:28), it was appropriate for him to use “sons” because in Jewish tradition sons were the certain heirs.

Because Paul’s language here so closely parallels his language in other passages (1 Cor. 12:13; Col. 3:9–11), many scholars think that he adopts here a widely used formula. Because it appears associated with baptism here (Gal. 3:27) and in 1 Cor. 12:13 (baptism is only inferred, in my opinion without adequate support, in Col. 3:9–11), many find here a baptismal formula. This is possible, but in this early period we lack sufficiently clear evidence for baptismal formulas (other than the believer’s confession of Jesus; Acts 2:21, 38; 8:16; 10:48; 19:5; 22:16).

Whether the formula is baptismal or not, some argue that because only the Jew/Greek part is directly relevant to Paul’s case, the rest probably reflects a preexisting formula. Although the other two pairs do prove more relevant to his case than some suppose, it is true that they are not as directly relevant to it. Moreover, 3:26 and 3:29 fit together seamlessly if one omits 3:27–28. (Still, this feature is hardly unique to this passage, and 3:27–28 fits the context too well to be even a digression, common as the latter element is in Paul’s letters.)

Whether Paul inherited a widely used formula or simply framed a teaching of his that he adapted for different settings, the pattern is clear:

Gal. 3:27–28

1 Cor. 12:13

Col. 3:10–11

Baptized into Christ (3:27a)

Baptized into one body (12:13a)

—

Clothed with Christ (3:27b)

(in the one Spirit, 12:13a)

Clothed with the new person (3:10a)

Jews or Greeks (3:28a)

Jews or Greeks (12:13b)

Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised (3:11a)

—

—

Barbarian, Scythian (3:11b)

Slave or free (3:28b)

Slaves or free (12:13c)

Slave, free (3:11c)

Male and female (3:28c)

—

—

All of you are one in Christ Jesus (3:28d)

(One body in Christ, 12:12–13; drinking from one Spirit, 12:13d)

Christ is all and in all (3:11d)

3:26

26That’s because you’re all God’s children through faith in Christ Jesus.

Minor children might be under a παιδαγωγός (paidagōgos, 3:24), but with the coming of the full revelation of Christ God’s children in this phase of salvation history no longer have that restriction (3:25). This is relevant for Paul’s audience in Galatia because they are all God’s children through faith in that revelation (3:26).

Although Paul explicitly introduces believers’ identity as God’s children in 3:26 for the first time in Galatians, in a sense he has been discussing this matter since 3:7, since Scripture already declared Abraham’s descendants to be God’s own children (Exod. 4:22–23; Deut. 14:1; Isa. 43:6; 45:11; Jer. 31:20; Hosea 1:10; 11:1, 10). That is, gentile believers have become part of God’s people.

As does my translation, the NRSV, WEB, and NIV understandably render the Greek υἱοί (huioi, “sons”) in 3:26 more inclusively as children, since in Greek a masculine title could be employed if even a single member of the group was male. But Paul has reason to employ the masculine Greek designation here, one that in fact places women and men even more plainly on the same footing: insofar as sons were the chief heirs, in this context Paul stresses that all believers, regardless of gender or other divisions (3:28), are heirs (3:29b; cf. 1 Pet. 3:7). Moreover, huioi here invites another connection: we also have the Spirit of God’s Son (υἱός, huios) within us; God’s Son, Abraham’s ultimate son (Gal. 3:16), physically identified with our state to transform us inwardly into his state as huioi of God (4:4–7).

Paul uses the formula “in Christ” (3:26, 28) not only in this letter but frequently (it appears more than eighty times in the Pauline corpus). In this letter, Paul employs the formula “in Christ” for churches (1:22), freedom (2:4), justification (2:17), Abraham’s blessing (3:14), being God’s “sons” in the Son of God (3:26), and unity (3:28). Both instrumental and local, personal and corporate uses of “in Christ” appear in various contexts.

3:27

27For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

Baptism into Christ here (3:27) parallels faith in Christ in 3:26, as distinct but complementary elements of Christian conversion. Many take Paul’s language of baptism into Christ as signifying movement into the sphere of Christ from outside it (cf. 1 Cor. 12:13). The formula could also imply transference to Christ’s ownership, based on analogous language in commercial transactions. Alternatively, it could simply signify baptism “with reference to” Christ, different prepositions in the early Christian formulation simply reflecting different Greek ways to translate the underlying Semitic original.

A CLOSER LOOK: BAPTISM’S MEANING IN ITS ANCIENT CONTEXT

Ritual lustrations were common throughout the ancient world, including in the OT and its contexts. Mystery cults used lustrations as preliminary purifications in their initiatory rites, but most contemporary scholars regard such acts as simply preliminary washings, rather than initiatory of themselves. First-century Christian sources lack the vocabulary typical of Greek purifications.

Evidence from Josephus, coins, and especially archaeology attests the widespread pre-Christian practice of ritual washings in Judea. Some count more than three hundred immersion pools uncovered so far in Judea and Galilee, with many in Jerusalem. Some suggest Qumran initiatory baptism (1QS 5:8–23) as the background for John’s and early Christian baptism, but the initial baptism at Qumran was apparently viewed, as with many other Jewish washings, as merely the first among many. Although this broader context is valuable, John’s baptism was distinctive by being eschatological, in light of God’s coming kingdom, and probably singular rather than repeated.

Whereas such lustrations provide a general context, and John’s baptism offers the most immediate antecedent and model, ancient hearers first encountering Christian baptism could understand its initiatory element precisely because immersion was often used for initiation when gentiles converted to Judaism.

By definition, the only fully initiatory Jewish baptism—that is, as an act of conversion—was proselyte baptism. Some scholars argue against proselyte baptism as a source for Christian baptism; others support it. Major features naturally distinguish John’s baptism from other Jewish purifications. It differs by being eschatologically oriented and especially by summoning Jews to turn to Israel’s God on almost the same terms as gentiles (cf. Matt. 3:9 // Luke 3:8). Such differences, of course, are genuine and do distinguish John’s baptism from proselyte baptism. In these respects, early Christian baptism follows John’s model most closely. The point, however, is that John’s (and hence early Christian) baptism did not arise sui generis (which could have rendered its symbolism unintelligible). Jewish initiatory purification of proselytes hardly borrowed the Christian practice, and their independent rise appears too analogous for coincidence.

The conversion ritual provided a clear, symbolic line of demarcation between a proselyte’s gentile past and Jewish present. Although Judaism employed circumcision as the primary sign of entering the covenant, both circumcision and baptism normally would have been required for new converts to Judaism. Because the Babylonian Gemara reports a debate between early Tannaim Rabbi Joshua and Rabbi Eliezer concerning whether baptism by itself or circumcision by itself would suffice for a valid conversion, some scholars have held that some authorities accepted baptism without circumcision; but it is hard to think that Rabbi Joshua could have openly diminished an explicit commandment of the Torah. Other scholars have thus preferred to follow the Palestinian recension of this tradition, where Rabbi Eliezer allows circumcision without immersion (probably under exceptional circumstances), and Rabbi Joshua insists that both are necessary. On either reading, the sages concurred on that occasion that both circumcision and proselyte baptism were necessary, and other texts reinforce the conclusion that proselyte baptism was a necessary part of conversion.

Some scholars have argued that Christian baptism originated before Jewish proselyte baptism, since the latter seems rarely attested. Yet ritual purification was so pervasive in Mediterranean antiquity that it required little comment compared with the far more offensive barrier to gentile conversion—namely, circumcision. Lacking explicit support from the Hebrew Scriptures (though naturally inferred from purity considerations there), it may also have been less universal than circumcision. Nevertheless, evidence and arguments for pre-Christian proselyte baptism seem sufficiently compelling:

Innovatively, John’s baptism summoned Israelites to turn to God the same way Jewish people expected gentile proselytes to do; like the Qumran sect, but with a more radical and public symbolism, John deemed only the true remnant of Israel to be prepared for the Lord (Matt. 3:9 // Luke 3:8).

Paul viewed baptism not merely as a demarcation and conversion but also as entrance into Christ’s body, initiation into Christ’s experience analogous to ancient Israel’s initiation into the experience of redemption and the covenant (1 Cor. 10:1–4).

Baptism relates to Paul’s argument in Galatians precisely because, as in its antecedent Jewish form, it involves becoming part of God’s people. A natural corollary of gentiles being impure was the need for them to be ritually purified when converting to become part of Israel. Gentiles converting to Judaism, thus becoming members of Israel, were circumcised (if male) and baptized. Paul rejects the need to circumcise gentiles, but Jesus’s movement retained initiatory washing, an act with intelligible symbolism throughout the empire and especially in Judea. Unlike circumcision, washing posed no major physical barrier to conversion, although public identification with an often-despised sect exacted social costs.

Most importantly, because Jesus’s movement practiced baptism for Jew and gentile alike, Paul retains it in his mission among gentiles as a line of demarcation, a public act of conversion. (By this I do not imply that the water itself saves or that someone who dies believing but without opportunity for baptism is lost. Rather, this was the initiatory rite by which believers demonstrated the crossing of boundaries into the church.)

Most scholars view the baptism here as water baptism (as it clearly is in 1 Cor. 1:13–17), but because early Christian tradition spoke of Spirit baptism as well (Mark 1:8; Matt. 3:11 // Luke 3:16; John 1:33; Acts 1:5; 11:16), some prefer that idea here. One might expect mention of the Spirit if that were the case here; nevertheless, being clothed in 3:27 probably does imply the Spirit’s activity, and the closest parallel text plainly refers to Spirit baptism (1 Cor. 12:13). The matter is less than certain, but if Paul refers to Spirit baptism here, he is again framing the section with related ideas, alluding to the Galatians’ clear experience of the Spirit in Gal. 3:2–5.

Unlike circumcision, baptism applied to women as well as men, pointing toward the nondifferentiation of gender with respect to membership in God’s people in Gal. 3:28.

What does it mean to be clothed with Christ (3:27b)? Citing Gal. 2:20, John Chrysostom explained, “He wants our soul to be a dwelling place for Christ, and Christ to surround us like a garment, so that Christ is all things for us, both inside and outside ourselves”; moreover, “having the Son inside yourself and being made like him, you have been made one in kind and form.” Or as Luther put it, “To put on Christ is not a matter of imitation but of new birth and a new creation. We have not just changed our clothes in the outward sense but become entirely new people.”

Some scholars associate the image with baptism, an image that makes sense since early Christians at some point embraced the regular Jewish practice of naked immersion. Clearly, early rabbinic sources do suggest naked immersion. Unfortunately for this traditional argument, this is the only Pauline passage that explicitly includes baptism in the immediate context of a figurative putting on, meaning that Paul rarely offers this “clue” to his meaning for “putting on.”

Moreover, a figurative significance of “putting on” appears far more widely than simply in connection with baptism. Sources for association with the mysteries are from long after Paul, would be known only to initiates (who were not free to divulge the rites), and are less dominant than earlier biblical language (noted below). More plausibly, some note that a Roman boy would mark manhood by donning the toga virilis (probably known to some citizens of Pisidian Antioch and Lystra), but the Pauline texts do not all associate “putting on” with maturation. Again, it represents a slender sample of contexts in which one might don a garment. More relevantly, a Greek idiom already existed; one playing the role of Tarquinius could be said, figuratively, to don Tarquinius, and one could put off the soldier and put on (i.e., act as) a sophist.

Scripture had already long offered a figurative use of this image (Isa. 52:1; 61:10; Zech. 3:3–4). “Clothing oneself” with a quality was a Semitic idiom. Other Jewish sources also spoke of being “clothed” with righteous qualities, the Spirit, or eschatological clothing (cf. 1 Cor. 15:53). The Apostolic Fathers also speak of figuratively clothing oneself with virtues, and apparently not in a baptismal context. Perhaps most likely here, being clothed with Christ may evoke being clothed with the divine Spirit in LXX Judg. 6:34; 1 Chron. 12:18; 2 Chron. 24:20, again applying a divine image to Christ.

3:28

28Now there’s neither Jew nor Greek! There’s neither slave nor free person! There’s not male and female! That’s because all of you are one entity in Christ Jesus.

Some think that Paul’s egalitarian-sounding claim in 3:28 reflects a baptismal formula more egalitarian than Paul himself. Whatever Paul’s sources or influences, however, his rhetorically crafted antitheses here are hardly an accident; rather, they climax his preceding argument, leading to the conclusion in 3:29.

Paul’s use of a unity formula is not unique to this passage (cf. 1 Cor. 12:13; Col. 3:11), but the examples in the formula here perhaps are tailored for this passage. One possible reason for highlighting slave status and gender in Gal. 3:28 (instead of the lists without gender in 1 Cor. 12:13; Col. 3:11) is the question of inheritance (cf. Gal. 3:29). A particularly benevolent slaveholder might honor a slave’s final wishes, but a slave’s testament was not legally binding. In Rome, a slave could be freed in a slaveholder’s will or even (more rarely) left a bequest, but children and friends were much more frequent heirs.

Rules regarding women’s inheritance varied geographically and culturally. Roman law generally allowed women to inherit. Biblical law allowed daughters to inherit only if there were no sons (Num. 27:8) and if they married endogamously (within their clan; 36:6–9). But in classical Athens, if a man had a daughter but no sons, the daughter’s sons inherited. God promised an “inheritance” in the land to Israel, not to gentiles. Now, in Christ Jesus, all—Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female—are heirs according to the promise (Gal. 3:29). The real heirs are not those born of the flesh, but rather those born according to the Spirit and promise (4:28–29).

More often proposed as a reason for highlighting slaves and gender here is the matter of circumcision. Women could not be circumcised, and slaves had no personal say in being circumcised (Gen. 17:12). Jewish teachers regarded women, slaves, and minors as exempt from many biblical commandments, though Jewish women were superior to gentiles.

Many scholars point to a Jewish benediction attributed to a late second-century rabbi: “A man must recite three benedictions every day: “Praised [be Thou, O Lord . . . ] who did not make me a gentile”; “Praised [be Thou, O Lord . . . ] who did not make me a boor”; “Praised [be Thou, O Lord . . . ] who did not make me a woman.” His explanation for the woman is that she is exempted from some of the commandments.

Whether such a Jewish prayer existed in the first century, and how many Galatians (unlike Paul) would have been familiar with it had it existed, are unclear, but this benediction rests on an earlier Greek saying, wherein a famous sage thanked Fortune “that [he] was born a human being and not one of the brutes; next, that [he] was born a man and not a woman; thirdly, a Greek and not a barbarian.” The setting and application differ, but such sayings at least illustrate the sort of ideas that Paul’s claim may address.

Scripture itself perhaps informs Paul’s formulation or at least his thinking: Joel 2:28–29 (MT/LXX 3:1–2) announced the Lord pouring out his Spirit on all humanity, on both male and female, all ages, and on slaves (presumably as well as free). Paul apparently echoes this verse elsewhere. If this background informs Paul’s thought in Gal. 3:28, it recalls his appeal to gentiles’ experience of the Spirit (3:2–5, 14). As God poured out the Spirit on them, they were baptized into Christ and clothed . . . with Christ (3:27). To whatever extent that passage informed Paul’s thinking, however, he cannot suppose his audience to infer it here, unless he has explained it to them on a previous occasion, since he does not highlight its language (especially the Spirit).

Jew nor Greek would reflect a major division of humanity from the standpoint of these hellenized south Galatians considering circumcision (see comment on 2:3). Like other minorities within the Hellenistic sphere, Jewish apologists such as Josephus defended their people against arrogant Greek ethnocentrism. Some ancient thinkers also desired a new unity in humanity, although often this was to be imposed by conquest. Later, Libanius could write of something that was necessary for everyone, “both free and slaves, both Greeks and barbarians.”

Many philosophers valued the virtue of being a world citizen rather than emphasizing ethnic or civic particularities. Regarding locality of birth as an accidental characteristic, Stoics appealed to Socrates’s admonition “never to say ‘I am an Athenian,’ or ‘I am a Corinthian,’ but ‘I am a citizen of the universe.’” Likewise, social class was a mere accident of birth, with true, heavenly wisdom available to all. Paul’s primary motivation, however, is an eschatological vision of unity in Christ (see Isa. 2:2–4; 19:24–25; 56:3–8; Zech. 2:11).

Some suppose that Paul here wishes to eliminate ethnic difference, but Paul’s interest may not be with such matters in this passage, and, in view of his wider theology in Galatians and elsewhere, he is more likely arguing against such elimination. Elsewhere, he protects cultural diversity in Rom. 14, and certainly he does so in resisting the circumcision of gentiles. Paul is thus posing not an elimination of differences but rather a unity that encompasses diversity, as in his treatment of diverse gifts in the body in Rom. 12:4–8 and 1 Cor. 12:4–30.

Paul’s pairings of slave/free and male/female might involve matters of the ancient household; slaves were considered members of the household. Commentators notice that Paul joins the first two pairs with or but the third pair, male and female, with and (3:28). Instead of his usual wording to refer to men and women, Paul here uses the precise terminology for male and female that appears in the creation narrative. Most commentators thus suspect an allusion to Gen. 1:27 here; the three-word phrase together quotes exactly the phrase in Genesis. Paul envisions a restoration of the primeval unity of male and female that flourished before the judgment of Gen. 3:16, as part of the new creation (Gal. 6:15). He undoubtedly presupposes Christ as the new Adam (cf. 1 Cor. 15:45), although he does not articulate this premise for his Galatian audience.

Some find here (as in 1 Cor. 7) Paul removing the mandatory expectation of marriage, a Jewish expectation based on an understanding of Gen. 1:28. Some find here an allusion to primeval androgyny, a prototype of the new creation. Some Jewish thought understood the original Adam as a hermaphrodite before Eve was taken from him; God first made “man” and then separated out the female component; originally the man was “neither male nor female.”

Paul’s interest, however, is not a return to the putative androgyny of the old creation, but rather the transcendent status of a new creation. Paul’s allusion to Gen. 1:27 does not indicate whether he shared the common contemporary understanding of that passage in terms of primal androgyny. What Paul is clearly not doing is speaking of women’s advancement in terms of them becoming masculine, a familiar idea among some ancient thinkers. In Genesis, husbands and wives become one flesh in marriage (Gen. 2:24; cf. 1 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 5:31); but all believers become one in Christ, to whom they are united as, in a sense, the feminine partner (1 Cor. 6:17; Eph. 5:30, 32).

Noting Paul’s use of the neuter, Hans Dieter Betz thinks that Paul eliminates even biological differences. While resurrection bodies might possibly lack reproductive apparatus, however (cf. perhaps Mark 12:25), they belong to the not-yet rather than to the already (1 Cor. 15:32; 2 Cor. 4:14; 4:16–5:5; Phil. 3:21; 1 Thess. 4:15–17). Paul may shift to neuter in order to retain the same grammatical gender for both adjectives, but most likely simply to follow the language of Gen. 1:27. Paul’s allusion to creation and his use of and might also be intended to undercut removal of nature’s gender distinctions in the present.

Being one entity in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:28) was obviously an issue of some import within the church (5:15, 20), though we cannot be sure of the fault lines and whether they resemble those articulated in 3:28. Because the adjective “one” in all of you are one entity in Christ Jesus is masculine, the likeliest assumed predicate nominative is “one person” (ἄνθρωπος, anthrōpos), as in the “one new humanity” of Eph. 2:15. On this line Chrysostom remarks, “You have one form, one character, that of Christ. . . . The former Jew or slave is clothed in the form . . . of the Lord himself and in himself displays Christ” (cf. Gal. 2:20).

Paul’s one entity in Christ Jesus here resembles “one body in Christ” in Rom. 12:5. Unlike “person” (ἄνθρωπος, anthrōpos), “body” (σῶμα, sōma) is neuter. But his body metaphor elsewhere does suggest the level of unity envisioned; although Paul presumably borrows the “body” language from popular political and philosophic discourse, he uses it in a more organic way that may resemble Stoic usage also for the cosmos. Given the probable allusion to the original creation in “male and female,” he probably envisions a restoration of God’s ideal in terms of being one in the new Adam, Christ (Rom. 5:15–21; 1 Cor. 15:22, 45–49; cf. Eph. 4:22–24; Phil. 2:6; esp. Col. 3:10–11).

Paul’s ideal could challenge Greco-Roman culture, which emphasized social classification and stratification. Certainly, dismantling division between Jews and Greeks challenged a live issue of his day, one sometimes carried to the point of genocide. The division between slave and free was considered a fundamental division in society. “Illness is the same in a slave as in a free man,” Pliny the Younger observed, but physicians treat the free man far better. Although laws acknowledged slaves as in one sense people, they also often treated them as property. They were sold and also distributed as part of a deceased person’s estate. Certainly, free persons did not eat with slaves. Without seeking to overthrow the social order, Paul at times challenged social stratification.

Bridging Horizons

A declaration such as “neither slave nor free” would have sounded like nonsense to a slave society such as the Roman Empire, where such divisions lay on the surface. Language and customs likewise separated diverse peoples, and in Paul’s world the ethnic division between Jew and gentile sometimes led to bloodshed.

Differences between male and female were even more pronounced, not only in roles but also, conspicuously, in apparel. As no one suggests that Paul explicitly advocated a unisex clothing style, it seems clear that Paul was not seeking to eradicate all gender difference in his world. In what sense, then, did he intend “male and female”?

Augustine suggested, “Difference of race or condition or sex is indeed taken away by the unity of faith, but it remains embedded in our mortal interactions. . . . Within the orders of this life they persist. So we walk this path in a way that the name and doctrine of God will not be blasphemed.” Citing Gal. 3:28, Chrysostom argued that virtue could be the same in either gender. Praising the ministry of other women in Rom. 16, he contends that 1 Tim. 2 prohibited women not from all teaching, but only a presiding position in the altar area. Chrysostom did not press Gal. 3:28 in all spheres, but he did use it to urge the freeing of slaves.

Luther recognized here unity in Christ while continuing difference and inequality in the world. Another Reformer deemed “all natural and social distinctions . . . removed, but only in him and with regard to what belongs to him”; “Where these distinctions do not apply is in the realm of calling, justification and eternal life.”

Until the Civil War in the United States, interpreters usually applied Gal. 3:28 only to salvation in Christ, but in its wake the Holiness movement adopted the text in support of social liberation for women. Continuing the abolitionist hermeneutic, Holiness interpreters pressed the apparently radical principles of the text against a more proof-texting traditional approach. The relevance of 3:28 to gender equality generated debate in the twentieth as well as the nineteenth century.

Today scholars continue to debate whether Gal. 3:28 has, or at least whether Paul intended it to have, implications for Christian life beyond salvation. Some contend that it supports neither gender hierarchy (male above female) nor gender egalitarianism (the equality of male and female) in this age. Paul’s primary concerns, after all, lie elsewhere; this age is passing (1 Cor. 7:31), so such matters are temporary anyway. Some contend that the verse addresses only salvation, making it compatible with Pauline household codes described elsewhere. Early Christians did believe that being fellow heirs of grace did affect how we should treat one another (1 Pet. 3:7), but this did not eliminate all social conventions. Some argue for no difference in spirit between male and female but continuing difference in whatever belongs to the realm of flesh. Some point out that its emphasis is unity rather than equality; certainly Paul was familiar with and could use elsewhere arguments from equality, especially among friends.

Others support various feminist or other egalitarian approaches to the passage. Some thus contend that texts about women ministering (Rom. 16:1–7; Phil. 4:2–3) and prophesying (1 Cor. 11:5) reveal Paul’s genuine sentiments and that more restrictive passages in the Pauline corpus must be interpreted in light of their particular situations and this broader egalitarian principle. (I share egalitarian convictions, leaving aside for the moment the question of how to interpret the present passage.)

From 1 Corinthians, it does appear that Paul was willing to live with some social conventions as long as the gospel was promoted. Paul does not try to eliminate culturally established marks of gender distinction such as women’s head coverings in the relevant spheres. Jew and gentile, slave and free remain distinct socially in this age although one in Christ, and the same may be assumed for men and women.

This could remain true even if Paul envisions eschatological equality; most who envisioned an egalitarian world conceived of it as a utopia unattainable in present life. Unity was a frequent element of such utopias, often even to the extent of abolishing private property (which Paul does not do for this age, though he devalues property in light of more pressing considerations; 1 Cor. 7:30–31). Other ancient thinkers offered comparable pronouncements without intending a program of social reform.

Still, Paul appreciates the value of manumission (1 Cor. 7:21; Philem. 13–14), a frequent practice; like Stoics, he may have recommended being content with one’s state but welcoming a more beneficial state if it becomes possible. Paul might feel that the creational distinctives that he recognizes in 1 Cor. 11:7 entail head coverings in his context (11:2–16). Nevertheless, the new creation has reintroduced a level of mutuality (cf. 11:8–9) that recalls the original creation of male and female together as one, reigning in God’s image (Gen. 1:26–27). Contexts might limit how this principle would be addressed (e.g., they might invite continuing the conventional cultural practice of head coverings), but the principle did challenge existing prejudices. As one Reformed commentator notes, Paul’s approach to gender roles was as controversial in his day as in our own, but “for exactly the opposite reason.”

While Paul does not depict unity in the new Adam in terms of the hermaphrodite myth, he does envision the eradication of gender as a boundary in the sphere of the new creation, hence to some degree in the church, despite making cultural accommodations for the old, existing world order. Some thus argue that the distinctions continue in the wider culture but should not affect standing in the church. Cultural and gender distinctions continue, but “these may no longer be distinctions of privilege, power or exploitation.”

One can hardly say that Gal. 3:28 addresses “only” salvation as if salvation itself lacks transformative implications for relationships. One cannot fully isolate 3:28 from relevance to social contexts since social conflict informs the entire letter. The already side of the “already but not yet” tension of the kingdom did impact social relationships between Jews and gentiles (2:11–14) and slave and free (Philem. 16), so we can expect it to impact mutual respect within marriage as well. No one challenged, and so Paul lacked reason to defend, simply the possibility of slaves or women being converted; more pressing would be relationships in the house churches. Paul rejected social hierarchy in church dinners, favoring the traditional Greek philosophic ideal of equality at banquets rather than the hierarchy commonly associated with banquets.

Paul may have accepted most social norms for their strategic value yet valued principles that could be expressed in different ways in different settings. Indeed, more than equality, he valued humbling oneself and voluntarily serving others, regardless of gender (Gal. 5:13; 6:2; Rom. 12:10, 16; 1 Cor. 4:9–13; 2 Cor. 4:5). Others see this passage as Paul’s transcultural principle in light of which his contextually oriented applications in other passages must be understood.

Many recognize that Paul moved beyond many of his contemporaries in this area. Some, however, have overstated this difference—for example, making the baptism of women a radical step toward women’s full participation. Yet Jews and others baptized women without necessarily viewing baptism as conferring equality. Various ancient cults welcomed women, notably including mysteries of Dionysus and Isis; the Eleusinian mysteries welcomed women, slaves, and all who spoke Greek, though they were open to challenge for excluding non-Greek-speakers. Granted, most scholars argue that women were excluded from Mithraism, or at least were rare; but Mithraism flourished in the empire especially in later centuries.

Paul’s churches probably included large numbers of women, and they may have sometimes received criticism for this from the women’s polytheistic gentile relatives. In general, Roman women found non-Roman religion more attractive than Roman men did, and gentile women proved more attracted to Judaism than men were. Inscriptions show that women predominated among proselytes. Presumably the Christian message spread widely through women as well (as Celsus complains). Women could talk in shops and homes, to other women and children, while going about their business, with probably very little interference from those who purported to control the culture. Attracting women, however, risked a backlash. Juvenal complains about women attracted to eastern cults. Opposition to women’s involvement in Dionysiac mysteries in republican Rome, to their susceptibility to a Jewish scam artist during Tiberius’s reign, and to their potential exploitation through the Isis cult in the mid-first century made Romans wary of such cults undermining traditional Roman family values.

Even when men affirmed equality in principle, this affirmation did not always translate into egalitarian practice. The early Stoic Zeno abolished slavery, marriage, and gender hierarchy. Aristotle complained against such philosophers who regarded slavery as unjust because it contravened nature. Opposition to hierarchy declined in time, however, as Stoicism grew more mainstream; “Roman Stoics were egalitarian in theory but” followed Aristotle’s household codes. The first-century Stoic Seneca believed that Nature made women capable of the same virtues as men, yet he often conceptualized women negatively. Musonius Rufus affirmed women’s equal virtues but focused on the domestic sphere, though apparently primarily because that was the role that society accorded them.

Some contend that by the first century radical equality may have characterized Cynics more than Stoics, though even some Cynic sources ultimately treat the woman Cynic Hipparchia as less than ideally committed. Pythagoreans stressed the equality of both genders and boasted many women disciples, though they sometimes also relegated women’s role to the private sphere. Epicureans appear to have been the most egalitarian sect in practice. Beyond philosophy, the emperor Augustus publicly praised Livia, but he used her to support social conservatism.

Teachings of equality in principle did not therefore automatically lead to egalitarian practice, although all these sects were more progressive than many of their contemporaries. By itself, Gal. 3:28 does not tell us how Paul implemented this principle in particular kinds of situations; for that, we must turn to his other letters (e.g., Rom. 16:1–7; Eph. 5:21–33; Phil. 4:3). If, as I think, Ephesians is Pauline, it seems noteworthy that Paul specifically frames his adapted household codes with mutual submission (Eph. 5:21; 6:9).

I have argued elsewhere that Paul stood on the more progressive side of these matters in his era, but that he wrote in a context that suspected minority cults of undermining conventional family values. Paul accommodated these concerns, but had he been contextualizing instead for the usual Western context today, I believe that he would have supported women’s full and equal participation in the Christian community.

3:29

29And if you’re Christ’s, then you’re Abraham’s progeny—heirs in accordance with the promise.

Galatians 3:29 caps off this part of Paul’s argument, and with 3:7 provides an inclusio that frames the section. Since Christ is Abraham’s ultimate seed (3:16), those who are Christ’s also belong to Abraham. (The term for progeny here, σπέρμα [sperma], is the same term used elsewhere in Galatians only at 3:16, 19, in both verses for Christ.) Through Christ, gentile believers become children of Abraham by faith, as in 3:7. (Some contend that Paul shifts to sperma here because it was the language of the opponents, but we cannot know this; Paul did not choose that language in 3:7, and the opponents had no reason to avoid υἱοί [huioi]. Variation was an accepted matter of style in antiquity, as it is in English composition today.)

Paul describes converts the way other Jews, and probably his opponents, described proselytes. Gentiles in Christ can become part of Abraham’s covenant spiritually without becoming ethnically or culturally Jewish.

It is also no coincidence that Paul’s inheritance language (3:18, 29; 4:1, 7, 30; 5:21) clusters in the section where his sonship language appears (3:7, 16, 19, 26, 29; 4:4–7, 22, 28, 30–31). This again evokes promises to Israel. Since the Galatian believers are Christ’s, they are heirs in accordance with the promise. Since the Spirit is the fullest present embodiment of the promise (3:14), and they have received the Spirit (3:2, 5), they already have the benefit that Paul’s opponents purport to provide through circumcision. Nothing can be added to Christ’s finished work to finish it further; we can only activate by faith and in experience what Christ has already provided.

A More Mature Era in Christ (4:1–7)

This new paragraph (4:1–7) continues to develop the thought of what precedes. The preceding context explains that before Christ and the way of faith came, the law was a pedagogue to keep its subjects in line (3:23–24). Thus even God’s own people, his children, were under the authority of a slave guardian (pedagogues usually being slaves). Now that Christ has come as Abraham’s ultimate offspring, however (3:16), whoever is in him is a child of God and an heir (3:26–29), no longer under this slave guardian (3:25).

Paul here reiterates the preceding point more explicitly: insofar as they were under a slave guardian, in practice the heirs were no better off than slaves (4:1). They remained under elementary teachings, the law being merely a pedagogue and not a full teacher (4:3). But the promised offspring Christ (3:16), God’s Son, was under the law and redeemed us from the law (4:4) to give us adoption as children (4:5). Although Israel was already God’s child (e.g., Exod. 4:22; Deut. 32:43; Jer. 31:20), they were a subject, minor child; and under the law, gentiles were not God’s children at all.

God has redeemed us from the Israel-centric law that excluded gentiles, however, so that he may now adopt even gentiles as his children (Gal. 4:5). The proof is gentile believers’ experience of the Spirit (3:1–5, 14), who gives them intimacy with God (4:6). Thus they are, as Paul already emphasized in 3:29, heirs (4:7). Spirit experience makes the conventional form of the law superfluous (5:18, 23).

The problem with the metaphor so far, of course, is that the Galatian gentiles had not knowingly been under the law before, except perhaps for some of those who had attended synagogues (cf. Acts 13:43). The written law excluded them, but it did not rule them. So Paul shows that their pagan past (4:8) was slavery comparable to being under the law (4:9–10; cf. 4:3)—a shocking comparison for those who regarded law-observance as far better than paganism! Yet Paul argues that turning to the law was like going back to paganism (4:9), in that they were relinquishing their position as heirs in Christ for something that was designed only for the former era, not the present.

Again, as noted before, Paul’s polemical approach here should not be used to neglect what he says elsewhere. The law is holy, just, and good (Rom. 7:12), inspired by the Spirit (7:14). It remains useful for moral instruction (Rom. 13:8–10; 1 Cor. 9:8–9; cf. 1 Tim. 1:8–10), condemns much of what is wrong (Rom. 3:20; 4:15; 7:7; cf. 1 Tim. 1:9–10), and remains the valuable possession of the Jewish people (Rom. 3:2). But it was meant to point toward Christ and the need for Christ (Rom. 3:19, 21, 31) and could never supplant the fuller revelation and ultimate salvation in Christ (Gal. 2:21; 3:21–22). Righteousness by the law means obeying its precepts, but this is not comparable to becoming part of an eschatological new creation as God’s gift (Phil. 3:9). Compared to the coming of Christ himself and with regard to justification, the law is little better than paganism, because by itself it cannot make people new (Rom. 7:5–6).

4:1

1My point is this: so long as the heir is a minor, there’s no difference between that heir and a slave, even though the heir is master of everything.

The theme of sons as heirs frames the paragraph (4:1, 7). The minor child was heir and master of everything (4:1), yet he could not access this owned property until he achieved maturity. Despite various regional definitions, everyone understood that maturity did not precede puberty. Although Paul does sometimes use exodus typology with respect to being God’s children and the image of slavery (see esp. Rom. 8:14–17), there is, against the view of some scholars, little specific indication of it in 4:1–2.

In early Roman law, children under the father’s authority were like slaves even to the extent that they owned nothing by themselves. Although not all cultures agreed, in economic terms Roman law treated children as their fathers’ slaves, with the father owning the property “until the children have obtained their freedom like bought slaves.”

Writers sometimes contrasted children and slaves, including in early Christianity (Rom. 8:15; Luke 15:21–24, 29; John 8:35); Paul will revisit the slave/son contrast from a different angle in Gal. 4:22. Some later rabbinic traditions elaborate this contrast regarding Israel; they were servants when they disobeyed but sons when they obeyed. In a later rabbinic parable, God treats Israel as his child differently once they attain maturity; but in these traditions, the historical turning point was when Israel received the law at Sinai. Whether Paul or his opponents knew of such a tradition, he places maturity at a different point.

The term for minor here is νήπιος (nēpios), which Philo uses to refer to beginners in knowledge, dependent on knowledge by means of the senses rather than yet perceiving virtue.

4:2

2No! He’s under legal guardians and estate managers until the time appointed by the father.

Paul was never averse to shifting metaphors as needed (cf., e.g., 1 Cor. 3:6–15, esp. 3:9). Legal guardians and estate managers were typically of higher status than pedagogues, but the image maintains the youth being under authority in any case. Paul presents nature’s divisions of time (4:8–10) and, for Israel, the law (4:3–4) as such guardians; full maturity and freedom would come only in Christ.

Because Greek men married late, minors were often orphans. Greek and Roman wills (cf. 3:15) often named a guardian or guardians to govern the child in case of the father’s decease; otherwise the father’s nearest male relative became the guardian. Legal guardians here reflects the Greek term ἐπίτροπος (epitropos); such a guardian would be appointed over an orphaned child to control the estate and from it provide for the child until the child came to maturity. Because everyone knows that orphans are defenseless, Dio Chrysostom explained, the state appoints guardians to protect them from unjust treatment. This was true even for kings who were minors.

Although guardians were appointed to protect the minor’s inheritance, incompetent guardians of orphans’ estates could ruin them, and guardians could be accused of and sued for embezzlement. At least in classical Athens, the punishment for ruining a ward’s estate was sometimes as severe as death. Jewish law also borrowed the Greek practice of guardians, though the practice was apparently not frequent. Squandering family property was considered a terrible offense, and handing property over to sons who lack sense was deemed great folly. Thus in a Jewish parable God, depicted as a king about to go abroad, reasons, “If I leave my wealth in the hands of my son [Israel], he will go and squander it. Lo, I shall appoint a guardian for him until he comes of age.”

Under Roman law, guardianship ended at puberty, which Roman custom often defined for males as about the age of fourteen. Still, even someone in his twenties might be ready to squander his inheritance. For Greeks, guardianship lasted longer than for Romans. In Roman law, as noted earlier, a minor child’s status under a guardian resembles that of a slave. Until the child reached maturity, the guardian provided for the minor as the guardian thought best, just as he did for the slaves. A slave’s role could be honorable (Gal. 1:10), but of itself, free status was higher than slave status.

Some contend that Paul uses legal guardians for those supervising the youth’s training and estate managers for those managing the estate. Alternatively, Paul may employ both titles together to refer to managers of the heir’s estate. More relevantly, the term translated as estate managers (οἰκονόμος, oikonomos) normally designates household managers, who were sometimes slaves or freedpersons. Such household managers were not normally designated in charge of the youth, but they did run the estate to which the youth was heir.

How does this image relate to the image of the pedagogue (Gal. 3:24–25)? In at least one case, a pedagogue became a legal guardian after the father’s death. More pervasively, when Stoics spoke figuratively of indwelling divinity, they used ἐπίτροπος (epitropos) mostly interchangeably with παιδαγωγός (paidagōgos, a term treated above at 3:24–25); rabbis also used these Greek loanwords (ἐπίτροπος and παιδαγωγός) mostly interchangeably. Paul apparently does recognize the difference, given his accurate legal language here, but his point in any case remains that the youth remains subject to others.

Until the time appointed by the father reflects legal language attested elsewhere. The time (NRSV: “date”) was most commonly a legal term (προθεσμία, prothesmia) for an appointed day after which proceedings were disallowed. The laws best known to us from antiquity fixed the time directly rather than the father fixing it, except perhaps for special, temporary guardianships while the father was alive but absent. Here the time appointed by the father, however, may mean simply the time of majority, of being an adult.

What is most important for understanding the passage is the point Paul wants to make. After all, the analogy could never be complete: God does not die (Scripture never presses the inheritance analogy in that way), and in any case in this context God does set the time of majority (Gal. 4:4). The point of the analogy is that, until the specified time, the child under his father’s authority does not inherit: “Someone in our power can have nothing of his own. And so where he is instituted heir he cannot accept the inheritance except when we tell him to do so.”

4:3

3In the same way, so long as we were minors, we were enslaved under the elemental entities of this world.

Scholars debate the identity of the we in 4:3, 5–6. Given the context of minors under the law, 4:3 must include the Jewish people; probably that is also true in 4:5, if those receiving the adoption are those under the law. Yet gentiles were under the στοιχεῖα (stoicheia) (4:9) no less than Jews, and gentiles surely also received adoption (4:5) so as to become God’s children (4:6). Did the ingathering of gentiles in 4:6a precipitate Jewish believers receiving the Spirit in 4:6b, since both actions were associated with the end time? Or, perhaps more likely, does Paul simply vary the pronouns less precisely in this context to include his gentile audience in the Jewish privilege of God’s people before turning exclusively to his audience in 4:8–10?

A more lively debate concerns the meaning of Paul’s phrase στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου (stoicheia tou kosmou), the elemental entities of this world, translatable simply as “elements of the world” (e.g., KJV; WEB); “rudiments of the world” (ASV); “elementary principles of the world” (ESV); “elemental things of the world” (NASB); “basic forces of the world” (NET); or, more interpretively, “elemental spirits of the world” (NRSV) or “elemental spiritual forces of the world” (NIV). Most scholars agree that Paul compares the law (or an approach to the law) to στοιχεῖα in 4:3 as well as to paganism in 4:8–10, but they diverge fairly widely on how Paul uses the phrase elemental entities of this world. Following are four major categories of views:

Despite this basic fourfold division of views, representatives of such positions overlap considerably. Avoiding overlap is difficult, particularly since even Diaspora Jews thought that gentiles worshiped elements and stars (Wis. 13:2–3), and many gentiles genuinely did regard celestial bodies as divine.

Such a range of interpretive options is not new. Jerome listed views circulating in his day as including “angels that preside over the four elements”; celestial bodies worshiped by the pagans; and elementary teachings such as the law and the prophets.

1. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING

Learning letters was the most basic exercise in Greco-Roman education. Sometimes well-to-do Roman homes delegated the learning of the alphabet and simple reading to a pedagogue, an image that would fit the law in this context (Gal. 3:24–25). Just as Paul could insult the Galatians as foolish (3:1), philosophers could criticize others for their lack of basic understanding, expressed in terms of alphabetic letters. The term στοιχεῖα was used for letters of the alphabet and thus for rudimentary knowledge about a topic. Many ancient authors used it interchangeably with γράμματα (grammata), or “letters,” which Paul elsewhere applies to the law (Rom. 2:27, 29; 7:6; 2 Cor. 3:6–7) but which would not encompass these gentiles’ past so easily.

This association with rudimentary knowledge could prefigure Paul’s allegorical treatment of Hagar and Sarah, since Philo, the most widely known Diaspora Jewish intellectual of his era, allegorized Hagar as elementary, sensory knowledge but Sarah as advanced education. Some philosophically minded pagans compared deity-images to elementary teachers sketching letters so their pupils could trace over them, an approach that would fit Gal. 4:8–10.

Many older modern commentators, as well as some contemporary ones, prefer this background for στοιχεῖα here. Pagans had merely elementary knowledge about deity from nature, such as seasonal cycles (Gal. 4:8–10, esp. v. 10), and the law was elementary compared to the revelation of Christ and the living experience of the Spirit (4:3–6). This image fits the immature minor status of those under the law.

Nor is this view exclusively modern. Jerome seemed to lean toward this view, the law and prophets being like “the initial and early stages of our studies.” It was the law as understood “according to the letter.” Another early commentator thought that pagan deification of elements would make sense, but that the fuller context of Galatians suggested the law as understood carnally. The ninth-century commentator Haimo of Auxerre cites the law and compares the possibly analogous use of στοιχεῖα in Heb. 5:12; the eleventh-century commentator Bruno the Carthusian compares the law with merely worldly matters in John 3:12; and the fourteenth-century Franciscan Nicholas of Lyra compares children tracing out the letters of the alphabet.

This view thus fits perfectly the context of both references in Gal. 4 as well as the references in Col. 2:8, 20, without the need for further speculation. What it does not fit, by itself, is the usual use of the entire phrase elemental entities of this world. At the least, this position requires an adjustment to say that Paul refers here to something more elemental than the alphabet: the basics of the cosmos/life itself. In this case, this world can refer to the earthly existence to which Paul has been crucified (Gal. 6:14), including material, law matters such as circumcision (6:15a), because Paul’s focus is now the new creation (6:15b).

2. ELEMENTS OF NATURE

Surveying a wide range of evidence, recent research demonstrates that while στοιχεῖα by itself may fit any of the proposals, the expression used by Paul, στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου (“elements of the world”), virtually always indicates the basic elements of nature. Commentators today often regard this lexical conclusion as practically settled. As Martinus de Boer notes, lexically this meaning “is really the only one possible.”

One ancient writer surveys the development of views on the basic elements of nature. “Thales of Miletus, one of the Seven Wise Men, affirmed that the principle of all things is water; Heraclitus, fire; the priests of the Magi, water and fire. . . . Pythagoras, Empedocles, Epicharmus, and other physicists and philosophers affirmed that there are four principles: air, fire, earth, water.” Empedocles the Pythagorean held “that there are four elements, fire, water, earth and air, besides friendship by which these are united.” Death would detach the four elements combined at a person’s birth.

But while de Boer concludes that this is the obvious lexical meaning, he warns that it “is not adequate to the argumentative context in which Paul makes use of the phrase.” Most scholars who settle on the view that the term refers to the four elements do allow that these elements are themselves somehow venerated, an often complementary position revisited below in view 4. Augustine thought that Paul referred to gentiles worshiping the physical elements. De Boer himself contends that it refers to a religion based on nature that involved calendrical observances (summarized by the metonymy stoicheia, referring to nature’s four elements), like those in the law (see Gal. 4:10).

3. HEAVENLY BODIES

These elements are associated with days and seasons and years (Gal. 4:10), which in turn can be associated with heavenly lights that determine these (Gen. 1:14). Given these associations, some scholars have argued that Paul refers here to heavenly bodies that pagans thought influenced the earth astrologically.

Astrology was widespread, including among Judeans and Galileans. By Paul’s day, a widely circulated Diaspora Jewish treatise viewed knowledge of the elements, seasons, and so forth as part of having Wisdom. By the third century, some Jewish circles associated demons with particular stars and spoke of seven ruling στοιχεῖα, the world rulers. There were also thirty-six στοιχεῖα, each ruling over 10º of the zodiac. Since the language of astral decans is pre-Christian, and these came to be identified with letters and thus στοιχεῖα, some argue that this usage of στοιχεῖα may also be pre-Christian. At least the concept is surely pre-Christian, but whether the terminology is, and whether Paul refers to that concept, remain open questions.

For what it is worth, Paul describes heavenly bodies differently in 1 Cor. 15:40–41. More importantly, the language he uses here is not attested as applied to heavenly bodies until roughly a century after Paul. Most importantly, as noted above, “elements of the world” appears to have always referred to the four elements of nature. Still, one could take those four elements as metonymy for calendrical observances dependent on nature (cf. Gal. 4:10). Early church fathers often link the στοιχεῖα with heavenly bodies. The early commentator Ambrosiaster thought that Paul meant new moons and the Sabbath. One could also associate them with deities (cf. Gal. 4:8).

4. SPIRITS WORSHIPED AS DEITIES

The στοιχεῖα to which the Galatians were enslaved (4:3) were or included the non-gods of 4:8, to which the Galatians risk becoming enslaved again (4:9) as their acceptance of Jewish regulations includes special religious days (4:10).

Even though στοιχεῖα are attested as astral spirits and other spirits or deities only after the first century, many have found appealing the view that these are personified cosmic powers or deities associated with the elements. Certainly, Paul did believe in angelic powers in the heavens, as shown in different terminology in other undisputed (Rom. 8:38) and disputed but certainly early (Eph. 1:21; 3:10; 6:12; Col. 1:16; 2:15) Pauline texts. Paul also describes such gods as demons (1 Cor. 10:20), so a case can surely be made for understanding Gal. 4:8 thus (see comment there) and for linking στοιχεῖα (4:9) with these entities.

Paul may have known the Wisdom of Solomon, a Hellenistic Jewish work that claimed that pagans considered fire, wind, and water (three of the four “elements”), as well as stars, to be gods (Wis. 13:2). Wisdom does not use στοιχεῖα here, employing that label (19:18) more broadly. In Wisdom it includes not only fire and water (19:20–21) but also major kinds of animals (19:19) and—possibly relevantly for Gal. 4:8–10—knowledge of the seasons based on celestial cycles (Wis. 7:17–19).

Philo similarly attributed to Chaldeans belief that celestial powers controlled earthly matters, and thus that they imagined the world (κόσμος [kosmos]) to be god. He complains about “those who venerate the elements [στοιχεῖα]: earth, water, air, and fire. . . . To these various ones have appointed various surnames: fire, Hephaestus . . . air, Hera . . . water, Poseidon . . . and earth, Demeter.” (This in fact describes a view attributable to Stoics.) Likewise, though without the terminology of στοιχεῖα, “some have deified the four first principles: earth and water and air and fire,” while others have done this with the celestial bodies and still others the entire world (κόσμος).

Although these are Diaspora Jewish stereotypes of gentiles rather than gentile reports of their own beliefs, they were not without foundation. Herodotus claimed that the Persians worshiped heaven as Zeus and sacrificed also “to the sun and the moon, and to earth, fire, water, and the winds,” as well as to some deities originally learned from others. Some spoke of sun, moon, and stars as the “visible” gods. Many gentiles did regard stars as divine beings, though Jews deemed them merely angels. Divinities could thus “include supernatural beings such as the gods that govern the stars.” Middle Platonists posited creatures native to all four elements, includes δαίμονες (daimones) in air. Greeks did not usually worship, but did personify, spirits of the trees, springs (nymphs, Dryads, Hamadryads) and other parts of nature.

As James Rives points out, “that aspects of the physical world could count as gods” was widely believed; “Votive dedications to the Sun and the Moon, to Heaven and Earth, and to Storms and Winds indicate that people actually invoked these deities in prayer and believed that they responded.” They especially offered to springs and other bodies of water.

Galatians would have venerated such elements no less than did others. Were they distinctively known for worshiping any elements in particular before their conversion? In fact, the interior of Asia Minor was known for its worship of the Earth Mother. She was often depicted as a “guardian goddess,” enthroned with lions on either side, a strict enforcer of justice. Paul’s emphasis on the heavenly mother of believers (Gal. 4:26) was not unique to him or to his correspondence with the Galatians but perhaps is formulated and emphasized here to counter such a belief.

Jewish tradition recognized angels over various features of nature (cf. possibly already Ps. 148:2–4), making the idea of spirits of the elements of nature here quite plausible. Angels may be identified with the host of heaven, the stars; the nations could be led astray in worshiping them. Jewish mysticism further developed such ideas; angels could rule particular seasons and years. At some point after (or at least attested after) the first century, language similar to στοιχεῖα came to be applied to such angels. Some identify the present spirits with the angels who gave the law in Gal. 3:19, but the angels in that verse are much more positive than the spirits here. Some Jewish circles understood all the world as lying under the power of the evil one, although they (unlike Paul) sometimes excepted Israel.

Which of the four approaches is most relevant to Gal. 4? Purely textually, I would favor the first approach; lexically, I would naturally favor the second approach as it has been developed into the third or especially the fourth approach. Cumulatively, the textual and lexical evidence currently available both seem strong enough that it is difficult to force a choice here.

It is possible, however, that we are mixing apples and oranges by contrasting all these approaches, and that some or all of these senses may be reconciled by Paul’s usage. Under what rubric could the Torah and the world’s physical elements be compared? Knowledge about God through nature was very basic; Paul may present the Torah, as understood without its fulfillment in Christ, in the same way (cf. 3:24). Both general and special revelation remained limited until the arrival of the ultimate special revelation that they supported—namely, Christ (4:3–4).

Thus Paul means what he says. He uses the language of “elementary matters” deliberately to put both forms of season-observing religions in their place. The particular elementary matters that the Galatians had experienced before conversion, however, were the elements of nature that they wrongly venerated as deities.

4:4–7

In contrast to Rom. 8:17, Paul’s image here is less about individual heirs than about a corporate heir. At the right stage in history, Christ made it possible for God’s people to function without being under the law in its traditional, codified form. But those previously outside the law also can come into this role as freed sons (and daughters) in Christ the ultimate Son.

In 4:1–3, Paul describes both Jews under the law and pagans as in bondage under the elementary matters, like children who had not yet experienced liberation from their pedagogues or (in this paragraph) guardians. Paul returns to that depiction of the shared, lamentable state of humanity in 4:8–11. He interrupts that depiction, however, by reminding the Galatians of the glorious new condition that they experienced in Christ: God sent his Son to make both Jews and gentiles his sons and heirs (4:4–7; cf. 3:27–29). Why would they want to go back to what they had before (4:8–11; cf. Num. 11:5; 14:3–4; Acts 7:39)?

The shift in pronouns and verb persons in this section appears inconsistent and has exercised commentators’ ingenuity extensively. The difficulty in the analogy here arises from Paul speaking of Jews and gentiles alike as enslaved (but not alike enslaved under the law) and both alike being redeemed from slavery. Paul can exclude Galatian gentiles from the few exclusively Jewish matters here while seeking to apply the general features to all. Jews were under the law as a servant to regulate them until maturity (3:23–25); gentiles may be under various different guardians (4:2), but both are under elementary matters (4:3). (If Paul presses the image so far, which he might not, he might think of the gentiles’ guardians as angels of the nations here.)

But all remain as minors under authority different from themselves until the right time in salvation history: the coming of Christ (4:4). Christ came to redeem those under the law (“us,” in this case the Jewish people), to give them adoption—to those, the Jewish people, who were under the law (4:5). (Jewish people did have salvation-historical priority; cf. Matt. 15:24; Mark 7:27; John 4:22; Rom. 1:16.) But though gentiles were under different guardians, Paul hastens to show that “you” gentiles have also been adopted (though perhaps in a way more complicated than restoring disinherited sons; cf. Rom. 11:24). The Spirit they have received (3:5) bears witness that they are also God’s children and thus heirs (4:5–7; cf. 3:29; Rom. 8:16).

Galatians 4:4 lies at the center of this description, rhetorically underlined with anaphora (repetition of opening elements) in 4:4–5 (born . . . born; so . . . so). The heavy Christology in these verses lent itself to significant patristic attention, and some scholars suggest here a pre-Pauline creed or at least traditional language. This thesis is not implausible, but neither is it very certain. The few supposedly “non-Pauline” words are not sufficient reason to urge that Paul did not compose it; the passage is consistent with Paul’s Christology (e.g., 1 Cor. 8:6; Phil. 2:5–11).

What is striking is that Paul can refer to such concepts here without explanation, suggesting that his audience already knew these matters and his rivals had not challenged them. Thus whatever the sources of the specific wording, the passage’s Christology was apparently a shared belief in the early Jesus movement. The further similarity of Gal. 4:4 to Rom. 8:3 (God sending his Son to save) and of Gal. 4:5–7 to Rom. 8:15–17 (liberation from slavery, adoption, God’s children and heirs, the Spirit’s assurance and the “Abba” cry) suggests that Paul was accustomed to using such formulations, wherever they originated.

4:4

4But when the appointed time arrived, God sent his Son, born from a woman, born under the law,

What does Paul mean by saying that the appointed time arrived (4:4)? In the first place, he continues his image of the child reaching maturity—that is, a new phase in life (4:1–2). This is the time appointed by the father (4:2). This image, however, relates to salvation history rather than to the personal experience of an individual, so it invites further consideration also. While it may be true that some conditions were now ripe for the spread of the Jesus movement, Paul’s language reflects apocalyptic interpretation of history rather than sociological analysis. Jewish expectations of impending deliverance rested on the belief that God controlled history and that all his words would be fulfilled in their appointed time. God had patiently endured humanity, one visionary noted, “not for their sake, but because of the times which he has foreordained!” Oracles such as Dan. 9:24–27, which most first-century Jews understood as pointing to a fulfillment in the first century, gave some of Paul’s contemporaries confidence that they were on the brink of deliverance despite the insuperable obstacles they faced in their revolt against Rome.

Jesus’s followers were convinced that the promised time was fulfilled (Mark 1:15; Eph. 1:10). This was the time of Christ (Gal. 3:24), the era of faith (3:22–23, 25). Now had come the fulfillment of the promise (3:17–18) in the promised seed Christ (3:16, 19) and by the Spirit (3:14). God’s people were no longer under a pedagogue, and were thus no longer de facto a slave (3:25; 4:7). Christ was born under the law, with under in this context signifying subjection shared with other mortals (3:23, 25; 4:1–3).

Scholars debate how much to read into the description that God sent his Son (4:4). Some note the use of sent language for prophets. Paul does not speak here of a mere prophet, however, but of God’s Son, sent for a unique and cosmic mission (Rom. 8:3; John 3:16–17; 1 John 4:9–10). Son was a messianic title in at least some Jewish circles, was sometimes divine language in Greco-Roman circles, and in the Jesus tradition indicates a special intimacy with the Father and unique role for Jesus. Comparisons with divine Wisdom, λόγος (logos, divine reason), or other exalted figures are thus closer to the point than are mere prophetic figures. Therefore, and in conjunction with clearer Pauline texts to this effect (Rom. 8:3; 1 Cor. 1:24, 30; 8:6; 10:4; Phil. 2:6–7; Col. 1:15–17), the passage supports Jesus’s preexistence. God sends the preexistent Son here just as, in a parallel manner, he sends his preexistent Spirit in Gal. 4:6.

Yet unlike divine Wisdom or any possibly personified στοιχεῖα, Christ was born from a woman, a historical event within the lifetime of some of Paul’s contemporaries. Some earlier interpreters sometimes found here a proof-text for the virgin birth, but born from a woman is simply a Semitic and LXX idiom indicating a human being (Job 14:1; 15:14; 25:4). In connection with sending, its focus is not virgin birth but simply incarnation. Nevertheless, incarnation is a supernatural birth, presumably portending believers being born according to the Spirit in 4:29.

Born under the law (4:4) means that Jesus shared others’ subjection to the law (4:5) and therefore could redeem them from under the law’s curse (4:5; cf. 3:13) by way of exchange, presumably because he had not violated the law (Rom. 8:3; 2 Cor. 5:21). Jesus was born in the era of subjection to the law (Gal. 3:23–24), and he brought the new era not simply by birth but by redeeming his people (4:5), which he did on the cross (1:4; 3:13). People in the empire could appreciate a powerful ruler who nevertheless subjected himself to the same laws to which they were subject. Jewish people also expected the Messiah to obey the law.

4:5

5so he could purchase the freedom of those under the law, so we could receive adoption as his children.

God redeemed gentile believers from the law that excluded gentiles from his people, so that now they can be adopted, like Israel, as his children (4:5). That he has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts (4:6) confirms this adoption; Christ, God’s Son, now lives in us, working in and through us (2:20; cf. 2 Cor. 13:3–5).

Scholars debate whether believers receiving adoption is theologically (or chronologically) simultaneous with God’s act of redeeming in Gal. 4:5 or subsequent to it. Some who see them as sequential believe that the first clause addresses Jews and the second gentiles (cf. Rom. 1:16). They argue this because God already provided the adoption for Israel (Rom. 9:4). But Paul applies the language in multiple ways, envisioning also believers’ fuller adoption at the redemption of the body, currently guaranteed by the Spirit (8:23).

Thus the second clause might encompass all believers; Paul’s use of adoption here is flexible enough to depict not only gentile adoption but possibly also Jewish liberation from slave-like sonship (Gal. 4:1) to the status of mature, free children and the Spirit-experience of being God’s children more fully (4:1–5). How can this be? Many Judeans anticipated in some sense Israel’s eschatological adoption. Most importantly, in 4:4–6 Jesus alone is the natural Son (4:4); all others, by comparison, come by adoption.

There might be a sort of subsequence, or rather consequence, but one that is theological rather than temporal: because of God’s redemptive act in Christ we receive adoption; in turn, because God has made us his children, he sends the Spirit (4:6). The similar construction in 3:14, however, may argue against pressing such details; the two clauses in 4:5, like the two in 3:14, are parallel in Greek.

God’s mission for his Son was to purchase the freedom (4:5). Paul employs this word (ἐξαγοράζω, exagorazō) for purchase the freedom in this way elsewhere in his extant letters only at 3:13, where Christ takes the curse for us, even as here he is under the law with us (4:4–5). There is a reversal of status here: the Son (υἱός, huios) is born under the law (4:4), so that those under the law become children (a “son,” υἱός; 4:5–6) and thus heirs (4:6–7). Thus Christ, though rich, became poor to make us rich (2 Cor. 8:9)—that is, sharing his inheritance (Rom. 8:17).

In this context, under the law (Gal. 4:4–5) signifies subjection (3:23, 25) and slavery (4:1–3); to purchase the freedom here therefore involves freeing a slave, possibly (as in the common commercial use of the term) by paying a price. If paying a price is in view here, there seems little doubt that it involves the substitution or exchange of Christ himself (3:13; cf. the cognate verb used to express the purchasing of believers with a price in 1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23). Manumission of slaves was a common practice in the Greco-Roman world, sometimes even sacral manumission (see comment on Gal. 5:1); Jews could recall how God redeemed them from slavery in Egypt (see comment on 3:13).

Adoption made one a legal heir. Though the fullness of the inheritance awaits the resurrection of our bodies (Rom. 8:23), the Spirit is our foretaste and first fruits of that promise (Rom. 8:15, 23; see comment on Gal. 3:14). The Spirit might also function as the legal witness to the adoption, although the idea is not explicit here as it might be in Rom. 8:16. Theologically, Paul draws on the analogy of Israel as God’s children, and elsewhere applies the language of adoption (υἱοθεσία, huiothesia) explicitly to them (Rom. 9:4). Nevertheless, the adoption image, including for Israel, is presumably informed with the sorts of adoption known to Paul’s audience, for which reason scholars examine especially Greek and Roman adoption practices.

A CLOSER LOOK: ADOPTION

The term adoption (υἱοθεσία, huiothesia) here invites exploration of the concept. Paul’s emphasis might be more on the status of being God’s child than on how this occurs, but clearly Paul’s term applies to adoption. We should also remember that the chief point of the adoption analogy is an alien person entering a new family as an heir; Paul used similarities with adoption in his analogy, but it is precarious to press every detail in any analogy.

Scholars debate whether Greek or Roman adoption practice is more relevant to the passage. Because Galatia was in the eastern part of the empire, most Galatians would have been more aware of Greek practice (and perhaps local traditions now lost to us). But citizens of Pisidian Antioch and Lystra, two of the three or four named cities where south Galatian churches flourished, may have also been familiar with Roman practice; they were, after all, Roman colonies. Moreover, most knowledgeable urban dwellers in the empire could not help but be somewhat familiar with Roman adoption, because not a single emperor in the contemporary Julio-Claudian dynasty had been the genetic son of his predecessor.

Roman adoption was meant to pass on the family name and property. Roman adoption mostly ended a person’s connections with the prior family, canceled all former debts, transferred all the adoptee’s assets to the adopter, and made the adoptee his heir. (A person who wished to remain part of the birth family could refuse to be adopted.) An adoptee was legally of the same status as a child by birth, apart from some exceptional circumstances or matters. It was not uncommon to adopt relatives; one could also adopt someone who was already named one’s heir. Whereas birth was simply by chance, adoption allowed for the selection of the best heir.

Roman adoption emulated slave emancipation, an image certainly relevant in this context (Gal. 4:1, 3, 5). A Roman father was head of his household, with significant legal authority over sons as well as slaves. He could free his children from his authority in a manner analogous to the freeing of slaves. In the adoption ceremony the original father would fictively “sell” the adoptee three times, thereby legally freeing the son from his household; on the third selling, the adopter could fictively “redeem” the adoptee, making him his own son. This applied, however, to a fictive bondage only. By the time of the late Roman Republic, an adopted freedperson owed continuing obligations to the former slaveholder, an element not envisioned in Paul’s use of the image.

Greeks also frequently practiced adoption. Some scholars suggest that Paul’s image reflects Greek legal practice. In contrast to Roman fathers, Greek fathers often needed to confer with their heirs before selling property; Greek heirs, including adopted ones, had a more active role than did Roman ones. Though Roman heirs also had legal rights, on this point the Greek analogy might be stronger. Those who support a Greek legal image here also offer the following reasons:

To these points it may be responded as follows:

Supporters of Roman law point out that Greek adoption also did not sever ties with the family of origin, lacking the stronger emancipatory power of the Roman image. Supporters of Greek law counter that even Roman adoption did not sever every connection; still, it seems to have done so more than Greek adoption.

Ultimately, a decision between Greek and Roman law does not change the most important point of the text. Paul himself probably did not know the details of such laws any more than most modern Americans who have not adopted a child know the intricacies of modern US adoption law, and neither did his audience. What they did know was the connection “between adoption and inheritance.” Both Greek law and Roman law made the adopted child an heir, and in both cases one could adopt for this express purpose. Paul’s interest is that gentiles are grafted into Abraham’s family and so become heirs as ancient Israel was. Diaspora Jews could certainly understand the collocation of such language.

Yet Paul’s image of adoption could create striking dissonance for hearers in the Roman Empire. Adopting strangers (which could include another’s slaves, as in Gal. 4:3, 8–9) was rare; adopting slaves differed from adopting freeborn persons; and one would normally not adopt an heir (cf. 3:29) if one already had a legitimate heir or heirs (as the Jewish people considered themselves to be). Accordingly, the image of God’s adoption of those he redeems from slavery, as well as his inclusion of gentiles, expresses a radical love unanticipated by most readers.

What may be more relevant than details of ancient adoption procedure is what Paul wants his audience to understand. Why would they resort to circumcision to achieve a status that they already possess? Would not any right-thinking person be envious (cf. possibly 3:1) of their status and the Spirit-experience that confirmed it? To capture some of the thrill that Paul’s words convey, compare the words of a philosopher from this era: “If Caesar adopts you, no one will be able to endure your conceit, but if you know that you are a son of Zeus, will you not be elated?”

4:6

6Because you’re children, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba, Father!”

Paul shifts from “we” to “you” in 4:6 not to imply that what he says is untrue of Jewish believers (cf. 4:5), but rather to reinforce for his mostly gentile audience that they too are directly included as the children of whom he is speaking (4:5) and thus heirs (4:7), as he affirmed in 3:29. The logical sequence here (adoption, therefore the Spirit) might be reversed in Rom. 8:14–15; rather than reflecting a change in Paul’s theology, the difference probably simply implies that the components of the event are really too intertwined to separate theologically (cf. Gal. 3:2). If there is any chronology implied here, it would be the sending of the Spirit (4:6) after the redemptive climax of the mission of the Son (4:4–5; cf. Acts 2:33).

Although Father here echoes the image of the father in Gal. 4:2, that image depends on God’s fatherhood of his people rather than the reverse (3:29). Paul can presume here a widely understood belief in early Christianity; corporate Jewish prayers already commonly addressed God as “Father” (see comment on 1:3), though not as “Abba.”

Yet not only the understanding of God’s fatherhood but also the early Christian experience of the “Abba” cry must be earlier than Paul, since Paul expects the church in Rome, where he has not visited, to be aware of it (Rom. 8:15). It is understood (albeit with Pauline translation provided) in both Galatia and Rome, even though it is an Aramaic phrase preserved from the earliest phase of the Jesus movement. Since Paul addresses Greek-speaking churches, the preservation of a small remnant of phrases in Aramaic (such as the marana tha prayer in 1 Cor. 16:22) suggests their importance.

Interestingly, we have evidence that Jesus historically addressed his Father this way (Mark 14:36), a tradition apparently widely known in the early church. Jewish people in this period regularly and corporately addressed God as “our Father” in prayer; “my Father” was less common, and “Abba” virtually unknown as an address to God in prayer. The only parallel to Jesus’s use of it for God normally cited is a “charismatic” Jewish sage’s comparison of God to an Abba in a parable. Jesus is the one figure behind the earliest Christian movement whose designation of God in these intimate terms would have become a standard from Asia Minor to the heart of the empire within the movement’s first generation. Most scholars thus trace the usage to the historical Jesus.

Many scholars have assumed that this cry therefore goes back to the Lord’s Prayer, which Jesus taught his disciples, in which God is addressed, in the simplest form, as “Father” (Luke 11:2). Some suggest that it must have been preserved in liturgy or even specified a possible baptismal setting; but even at an unsophisticated, nonliturgical level particular phrases often become dominant in prayer vocabularies, establishing a sort of informal pattern of repetition without an established sequence.

That Abba was used in the Lord’s Prayer is possible, but the one location in the gospel tradition where Abba is specifically preserved for us is Mark 14:36, in Jesus’s prayer at Gethsemane. The Abba prayer might therefore recall Gethsemane and Jesus’s cries of anguish as he prepared to face the world’s hostility, a usage relevant for its recurrence in Rom. 8:15 (cf. 8:17–23, 26, 35–39).

It should not be lost on us that the Spirit inspiring the “Abba” cry here is the Spirit of God’s Son, so that we as God’s children utter the very term of love and intimacy that Jesus expressed to his Father, including in settings like Gethsemane. It is a prayer in a sense moved by “Christ in us” (Gal. 2:20), as we share in Jesus’s relationship with his Father (cf. John 10:14–15).

That the inspiring Spirit, normally identified as the Spirit of God, is here the Spirit of God’s Son is significant also for Christology, as with the “Spirit of Christ” in Rom. 8:9 (cf. also 1 Pet. 1:11), the “Spirit of Jesus Christ” in Phil. 1:19, and the “Spirit of Jesus” in Acts 16:7. Jewish thought traditionally viewed the Spirit as an aspect of God, so Jesus is here presented as divine in some respect (cf. Gal. 1:1, 3).

Some suggest that Abba reflects an ecstatic cry. Varying definitions of the meaning of “ecstatic” today make this designation less helpful, though we cannot doubt that an acclamation of “Father!” will normally carry some affectionate emotion. Some scholars suggest a cultic exclamation, such as appears in various ancient settings. Yet normally one invoking a deity in prayer would begin with a title in any case. Given early Christian understanding of the Spirit, identifying the cry as “charismatic” may be more apropos.

In Gal. 4:6, grammatically, it is the Spirit who offers the cry, “Abba,” whereas in Rom. 8:15 it is believers who cry, “Abba!” by (or in) the Spirit. Because the Spirit was often associated with prophetic inspiration (e.g., Num. 11:25–29; 1 Sam. 10:10; 19:20; Joel 2:28–29), an association even more dominant in early Judaism than in the OT, it appears here that the Spirit inspires God’s children to cry, “Abba!” In some giftings, Spirit-empowerment is no guarantee of godliness (cf. Judg. 14:6, 19; 15:14; 1 Sam. 19:23–24; Matt. 7:22), but in this case it marks a true child of God.

A CLOSER LOOK: THE SUPREME DEITY AS FATHER IN ANCIENT THOUGHT

Claiming that God or Zeus was the father or begetter of humanity was a common Greek idea. Zeus or Jupiter appears as “the Father” in both Greek and Latin texts; is addressed as “Father” in invocations; is “Father of all”; is father of the gods; is father of humanity; and is often “father of humans and gods.” He could also be portrayed as father of kings or of the virtuous. Human feelings toward mortal parents can give humans a way to approach their ultimate parent, the Zeus of their ancestors; human fathers were reflections of the universal father. While Zeus’s kingship was linked with strength, his fatherhood could be linked with gentleness and kindness.

Because their pantheon was polytheistic, Greeks and Romans also assigned the respectful title to other deities, such as time, Janus, Neptune, Pluto, Oceanus, Ouranos, Saturn, Apollo, Mars, Bacchus, Heracles, and in some sense the emperor. (The emperor was often “father of his country,” an honorary title.)

Stoic thinkers also spoke of God as a father—that is, “father of all,” father of human beings, and father of humans and deities, by virtue of creation. As in Gal. 4:6, Greeks sometimes claimed that the gods loved humanity on account of kinship with them. They could also argue that kinship to deity should free people from superstition.

Jewish people called God “father” (also an occasional OT title for God), though not all with equal sympathy for the Greek usage. Philo speaks of the “supreme father of deities and people” acknowledged by both Greeks and barbarians; Josephus, however, condemns the Greeks’ “father” who rules heaven as a tyrant, rejecting the identification of Zeus with the true God.

Greek-speaking Jews were united, in any case, in regarding God as Father of all, from Philo to the Sibylline Oracles; Jewish magical texts could also invoke God as “father of all creation.” God was “begetter of gods and humans.” Greek-speaking church fathers agreed. A variety of other Jewish sources also called God “father.” The liturgical title that came to dominate in later rabbinic Judaism was “father in heaven.” Corporate Jewish and Christian prayers to God as Father are nearly identical. Because Jewish culture generally perceived fathers as wise, benevolent, and authoritative protectors, “father” offered a useful image for God.

For most Jewish sources, God is especially Israel’s Father; for most Christian sources, God is Christians’ Father. Galatians 4 emphasizes intimacy, for the Spirit of God’s Son within believers embraces God as Father.

4:7

7Because of this, you’re no longer a slave but his child; and since you’re his child, you’re also his heir, through what God has done.

Paul continues to address the Galatian gentile believers directly (you) in 4:7 (though here with a singular verb and singular nouns, hence perhaps on a more personal level). Gentiles who trust Christ are no longer slaves (4:3), and, like those who were already children yet once comparable to slaves under the law (4:1), they are now just children. Given the clear statement to this effect in 4:7a, the clause in 4:7b may be translated as since you’re his child.

Under Roman law, one became an heir by birth or adoption, not by the father’s decease. The difference between slaves and children is not that only the former owe obedience; in Paul’s world, both owed obedience, and both usually gave it. The difference is that the slave obeys usually without hope of long-term reward; the son is the father’s heir and, upon reaching maturity, will exercise authority (even over slaves). The final through what God has done (διὰ θεοῦ, dia theou) implies that God himself has brought about this state of affairs, through the actions narrated in 4:4–6 (sending his Son, redeeming, sending his Spirit).

Returning to Empty Practices (4:8–11)

4:8

8But before all this, when you didn’t know God, you were slaves to things that by nature aren’t gods.

Paul’s rousing praise of Christ and believers’ status in him is cut short with an abrupt but (in the NRSV) untranslated, strong adversative (ἀλλά [alla], “but”) beginning 4:8. Paul was not the only person to denounce false gods. Although too prudent to critique society’s dominant paganism publicly, intra-Jewish ridicule of worshiping images was common. Even some gentiles mocked popular pagan practice. But while many gentile intellectuals doubted that statues adequately depicted deity, most accepted them as useful aids for focusing devotion on the deity. Paul is more circumspect than to specify the Galatians’ particular deities in a letter (cf. Acts 19:37), but he is not afraid to criticize, on a generic level, veneration of false deities (cf., e.g., 1 Cor. 10:14; 12:2; 2 Cor. 6:16; Gal. 5:20; 1 Thess. 1:9).

What sorts of deities had the Galatians worshiped before their conversion? For the most part, their pantheon coincided with the deities worshiped elsewhere in Greco-Roman Asia Minor; for example, Zeus and Hermes often appear. Nevertheless, we may offer some more concrete details. Certainly the imperial cult was a major element in local worship, especially in Pisidian Antioch, where a prominent temple was devoted to the emperor’s honor. The local imperial cult, with its civic celebrations on special days and months (cf. Gal. 4:10), regulated much of public life in Antioch. The imperial temple, probably fairly recently completed, was so large that visitors traveling the Via Sebaste would see it long before reaching Antioch.

Despite their prominence, however, emperors represented only a few of the putative divinities that Paul’s confrontational message urged the Galatians to turn from (Gal. 4:8; cf. 1 Cor. 8:5–6; 1 Thess. 1:9; Acts 14:15; 17:29–30; 19:26). Some other deities were distinctively identified with the interior region of Anatolia, apparently adopted even by the Gauls who settled in northern Galatia. Some of these deities were known as strict enforcers of morality, and Phrygia was known as preoccupied with virtue, perhaps contributing to the Galatians’ religious zeal.

In Pisidian Antioch, the cult most dominant after that of the imperial deity was the community’s patron deity, Mēn Askaēnos. One of his two temples lay on a hill, an hour’s steep ascent above Antioch, strewn with dedications. Chief citizens of Antioch held priesthoods there, and the city celebrated games in honor of the deity during his festivals. Depicted with a crescent moon and in Phrygian garb, Mēn was worshiped throughout the Anatolian interior. Mēn’s association with the moon is intriguing in light of Paul’s concern that the Galatians are returning to venerating “elements” (4:9).

But probably no deity was more closely associated with the interior of Asia Minor, and especially Phrygia, than the Great Mother, Cybele, the mother goddess associated with earth. Her cult was traditionally celebrated with ecstasy, shouts, and dancing. Her worshipers celebrated with tambourines, cymbals, and sometimes Phrygian flutes, but they also lamented the death of Cybele’s beloved Attis. (Cf. further comment at Gal. 4:26; 5:12.)

These are presumably some of the Galatians’ former objects of worship (some related to bodies in nature such as the moon or earth) that might come to mind when they hear about things that by nature aren’t gods (4:8). Paul himself may be less acquainted with, and surely less interested in, the specifics. His language evokes earlier biblical and early Jewish denunciations of objects of worship that were truly “no gods,” as in 2 Chron. 13:9; Isa. 37:19; Jer. 2:11; 5:7; 16:20. This need not mean, as the language sometimes implied, that Paul regards the non-gods as nonentities altogether. Paul probably means something similar to his reference to “so-called gods” in 1 Cor. 8:5 and thus to the alleged gods that are actually “demons” in 10:20. Many other Hellenistic Jews regarded pagan deities as demons.

Yet his complete phrase, by nature aren’t gods, also appears to evoke a technical distinction in Hellenistic religion between deities that were so only by human custom and those that were so by nature (φύσει [phusei], as here). The latter included sun, moon, and stars. A philosophic approach known as Euhemerism employed the latter in demythologizing Hellenistic religion; Hellenistic Jewish apologists exploited this system in its own critique of paganism. This approach in turn took two directions, one that denied the existence of such deities altogether, and one that viewed them as demons; as noted above, Paul’s language elsewhere indicates that he followed the demonic interpretation.

Thinkers regularly appealed to nature as a standard for evaluating morality and utility; in this case, Paul may allude to the Galatians’ previous veneration of nature, such as the mother goddess associated with earth and fertility, and remind them that by nature the στοιχεῖα, the world’s elements, were just that: lifeless elements. They were no gods. The demonic dimension enters only when they are worshiped (1 Cor. 10:25–29); thus Paul’s wording differs from Gal. 4:3, where we were enslaved under the elemental entities of this world. In 4:8 the Greek verb ἐδουλεύσατε (edouleusate) is active and should not be translated as “were enslaved” (NRSV), but rather as “served” or “acted as slaves to.” Their belief, not something in nature itself, made them slaves.

Luke depicts Paul as previously having urged the Galatians to turn from false deities, which God tolerated in an earlier time, to the true creator of realms celestial and terrestrial (Acts 14:15–16). To a Galatian farming community, Paul declared that this God graciously provided fruitful “seasons” (Acts 14:17, using the same Greek term as in Gal. 4:10). Paul now reminds Galatian believers of the earlier time under false religion, a less-than-ideal time of immaturity (Gal. 4:8), of serving less-than-gracious gods (contrast 4:4–7). They had turned from that empty religion, so Paul can express astonishment that they were now turning back (4:9).

4:9

9But now that you have come to know God—or rather, to be known by God—how can you turn back again to the impotent and impoverished elementary entities? Do you want to serve as their slaves all over again?

In 4:9, Paul’s tone perhaps begins to shift toward his appeal of pathos that is clearer in 4:12–20. How can the Galatian Christians turn back now that they have come to know God? Philo, the Qumran scrolls, and Hellenistic philosophy all valued the knowledge of God. The idea of knowing God reflects biblical language for God’s people maintaining their side of the covenant that he had established with them (e.g., Jer. 9:24; 22:16). Someday Israel would know God fully (Jer. 31:34; Hosea 2:20; cf. 1 Cor. 13:12); some gentiles would also enter this covenant relationship (Isa. 19:21). By contrast, Israel had pleaded for God’s judgment against pagan nations that did not know God and thus oppressed God’s people (Ps. 79:6; Jer. 10:25; Jdt. 9:7; 2 Macc. 1:27). These gentiles had entered the covenant and experienced a real relationship with God (Gal. 3:2, 5).

But Paul corrects himself: perhaps they really do not know God, even though they are known by him (4:9b)! Speakers sometimes deliberately retracted what they had said, replacing it with something more suitable to drive home a point (or, less relevantly here, to soften a rebuke). Here Paul hints at their sorry spiritual state.

Nevertheless, even to be known by God was a great honor (1 Cor. 8:3), especially in a world in which people often thought that gods were paying no attention to them despite their offerings. To be known to Caesar was a great mark of honor and prestige; how much more to be favorably known to a deity! Sometimes the language of knowledge applies to God’s choice or favor, as in the Hebrew and LXX texts of Gen. 18:19; Ps. 1:6; Jer. 1:5; and Amos 3:2; surely to be known in the sense of being chosen by God was an incomparable privilege (cf. Rom. 8:29; 11:2). (To not be known to the Lord, by contrast, would constitute being lost [cf. Matt. 7:23 // Luke 13:27].) So why would they turn back?

Paul elsewhere uses this term for turn back (ἐπιστρέφω, epistrephō) to include conversion from idolatry (1 Thess. 1:9) or spiritual blindness under the law (2 Cor. 3:16); in Acts 14:15 Luke depicts Paul as summoning people in this region to turn from idols, again employing this term. Here, however, Paul warns the Galatians that they are on the verge of deconverting. Paul’s language is emphatic, three times using words for again (despite the failure of most translations to reflect this). Pagan religion was festive and communal, which might offer temptations to turn back; in a later rabbinic story, even a supposedly nonidolatrous pagan friend of a rabbi was discovered practicing evil on a pagan feast-day. But the pagan religion that they served was in fact merely about στοιχεῖα (stoicheia), elements, objects in nature or ideas drawn from nature. It involved worshiping what was created rather than the creator (Rom. 1:25), an action that became a frequent object of ridicule among monotheists and some gentile intellectuals.

The element of shock here, however, is that it is the Galatians’ new observance of the Jewish calendar (4:10) that represents a turning back that Paul deems equivalent to the practices of their pagan past. So wholly and solely sufficient is Christ that turning back to slavery under anything elementary, whether the law (4:1–3) or things that by nature aren’t gods (4:8), is deemed apostasy. Having the fuller reality, how can they turn to what was at best preparatory (cf. similarly Heb. 2:2–3; 10:26–31)? The στοιχεῖα are impotent (4:9), a fitting term for idols (Wis. 13:17–19), which are often even depicted as “dead”—that is, lifeless (Wis. 13:10; 14:29; 15:15; Ep. Jer. 70–71).

Paul may equate the real spirits behind idolatry with demons (1 Cor. 10:20), but while they are not absolutely powerless (cf. Job 1:13–19; Rom. 8:38; Eph. 6:12), they are nothing before God, hence void of value and virtually impotent. They are created entities, dependent on creation, and in early Christian sources often appear to be so weak as to be parasitic on bodily life (e.g., Mark 5:9–12). Insofar as gods depended on mortals to feed them, they could be deemed not only desperately poor (πτωχά, ptōcha) but even utterly dependent on mortals for support, like shadows of the underworld.

Whether the στοιχεῖα here are the non-gods of Gal. 4:8 or simply elementary concepts about religion (which include the strictures of both non-gods and Torah) is a matter of much debate (see discussion at 4:3). The language by nature in 4:8 may suggest, as noted above, that the elements of created nature and cosmic lights are in fact the non-gods that the Galatians formerly venerated as deities.

4:10

10You’re observing days and months and seasons and years!

Just as in their former paganism (4:8–9), the Galatians were now placing themselves under calendrical rules, like spiritual slaves instead of God’s children ruled by the Spirit of Christ (cf. 4:1–7). Relevant to 4:10, Jewish people recognized from Scripture that God had provided the sun, moon, and stars for seasons and days and years (Gen. 1:14); many gentiles thought along similar lines. Following cycles of the moon, many gentiles divided the month into three nine- to ten-day portions; three-month periods were seasons, of which four composed a year; every fourth year marked an Olympiad. Romans used eight-day weeks with the eighth day as a market day, but by the late first century the Greek planetary weeks of seven days, already known in Rome in Augustus’s reign, were influencing Roman culture. Astrology played a more prominent role in the Greek form of the calendar dominant in the eastern Mediterranean world, where Paul and the Galatians lived.

Some interpreters have applied 4:10 partly or fully to pagan superstitious days, when to avoid journeys, contracts, and the like. This could help explain how the Galatians’ preconversion background approached special days. Various days were deemed unlucky, so choosing lucky days was an important skill. Odd days were more powerful, perhaps because even numbers were more dangerous; later rabbis also prescribed which days were particularly dangerous. Romans presented honey to Janus on January 1 to provide a good omen for the rest of the year, so that it would be sweet.

Romans loved to participate in Saturnalia and the New Year’s festival, and they spread these festivals throughout their empire. Particular times were consecrated to particular deities in the same way that sacred land was. Many of these days were related to celestial indicators, including constellations. Greeks also had many widely used festivals. Most festivals, however, were local or kept at local times. Each festival was related to a deity.

South Galatia would have had its share of festivals. For example, March 24 began the sacred time for wailing for Cybele, mother of the gods. In Pisidian Antioch, as archaeologist Stephen Mitchell observes, “The packed calendar of the ruler cult dragooned the citizens of Antioch into observing the days, months, seasons, and years which it laid down for special recognition and celebration. Its sacrifices were the chief source of meat which the Apostolic Council had forbidden Christians to touch.” Christians could not conceal their allegiances in such an environment.

Because the Galatians turn back again to preconversion practices (4:9), and because they are turning toward circumcision (5:2), it seems clear that Paul is (perhaps hyperbolically) virtually equating the contemporary Jewish festival calendar with their former pagan calendar. This may be because of how the Galatians risk approaching it: not as a commemoration of God’s past acts for his people, but as a requirement of the law that they consider adopting.

Although the Galatians had not yet succumbed to circumcision (Gal. 5:2), scholars debate whether they were already observing special days. The present-tense verb παρατηρεῖσθε (paratēreisthe, you are observing) might favor this, but this may be too much weight to hang on a verb tense, so we cannot be certain. The verb may be helpful in another respect, however: Paul’s term for observing the days was also used by other Jews for observing the Sabbath and festival days.

Every ancient religion observed prescribed festivals during the year; Paul’s treatment of observing Jewish festivals on the same grounds as pagan ones contravened all ancient religious practice. Under circumstances demanding less polemic, Paul allowed different approaches to festivals (Rom. 14:5–6) and may have even observed some himself, for whatever reasons (cf. Acts 20:6, 16). Certainly his churches knew about festivals (1 Cor. 5:7; 16:8). In the earliest centuries, Christians depended on Jewish determinations for Passover to set their own calendars for Easter.

In Roman custom, the year belongs to Jupiter and the months to Juno. Throughout history, however, most interpreters have recognized from the context that Paul warns here specifically about Jewish times. Most interpreters take “days” as Sabbaths or Passover, “months” as “new moons” (Col. 2:16), “seasons” as the regular Jewish festivals or fasts, and “years” as the Sabbatical (seventh) Year and/or the Jubilee. The LXX uses the Greek term for seasons with respect to the appointed times for festivals. The soil’s Sabbatical Year (Lev. 25:1–7) might appear irrelevant outside the holy land (25:2), despite many farmers in Galatia, but given the recent nature of the crisis, Paul’s “years” is probably rhetorical in any case.

Other peoples besides Jews observed the new moon celebration. More importantly here, the Jewish Sabbath, known throughout the empire, was sometimes regarded as superstitious, but many gentiles were attracted to Jewish holy days. Followers of Israel’s God in Galatia, including gentile Christians, undoubtedly found the Jewish calendar attractive as well.

Jewish people believed that God had ordered seasons and feasts, consecrating some days as holy. Like withholding circumcision and eating gentile food, after the Maccabean period breaking the Sabbath became a conspicuous marker of violating God’s covenant. Even tilting a lamp on the Sabbath to get more light incurred a sin offering.

Because these days were connected with astral observations, problematic especially for the traditional lunar calendar, scholars often connect them with the στοιχεῖα (stoicheia) of Gal. 4:9. Indeed, in Judean tradition, angels governed the seasons. But “in taking guidance from the stars,” Paul may have been warning, “you are returning to the worship of the elements rather than of God.” This would be hyperbole, since astronomical observations do not necessarily entail worship; but Scripture offered a long tradition of some inappropriately connecting the two.

But what if one celebrated festivals on the wrong day? While this practice might have been overlooked in the OT (2 Chron. 30:2–3, 17–20, 23), it became a matter of life and death in early Judaism. As James Dunn points out regarding Gal. 4:10, “Disagreements regarding the proper observance of such [Jewish] festivals was a regular feature of intra-Jewish factional dispute.” Tradition declared that even the famous sage Hillel was mobbed by detractors in the temple when he declared that Passover takes precedence over the Sabbath.

More critically, in keeping with ancient Middle Eastern custom, the Pharisaic movement followed a lunar calendar; the Essenes instead insisted on a solar calendar. The book of Jubilees stems from circles similar to those that authored 1 Enoch and the Dead Sea Scrolls. In Jubilees, to miss observing the festivals, new moons, Sabbaths, and Jubilees in particular exemplifies the violation of God’s commandments. For them, the solar calendar of 364 days was essential for observing “fixed times.”

So severe was this division that either side regarded the other as unfaithful to Jewish tradition and identity. Thus, for observers of the solar calendar, the lunar calendar was corrupt, and those who observed it were like ignorant gentiles! Only the solar calendar was accurate; those who did not observe it were sinners. Pharisaism’s successors, however, declared that it is the gentiles who reckon by the sun. Feelings about getting the fixed days of the calendar correct obviously ran high on both sides. Paul’s opponents apparently bought into such feelings, but Paul no longer (cf. Gal. 1:14) regarded the calendar as a matter of true consequence.

4:11

11I’m afraid for you—afraid that my toil for you has been pointless!

The looming threat of his converts’ apostasy (4:8–10; 5:2–4) is now expressed in distress (4:11) that will trigger the letter’s heaviest pathos section (4:12–20). (Cf. Paul’s concern in 2:2 about laboring “in vain.”) This is not the only place where Paul warns his converts that if they pursue the wrong path their faith and his work will have been in vain (1 Cor. 15:2, 10, 14; 2 Cor. 6:1; cf. Phil. 2:16) or the only place where he fears the possibility (1 Thess. 3:5). Elsewhere he sometimes counters these concerns fairly confidently (1 Cor. 15:58; 2 Cor. 7:4, 16; 8:22; 1 Thess. 3:6); he does so only fairly weakly in Galatians (Gal. 5:10).

Plea to Return to Earlier Relationship (4:12–20)

There is a clear break in tone between 4:11 and 4:12, with new and more direct deliberative appeal and the letter’s first imperative. It is also a section seething with pathos. Forensic speech necessarily incited emotions, but emotion was particularly helpful in deliberative rhetoric. Conversational or debate styles suited some subjects, but speakers used a heightened tone for exhortation or lament.

A CLOSER LOOK: PATHOS

Although Paul writes letters, he does so as one who is normally a preacher. Paul’s letters often appeal to πάθος (pathos), or emotion, as well as arguments from character (ἦθος, ēthos) and from logic. (Direct emotional appeal naturally dominates more in letters written to an audience with whom he already had a close relationship; it thus plays a lesser role in Romans.) Because in speeches pathos depended heavily on delivery, Paul would want the messenger who delivered this letter to be able to convey the sense of feeling here. Like Paul, a skilled speaker might alternate between argumentation and emotional appeal.

Approaches to emotion in persuasion varied. Stoics might wish to avoid emotion, but a Stoic who avoided conventional rhetorical antics also risked losing his case. Apart from some philosophers, most thinkers acknowledged emotion’s role in persuasion. Orators employing Attic style proved particularly restrained, but such lack of passion could weaken their appeal.

Cicero urged the importance of manipulating the audience’s emotions, and Pliny the Younger preferred to be “roused and heated, sometimes even to boiling-point.” Still, his social class mistrusted those who merely shouted without understanding the right ways to employ passion in rhetoric. A good orator, Cicero opined, should avoid violent movements, pacing, or stamping the foot too often. Far more than Cicero or Pliny, by contrast, populist orators delivered their speeches more passionately and forcefully, unconcerned with maintaining aristocratic dignity. Still, even aristocrats were pleased when they could stir their fellow aristocrats to shows of emotion.

People have emotions, so a strategic speaker “should not oppose powerful emotions but should yield and allay them.” Emotional appeal was not itself unethical, but it could be used unethically, inviting discussions of safeguards. Thus an opposing speaker would point out that pathos without evidence was insufficient to merit consideration. Sometimes, Quintilian noted, emotions must be used to steer an audience away from truth. Real emotions, moved by loyalty to one’s client, were preferable to and more effective than feigned ones. One could learn dramatic techniques from actors but must avoid appearing to be like an actor.

Pathos in general could involve any emotion, including joy and affection; one should appeal to or generate friendly feelings. Quintilian focused on particularly negative emotions, presumably as the most effective (as often in news media and politics today). “Pathos,” he declared, “is almost entirely concerned with anger, dislike, fear, hatred, and pity.” A “fearful tone” is “wavering, full, halting, and mournful,” whereas an angry tone should be “sharp, rapid, with short abrupt clauses.” A speaker could stamp his foot during debate and communicate feeling during the emotional peroration by striking his head or thigh.

A speaker would often seek to stir compassion for himself or the defendant. Vivid description or appeal to the defendant’s age (cf. Philem. 9), childlessness, or (perhaps more relevant here) past unjust sufferings (cf. Col. 4:18) could be used to this effect. One way of eliciting pity was to parade relatives before an audience. But while a father begging for his son’s life was often effective, in some cases it would seem to assume his guilt, and so must be avoided.

One way to forestall the opponent’s appeal to pity was to highlight how terrible his actions were, or to consider the feelings of the evildoer’s surviving victims; strong emotions could thus be summoned to persuade the audience to reject pity. The defendant will surely appeal to pity, the prosecutor might warn, but that is due the unfortunate, not the wicked. If tears matter more than propriety, then we may as well close down the courts!

Ideally, therefore, one should arouse pity for one’s own position but anger for that of one’s opponent, shifting emotional gears as needed. A good orator would “even fly into a passion and protest violently,” yet also “will plead and entreat and soothe the audience.” One might appeal to patriotic feeling—for example, to rouse anger. “I can hardly control my anger,” one speaker raged, “and an immense indignation is surging within me!”

The rhetorical handbook tradition emphasizes emotion particularly in speeches’ openings or conclusions, especially the latter. Nevertheless, it could be used anywhere in a speech, and Paul is not bound to speech constraints in a letter anyway.

Emotional appeals were not limited to speeches; they could also appear in letters. However conventional, letters often revealed affection, including in the conventional protest that a friend should write or visit (cf. Rom. 1:11; 15:22). Galatians 4:10–20 employs many stock motifs from the conventional ancient theme of friendship. Paul’s letters are often warm and affectionate, more so than is typical in the usually brief, business-oriented letters that dominated antiquity.

4:12

12I beg you, brothers and sisters, become like me, because I became like you. You didn’t mistreat me.

The request formula (here, I beg you) was common in letters. Paul seeks reconciliation, perhaps surprising the Galatians, who did not realize that their interest in his circumcisionist rivals constituted enmity with him (cf. 4:16).

Become like me probably evokes traditional conceptions of friendship. Greeks insisted that true friends must be equals; a friend was like a second self. In Scripture, also, one could emphasize one’s solidarity with another by declaring, “I am as you are.” Such statements of intimacy, solidarity, or sharing of all possessions appear elsewhere as well. Thus, for example, Cicero rhetorically asks his brother, “What has ever given me pleasure without your sharing it, or you without my sharing it?” Pliny notes the adage “All you have is mine,” a host’s way of sharing all. One seeking mercy could even appeal to a level of solidarity with one’s attackers; “I am yours and you are mine.” Paul urged sharing others’ feelings (Rom. 12:15) and did so himself (2 Cor. 11:29); such may be part of loving one’s neighbor as oneself (Gal. 5:14).

Jerome suggests that Paul means that he has come down to the Galatians’ spiritual level and now invites them up to his. More likely, in his becoming all things to all people for the sake of winning some (1 Cor. 9:20–22), Paul, like Peter, has become like the gentiles outside the law by eating with them (Gal. 2:14). Now he urges the Galatian gentiles to imitate his own flexibility: he has become like them, so they should become like him in recognizing that God does not now require adherence to the conventional form of the law for covenant identity or spiritual maturity. To accept his opponents’ yoke of the law would make them unlike him.

Paul urging others to become like himself in some way is not unique to Galatians. Paul elsewhere invites his disciples to imitate him or praises them for doing so, because he imitates Christ (1 Cor. 4:16; 11:1; Phil. 3:17; 1 Thess. 1:6; 2:14). Young people regularly imitated not only their parents but also their teachers. The behavior of disciples also was held to reflect on their teachers, so others would have to explain an errant disciple’s failure to imitate the teacher’s ways. Apart from Cynics, philosophers were often reluctant to urge imitation of themselves, but it was considered acceptable to praise oneself for the purpose of inspiring positive imitation. The usual practice was to imitate the elite; Paul instead invites imitation of one who humbled himself to serve the Galatians, like Christ humbled himself to serve humanity (2 Cor. 8:9; Phil. 2:6–8).

The context suggests that Paul’s You didn’t mistreat me (Gal. 4:12) means, “You did not wrong me” (when I first visited you; 4:13–14), thus implying the question, “So why are we at odds now?” (4:15–16). Paul may thus invite consistency. One opposing a charge could note its inconsistency; thus, for example, when Cicero publicly criticized Marcus Crassus, the latter complained that Cicero had publicly praised him just a couple days earlier.

4:13

13You know that it was because of my physical suffering that I originally announced the good news to you.

Paul goes on to elaborate how the Galatians did him no wrong and in fact welcomed him hospitably. Paul begins 4:13 with you know, an appeal to their own knowledge of him. Paul often offers such appeals in letters to those he knows personally (e.g., 1 Thess. 1:5; 2:2, 5, 11; 4:2). Appealing to the knowledge of one’s own audience was naturally common. Paul appeals here to ἦθος (ēthos), to his character, which they know; even in law courts, the burden of proof was always on someone trying to convict a person known for good character.

In 4:13–14, Paul speaks of how the Galatians received him on his first visit. Scholars debate the meaning of “first” visit here. In classical Greek, the term translated as originally initially meant “the former of two,” but by this period it could also mean simply “formerly” or “earlier.” If Paul writes this letter to south Galatia before the Jerusalem Council, one could count two visits as Acts 13:3–14:20 and 14:21–23; if to south Galatia after the Jerusalem Council (my view), Paul’s visits could be 13:3–14:20, 14:21–23, and 16:1–6; if to north Galatia, the visits would likely fall in 16:6 and 18:23.

Even on the earliest possible date of Galatians, if the letter’s destination is southern Galatia, Paul had come through their cities at least twice before writing Galatians, since he visited them again (Acts 14:21–23). Galatians would experience this as two visits rather than one, even if from the standpoint of Acts commentators or Syrian Antioch both belonged to a single journey for Paul. If Galatians is written after the Jerusalem Council, as I and a majority of commentators believe, then Paul visited them some time after that council (Acts 15:2–31) again in 16:1–5 (and probably 16:6). Given the two visits of Acts 14, however, as well as the possible meaning of simply “earlier,” the only insight that Gal. 4:13 contributes to the date of Galatians is an elementary one: Paul wrote to churches of Galatia only after he had founded them.

Paul’s point is simply that when he visited them, they received him well, implying (and eventually demanding more explicitly; 4:15a, 16), “What has changed?” One arguing in a court could protest an opponent now raising a new charge that should have been raised earlier if it was really based on genuine misdeeds.

Because it did not suit Luke’s literary aims, Acts probably leaves us in the dark as to the setting depicted in Gal. 4:13. By contrast, letters frequently included mention of current health issues. Scholars have speculated extensively about the particular issue to which Paul alludes here, which the Galatians knew but the particularity of which probably does not affect Paul’s point. Although Paul does not mention this point here, he had learned to depend on God’s power in weakness (1 Cor. 1:23–25; 2:3–5; 2 Cor. 12:9–10; 13:3–4), which undoubtedly encourages his willingness to speak about the issue.

Because the term that I have translated as suffering can simply mean “weakness,” Jerome suggested that in order to reach the Galatians, Paul became as weak to the weak (1 Cor. 9:22; cf. 2 Cor. 11:29), as to infants (1 Cor. 3:1). He also allows that Paul’s humble apparel may have been a test for them. One might also think of Paul’s rhetorical weakness, probably in terms of delivery or possibly his physical presentation, as in 1 Cor. 2:3 and 2 Cor. 10:10; the former passage refers to Paul’s first occasion of preaching to another audience—namely, Corinthians. But Paul speaks more specifically of a physical weakness (employing the Greek term for “flesh” in both 4:13 and 4:14). Although “bodily weakness” could have other senses, normally interpreters think here of sickness or injury.

Somehow Paul’s physical infirmity became an opportunity to share the gospel with them (Gal. 4:13), though one may suspect that Paul would in any case seize on even the smallest opening as an opportunity for the gospel. Most often commentators envision some sickness here, though suggestions become increasingly speculative as they become more specific. Many have appealed to a supposed parallel with Paul’s thorn in the flesh (2 Cor. 12:7); but the thorn may have been the persecutions mentioned in the surrounding context, and the wording probably applies to this adversity the figurative thorn of Num. 33:55 and Josh. 23:13. Reading a sickness in Gal. 4:13 in light of Paul’s thorn is thus problematic.

Some have suggested recurrent migraine headaches. More often, some suggest malaria, which is often intermittent; William Ramsay reasonably suggested that susceptibility to this illness in the lowlands would have driven Paul to the Galatian hill country of the Anatolian interior. Due to sickness, people sometimes delayed travel or temporarily relocated. There may, however, have been additional factors leading Paul to south Galatia more generally.

William Wrede and Joseph Klausner suggested epilepsy, because the term rendered as reject in 4:14 (ἐκπτύω, ekptuō) can mean “spit,” and people sometimes spat to avert the evil eye or a hostile demon. People sometimes associated epilepsy with spirit-possession because of its sometimes similar bodily effects, though others gave naturalistic explanations and treatments. Spitting on epileptics during their fits was one of the proposed treatments.

Others suggest that Paul had an eye problem, based especially on Gal. 4:15 but also some additional factors such as the “large letters” of 6:11, Paul’s initial blindness in Acts 9:8, and his merely having “heard” in 2 Cor. 12:4. People often had eye problems and resorted to eye doctors or remedies; vitamin A deficiency probably led to many eye problems in antiquity. Some viewed weakness of the eyes as a common malady in contrast to those that reveal a divine curse. Others, however, did view it as a divine punishment. The primary support for this thesis in 4:15, however, turns out to have been simply a figure of speech, and stronger explanations exist for 6:11 (see comments on these passages). The same source that reports Paul’s blindness reports his healing (Acts 9:18).

The suggestion that provides the most fruitful connections with other material in Galatians, although it remains uncertain, is that Paul refers here to wounds from his experiences of persecution. One could generate sympathy by alluding to one’s losses or wounds in battle and so presumably also in ministry. When Paul preached to the Galatians, he may have shown them his marks or scars (6:17), a sign of Christ crucified in him (2:20; 3:1).

Those skeptical that Paul might allude to his past injuries from persecution often note that Paul’s ailment drove him to Galatia rather than, as in the case of persecution, occurred to him after he reached there. But we have no record of what Paul may have experienced in Perga before traveling further inland (Acts 13:13). Perga was a major Pamphylian city with strong connections to Rome; probably some of Pamphylia’s Jewish residents lived there. Paul was beaten in synagogues and elsewhere more often than Luke can narrate (2 Cor. 11:24–25). Paul faced hostility in south Galatia well before his stoning in Lystra (Acts 13:50; 14:5, 19), possibly accounting for injuries, unreported by and perhaps unknown to Luke, visible to at least some south Galatians. While the persecution thesis remains speculative, it is therefore no more so than competing proposals.

The question on any view is whether all or only some of the Galatian churches knew of Paul’s infirmity (4:13) and witnessed his condition. Many cities in both north and south Galatia were more than fifty miles apart. Perhaps only the house congregations of one city saw him. Or perhaps his ailment was chronic or recurrent and persisted during his evangelization of the region; this description would also fit serious wounds, which would normally take time to heal. Whatever Paul’s physical weakness, far from hindering his ministry to them, as one might expect for a person of lesser determination, it invited it.

4:14

14Although that suffering in my body was a test to you, you didn’t disdain or reject me. Instead, you welcomed me as if I were an angel from God; indeed, as if I were Christ Jesus!

In 4:14, Paul continues to highlight the Galatians’ past affection that exceeded ordinary expectations. In the ancient Near East, others would withdraw from a suffering person, considering such suffering a curse from deities that one would not want to offend. Greeks valued beauty, a “virtue” of the body and a feature to praise in some epideictic speeches. Some also thought that they could discern one’s personality or future through physiognomy, examining bodily traits. For Greeks and those influenced by them, features of this beauty typically included tall stature, white skin, and golden hair. Probably none of these traits characterized Paul. (Many thinkers did recognize, however, that such preferences varied by culture.)

Although Greeks had some fully human heroes who were less than perfect physically, they expected deities, sons of deities, and divine messengers to be perfect by their standards. Unpleasant appearance and especially physical deformity invited ridicule, just as did weakness in rhetorical gestures. Although there were exceptions, many associated disability and other physical afflictions with divine judgment or poor character, including in Phrygia. Greco-Roman religion generally expected greater blessings for the devout. This is undoubtedly why Josephus responds to an Egyptian writer’s criticism that Israel’s hero Moses was leprous and maimed. Paul’s “weakness” here thus would also affect how observers assessed his status. Appearance affected how audiences responded to attempted persuasion. Paul’s physical imperfection by Galatian standards could grant credibility to his opponents’ claim “that it is really he and not they who stands under God’s curse.”

Later Jewish sources necessarily recognized that even the righteous were sometimes quite sick, and sometimes these sources construed the illness of the righteous as providing meritorious atonement. Some Greco-Roman thinkers challenged the valuation of external beauty in their environment. Nevertheless, most people, whose values were more closely identified with popular epics and speeches, went by what they could see (John 7:24).

An infirm stranger might be suspected of association with the evil eye, a suspicion that could undercut normal conventions of hospitality. Paul’s term translated as reject (ἐκπτύω, ekptuō) in 4:14 originally meant “spit,” and many scholars argue that it retains that meaning (rather than its more common figurative sense) here, as it sometimes did. People sought to ward off the evil eye and its demonic power by spitting. If the Galatians recognized that Paul was not bewitched and hence they did not spit when he preached to them, Paul might well ask who has now bewitched them to produce such a different response to his ministry now (a common understanding of Gal. 3:1). (Nevertheless, it remains possible that simple Greek alliteration dictated Paul’s word choice here.)

If Paul’s apparently repulsive appearance involved wounds, the “evil eye” interpretation here would probably falter. But it would not be less reason to be repulsed by Paul, especially if the wounds or bruises were inflicted by authorities respected by the Galatian gentiles, such as civic authorities in Perga, or by Galatian Jews, such as a synagogue in Perga.

In any case, Paul’s appearance was a test for the Galatians (4:14a). His appearance made it potentially more difficult for them to receive Paul’s message, but they passed the test. In Paul’s view, Satan tests people to seek their stumbling (1 Cor. 7:5; 1 Thess. 3:5; cf. Mark 1:13), but God desires success in testing (1 Cor. 10:13; cf. Gen. 22:1; Exod. 15:25; 16:4; James 1:12–14).

Instead of viewing Paul negatively, as his potentially preternatural affliction could have invited, they embraced him superlatively. Far from associating him with the evil eye or anything demonic, they received him as an angel from God (4:14). This is a highly honorable association. Some Jewish sources, for example, claimed that God spoke through Moses or Aaron as if they were his angels.

An angel from God might contrast with the idea of fallen angels, but more likely (or perhaps additionally) evokes the biblical “angel of the Lord,” the likeliest background if Paul draws on the OT in his description (as he surely does). In the OT, God’s angel spoke for him, and some passages identify the two. Later rabbis sometimes used references to angels as circumlocutions for God’s name. The leading Diaspora Jewish intellectual Philo spoke of God’s λόγος (logos), or reason, as the Lord’s angel, though also of all angels as λόγοι (logoi). The highest angel is the Lord himself; those who cannot see God directly see his angel/λόγος as his image.

The likeliest specific background to supply Paul’s language is in texts where a person respectfully addresses another as like “an angel of God.” Thus some speakers address David as like “an angel of God.” After wrestling with an angel, Jacob tells Esau that he sees his face like one seeing God’s face (Gen. 33:10). Such expressions are meant to convey the great honor and blessing of seeing one’s face.

From the second century, mainstream Christians identified Jesus with the angel of the Lord until potential Arian associations in the fourth century forced the image’s discontinuation. (Guarding against other interpretations, possibly including Christian ones, later rabbis insisted that the three figures in Gen. 18 were just angels, not divine.) Some gnostics and minority Jewish Christian sects also regarded Christ or God as an angel. Some Jewish texts identified Melchizedek with the archangel Michael, which may have facilitated the connection.

Commentators often suggest that the Galatians’ early reception of Paul as a divine or angelic figure may correspond to the incident in Lystra when Paul was initially mistaken for Hermes, the messenger deity, which in Diaspora Jewish terms might be more positively understood as an angel. The allusion could be ironic, but we lack enough details to be sure of the nature of the connection. Pagan deities and angels were both believed to visit mortals at times in disguise, sometimes to test them.

Does the next phrase, as . . . Christ Jesus, equate Jesus with an angel or progress to an even higher level of honor? Grammatically and rhetorically, either is possible. If the “angel” here is the divine angel of the Lord, however, Paul might not envision a significant difference. In a passage that would be understood as messianic, David’s house would be regarded “like God, like the angel of the LORD” (Zech. 12:8). Philo believed that God sometimes presents himself as an angel. Presumably, Christ is being presented in a divine role here, in keeping with Paul’s christological assumptions that surface also in Gal. 1:1, 3; 4:6.

For Paul to be identified with Christ (here figuratively; 4:14) is not surprising. It was in Paul’s ministry that the Galatians had witnessed Christ crucified (2:20; 3:1; cf. 2 Cor. 4:10–11). As Richard Longenecker summarizes, “Paul views himself as identified with Christ (cf. Gal. 2:20 and the many ‘in Christ,’ ‘in him,’ ‘in the Lord’ expressions in his letters), an imitator of Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 11:1; Phil. 3:10–17; 1 Thess. 1:6), and a representative of Christ (cf. 2 Cor. 2:14–17; 5:18–20; 13:3–4; Eph. 3:1–19; Col. 1:23–2:5; 1 Tim. 1:12–17).” Paul is an agent of Christ (Gal. 1:1; 2:20; 3:1; 6:17), and whoever welcomed Jesus’s agent welcomed Jesus himself (2 Cor. 5:20–21), as Jesus himself taught (Matt. 10:40 // Luke 10:16 // John 13:20; cf. Mark 9:37; Matt. 25:40, 45). In Acts 9:4–5, Paul first encountered Christ in solidarity with Christ’s suffering agents. In Scripture, God counted the treatment of some individuals or groups as treatment toward himself (Exod. 16:8; 1 Sam. 8:7; Prov. 19:17; Zech. 2:8).

4:15

15So what’s changed since then? You felt privileged to welcome me. I can attest that had it been possible, you would’ve even ripped your eyes right out and given them to me!

One way of arguing was to point out that in the past the hearer would have granted one’s request, and so should be all the more ready to do so now. In graphic terms, Paul highlights their past loyalty to him. Chrysostom insightfully explains, “Do you see the absurdity of receiving him as an angel of God when pursued and persecuted but not receiving him when he commands what is necessary?”

Appeals to others’ love for the reader were common, and Paul, depending on his relationship with his churches or the members’ with one another, elsewhere makes such appeals (2 Cor. 6:13; 8:24; Phil. 2:1). Letters often included affectionate protests, playing on the sender’s and receiver’s mutual affection, but most were more playful and less urgent than here.

When Paul says, You felt privileged to welcome me (4:15), the Greek term translated as privileged is μακαρισμός (makarismos), or “blessedness/happiness,” and probably refers to them counting it a blessing to receive this great messenger of God (4:14).

Paul now elaborates rhetorically on the blessing that they had once counted it to receive him. There is no thought that the Galatians would have literally extracted their eyeballs, but the claim succeeds as a grotesque and therefore gripping image. Some earlier interpreters rightly understood this expression as hyperbole communicating the Galatians’ earlier affection for Paul.

Given the proximity of Paul’s mention of a physical problem (4:13–14), modern interpreters often argue that nevertheless the mention of eyes reflects the Galatians’ past sympathy for Paul’s putative eye condition. The mention of eyes says nothing about Paul’s infirmity, however. People spoke of readiness to sacrifice for another, and this was one such expression. Eyes were the “most precious” organ, so one could speak of loving another as one’s own eyes. Sacrificing one’s eyes was thus idiomatic for self-sacrificial love. For example, some rhetoricians are depicted as appealing to pathos by crying that they have sacrificed their eyes to defend the people. A rabbi depicted Abraham’s devotion to God as his willingness to surrender even the pupil of his eye or his life. An analogous idiom in English today is “You would have given your right arm for me.”

One might profess fear regarding how one’s words would be received, while trusting or at least hopeful that one’s words will be received. One should also emphasize that one’s argument did not proceed from the bias of personal enmity—or, in this case, not enmity from Paul’s side (Gal. 4:16).

4:16

16So have I suddenly become your enemy by speaking truth to you?

Rhetorical questions are often a means to protest one’s innocence. Paul elsewhere can ask ironically, “How have I wronged you?” (2 Cor. 12:13, 17–18). “If I love you more,” Paul the wounded lover pleads, “am I to be loved less?” (12:15). This sort of questioning was also relevant for responding to charges of enmity. Arguing the absurdity of a charge, one orator protests that his embassy was sent because they were known to be loyal; did they suddenly become traitors overnight once they met with Philip of Macedon? Another complains, “Just as if it was my fault that he lost his property, he is my enemy just because he has nothing. Did I rob you of your inheritance, Gellius, or did you yourself devour it?” Or most analogously, another demands in protest to know why they are treating him like an enemy when he has loved them so much.

Many scholars doubt that Paul is asking a question here (as in most translations, e.g., NRSV, KJV, NASB, NET, WEB, NIV, ESV), contending that instead he is offering a statement of protest regarding their current attitude toward him. Whether as a question or a statement, however, 4:16 presumes that the relationship is no longer what it should be and protests that the fault lies not with Paul. Paul here elicits the negative side of pathos.

Probably some Galatian believers assumed that they could merely supplement Paul’s teaching with the new message brought by his rivals. Paul, however, declares that the options are mutually exclusive (cf. 2 Cor. 6:14–16). As in ancient partisan politics, friendship with one’s enemy made one an enemy; one had to choose one side or the other. If enemies maligned one, one’s friends were obligated to come to one’s aid. A widespread maxim obligated one “to do everything ‘to help a friend and harm an enemy.’”

Some later Jewish-oriented but sectarian adherents of Jesus’s teaching, probably influenced by the circles that spawned Paul’s opponents in Galatia, did indeed call Paul “the enemy.” The probably late second-century (and thoroughly fictitious) Ascension of James depicts Paul as just a proselyte to Judaism so he could marry the high priest’s daughter; after being rebuffed, it complains, he opposed circumcision. Those Jews who saw “living like a gentile” by eating with gentiles as betraying their people (see Gal. 2:14–15; comment on 4:10) could think of Paul as an apostate.

Moralists often remarked that true friends would tell the truth even when it was painful to hear, whereas flatterers (cf. 1 Thess. 2:5) were really enemies rather than friends (Prov. 27:6). Following Attic tradition, ancient moralists commonly praised the virtue of frank speech (παρρησία [parrhēsia]). Moral freedom was inseparable from this virtue of unrestrained speech; philosophy thus could be associated with frankness, truth, and freedom in contrast to flattery and servility. Moralists thus frequently contrasted this virtue with flattery, preferring those who spoke the truth. One should be grateful for another who speaks truth to one; it is better to tell hard truths than gentle lies.

This principle was especially true in friendships (where such boldness often proved safer than in politics). Plutarch complains that “since friendship’s voice has nowadays become thin and weak when it comes to frank speaking, while its flattery is voluble and its admonition mute, we have to depend upon our enemies to hear the truth” that should have come from friends. Paul refuses to be such an unfaithful friend; he speaks for his hearers’ good.

The truth that Paul is telling them here is the truth mentioned earlier in Galatians—the “truth of the gospel” (2:5, 14). Persuaders would sometimes confess noncrimes or concede that they deserved to be punished if the charges were true (which they were not). In particular, they could protest that far from having done something wrong, they were now being maligned or harmed because of, or at least in spite of, some benefaction that they had done (cf. Acts 4:9; 10:38–39; 24:17–18). Paul here was seeking the Galatians’ good; how did this make him their enemy? If he denounced those truly harming them, how was his truth-telling harming them? The real enemies were Paul’s opponents, to whom the Galatians ought not to be listening.

Probably the Galatians do not in fact consider Paul an enemy. Paul is simply making the necessity of the choice clear to them. Loyalty was one of the virtues expected from true friends.

4:17

17Oh, they pursue you—but not with good motives! Instead, they want to lock you out, so you’ll have to jealously pursue them.

As in 2 Corinthians, once Paul is in the mode of pathos he can shift quickly from a personal plea of deep affection (2 Cor. 6:11–13) to warning against rivals (6:14–7:1). It was important, when possible, to show that one’s opponents did not have one’s best interests in mind. Paul here challenges the motives of his opponents.

Pursue you is an attempt to capture the range of meaning in the Greek phrase ζηλοῦσιν ὑμᾶς (zēlousin humas). The term ζηλόω (zēloō) here surely holds its usual meaning with a personal object, “have deep interest in, court the favor of”; this is the sense it must carry in 4:18 (a good thing to be pursued) and presumably carries the same meaning in 4:17.

But some argue that Paul plays on additional nuances of the term. Because of its cognate noun in 1:14, some believe that it retains associations of zeal for the law, which would in any case be true of the interests of Paul’s opponents. Moreover, the term can mean “be jealous of,” which could be fitting in the possible context of amatory rivalry (4:17–18) and possible reference to the evil eye (3:1). (Ζηλόω language also can appear in teacher-student contexts, but usually in the sense of emulation. In 4:18, some do suggest a play on the term’s meaning of emulation, although it seems improbable there.)

“Zeal” in the negative sense also appears in 5:20. Luke attributes the hostility of the largest Jewish community in this region to jealousy (ζῆλος, zēlos) in Acts 13:45, although Luke also attributes this charge to Jewish people in other areas (5:17; 17:5; cf. 7:9). Paul himself seemed ready to provoke the jealousy of his fellow Jews by converting gentiles, but hoping thereby to draw to their attention the fulfillment of God’s promises in the Messiah (Rom. 11:14). If Paul’s rivals act jealously here, it would be from jealousy of Paul’s once closer relationship with the Galatian believers.

Many see Paul’s language here as portraying his rivals as courting the Galatians, as in a rivalry for their affection. This would explain why, instead of telling the hard truth as Paul does (Gal. 4:16), the rivals simply engage in a seducer’s flattery. It is sometimes difficult for a truth-teller to compete with flatterers.

The rivals are zealous for the Galatians, but not with good motives (4:17b). This contrasts with Paul’s in a good way in 4:18, a contrast enabled by Paul’s choice of a term (ζηλόω) with potentially either positive and negative connotations. That they want to lock you out in order to make the Galatians zealous for Paul’s rivals might evoke the motif of the “excluded lover,” which appears frequently in ancient literature and speech. Ancient sources were full of laments of unrequited love, and the image of locking a lover out often occurred in contexts of insincere love or emotional manipulation. If Paul plays on such a theme here, this is not the only passage in which he is ready to expose the exploitive character of opponents. He believed that some of his other opponents pursued his converts for their own interests rather than the converts’ good (2 Cor. 11:20). Someone deeply concerned for his letter’s recipient might charge that another lover might pretend greater love on the claim that his passion is greater, but in reality he is simply more shameless.

What do the rivals want to lock them out from? By treating the Galatian believers as not yet members of God’s people, Paul’s rivals are excluding them from the people of God until they become circumcised. They may present themselves, in essence, as gatekeepers of the kingdom, an image that appears more explicitly in some other early Christian polemic. In practice this probably means refusal of table fellowship until the gentile believers are circumcised (see Gal. 2:11–14). Paul’s language of exclusion here (using ἐκκλείω [ekkleiō]) probably also evokes his earlier image of being imprisoned or locked up under the law (3:23, using συγκλείω [sunkleiō]).

4:18

18Well, it’s a good thing to be pursued in a good way—all the time, and not just when I’m present with you!

Many view 4:18a as a familiar aphorism that Paul bends to his purpose. The idea may be familiar, but an aphorism worded this particular way is probably not. Excluding other Christian texts and any texts after the third century, a TLG search did not turn up any examples of this aphorism in other literature.

Some suggest that Paul allows anyone to court them, his children, provided it is for their good. Parents were, however, usually selective regarding courtship, and regarding marriage parents still retained a strong or even decisive voice. Many read the passage as Paul himself having courted them for their good before, yet now they unfaithfully welcome someone to court them with dishonorable motives. Courting does not suit the parental image explicit in 4:19, but Paul can readily shift metaphors (cf. 1 Cor. 3:6–10). If Paul intends the image of “courting” in Gal. 4:17–18, it is only because he portrays his rivals as sexual predators; Paul is normally the concerned parent, who is responsible for a daughter’s continued virginity and proper betrothal (cf. 2 Cor. 11:2).

Most ancient commentators believed that Paul refers here to the Galatians’ zeal, but this is because of a textual corruption in the later manuscripts on which they relied. Even with the correct reading, however, the Galatians could be the ones being zealous: they had been zealous for Paul when he was with them (4:13–15), but it would be good for Paul to be pursued in a good way—all the time, even now in his absence.

A majority of interpreters today believe that the Galatians are objects of Paul’s zeal in a good way in 4:18; he is the one who has told them the truth (4:16), and he struggles again in birth pangs for them (4:19). Paul might intend a double application: the Galatians might well think that he speaks of his zealous love for them when first hearing 4:18a, but the last part of the verse might highlight instead the faithful love that they ought to be showing Paul. If Paul does not invite their love directly, he does so at least indirectly, if the final part of the verse refers instead to his own faithfulness in loving them even when apart. Reciprocity was essential, and ancient ethics regarded fickleness as a vice (which Paul’s Galatian converts have displayed, 4:14–16).

The be pursued, or “be the object of zeal,” in 4:18 could mean “be emulated,” another meaning of the term. It is unlikely that Paul’s opponents had emulated the Galatians in 4:17, so this interpretation would require a very different nuance in the two verses; but the contrast between the “not good” of 4:17 and “good” of 4:18 might allow that in any case.

4:19

19My children! I’m in labor pains for you again until Christ is formed in you.

The pathos of this section (4:12–20) reaches its apex here, as Paul shares the pain that his children’s waywardness is putting him through. Ideally, a letter was supposed to share the author’s heart and character; Paul speaks as one willing to suffer for his dear children, though they are creating this suffering needlessly.

Paul has been addressing them especially with the endearing title “siblings” (1:11; 3:15; 4:12, 28, 31; 5:11, 13; 6:1, 18 [rendered inconsistently in the NRSV]); they are elsewhere here Abraham’s (3:7; 4:28, 31), Sarah’s (4:27–28, 31) and God’s (3:26; 4:6–7) children, but as Abraham is their long-range ancestor, Paul is their short-range parent. This could suggest their immaturity, as those under the law and not yet entering the eschatological community (4:1–3), but especially it applies to Paul laboring over them in birth pangs (4:19).

Paul’s again might allude in part to the physical pain, whether sickness or persecution, that originally brought him to them (4:13); in any case, it surely alludes to the struggles that he underwent to bring their churches to birth (cf. Acts 13:50–51; 14:2, 5, 19). Because childbirth was a familiar experience, gentiles also used pregnancy as a metaphor. The image is, however, more pervasive in Jewish sources. As a metaphor for suffering, the image of “birth pangs” was applied to men as well as women, although in the metaphor they are being compared to women.

The image of birth pangs was suitable to any terrible affliction, but often it stands for the promised pangs that would usher in the new world. The image may apply at times to the birth of the promised ruler and at other times to the delivered, eschatological people of God. For Paul, eschatological tribulation was a present experience (Rom. 8:22); birthing new believers as a foretaste of the new creation (Gal. 6:15; 2 Cor. 5:17) was part of that tribulation (cf. Rom. 8:17–23; Col. 1:24; 2 Thess. 1:4–5). That the Galatians could understand birth pangs as an image of eschatological tribulation fits Paul’s reported central teaching in their churches, summarized as tribulation ushering in the kingdom (Acts 14:22).

The birthing is the Galatians’ being born according to the Spirit (4:29), as those who share in Jesus’s filial relationship to God not through the law but through the Spirit (4:4–6). The Galatians, if converted at all, were converted when they received the Spirit (3:2), and this not by law-works but rather through believing Paul’s preaching of Christ (3:1–2).

That the Galatians need to be birthed again suggests how far they have fallen. Other features of Galatians may suggest that they have not yet fallen away fully (5:1–2; the frequent label of “siblings,” e.g., 1:11; 3:15), but Paul presents them here as if they have (cf. similarly his rhetorical pleas to the Corinthians in 2 Cor. 5:20; 6:1–2). Christ is in believers (Gal. 2:20), and if he is not yet in the Galatians, they are not yet converted (2 Cor. 13:5). Through embracing Christ’s truth, the process of formation into his image may be progressive (Rom. 12:2; 2 Cor. 3:18), and its consummation in the future (Rom. 8:29; cf. 1 Cor. 15:48–52; Phil. 3:21). If the process has not yet begun, however, they are not in Christ. Though the current image may be hyperbolic, the imminent danger of falling away against which the hyperbole warns is real (see comment at 5:4).

The image here is of Paul as the Galatians’ mother, as most commentators recognize. Paul’s use of this image may be viewed as rhetorical impersonation, but the use of a maternal metaphor for a male was not unique to Paul. Paul can also appear as a father (1 Cor. 4:15; 1 Thess. 2:11) in contexts where he appears as a mother or nurse (1 Thess. 2:7; probably 1 Cor. 3:2). In a more consistent early Christian analogy, God is all believers’ ultimate Father (Gal. 1:3–4; 4:6; cf. Matt. 23:9). Divine and human paternity were not, however, necessarily incompatible; some Jews likened those who converted gentiles to those who had begotten them. (One must guard, however, against begetting them for Gehenna, as perhaps Paul envisioned his opponents doing; cf. Jesus’s condemnation of scribes and Pharisees in Matt. 23:15.) Abraham’s and Sarah’s promised descendants were also God’s children (Gal. 3:7, 26; 4:6–7, 27–31); Paul is a more proximate Sarah sort of figure in this spiritual lineage. The pangs already prefigure those of Sarah in Isa. 51:2, alluded to in Gal. 4:27, and Isa. 54:1, quoted in the same Pauline verse.

What is most intriguing is that Paul uses “birth pang” language in two adjacent paragraphs, in Gal. 4:19 and in 4:27. Given that Paul uses cognates of this language elsewhere only rarely (Rom. 8:22; 1 Thess. 5:3), the proximity of these references is likely no coincidence. As a messianic Jew, part of Israel’s righteous remnant, and perhaps as part of Jesus’s movement more generally, Paul is part of Zion travailing to bring forth eschatological Zion. The delivered remnant gives birth to the full restored people of God (Isa. 66:7–13; cf. Rev. 12:1–5, 17; 21:2).

Someone might interpret Paul as merely a midwife helping Zion to bear; midwives also appear occasionally as analogies for philosophers. But labor pains belong to the mother, so Paul’s image here is plainly that of a mother. So Paul, acting as an agent, not only assists birth but also births for God.

A CLOSER LOOK: PREGNANT AND NURSING MOTHERS

Pregnant women were, like infants and the aged, recognized as particularly vulnerable. Pregnancy increased the difficulties of urgent flight and could make the pregnant more susceptible to death. Pregnancies were sometimes as short as seven months, and some physicians knew that the typical gestation period was nine months. Nevertheless, ancients commonly spoke of a ten-month gestation period as normal.

Ancient men were not so sheltered as to be unaware that birth pangs are traumatic. Not surprisingly, then, they employed the image of birth pangs to depict various kinds of anguish. The OT often applies the imagery to judgment, and the image was suitable also for the period of eschatological suffering, as scholars often note. Such background informs the image of eschatological travail in 1QHa 11.8–12, but interpretations vary widely, from the Messiah, to something eschatological but not messianic, to the birthing of the community. In any case, this passage illustrates the male recognition that childbirth was usually a distinctively agonizing experience.

As noted above, in 1 Cor. 3:2 and 1 Thess. 2:7 Paul compares himself to a mother or nurse breastfeeding a baby, and such feminine images for males were neither extremely rare nor necessarily demeaning. Some used milk as a figure for mere elementary studies, but the image could also be more positive, for God’s word, as in 1 Pet. 2:2.

Jewish mothers usually nursed their own children. Some sages warned against them nursing gentiles, lest they nurture future idolaters, but allowed gentile nurses for Jewish infants. Other Jewish traditions, however, claim that Sarah miraculously nursed gentile babies, and that young Moses accepted only Israelite milk.

Though moralists often recommended maternal breastfeeding, wealthy gentile homes usually employed nurses. Less financially endowed homes sometimes used them as well. In aristocratic homes the nurses were often slaves; in Egypt they were often impoverished peasants, and elsewhere some took the position only because compelled by financial need. Nursing contracts sometimes required the woman to nurse the child in her own home for a particular period; they could also forbid her to become pregnant or nurse another child. Although the nursing period was most often two years, contracts ranged from half a year to three years.

Nurses were assigned a great formative influence, for good or ill. Children often grew fond of their nurses, with affectionate ties continuing into adulthood; nurses apparently expressed affection for their charges as well, although extant literary sources do not offer us the true voice of slave nurses. Sometimes the child appears closer to the nurse than to parents, but usually attachment to parents remained primary.

4:20

20And I keep wishing that I could be with you now and change my tone, because I’m bewildered about you.

Galatians 4:20 revisits the question of Paul’s absence, already raised in 4:18. Paul’s geographic distance did not simply leave him less than fully informed, or unable to craft his counsel to fit each individual; it also left his legacy vulnerable to more persistent attacks by his opponents. Unlike Paul, Paul’s opponents continue to have geographic access to the Galatians. Absence did not always make the heart grow fonder. It was wise argumentative strategy to point out where one’s opponents had unfair advantages for persuasion, though it is not clear whether Paul is doing such here. With limited communication, misunderstandings could arise, and the Galatians may have also felt that Paul’s absence was serving major urban centers such as Ephesus or Corinth at their expense.

Geographic separation was not a problem only with respect to the Galatians. Paul often must remind churches of his presence in heart (1 Cor. 5:3; Col. 2:5), promising his bodily presence as needed (2 Cor. 10:2, 11; 13:2, 10) or reminding them of his past bodily presence (11:9). Even now, Paul wishes that he could be present with the Galatians (Gal. 4:20), though love should be faithful even when he is not present (4:18).

In any case, Paul wishes that he could speak directly to the Galatians. Longing to see another was a common theme in letters (cf. Rom. 1:11; 2 Tim. 1:4). Letters were supposed to be substitutes for presence, but face-to-face conversation was normally deemed preferable to pen and ink (cf. 2 John 12; 3 John 13).

Paul wanted to be present so he could change his tone; letters could not convey one’s tears as deeply as presence. Tone of voice was crucial in communication. Tones in speech varied; some rhetoricians classified them as deep (with impressive dignity), shrill, or mediating, or grand, plain, and mediating. Good speakers could vary tones as needed, sometimes even within a single speech. Questions, answers, and exaggeration to heighten intensity cannot properly “be delivered in the same pitch and tone of voice.” But in a letter Paul could only depend on the reader who would present his message as he tried to convey his heart in a way that he would rather deliver in person.

Now Paul laments that he is bewildered (4:20). Some communicators used claims of such perplexity to convey the intensity of their emotion. An orator might feign or arouse such feeling for dramatic purposes, but it could also be tragically authentic, including in letters. One could profess to be at a loss as to what to say. This was often most effective in the end of a speech; Paul uses it here to conclude the main pathos section of his letter.

Abraham’s Free Heirs versus His Slave Children (4:21–5:1)

Paul has been engaging and elaborating the Abraham material of Genesis since 3:6, except for his digression to develop pathos in 4:12–20. Since argumentation required a different tone than pathos, there clearly is a shift in tone at 4:21. Some find the transition to be in accordance with the shift Paul proposes in 4:20. For Paul to return to another biblical argument (3:6–4:11, esp. 3:6–14) after a section devoted primarily to pathos could be problematic only if we envision Paul’s argumentation as a conventional speech, which it is not. If 3:6 introduced Paul’s own argument from Abraham, 4:21 may introduce his refutation of his opponents’ argument from Abraham.

Much of Paul’s appropriation of the OT Hagar narrative is counterintuitive. Hagar, a gentile to whom the Lord reveals himself, is the first biblical figure to explicitly meet the angel of the Lord (Gen. 16:7–13). Later the angel speaks to her from heaven (21:17) just as he speaks to Abraham in the following chapter (22:11, 15). In other circumstances, one might have expected Paul to use Hagar as a model for gentile believers. In this instance, however, his rivals have probably unfortunately appropriated her first.

Persuaders liked to be able to turn opponents’ advantages against them in debate. For many centuries some scholars have suggested that the curious character of Paul’s argument here stems from him opposing an argument by his rivals. This is probably the majority view of commentators today as well. After all, Paul nowhere else uses allegory in this form, or the term (ἀλληγορέω [allēgoreō]; Gal. 4:24) anywhere else, even where it would have been convenient. His use of the text is, as noted above, counterintuitive. Paul assumes that his largely gentile audience is also familiar with this story; it may be that they heard it from his rivals. It is not difficult to guess how his rivals could have used the story had they wished. When Judeans at Qumran allegorize, they emphasize obedience to the Torah.

As is evident elsewhere in Galatians, Paul’s opponents insist that gentiles cannot become true descendants of Abraham without accepting the covenant obligations of Abraham’s children, such as circumcision. As noted earlier, they probably depended on circumcision as a covenant obligation in Gen. 17:9–14. In a later letter Paul will separate the promise from circumcision by showing that not all of Abraham’s (circumcised) physical children received the promise (Rom. 9:6–13), but again, his opponents may have beaten him to the punch here.

Considering Paul’s gentile converts only partially converted to Judaism, the opponents may have considered them something like Ishmaelites, somehow related to Abraham but outside the covenant. Even Hagar’s son Ishmael was circumcised (Gen. 17:25), but his descendants were gentiles, and some Judean traditions were emphatic about this point. Most importantly for Paul’s point, Isaac, not Ishmael, was the heir (Gal. 4:30); Paul reaffirms that gentile believers are, along with Jewish believers, heirs (3:29; 4:7)—that is, the spiritual line of Isaac.

Paul must now reverse his opponents’ line of interpretation. Because his opponents neglect the promise, the way of the Spirit, it is they who are Abrahamites outside the covenant. They are spiritual Ishmaelites, circumcised yet missing the very fulfillment that the law had promised. Paul has connected the law with slavery (3:22–25; 4:1–5); this offers a fitting point of connection with the slave line of descent (4:24–25, 30–31). Abraham’s son Isaac represents not only Christ as the promised seed (3:16), but also those who are in him (3:29).

The allegorical correspondences appear especially in 4:24–26; by contrast, 4:28–31 can function typologically, based on principles and analogies. J. Louis Martyn charts out the “antithetical correspondences” between two covenants in 4:22–27 and then the more typological correspondences between two sons in 4:28–30.

(Earlier covenant, 4:24)

(Eschatological covenant, 4:24)

Slave woman (4:22–23)

Free woman (4:22–23)

Gives birth according to the flesh (4:23)

Gives birth through promise (4:23)

Mount Sinai (4:24–25)

(Mount Zion, not named)*

Bears children for slavery (4:24)

Our mother (4:26)

Hagar (4:24–25)

“The other woman” (Sarah; 4:26)

Present Jerusalem (4:25)

Jerusalem above (4:26)

In slavery (4:25)

Free (4:26)

Wife with fewer children (4:27)

Desolate woman with many children (4:27)

*Dunn has here “promise.”

First Son

Second Son

Born according to the flesh (4:29)

Born according to the Spirit (4:29)

Persecutes (4:29)

Child of promise (cf. 4:28)

Drive out; must not share inheritance (4:30)

Inherits all (4:30)

Born of slave woman (4:30–31)

Born of free woman (4:30–31)

Antithesis was a standard rhetorical device, designed to hold attention, like other forms of parallelism. Comparison, or synkrisis, was also a standard rhetorical exercise (see comment at 2:7–9), one that Paul sometimes develops at some length (see esp. Rom. 5:12–21; 1 Cor. 15:42–49; 2 Cor. 3:6–18; 11:21–23; Gal. 5:16–17).

A CLOSER LOOK: PAUL’S ALLEGORY IN GAL. 4:21–31

Paul’s use of the verb ἀλληγορέω (allēgoreō) in 4:24 (NRSV: “an allegory”) has generated no small concern from commentators.

Allegorization was natural in a Greek philosophic milieu, especially in Alexandria. Philosophers, including early Stoics and especially later Platonists and Pythagoreans, regularly allegorized offensive elements of myths.

Christian interpreters have approached Paul’s exposition here in various ways. Not all church fathers supported allegory. Although differences can be exaggerated, in general Alexandrian interpreters associated textual figures more freely (in the way the term came to be used, more “allegorically”) than Antiochene interpreters such as Chrysostom, who were usually more cautious about correspondences extrinsic to the text.

Given the approach to Scripture found in Philo, Clement, and Origen, the Alexandrian method probably reflects especially the influence of Middle Platonism, though perhaps with Stoicism as well. Origen used Paul’s words here to support his own approach to texts. By contrast, Chrysostom and Theodore of Mopsuestia construed Paul’s “allegory” as typology rather than allegory. Chrysostom complained, “Contrary to usage, [Paul] calls a type an allegory.” Far from denying the literal sense, Theodore warned, Paul is countering errorists who abuse Genesis and deny the actual historical sense. Already the OT prophets used figures of their own time as signs or symbols of what was coming, in addition to (rather than instead of) those figures’ historical experience (Isa. 8:18; 20:3; Ezek. 12:11; Zech. 3:8).

While recognizing that allegory simply meant signifying a sense beyond those directly communicated by the words, Jerome insists that “those who understand Scripture allegorically are Sarah’s children, and its literal interpreters are Hagar’s children”; it was literal interpretation, he opined, that led Marcionites to reject the OT. Augustine argued that the letter—merely literal interpretation—of the law kills; by contrast, Pelagius warned that allegorical interpretation was not appropriate to every passage, such as ethical commands. Noting Paul’s appeal to “allegory,” the ninth-century interpreter Haimo of Auxerre inferred the necessity of a spiritual significance beyond the literal words.

After experiencing allegory’s medieval abuses, Luther and subsequently Calvin rejected this approach, as did Bucer and some Jewish exegetes. Calvin complained that Origen and his successors used Gal. 4:24 as an excuse to distort Scripture into a variety of clever interpretations not grounded in the natural meaning of the text.

In more recent times, “Romantic critics like Goethe, Schlegel, Schelling, and Coleridge” have contended that allegorical readings transgressed texts’ original intent and have influenced modern academic approaches. Today there are a range of interpretive approaches to the passage. For some, an anti-Jewish history of interpretation of Gal. 4:21–31 raises concerns with its lack of limits. Others situate its interpretive approach in its original context and offer an anti-imperial reading of its liberation theme.

In some respects Paul’s exegesis in 4:21–31 is comparable to Judean midrash: an initial text developed by means of an additional citation, with links to both texts via keywords, and a closing text and application, referring to the initial text (cf. Gen. 21:10). Gentiles in Galatia would not, however, be as familiar with this approach as with his use of homiletical allegory, which public speakers in Roman colonies such as Pisidian Antioch and Lystra probably sometimes used. It is not the sequence of his exposition (plausibly related to Paul’s Judean background) but the allegorical links in Gal. 4:24–26 that confound most readers today. As E. P. Sanders comments (leaving aside the question of Paul responding to opponents’ exegesis here), “I think that Paul handled typologies very well. But he shows himself not to be very gifted in the creation of allegories.”

How much of Paul’s exegesis is allegorical and how much is typological? To some extent that decision depends on how we define the terms. One contemporary distinction between typology and allegory is that typology connects type and antitype by means of an analogous situation, whereas allegory lacks such concern. Many scholars find at least some allegory here, or sometimes the entire argument as allegorical. Others see Paul’s argument as typological, extrapolating the biblical “narrative of divine promise.” “By applying analogical thinking to the Old Testament,” one scholar suggests, “Paul was able to detect recurrent patterns stamped into the structure of salvation history.” Ancient thinkers often did parallel figures or events that they deemed analogous, as did Paul (1 Cor. 10:11). Many find a mixture with elements of each.

Luther and Calvin were certainly fond of Paul’s theology, but not so much of Paul’s argument here. “Allegories are not the basis for theology,” Luther warned, “but they may be used to illustrate particular points that were originally made on a different basis,” as Paul has already done. “After touching their feelings,” Calvin explains, “Paul follows up his earlier teaching with a fine illustration. As an argument it is not very strong, but as confirmation of his earlier reasoning it is not to be despised.”

That is, Paul is making a homiletical/rhetorical/polemical move at this point (probably directed against use of the same text by the agitators), not offering a hermeneutical model. This suggestion is consistent with the ancient semantic range of ἀλληγορέω (allēgoreō). Paul is speaking to Galatians on his authority, reinterpreting a story they have heard, offering not the sort of exegesis he more typically engages in (cf. 3:6–14), but rather exhortation. He may even be making light of what he conceives as the flippant exegesis of the agitators.

A Different Kind of Allegory

The term “allegory” has more than one sense, as Chrysostom warns when commenting on this passage. Besides a method used to extract desired morals from problematic mythic narratives, in rhetoric (persuasion) “allegory” also included any “of a group of figures which say one thing but hint at another.” Figures could include something like an extended metonymy; in metonymy, something is called by a name of something else associated with it. Rhetorical critic Ben Witherington observes that this sort of device is the “artistic alteration of a word or phrase from its proper meaning to another,” whether “for stylistic purposes or,” as here, simply to communicate what the speaker wants to say.

The most common form of allegory in persuasion uses words figuratively in an ornamental way but communicates meaning through words used in a literal way. The form of allegory used here is meant to teach truth not about persons within the narrative world, but rather about those within the audience’s world; one can speak allegorically from a story that was not originally intended as allegory.

Such allegorization gave stories a secondary level of meaning rather than implying that the new exposition reflects their original meaning. “An ancient allegory,” Witherington explains, “was not like Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress or Spenser’s Faerie Queene where detailed point by point ‘this is that’ sort of referents were the norm.” Modern literature also uses allegory in two distinct ways. In contrast to The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Dryden’s poem Absalom and Achitophel, written just three years later, uses the biblical story to address political issues in his own day, where the audience will see Charles II in King David, and Charles’s son, the Duke of Monmouth, in Absalom.

The question then is whether Paul meant that the Hagar narratives were composed as allegory or that he was reading them as allegory—corresponding to the difference between the authorial intention of Genesis and Paul’s rhetorical/homiletical use of Genesis. Some exegetes of Galatians have long noted this distinction. If Paul is responding to arguments of opponents, the latter—Paul referring to his rhetorical use—seems more likely.

When Paul declares in Gal. 4:24 that “these things are being expressed allegorically” (though the NRSV translates “these things” as singular, “this”), he might refer to what he himself has just said in 4:22–23. Granted, ancient interpreters usually refer to their source texts speaking allegorically, and Paul has also just mentioned the law speaking in 4:21. Many allegorists apparently thought that the authors whose works they were interpreting, such as Homer, knowingly encoded these meanings in their writings.

But Paul’s language of alignment or correspondence (4:25–26) may suggest that he refers to his own analogy rather than the Genesis author’s intention. More importantly, Paul elsewhere uses a midrashic “this-is-that” in which a figure in the text corresponds to (rather than is simply a symbol for) a figure in his own world. It may thus be better to understand ἀλληγορέω (allēgoreō) in 4:24 as “figuratively” rather than to import subsequent, loaded senses of “allegorize.” In any case, unless we take into account the opponents’ putative arguments, known directly to the Galatians but not to us, the correspondences in 4:24–26 seem artificial or forced. As one ancient teacher of persuasion warned, allegories and figurative speech can be overdone if they create obscurity rather than clarity. Persuaders sometimes used figures just for their shock value.

What justifies Paul’s correspondences in this case is his understanding of his soon-to-be-cited cotext, Isa. 54:1. This passage was the haftarah reading that was read together with Gen. 16:1 (Gal. 4:27). (Concrete evidence for the haftarah cycle is later, but the matching of these texts in the later haftarah cycle hardly seems a mere coincidence, probably betraying at least a shared interpretive tradition.) Jewish tradition plausibly understood Sarah as the barren woman in Isa. 54:1; in its Isaianic context, this in turn associates her with desolate Zion who would give birth to the new Jerusalem (see comment at Gal. 4:27).

Paul’s Opponents’ Allegory?

Another question invites consideration, although in our present state of knowledge it seems insoluble. Paul nowhere else uses allegory in this manner. Assuming, as is often held, that Paul’s unusual use of allegory responded to an allegorical approach by his opponents, we may consider from where their allegorical approach derived.

Other factors lead us to believe that these opponents were probably Judeans (cf. 4:25), but they were teaching in the Diaspora. Could they have drawn on some prior Diaspora Jewish outreach to gentiles the way that Paul often drew on prior Hellenistic Jewish apologetic? At least some of Paul’s opponents did so; in Corinth, his opponents were more rhetorically sophisticated than he (2 Cor. 11:5–6), and some apparently thought in Philonic terms (1 Cor. 15:45–47). Philo was perhaps the best-known Diaspora Jewish intellectual in the Mediterranean world, at the pinnacle of respect roughly a decade before this letter. One need not suppose direct influence from Philo, but Philo remains our best extant representative of, as well as an undoubtedly influential voice on, Diaspora Jewish exegesis.

Philo, master of allegorizing the Pentateuch, regularly allegorized Hagar as merely elementary learning, whereas Sarah represented advanced learning and appropriation of virtue. Paul’s opponents presumably believe that their deep teaching on the Torah is advanced learning; it was such teaching that freed one from passion and enabled one to live virtuously. Whereas Paul merely started them on the path with his elementary message, they would claim, it was they who provided the real, mature teaching. Paul would be inverting such an idea when he represents the Torah, like the elements venerated by gentiles, as mere elementals (Gal. 4:3, 9–10). Elementals are not bad per se, just incomplete and often requiring a better framework for interpretation. Ultimately, virtue is found by the Spirit, by Christ living in and through believers as children walking close to God (2:20; 4:6; 5:16–23).

Philo himself vehemently opposed carrying allegory so far that some would not practice circumcision or food customs literally. Paul’s opponents surely rejected such “excessive” allegorization as well, and perhaps even accused Paul of excessively allegorizing such commandments, especially circumcision (cf. Rom. 2:28–29; Col. 2:11). From Paul’s perspective, however, their approach to the Torah, however intellectually respectable in their context, was ultimately only elementary learning like grammar, without Christ (cf. Col. 2:8–11).

4:21

21Tell me, you who want to be under the law: Won’t you heed the law?

Paul begins this section with a call to attention: Tell me! Didactic exhortation sometimes used this phrase, on occasion when preparing to quote a respected source. It resembles the rhetorical form apostrophe, when one turns to address a particular member of the audience, except that Paul here continues to address all of them (with a plural imperative).

Paul now seeks to show his gentile converts who want to be under the law that they do not really understand what the law teaches (cf. Jesus’s charge in Mark 2:25; 12:10, 26). Teachers commonly exhorted their audience to listen (cf. Mark 4:3, 9, 23; 7:14; Sir. 6:23; 16:24), and the command to heed the law was common in the law (Deut. 4:1; 5:1; 6:3; 12:28). The term translated as law included the Genesis and Exodus narratives as a sort of prologue, and it is back to these, from which Paul drew his crucial text in Gal. 3:6, that Paul turns.

4:22

22Because the Bible says that Abraham had two sons, one from the slave woman and one from the free woman.

Paul’s the Bible says (lit., “it is written”) usually precedes a quotation of Scripture, but in 4:22 it precedes a summary. This apparent anomaly may be an additional clue that Paul is here responding to opponents rather than simply appealing to Scripture on his own ground. Abraham ultimately had more than two sons (Gen. 25:1–4), but only two in the narrative under consideration. Both of these sons were circumcised, so circumcision alone does not make one an heir.

Paul’s rivals were teaching the Galatians to become descendants of Abraham through circumcision, whereas Paul taught that they did so by faith like Abraham’s (Gal. 3:6–7; cf. Rom. 4:16). Paul here is quick to add the point that being Abraham’s physical descendant does not automatically confer the promise that came through faith; after all, only one of Abraham’s two sons came through promise (cf. Rom. 9:7). The heirs are not the slave line (Gal. 4:7); Paul’s opponents, those who advocate law observance in order to be in covenant with God, are like spiritual Ishmaelites.

The true line through Sarah was the line of promise; it is those who (like Abraham) trust God’s promise in Christ who are heirs (4:27–31). (Jewish tradition often elaborated on Sarah, extolling her beauty and normally viewing her respectfully. In 11:11, the author of Hebrews extols her faith.)

4:23

23But whereas the one born from the slave woman was born according to the flesh [the normal human way], the one born from the free woman was born by means of God’s promise.

In Genesis, God blessed the one born from the slave woman because he was Abraham’s son (Gen. 21:13; cf. 16:10). Paul’s contrast between slave and free is not meant to denigrate slaves (cf. Gal. 3:28), but rather to appeal to his audience’s reason: freedom is a more desirable state than being enslaved. The issue is not that the slave’s son was bad (although cf. 4:29), but that he could not be allowed to inherit and so reduce the inheritance to the child whom God had promised, Isaac (Gen. 21:10–12; Gal. 4:30). Throughout Genesis, the chosen line is repeatedly narrowed down, to Shem, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

Being born according to the flesh is also not primarily negative; it simply refers to birth in the natural manner. Being born by means of God’s promise, however, refers to the special circumstances of Isaac’s birth: he could be born only because of God’s promise, by extraordinary divine agency. “Natural processes did not produce his conception,” Chrysostom noted. Isaac thus was the promised seed who prefigured the ultimate promised seed of Abraham, Christ (Gal. 3:16), and ultimately all believers (3:29; 4:28). As Augustine points out, merely being born free would not be sufficient for him to “signify the people who inherit the New Covenant. What is more important is that he was born according to the promise.”

The expected contrast between birth according to the flesh and birth according to the Spirit awaits the application in 4:29; in 4:23, Paul is still expounding the Genesis text, where it is promise that is more explicit. But anyone who has followed Paul’s argument so far already understands that Paul also links promise with the Spirit (3:14).

In ancient societies, those who were born from slaves were of lower status than freeborn persons, even once they achieved freedom. The term for slave in Gal. 4:23, παιδίσκη (paidiskē), is the title for Hagar in the Greek text of Genesis. Philo contrasts Hagar in this role not only as a slave but also as a child in contrast to Sarah, who was a free adult; this fits Philo’s image of Hagar as elementary education and Paul’s image of God’s people being under the law only until they attained maturity. Philo associated slavishness with baseness.

4:24

24These things are being expressed allegorically. For these women are two covenants. The one covenant is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery—this is Hagar.

Paul’s biblical interpretation in 4:21–23 could move immediately into 4:28–31 without 4:24–27 between them. In these intriguing intervening verses Paul may be digressing in order to answer an interpretation by his opponents. These verses are, in any case, further support for his case.

Abraham had some descendants according to the flesh (such as Ishmael) and others according to the promise (through Isaac). In Paul’s day, those according to the flesh were those dependent only on the flesh for their relationship with Abraham: ethnic descent and circumcision. Those who trust God’s promise, ultimately fulfilled in Christ, are Abraham’s children supernaturally, who have faith like Abraham had. They have the reality of the Spirit (3:2–5). All this reiterates what Paul already emphasized in 3:6–9, 14, 29.

It is thus straightforward for Paul to parallel Hagar and her line with the covenant that depended on the flesh, the Sinai covenant that he has already associated with slavery (4:1–3). While Paul’s nemeses would bristle at the language of enslavement to the law, they would not simply dismiss the notion that present Jerusalem experienced enslavement. One could speak of a conquered people or a people under tyrannical rule as being in slavery, and there was no question that earthly Jerusalem remained under Roman rule. Granted, the parallel is limited: Hagar and Ishmael technically ceased being slaves when they were sent away. Nevertheless, they remained excluded from the inheritance (Gen. 21:10; 25:5).

In midrashic terms, Paul’s analogies are fairly obvious. As the “Lord” of Exod. 33–34 corresponds to the Spirit today in 2 Cor. 3:17, so here the noninheriting line stands for those who, not recognizing the time of fulfillment, still keep the law without the Spirit: the children of Sinai, whose center is in earthly Jerusalem (Gal. 4:25).

For those wanting to emphasize the importance of Jerusalem and Judea, Sinai was literally and conspicuously in the sphere of Nabatean Arabia. (Paul had already reminded the Galatians that he knew Nabatea; Gal. 1:17.) Sinai thus links the law with Arabia, and some first-century Jews counted Arabs as conspicuous descendants of Hagar and Ishmael. Scholars sometimes suggest one further association between Hagar and Sinai. Some argue that evidence suggests that some called the area that included Sinai Hagra; the lexical evidence is, however, questionable and would hardly occur to the Galatians in any case. Whatever the details, however, ultimately it is the covenant that Hagar represents, rather than Hagar herself, that connects with Sinai directly.

Mountain images could be used various ways, but the mountain here is explicitly Mount Sinai. This mountain contrasts with the heavenly Jerusalem (4:26–27), the eschatological Zion, a mountain giving forth a Torah greater than Mount Sinai (Isa. 2:2–3; cf. 51:1–4; 65:17–18; 66:8). (The contrast with Mount Sinai can presuppose Mount Zion, but by being “above” in 4:26 she is higher than a mountain in any case.) It is the prophetic haftarah of Isa. 54:1, Paul’s cotext in this passage, which he will cite in Gal. 4:27 (see comment there), that allows Paul to apply the text as he does, clarifying what for several verses appear somewhat muddied waters.

Although Paul’s argument contrasts law-keeping with the people of Spirit and promise, this formulation is probably directed polemically against Paul’s opponents specifically. When Paul elsewhere uses this term for bearing or born (γεννάω, gennaō) figuratively, he uses it for his role in bringing others to spiritual birth (1 Cor. 4:15; Philem. 10; cf. Gal. 4:19; 3 John 4). Hagar’s children for slavery thus probably refers to Paul’s opponents and their converts (cf. Rev. 2:23). That is not to say that Jerusalem in Gal. 4:25 stands for the Jerusalem church, as some contend; but Paul’s probably Jerusalemite interlocutors are presumably the primary target of his polemic.

When Paul speaks of two covenants, one representing Sinai through Hagar and one representing Sarah and the heavenly Jerusalem, he weaves together a range of traditions and results of extensive linkage of Scripture (see comment on Gal. 4:27). Paul’s opponents probably emphasized to the Galatians the explicit, mandatory sign of circumcision in the Abrahamic covenant (Gen. 17:10–14), requiring Paul to gain the upper hand by reclaiming the Abrahamic covenant for believers aside from circumcision. (Paul can proceed to that case directly because has already argued that faith like Abraham’s and the consequent gift of the Spirit are sufficient; Gal. 3:5–6.)

In terms of textual exegesis alone, Paul’s opponents were more faithful to the biblical text; what they were not taking into account was the hermeneutical role of fulfillment in Christ, as guaranteed by the Spirit. That is, their application was for the wrong era; they were not reckoning with the arrival of an entirely new age in Christ.

In the Abraham section of Genesis there is one covenant, with Abraham (Gen. 15:18; 17:2, 4, 7, 9–14), a covenant that Paul contrasts with the later-given law in Gal. 3:17. This covenant is with Isaac, not Ishmael (Gen. 17:19, 21; Exod. 2:24; 6:3–5; Lev. 26:42). Paul’s opponents probably blended the covenant with Abraham with the covenant at Sinai; Paul assigns to Hagar’s/Ishmael’s line the later covenant of the law (Exod. 24:7–8; 31:16, 18; 34:10, 27; Lev. 26:9, 15, 25, 44–45; Deut. 4:13, 23; 5:2–3; 29:14, 21; 31:16, 20).

Paul has already argued that the law cannot supersede the covenant with Abraham (Gal. 3:15–18), and that it is thus itself superseded by the coming of Christ, who fulfills the promise to (and thus the covenant with) Abraham (3:14, 16, 23–25; 4:1–5). (Again, it is important to remember that Paul’s approach to the law is not always supersessionist; in Galatians’ polemical context, he is addressing one aspect of the law.)

Scholars often point out that Paul’s two covenants here are the covenant with Abraham and the Sinai covenant. But the point that they sometimes attach to this, that Paul is not speaking of the same two covenants that he addresses in 2 Cor. 3:6, does not follow. Because the Abrahamic promise is fulfilled in Christ, the new covenant (1 Cor. 11:25; 2 Cor. 3:6) is of a piece with that promise.

A CLOSER LOOK: FOCUS ON JERUSALEM

Throughout the Roman Empire, Jewish people were viewed as ethnic Judeans or, in terms of conventional urban eastern Mediterranean, city-centric perspectives, as the people whose well-known mother city was Jerusalem. Paul might respond in Gal. 4 to his rivals’ emphasis on Jerusalem. Ancient Near Eastern religion emphasized holy sites; thus when invaders destroyed an earlier city, they often reused its cult sites for their own shrines. Various ancient Jewish and Christian traditions also valued holy sites. For many later rabbis, the location of prayer was very important; some locations made prayers more likely to be heard than others. Thus one should not recite the Shema in an unclean location, and a Jewish teacher who had never meditated on Torah in any unclean place would invite emulation.

Synagogue architecture may reveal popular Jewish views of sacred space outside rabbinic circles. Thus builders may have elevated some synagogues or (following biblical precedents) oriented synagogues toward the Jerusalem temple, although not all synagogues fit this description.

By the time of the Jewish nationalist revival of the mid-second century BCE, some Jewish writers were heightening the land polemic already present in Genesis. Naturally, following biblical prophecy, early Judaism envisioned a unique eschatological significance for their homeland. Although Josephus does not highlight the land as much as one might expect, perhaps to avoid revolutionary implications, some other early Jewish texts do.

This interest is developed most fully in later rabbinic texts, where Israel is the holiest among lands. Here Israel is the highest—hence most praiseworthy—of lands, and the temple is higher than the rest of the world. Eretz Israel was one of God’s supreme gifts to Israel. Some limited the Torah and the Spirit of prophecy to the land of Israel. Dwelling in the land was meritorious, and the merit available to those outside the land was limited.

Idolatry was a temptation in the Diaspora, whereas dwelling in the land helped a sage’s scholarship. Guardian angels forsook those who left Eretz Israel. Some teachers prohibited renting land to Samaritans or gentiles in the holy land. A fully Jewish town is normally more preferable for habitation than a partly gentile one, but better a majority gentile town within Eretz Israel than a fully Jewish one in the Diaspora. In the end time, opined one rabbi, all synagogues would be in Eretz Israel.

Citing Ezek. 37:12–14, Amoraim taught that the dead in Israel would be raised first, or that the righteous dead outside Eretz Israel would have to roll underground to return to the land before being resurrected. Burial in Eretz Israel was a privilege and reward. In this case rabbinic evidence probably reflects a wider preference for burial in the holy land; many Diaspora Jews appear in Amoraic-period Judean burial sites. Some limited evidence suggests that already in the first century some Diaspora Jews and proselytes preferred to be buried in the land. Probably partly because the Romans found revolutionary potential in such ethnic ties of geographical loyalty, they eventually diverted the didrachma tax once used for the Temple’s upkeep.

Jerusalem was the holiest place in the holy land, the only place worthy of the temple or altars. Well before Paul’s day, Jews praised Jerusalem’s great holiness. According to some later traditions, in the world to come Jerusalem would be the size of Eretz Israel, and Israel the size of the current world. The principle of holy land applied especially to the holiest site of all, the Jerusalem temple. Thus when Jewish teachers spoke of a progression of holiness, the holiest site in the holy land’s holy city was the temple. Various Jewish groups argued that God had long before chosen this site for the temple.

A CLOSER LOOK: PERSONIFIED FEMININE IMAGES

The maternal and other feminine images here fit ancient expectations. Wisdom was often portrayed as a woman, sometimes contrasted with promiscuous folly. Similarly, Dionysius of Halicarnassus contrasts at length Attic rhetoric, depicted as a model, chaste, classical Athenian woman, with Asiatic rhetoric, which he portrays as a debased prostitute. Dio Chrysostom rhetorically contrasted two symbolic women, one the spirit of royalty and the other of tyranny. Athenians, believing that they sprang from local soil, counted it as their mother; for a loyal Roman, Italy was a mother. A city could be the mother of its region. People normally loved their “mother-fatherland”; one’s home city was one’s mother.

Although the mother goddess was not simply a personification, the prevalence of her cult in Galatia bears mention here. Mother goddess cults were widespread, but the renowned one in the Roman Empire was associated most particularly with Phrygia (see comment on Gal. 4:8). Ancient sources often speak of the earth mother or mother earth, “Great Mother,” “Mother Cybele,” “Mother of the gods,” “Mother of all,” or the Idaean Mother. She was hellenized even in Asia, but the mother role was retained. Just as Rhea was mother of Zeus in traditional Greek sources, Cybele assumed this role in some contemporary sources.

Biblical prophets often depicted God’s people as a woman, whether as his faithful bride when pure (e.g., Isa. 54:5–6; 62:5; Hosea 1:2; 2:19–20) or as an adulteress when unfaithful (e.g., Lev. 17:7; Isa. 1:21; Jer. 2:20; 3:1–9; Ezek. 16:16–41). Righteous Israel was the mother of the restored future remnant of Israel (Isa. 54:1; 66:7–10; Mic. 4:9–10; 5:3; cf. Isa. 26:18–19; 50:1). Jewish tradition continued the image of Zion/Jerusalem as a mother; her offspring could be the restored or new Jerusalem.

Gentiles could also imagine their homeland or ancestors personified as a woman. A city would often be portrayed as a wealthy goddess enthroned beside a river. Syrian and Phoenician cities’ coins included the Syrian “city goddess.” Roma, the deified personification of Rome, also appears as a woman on coins. Rome depicted conquered nations as women crushed beneath Rome.

But the heavenly, maternal city that is free also evokes especially positive images of the day. Rome allowed many “free cities” in the empire, and free cities boasted in this status. Cities that founded colonies were typically called “mother-cities.” A city that was both “free” and a “mother” might boast in both.

Philo applies the title “mother city” to heavenly citizenship, to the logos, and, like some other Jews, to Jerusalem. Similarly, in early Christian sources the church is a woman, a bride, and a mother, and the earliest church becomes the metropolis of citizens of the new covenant. An early second-century work applies Isa. 54:1 to the church, and medieval commentators generally viewed the church as the heavenly city of Gal. 4:26.

The image of Zion here is the image of the eschatological, heavenly Jerusalem of Isa. 54:1, 11–13; 65:18–20; 66:8–11. Paul himself, as part of reborn Zion, can participate in the birthing of believers—though unlike Zion at the end, in the present he does travail with birth pangs (Gal. 4:19; cf. Rom. 8:22–23). Paul probably conceptualizes the heavenly Jerusalem also in Phil. 3:20–21; believers’ citizenship is there, and Christ will return from there. Paul might also play there on the widespread philosophic ideal of universal, world citizenship in contrast to the mere specificity of earthly origins (cf. Phil. 3:4–6, 19).

4:25

25And this Hagar/Mount Sinai is in Arabia, the land of the Nabatean Arabs. And she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she serves as a slave with her children.

The term translated as corresponds to (συστοιχέω, sustoicheō) in 4:25, which sets up the line of contrasts, appears in tables of categories, a function that fits the correspondences noted here. Thus the sense is, with many translations (e.g., NRSV, NASB, NIV, ESV), corresponds to, not “represents.” Paul links Hagar, the slave woman, with the Sinai covenant, which he has already associated with slavery (4:1–3); he thereby also links Hagar with present Jerusalem, where (given the presence of the temple) the Sinai covenant is most fully observed. The popular link between Hagar and Arabs also facilitates Paul’s homiletical move here.

Paul’s adversaries undoubtedly knew and perhaps reported biblical assurances that Jerusalem / Mount Zion would be a new Sinai, with God’s law going forth to the nations (Isa. 2:3). For Paul, however, that prophecy addresses a new, eschatological Jerusalem (Isa. 65:17–18), to which he turns in Gal. 4:26.

Richard Longenecker argues for a chiasm in 4:25–26, conspicuously missing one element:

A Hagar

B Sinai

C slavery

D present Jerusalem

D′ heavenly Jerusalem

C′ freedom

B′ (Mount Zion)

A′ our mother

Structurally, this chiasm must be modified slightly, since C actually follows D, making CD parallel with D′C′ instead of inverted. This modification may challenge the overall proposed structure less than does the absence of explicit mention of Mount Zion. If Paul is less concerned to construct an exact chiastic scheme, Mount Zion is probably simply assumed in the heavenly Jerusalem.

4:26

26But the Jerusalem above is free. She’s the one who’s our mother.

In Scripture the title Jerusalem included the people (Jerusalemites) as well as the place (e.g., Isa. 40:2, 9; 41:27; 51:17; Jer. 4:14; 6:8), so the contested imagery for God’s people in Gal. 4:25–26 seems clear. Possibly Paul’s opponents, probably from Jerusalem, spoke of that city as “our mother,” as Philo, Josephus, and other Jewish people did (see discussion above). If so, Paul reclaims the title here; as an educated Pharisee (Phil. 3:5), he had surely spent time in Jerusalem himself, but he is ready to cede the title of earthly Jerusalemites to his opponents, since he looks to a greater city. His challengers apparently contend that Paul got his message from Jerusalem (see comment on Gal. 1:17–18 and 2:1, the other mentions of Jerusalem in this letter); Paul’s source, however, is a different Jerusalem. However great Sinai or the present Jerusalem might appear, they could not compare with the heavenly city.

As some rabbis opined, those who mourn for present Jerusalem would rejoice for her in the coming age. Paul contrasts the present and future/heavenly Jerusalem (4:25–26), as well as the old covenant law with the new way of Christ (3:17–23; 4:1–5). “In both apocalyptic writings and Qumran the heavenly Jerusalem could be conceived of as already present,” Andrew Lincoln points out, and from Paul’s early Christian, “already but not yet” eschatology, Paul could argue that believers already experience a foretaste of this citizenship.

The context of the new creation in Isa. 65:17 and 66:22 includes a new Jerusalem as well as a new heavens and earth (65:18). Jewish people expected that God would prepare this city for his people and even rebuild the temple, and perhaps the city, himself. Although in many sources the city was future, in many texts it was also heavenly. Some sources view it as a currently hidden city that will be revealed at the end. Vertical dualism, of course, characterizes Platonism, but it also characterizes Jewish apocalyptic and much other ancient thought. Apocalyptic imagery sometimes conflated the future world and the current heavenly one.

Perhaps relevant to any connection that Paul’s adversaries might make between Zion and Isaac, Jewish tradition located the binding and deliverance of Isaac (cf. Gal. 4:28) on Mount Zion.

4:27

27For as Scripture puts it, “Celebrate, you childless woman who has never before born a child! Burst out and shout, you who’ve never endured labor pains! Because the deserted woman will have many more children than the married one!”

Although Paul cites Isa. 54:1 only now, it informs how he applies the Sarah/Hagar story in Genesis throughout Gal. 4:21–31. Isaiah 54 is the haftarah reading for Gen. 16 in later liturgy, and the linkage occurs in various later texts. This shared linkage suggests an early tradition of linking the two texts, surfacing also here in Gal. 4, or at least that similar midrashic exegesis naturally led to this linkage, as illustrated by both texts. (Later rabbis certainly did not borrow the linkage from Paul’s letter.) Other Jews also applied Isa. 54 to the future time of restoration.

Paul’s citation of the verse appeals to the entire context; although the Galatians might not recognize it, Paul and his opponents surely would. The verse that he cites immediately follows the suffering servant making God’s people right with him (Isa. 52:13–53:12). God could restore his people because the servant, whom they and others abhorred (49:7; 52:14; 53:2–4), had borne their sins (53:4–6, 10–12) even though he himself had not sinned (53:7, 9); he would thus be rewarded (53:10–12). Paul elsewhere showed his belief that Isa. 53 was fulfilled and that now was the time to proclaim the good news (52:7). The promised eschatological restoration to God has come; Jesus’s followers in Galatia have entered that restoration, whereas Jerusalemites who reject it continue to live as in the prerestoration judgment.

Jerusalem is desolate in Isa. 54:1 because of Israel’s sins (cf. the mother in 50:1). The Greek term translated as deserted here (ἔρημος, erēmos) means “desert” or “deserted” and is so used of the ruins of Jerusalem that the Lord will restore (Isa. 51:3; 52:9; 58:12). Barrenness was considered a great disgrace. Men sometimes divorced their wives for childlessness; some Judean traditions considered this a duty for the sake of childbearing. It was believed that sometimes God visited the barren and provided children. In times of tragedy, however, not bearing might be deemed happier than bearing. Terms for inability to bear were sometimes used metaphorically.

In the wider context of this section of Isaiah, the mother who bore God’s people is Sarah (Isa. 51:2b), who was once barren but ended up with “many” descendants (51:2d). (Given the term ὠδίνω [ōdinō], “suffer birth pangs,” in the LXX of both Isa. 51:2 and 54:1, midrashic interpreters were bound to link the passages, though in 54:1 the mother has not suffered birth pangs.) Likewise in this context, when God would restore his people, he would spread his word to the nations (51:4–5). In a closely parallel Isaianic passage, the desolate land would become crowded with children born during Israel’s bereavement in exile (49:19–20), as the nations would bring Israel’s scattered children (49:22–23).

Like the barren mother Sarah’s birth of God’s people (Isa. 51:2), the birth in 54:1 would be a miraculous birth. The barren mother here has neither given birth nor labored (unlike Sarah in Isa. 51:2 and Paul in Gal. 4:19!), yet has many children (Isa. 54:1). For first-century interpreters, Isaiah was a single book, so this passage would call to mind other, similar contexts. Without labor, Zion would bring forth children (66:7–8), the people of the new Jerusalem (65:18), part of the new creation (65:17; see Gal. 6:15–16). No longer desolate (Isa. 54:1), Zion would be the Lord’s bride (54:5–7). God himself would rebuild Zion (54:11–12).

Scholars often argue that Paul found two women in Isa. 54:1, providing a basis for his exposition on Hagar and Sarah in Genesis. That Zion would bear more children than the married woman (54:1) does not, in Isaiah, offer a contrast with the slave concubine Hagar, but it could function that way in Paul’s midrashic context, even if Paul were pressed by detractors and had to offer it simply as a qal wahomer argument: if the deserted woman would have more children than the married one, how much more would Sarah have more children than Hagar.

Isaiah may think of just one woman, Jerusalem, first desolate because of exile and then restored in splendor. Without necessarily denying continuity between the figures, Paul might regard them as chronologically and spatially separate. Some ancient hearers might have even been ready to consider Isaac (Gal. 4:26–31) and Ishmael (4:24–25, 29–30) eschatologically; some, for example, read Esau as representing the present evil age, with Jacob representing the imminent age to come.

Although some Second Temple Jewish interpreters may have demurred, Isaiah’s context may also suggest that Jerusalem’s expansion embraces gentiles as well as Jews. Some other biblical texts may also envision gentile inclusion in the future Zion, not least one that, in the LXX, speaks of “Mother Zion” (LXX Ps. 86:5; ET 87:5). In any case, Paul sees the influx of gentiles as children of Abraham and Isaac as fulfilling Isaiah’s promise. The noncircumcising gentile mission was winning far more converts than were those circumcising the flesh in converts to other versions of the Christian movement or Judaism.

When Paul wrote Galatians, earthly Jerusalem was flourishing and the sometimes persecuted Christian movement was, by comparison, more like a deserted woman. Yet Paul, who had labored over the Galatians for birth (Gal. 4:19) and believed that the present sufferings were the messianic birth pangs of the new age (Rom. 8:22), anticipated a different future. In that day gentiles would rejoice with God’s people (Rom. 15:10, citing LXX Deut. 32:43).

4:28–29

28–29Now you, brothers and sisters, are children of the promise, just like Isaac. But just like the child born according to the flesh persecuted the one born according to the Spirit, that’s how it is now.

Paul’s opponents require for adherence to the Sinai covenant a human work beyond salvation; Paul counters that for the promised new covenant God’s work in us is both essential and sufficient. Like Isaac, believers are born supernaturally; they are “born from the Spirit” (4:28–29).

Whatever one makes of some elements of Paul’s connections in 4:24–26, Paul draws a simpler analogy in 4:28–29. In Abraham’s day, the child born according to normal, fleshly means (4:23) was not the child or line that God had promised. The child whom God had promised (4:23) came supernaturally. In the same way, converts made according to the flesh (ethnically and/or by circumcising their flesh; Gen. 17:11, 13–14, 23–25) do not represent the promised line; that belongs to those converted by the supernatural/divine act of the Spirit (Gal. 4:29), as Paul’s converts were (3:2–3, 14; cf. 1 Cor. 2:4–5; 2 Cor. 3:3, 6; 1 Thess. 1:5–6).

Born according to the flesh presumably refers here to those born only according to the flesh, as opposed to those also born from the Spirit; cf. parallel language in John 3:5–8, especially 3:6. God’s Son was born from a woman, born under the law (4:4) so God could make believers his children as well through the Spirit of his Son (4:5–6). Believers are thus born according to the Spirit (4:29).

The central point of Paul’s analogy is that believers, including gentile believers, are children of the promise, just like Isaac (4:28; cf. 3:29). Paul makes the analogy by emphasizing in both cases direct divine action rather than, as his opponents would insist, an ethnic connection. God required more from Isaac than his foreskin; Abraham had to offer up Isaac’s life wholly, and Jewish tradition often emphasizes Isaac’s willingness, though it is not clear that Paul addresses that offering in Galatians.

Paul’s claim that the child born according to the flesh persecuted the one born according to the Spirit (4:29) may be figurative, simply to allow the comparison for present conflict. Nevertheless, Paul probably was aware of tradition to the effect that Ishmael did oppress Isaac. Although Genesis nowhere says this explicitly, ancient tradition inferred this. Stories abounded concerning dangers of sibling rivalry and even murder, including concerning the seminal biblical brothers Cain and Abel. Philo even wrote an essay on Cain killing Abel, on the topic of the worse being inclined to attack the better. Because Jewish tradition recognized that Cain killed Abel (Gen. 4:8), Esau hated Jacob (Gen. 27:41–42), and Joseph’s brothers hated him (37:4–5), it was undoubtedly ready to infer that Ishmael also hated Isaac. The tradition also could note that Ishmael’s seed sometimes opposed that of Isaac (Judg. 8:24; Ps. 83:4–6).

Josephus reports that Sarah loved Ishmael until her own son Isaac was born, but then she feared that, being much older than Isaac, Ishmael might mistreat him once Abraham died. In later Jewish tradition, the brothers disputed about the birthright. More important is how ancient interpreters read Gen. 21:9, which says something to the effect that Sarah saw Ishmael “playing with her son Isaac.” This is the verse that immediately precedes the verse quoted in Gal. 4:30, and it is surely what is referred to here. Yet the word that can be translated as “playing” is ambiguous, with a range of meanings from innocent to sinister. Philo says that Ishmael, though illegitimate, played with Isaac, the genuine heir, as if he were his equal. Later interpreters connected his jesting with idolatry and various other offenses. Jewish tradition often viewed Ishmael as wicked, but later rabbis construed Gen. 25:9 as saying that he eventually repented, unlike Esau.

There may have been some basis in the biblical text for believing that Ishmael did something negative to Isaac. It is hard to imagine that Ishmael would not be affected by himself, as presumed heir, being displaced in the eyes of the community, as he would be, by Isaac’s birth. Psychologizing aside, the text of Genesis seems to presume that what Sarah saw Ishmael doing (Gen. 21:9) was what precipitated her demand that Hagar and Ishmael be sent away (21:10).

The verb that can be translated as innocently as “play” in Genesis also has other meanings in less innocent contexts. It can mean “scorn, mock” or “treat lightly”; historically, some interpreters have inferred this sense, equating it with persecution because this ridicule opposed God’s promise, or treating it as simply a lesser analogy for the greater persecution in Paul’s day. Perhaps Ishmael showed contempt as his mother had for Sarah (Gen. 16:4); perhaps, given Sarah’s strict response, his disdain included Isaac’s birthright.

For “play” in Gen. 21:9 the LXX uses the word παίζω (paizō). Again, the term’s sense is sometimes positive and sometimes negative, and can include mocking. It applies to young men competing and dying in 2 Sam. 2:14 and to the abuse of Samson in Judg. 16:25. Besides Gen. 21:9, in the Pentateuch it appears only in Gen. 26:8, where Isaac caresses Rebekah, and Exod. 32:6, which Paul seems to interpret sexually in 1 Cor. 10:7, his only use of the term. This raises the possibility that Paul and some other students of the LXX might envision the adolescent Ishmael as molesting, or at least sexually taunting, his half-brother. Still, the context is a public feast (Gen. 21:8), making physical molestation (within Sarah’s range of sight) unlikely. It is not impossible, however, that the adolescent Ishmael, still learning social propriety, taunted his just-weaned half-brother as inferior sexually or for finally graduating from seeking his mother’s breast (cf. Isa. 28:9).

In Hebrew, the verb can mean “laugh,” “jest,” or “play,” an important motif in Genesis about God’s ways being surprising. Positively, it refers to Sarah laughing with joy when her son Isaac is born (Gen. 21:6), just three verses earlier. But would Ishmael celebrating Isaac prompt her response in 21:10? If the verb has anything to do with Sarah’s reaction (i.e., if Sarah is not simply reacting to seeing Ishmael at the feast for Isaac’s weaning), it may suggest something more malevolent. Maybe instead of laughing with Sarah, he was laughing at Isaac.

Negatively, it refers to Abraham (Gen. 17:17) and Sarah (18:12–15) laughing at God’s promise, not believing; and most negatively, Lot’s sons-in-law laughing at his warning from God, leading to their destruction (19:14). The masculine singular Piel participle, however, the form in 21:9, appears only three times in the OT, all within five chapters of this verse. One is for Lot’s sons-in-law, just mentioned (19:14); the other is Isaac fondling his wife (26:8). The other biblical uses, also in the Piel, are these: Gen. 39:14, 17, where it claims that a foreign slave “made sport” of Potiphar’s household by trying to rape his wife; Exod. 32:6, where it may have sexual connotations; and Judg. 16:25, where Samson’s Philistine captors summon him as foreign slave to “entertain” them. It is reasonable to suppose, then, that Ishmael is taunting from a position of superiority, and it seems at least possible that Genesis employs a euphemism here for some sexually suggestive innuendo (on innuendo, cf. comment on Gal. 5:12).

The issue here is not, however, the historical Ishmael or traditions about him, so much as the contrast between Abraham’s merely physical descendants boasting in an old covenant and Abraham’s spiritual heirs basking in the fulfillment of Abraham’s promise.

While Ishmael may have been thought to do something that could be an analogy for “persecuting,” the question arises as to who was persecuting Spirit-born persons in Paul’s day (that’s how it is now, 4:29). In Galatians, each of the other four uses of the verb here translated as “persecute” probably refers to non-Christian Jews persecuting Jewish followers of Jesus (1:13, 23; 5:11; 6:12). That also fits the experiences of Paul in Galatia that Galatian believers would have witnessed (Acts 13:50–51; 14:2, 19). While the vast majority of persecution between Jews and Christians over the centuries has come from the latter side, early Jewish sources report many intra-Jewish conflicts that grew violent, and the direct testimony of one of the former persecutors (Gal. 1:13) can leave little doubt that some of this intra-Jewish peresecution was directed against Jewish followers of Jesus.

But while Paul’s opponents may be acting under pressure from nonbelievers (6:12), they themselves claim to be believers. Yet Paul considers them accursed, preaching a false gospel that disturbs the believers (1:6–9). Their approach is from the flesh (3:3; 4:23; 6:12), and their false teaching counts as persecution, for it threatens to enslave them like captives (5:1; cf. 2:4)!

A CLOSER LOOK: REBIRTH, CONVERSION, INHERITANCE

That Paul employs the image of rebirth for conversion here is no accident. Galatian gentiles might think of some gentile traditions of regeneration, but that is not the source of Paul’s image. Rebirth from God’s Spirit or word was a familiar early Christian image (John 1:12–13; 3:3–6; 1 Pet. 1:23; 1 John 3:9), but it also plays on an image of conversion probably already circulating in first-century Judaism. In the Diaspora, Justin Martyr also testifies independently to the mid-second-century Jewish belief, apparently widespread, that the proselyte is “like one who is native born.” It was, in fact, a commonplace that a proselyte’s status was that of a newborn child. A convert was no longer the person he or she had been as a gentile, before God, the law, or Israel; his or her legal standing was that of an Israelite.

In the halakah, a proselyte had lost all previous connections; the convert had begun a new life. This may bear some relation to a Roman custom in which one becoming a Roman citizen had to explicitly reaffirm prior legal ties for them to remain binding. Thus, in terms of legal status, a proselyte had no relatives and could marry paternal relatives; according to legal theory, though not practice, a proselyte could even marry his former mother. It may not be surprising that gentiles accused converts to Judaism of disowning their families of origin. Many early Palestinian Amoraim understood Tannaitic authorities to say that a proselyte had no inheritance obligation to his former children. A proselyte was still, however, allowed to inherit from gentile parents.

Conversion to Judaism was in a sense adoption into a new ethnic community. In Gal. 4, God adopts gentiles as his children without their adopting a new ethnicity—though as children of Abraham they should see themselves as grafted into the heritage and story of ancient Israel.

4:30–31

30–31So what does the Bible say? “Send away this slave woman and her son! For the son of the slave woman isn’t going to get a share in the inheritance of the free woman’s son.” Therefore, brothers and sisters, we aren’t children of the slave woman. Rather, we’re children of the free woman!

Paul rhetorically asking his audience what the Scripture says matches his asking rhetorically whether they would heed the law in 4:21, questions strategically toward the beginning and end of 4:21–31. In this case, Paul also might appear to consult with his audience, as speakers sometimes did in a particular sort of rhetorical question.

In an era before chapters and verses were added to the text, one might cite part of a passage to evoke the whole (cf. Mark 12:26). Paul here quotes Sarah’s words to Abraham in Gen. 21:10, but God confirms these words as his own counsel in 21:12, a passage that Paul quotes elsewhere (Rom. 9:7; cf. Heb. 11:18). Thus Paul cites these words not as spoken by Sarah, but as spoken by “Scripture.”

When Paul mentions the law in Gal. 4:21, he alludes to a story rather than quoting it. Here, however, he quotes his climactic text from the story: Send away this slave woman and her son! As was common practice when citing sources, Paul slightly adapts the wording of his quotation; this is noticeable especially in the end, where “my son Isaac” in Gen. 21:10 becomes “the child of the free woman” to fit the emphasis on freedom in his own argument.

As pathos was most appropriate at the end of a speech, Paul invokes a passionate text before the rousing affirmation and probably concluding exhortation of this section (4:31–5:1). His quotation is made a bit more rousing by his insertion of the little Greek word μή (mē), by which he makes the negation of Gen. 21:10 (“shall not inherit”) all the more emphatic (“shall in no wise at all inherit!”).

As many scholars argue, in Gal. 4:30 Paul probably wants his audience to apply the demand of Gen. 21:10, cited here, to their persecutors from the previous verse, which cites Gen. 21:9. The Galatian believers are to cast out the rival teachers, as Paul may further urge in another way in Gal. 5:9–10 (see comment there). Paul cannot here urge them to cast out everyone who keeps the law, referring to his Jewish contemporaries generally; obviously, most Jews were not part of the community of believers that he addresses. He must refer to the particular children in slavery (4:24–25) who are theologically oppressing them (cf. 4:29), or at least to those who are bowing to persecution in order to pressure them (cf. 6:12).

Whatever Ishmael’s offense in Gen. 21:9, if any, Sarah’s motive in seeking Hagar’s and Ishmael’s expulsion is explicit: to prevent Isaac having to share the inheritance with Ishmael (21:10). In Mesopotamian law, if the slaveholder ever called his son by a slave woman “my son,” the slave son must receive an inheritance with the children of the first wife. If the slaveholder has not called him “my son,” the slave woman and her son are to be freed on the slaveholder’s death, with no claim to the inheritance. Abraham had undoubtedly called Ishmael his son (17:18, 23, 25–26), and those who had accompanied Abraham from Mesopotamia would expect Mesopotamian custom to be followed unless Abraham specified otherwise. A way to protect the full inheritance for Isaac was to free Hagar and Ishmael now and to send them away before Abraham’s decease.

The moral of 4:30–31, ultimately, is this: Do not let anyone take your inheritance. You are already true children and have the firstfruits of the blessing of Abraham (3:14, 29). Those trying to get you circumcised in order to be children of Abraham are from the fleshly (Hagar) line of Abraham, not the spiritual line to which you belong.

5:1

1It’s for freedom that Christ liberated us! So stand firm and don’t be subjected again to a yoke of slavery!

Paul introduced the notion of freedom in 2:4, implying also in 3:28 that this freedom is available to both free and slave alike. Christ setting us free also alludes to God redeeming us from the law through him in 4:5. It is in 4:22–23, 26, 30–31, however, that he emphasizes our Abrahamic, spiritual descent from the free woman that forms the basis for Paul’s comments on freedom in 5:1, 13.

Galatians 5:1 is a key transitional verse, climaxing 4:21–31 while also pointing to what will follow. Thus it summarizes what Paul has argued so far and introduces what follows (esp. in 5:13, after his additional digression with pathos in 5:2–12). This is inconvenient for modern hierarchical outlines, but Paul’s argumentation, like some other ancient discourse, does not always conform to such outlines. Rhetorically, the Greek sentence commands attention, especially by doubling “freedom” language (τῇ ἐλευθερίᾳ . . . ἠλευθέρωσεν [tē eleutheria . . . ēleutherōsen; for freedom . . . liberated]). Paul emphasizes freedom, highlighting it by placing it first in his Greek sentence. Galatians 5:1 also calls attention back to Christ, who is implied in 4:21–31 (cf. Christ as the seed in 3:16) but is mentioned especially in the climactic application of the preceding section.

Building on what precedes, Paul invokes both the indicative and the imperative: indicatively, we are children of the free woman (4:31) and therefore free in Christ. But imperatively, we must stand firm to maintain that freedom; in Paul’s theology, a past conversion remains effective only as long as the person does not deconvert (cf. 4:19; see comment on 5:4). “For this is true freedom,” Marius Victorinus insists, “to keep faith with God and to believe all God’s promises.”

Tension between indicative and imperative is a significant theme in discussions of Pauline ethics (e.g., Rom. 6:4; 1 Cor. 5:7; Gal. 5:1, 13; Phil. 2:12–13). In practice, it might resemble God telling Israel, “The promised land is yours: Go in and take it” (cf. Num. 33:53). That is, it is already a reality in terms of God’s perspective, but this promise and guarantee still must be implemented on the human level, and the people will not possess it until they obey. There are, however, some clear differences, of which we may highlight two that seem particularly conspicuous: first, Christ has already won the decisive victory; and second, some aspects of the expected “not yet” are therefore “already.”

Paul often uses this verb for “stand” (στήκω, stēkō), especially in the imperative. Most of these texts (most obviously Rom. 14:4; 1 Thess. 3:8; cf. 1 Cor. 15:1–2; not in 1 Cor. 7:37) urge perseverance, a matter also important in the context of Gal. 5:1 (see 5:4). Such “standing” contrasts with “falling” (Rom. 14:4; cf. 1 Cor. 10:12) or “stumbling” (cf. Rom. 14:13), an expression that Jewish people already used as a metaphor for apostasy. We “stand,” rather than commit apostasy, by faith (Rom. 11:20) as well as in faith (1 Cor. 16:13; 2 Cor. 1:24). That is, we persevere by continuing as believers in Jesus; the Galatians risked apostasy by forfeiting their dependence on Jesus for dependence on something else.

The command stand firm is appropriate for a people delivered from slavery; Moses exhorted the Israelites, just delivered by God from slavery in Egypt, to “stand firm” because God would protect them from their pursuers (Exod. 14:13), who wanted to reenslave them (14:5). God delivered his people from slavery in Egypt, breaking their “yoke” so they could stand upright (Lev. 26:13).

Paul warned the Galatians not to be subjected again to slavery not because they had observed the law itself before, but rather because they were returning to elementary matters appropriate at most (in the case of the law) for an earlier stage of salvation history (Gal. 4:3, 8–10).

Scholars debate the precise sense of the expression translated as for freedom (5:1a). It may represent the place to which Christ has brought them, the realm of freedom, or possibly the purpose or goal for which Christ has freed them. Whereas the exodus narrative depicts liberation from Egypt for service to the law, Paul depicts liberation from the law in some sense. Hellenistic Jewish intellectuals regarded the Torah as the means of liberation from being slaves to passion; for Paul, Christ and the Spirit take this role.

Many scholars point out that for freedom appears in pre-Christian Greek sacral manumission inscriptions. In these inscriptions, a slave is manumitted “for freedom,” being formally sold to a deity but, aside from some cultic obligations, now free with respect to people. Sacral manumission was mostly a legal fiction, but if it is in view here, the god Christ set us free at a real cost to himself (Gal. 1:4; 3:13; 4:4–5; 1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23), making us his own slaves or freedpersons (1 Cor. 7:22–23). This connection would fit Pauline theology. Nevertheless, the expression is not limited to sacral manumission. As fertile as the connection seems, the use of ἐλευθερία (eleutheria) in the dative case usually does not mean this.

Paul’s language would be intelligible to gentiles; a freed slave who proved difficult could be reenslaved under some circumstances (see Gal. 4:9). One orator a couple generations later warned that those who submit to human rather than divine law are under a yoke of slavery. “Stand fast,” a Cynic urged, for by the Cynic lifestyle one is freed from subjection to nature. For a Stoic, freedom might include ruling oneself, hence “not fearing either men or gods”; even Zeus could not control one’s will. For Paul, Christ liberates us from sin and from the need for external rules; yet this transformation was not by self-discipline but because of the indwelling righteousness of God’s Spirit (Gal. 5:22–23; Rom. 14:17).

The image of the yoke is an image of subjugation, made clearer by the full expression here, yoke of slavery. Yokes could be used for animals, but often they indicate corporate subjugation when applied to people. This was true not only with respect to Israel’s slavery in Egypt, but also for other instances of political subjection.

But there were also positive yokes; thus when God will convert the nations they will serve under his yoke (LXX Zeph. 3:9). One should place one’s neck “under the yoke” of wisdom in order to learn instruction. Here Paul probably evokes the traditional Jewish figure of the privilege of the yoke of Torah. One accepts the yoke of the kingdom of heaven by keeping commandments, such as reciting the Shema; the yoke of Torah or of the kingdom contrasts with yokes of worldly kingdoms. The yoke of Torah frees one from earning secular wages.

For Paul to essentially praise freedom from the “yoke” of the Torah (Gal. 5:1, playing on the familiar expression), although limited to a particular aspect of the Torah, thus subverts Jewish expectations. Jews longed for freedom from an oppressive empire, but here some Jewish teachers were, in Paul’s view, also oppressing open-minded gentiles with an even harsher imperialism, demanding a far more detailed conformity to customs, including an act that their own gentile culture deemed physical mutilation (see comment on 5:12). Roman citizenship could be awarded without one having to worship Roman deities, but membership in Israel required that a man give up a small piece of his flesh.

Circumcision Cannot Supplement Christ before God (5:2–6)

5:2

2Watch out! I myself, Paul, am warning you that if you are circumcised, Christ will not benefit you at all.

Just as 4:12–20 interrupted Paul’s argumentation from Scripture, dividing two expositions, so does 5:2–12 interrupt the continuity of his language of freedom in 5:1 and 5:13. Whereas the pathos that Paul evoked in 4:12–20 was primarily sympathy for him as the Galatians’ spiritual mother and lover, here, by contrast, he rhetorically invokes the emotion of anger toward the opponents. Some also see this section as recapitulating major points from Paul’s argumentation in 4:21–31 or even the entire letter. Certainly, effective communicators often recapitulate their argument at its end or at the end of their communication.

Although Paul does not explicitly address the question of circumcision in Galatia until 5:2, he has been preparing for it earlier in the letter (2:3; cf. 2:7–9, 12), like a good rhetorician building rapport before addressing the most controversial matter. (Even apart from controversy, one could speak of a matter in a somewhat ambiguous way before addressing it more explicitly.) Although he addresses the law beforehand in more general terms, it is the costly entry rite of circumcision that would most conspicuously evidence the Galatians’ defection from dependence on Christ alone. (In a Greek setting, circumcision was so conspicuous that some uncommitted Jews had undertaken a surgical operation to disguise their prior circumcision.) Circumcision was often the final step in conversion, after accepting other Jewish customs (4:10). Circumcision was not wrong in itself, certainly not for Jews (see 5:6), but accepting it to supplement justification in Christ de facto renounced faith in Christ’s sufficiency.

If you are circumcised probably indicates that Paul’s Galatian converts have not yet taken this step, but are still merely entertaining the overtures of his rivals. It usually took some time to prepare converts, who would, among other things, have to relearn even “shopping and cooking practices.” Paul now warns them in no uncertain terms; his I myself, Paul, am warning you, repeated in 5:3 as Indeed, I testify again, may take almost “the form of a solemn affidavit.”

That Christ will not benefit you at all may evoke the common ancient valuation of whether an action was profitable. For Christ not to benefit them, however, would prove not simply inconvenient but eternally disastrous. Although Paul could have used a different Greek word for this same point (cf. 1 Cor. 6:12; 10:23; 2 Cor. 12:1), he selects ὠφελέω (ōpheleō; cf. Rom. 2:25; 3:1), which offers a wordplay with ὀφειλέτης (opheiletēs), obligated (i.e., a “debtor” [ASV]) in Gal. 5:3. “Christ will not benefit them [ὠφελήσει, ōphelēsei], but, instead, they will be in debt [ὀφειλέτης, opheiletēs] to the law.”

A CLOSER LOOK: CIRCUMCISION

The practice of circumcision was not unique to the Jewish people, and indeed appears in many traditional societies. Nevertheless, it was central in a special way to Jewish identity; even many gentiles saw circumcision as a distinguishing boundary marker of Jewish ethnicity, as is often noted. Unlike the signs of other covenants (cf. Gen. 9:12–13, 17), circumcision located the mark of the Abrahamic covenant in one’s flesh (17:11, 13). In the Maccabean period, Jews had risked their lives to circumcise their children, and those who refused would be “children of Beliar” and like gentiles.

Later rabbis celebrated, “Great is circumcision!” They opined hyperbolically that circumcision equalled all other commandments and that it sustained creation. Their belief that it was necessary to make even righteous Abraham complete may be similar to the belief of Paul’s rivals in Galatia.

Slaves bought from foreigners needed to be circumcised in order to become part of the covenant people (Gen. 17:12–13), as did any foreigners in the land who wanted to join the Passover festival (Exod. 12:48). Thus Jewish practice normally treated circumcision as necessary for becoming part of the covenant people. A minority of Judeans treated it as necessary even for a place in the world to come, the radical Judean view articulated in Acts 15:1. Some were apparently prepared to impose it even by force on gentiles wishing to remain in the land promised to God’s people. Diaspora Jews, who constituted an easily identifiable minority in society and who often interacted with gentiles, were more circumspect, avoiding alienating gentile sympathizers who did not wish to become Jews fully. The range of views that surfaces in Acts 15 and the situation in Galatia probably mostly reflect the range of views in contemporary Judaism more widely.

Paul’s opponents may have resembled the Galilean named “Eleazar” in Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.43–45. Josephus describes him as “precise” in Jewish learning, language that he elsewhere applies to Pharisees, though not exclusively to them. King Izates had become a Jewish sympathizer through the persuasion of one Ananias, a Jewish merchant, but Ananias tried to prevent him from being circumcised, fearing an anti-Jewish backlash. Eleazar, by contrast, insisted that failure to be circumcised made a mockery of the king’s profession of Jewish faith, and so he persuaded the king to act.

If Paul’s opponents were something like a Christian version of Eleazar, however, Paul was nevertheless much more radical than Ananias. Ananias opposed circumcision out of “necessity,” a recognized category of ethical argument that reduced culpability. Even some later rabbis recognized some exceptional cases in which circumcision was inappropriate, although they would likely have sided with Eleazar in Josephus’s account.

But Paul as a matter of principle prohibited imposing any external demand such as circumcision, since those who had received the eschatological Spirit already belonged to God’s people, making them already part of the eschatological new creation. If God granted that promised eschatological covenant blessing—God’s own Spirit (Gal. 3:14)—without the old sign of the covenant, the traditional sign was acceptable but not necessary (1 Cor. 7:19; Gal. 5:6; 6:15). Outward signs were nothing compared to God himself, and a symbol of relationship with God was nothing compared to its eschatological fulfillment.

The early Christian consensus was that God accepted gentiles who committed their allegiance to Jesus; most Jewish followers of Jesus likely saw them as God-fearers who would share the world to come, but not as members of God’s people descended from Abraham. Where Paul was radical was in not requiring them to become proselytes by physical circumcision, or, to put it somewhat differently, in welcoming gentiles who received the Spirit as proselytes without requiring circumcision. Paul did, however, preserve the less painful step of baptism, a common Jewish practice for gentile converts also used by John the Baptist and from the beginning of the Christian movement (cf. John 4:1–2; Matt. 28:19; Acts 2:41). Paul also never discouraged Jews from observing their ancestral sign of the covenant (Acts 16:3; 21:21; Gal. 5:6; 6:15; esp. 1 Cor. 7:18–19).

Circumcision posed a deterrent to conversion for many gentiles. As Martinus de Boer notes, it was “no small step for an adult man especially in antiquity (no anesthesia, the high risk of infection, social derision).” Gentiles often ridiculed circumcision, subjecting converts to shame, perhaps especially from family and other close associates.

From the Jewish side, most Jews we know of welcomed proselytes; many insisted that proselytes should be treated well, for they had good standing before God. How great a measure of status could be attributed to proselytes may be seen in the common identification of Abraham as a model proselyte, or the tradition that Shemayah and Abtalion were descendants of proselytes. Proselytes could become disciples of the sages.

Nevertheless, not all approaches were positive. Proselytes still experienced diminished status; even the later rabbis restricted first-generation proselytes’ marriage prospects in Israel, although proselytes were now also too Jewish to marry pagans. They might be more quickly be accused of sin. Some Tannaim even forbade proselytes to call Abraham their father. Most importantly here, even full proselytes may have experienced less welcome among increasingly nationalistic circles in Judea.

Some church fathers readily exploited Philo’s symbolic associations for circumcision. Later, Epiphanius regards physical circumcision as important in its own era, but he deems Christ as believers’ circumcision in the present era. Following a different approach, Theodoret of Cyrrhus distinguishes between universal, natural law such as appears in many of the Ten Commandments (except the Sabbath), and ritual laws such as circumcision, which were limited to Israel. For further discussion of patristic approaches to the law, see comment on “works of the law” at Gal. 2:16.

5:3

3Indeed, I testify again to every man who allows himself to be circumcised that he is obligated to observe the entire law.

Paul’s testify (cf. Gal. 4:15; Rom. 10:2; 2 Cor. 8:3; 1 Thess. 2:12) probably suggests a solemn affirmation of what he knows firsthand; again probably recalls Gal. 5:2. If one was going to keep the law, one should go all the way; Paul knew better than most others what that lifestyle would look like (Gal. 1:14; Phil. 3:5).

Literally, to observe the entire law is “to do the entire law,” evoking the wording of Paul’s biblical argument about doing all the things written in the book of the law in 3:10 (cf. also 3:12). In light of these connections, every man in 5:3 probably also evokes “everyone” in 3:10. Paul’s phrase “do all the words of Torah” is common in Deuteronomy, and these passages appear to deal with the Torah “in its entirety.”

Some contend that in both 3:10 and 5:3 Paul is not claiming that it is impossible to observe all the law, but rather pointing out that his opponents are urging only partial observance. While partial observance was often a step toward proselytism, however, circumcision meant full conversion and obligated one to the same stipulations demanded of those genetically born into Israel.

This rigor probably particularly characterized the Shammaites, the leading Pharisaic school in this period, who probably influenced Paul’s rivals (cf. Acts 15:5). As noted above, some Jews felt that honoring God’s commandments overall was more important than circumcision, though this may have conferred only the status of God-fearer; but a Galilean “skillful in the law”—language sometimes associated by Josephus with Pharisees—insisted that circumcision was necessary for conversion. But even the later sages, who followed the school of Hillel, declared that “if a heathen is prepared to accept the Torah except one religious law, we must not receive him [as an Israelite].”

Some early Christians also followed Paul’s argument; “The law of Moses was not unjust. Rather, it was difficult and able to justify only those who had followed the entire law perfectly.” Chrysostom suggests here that any commandment entails others in a direct way; one could not observe circumcision properly without sacrifice, sacrifice without required forms, and the like. Even, however, if it was possible for someone raised with the commandments to keep them all (a matter at which Paul denied his rivals’ success, 6:13), it would be very difficult for gentiles, who would be learning this entire way of life from the beginning.

Obligated (also NIV; ESV) reflects a Greek term that can mean “debtor” (KJV; ASV; WEB) or one under moral obligation (NASB). Obligation was a major Greco-Roman social concept, conspicuous in the need for reciprocity. Jews also spoke of obligations to God. Paul elsewhere refers to the law, when approached by human works, as a matter of debt (Rom. 4:4), whereas our only debt should be the love that fulfills the law (13:8). As a physical sign of the covenant agreement, circumcision obligated obedience; it may have warned that one who did not observe the covenant would be cut off.

But whereas full proselytes had to obey all the law’s stipulations (5:3), Paul declares that the full righteousness to which the law points (“the whole law”) can be fulfilled (or at least summarized) simply by consistent love (5:14; see comment there).

Jewish tradition links the commandments in a simpler way. For example, one should be as “careful concerning a light commandment as with a heavy one, since you do not know how God will assign reward.” Speaking hyperbolically, rabbis ruled that to keep a single commandment is to keep one’s life, but to neglect it is to neglect one’s life. Breaking a single command denies God. These teachers were not implying that they never broke any commandments; their point instead was that whoever cast off any commandment or principle of the law was discarding the authority of the law as a whole. Likewise, accepting some commandments implied recognizing the validity of them all.

False advertising was unethical, so proselytes should know what they were getting into: they were obligated to observe every commandment. Perhaps some of Paul’s rivals even insisted on oral traditions by which the Pharisees in particular explained and expanded the law for their people. Nor would Diaspora Jews overlook biblical commandments. “To transgress the law in matters either small or great is of equal seriousness,” 4 Maccabees warns, “for in either case the law is equally despised” (4 Macc. 5:20–21 NRSV). This way of putting the matter comported with the widely known Stoic doctrine to roughly the same effect: all wrong acts are equally wrong.

5:4

4You who seek to be righted by the law have been cut off from Christ; you’ve fallen away from God’s abundant generosity.

Paul has already warned against seeking to be justified by works of the law (2:16; 3:11). Now he warns that if the Galatians pursue this course, they will be cut off from Christ and will have fallen away from grace. Cut off (καταργέω, katargeō) is the language of annulling something (as in 3:17) or rendering it ineffective (as in 5:11). It follows naturally from the idea of Christ no longer being of benefit to them (5:2).

“Falling” or “stumbling” can designate apostasy (Rom. 11:11, 22; 14:4, 13; 1 Cor. 8:9, 13; 10:12); the cross may be a cause of stumbling for the Galatians as for others (1 Cor. 1:23; Gal. 5:11). Paul employs the verb καταργέω (katargeō, “cut off”) followed by the preposition ἀπό (apo, “from”) in only one other passage, where in Christ believers are freed from the law’s rule (Rom. 7:2, 6). Here, as Douglas Moo notes, “the Galatians are flirting with the possibility of reversing this situation.”

Paul is ready to use shocking language here, but as in Gal. 4:19 or 2 Cor. 5:20; 6:1–2, his depiction of his readers as unconverted is probably hyperbole. They have not yet taken the step of circumcision (Gal. 5:2), and he has continued to address them as siblings (e.g., 1:11; 3:15; 5:13). Thus Paul may use the aorist of katargeō here in what traditional grammarians call the gnomic sense, or he may simply employ the image of completed apostasy as part of the verse’s rhetoric.

But it would seem special pleading to take Paul’s warnings of apostasy as something less than a real possibility. Paul elsewhere warns gentile believers that if they fall from faith, they too will be cut off as were Jewish people who failed to believe (Rom. 11:22; cf. 8:13). Paul disciplines himself in order to avoid being disqualified (ἀδόκιμος, adokimos, 1 Cor. 9:27), going on to warn the Corinthians that despite their spiritual resources, they could be struck down as were many Israelites in the wilderness (10:1–11); they must stand and avoid falling (10:12). They must examine themselves to make sure that they remain in the faith and are not disqualified (ἀδόκιμος, 2 Cor. 13:5–6). Had persecution moved the Thessalonians to abandon faith in Christ, Paul’s labor among them would have been in vain (1 Thess. 3:5). Colossian believers would be presented blameless before God, provided they continued in the faith (Col. 1:23). Paul’s concern was their ultimate salvation; he does not address the question of some individuals falling away yet later returning, since the conditions that facilitated their falling to begin with usually precluded their interest in returning. Gentile sources do reveal that many who had become Christians reconverted back to paganism afterward.

Already in Scripture, if the righteous turn to the way of sin, their righteousness will be forgotten (Ezek. 18:24, 26; 33:12–13, 18), but if the wicked turn to righteousness, they will live (33:14–16, 19). Jewish people lamented apostasy, with some Jewish sects believing that even members of other Jewish sects had abandoned righteousness. Some expected apostasy as one of the tragic signs of the end time as under previous persecutions. Early Judaism divided regarding whether apostates could be forgiven if they repented. Paul probably also envisioned the prophesied end-time apostasy (Mark 13:12–13; Matt. 24:12) as already occurring in his day (cf. 2 Thess. 2:3). Subsequent centuries of Christian thought also required perseverance in the faith.

Corinthians’ sexual sin contradicted Christian faith (1 Cor. 6:9–20), but Galatians were in danger of abandoning faith in Christ no less by adding to (and thus subtracting from) the faith. Like baptism, circumcision functioned as a demarcation, a rite of passage into a given community (in this case, of ethnicity; in the case of Christian baptism, of faith). By going under the law as if their baptism was inadequate, they would essentially deny the efficacy of their baptism. Paul certainly did not teach the popular doctrine today of “once saved, always saved”; a convert does not regularly move in and out of the saved community, but a convert who deconverts is again a nonbeliever.

5:5

5For it is through the Spirit, on the basis of faith, that we anticipate the hope of righteousness.

Rather than finding their justification in the law (5:4), the Galatians can expect it successfully only through the Spirit, by faith—in other words, in the way Paul already explained in 3:1–5:1. Some construe Paul’s “we” here with reference only to Jewish believers, but it applies to all who have the Spirit (including the Galatian believers, 3:2). The Spirit is the foretaste of the coming world (Rom. 8:23; 1 Cor. 2:9–10; 2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5). In the present, faith working through love (Gal. 5:6) may be a foretaste of the new creation (compare 5:6 with 6:15).

The question of the meaning of faith arises again in this verse. Some scholars skillfully argue that it refers to Christ’s faithfulness (a subjective genitive); others, that it refers to believers’ faith (an objective genitive). Since Paul is calling for perseverance (5:1–4), and the faith working through love for which he calls (5:6) is presumably believers’ love (5:13–14), believers’ faith is likelier here. Ultimately, what is decisive in the matter is how we construe saving faith earlier in the letter (1:23; 2:16, 20; 3:2, 5–8, 11–12, 14, 22–26), which in my opinion again supports believers’ faith here (see especially discussion at 2:16). For Paul, this means depending on Jesus.

Scholars also debate the meaning of righteousness or “justification” (the same Greek term, δικαιοσύνη, dikaiosunē) here, especially its relationship to hope. Clearly, Paul associates the term here with the Spirit and faith rather than with the law (see 5:4). But does the hope of righteousness mean “the hope guaranteed by righteousness/justification”—that is, we have secure hope because we have been righted with and in God? Or does the hope of righteousness mean “the hope that is righteousness”—that is, the verdict of justification at the final judgment? Final justification was the mainstream Judean hope, as was eschatological deliverance from evil and sin; but Paul nowhere in Galatians uses the noun dikaiosunē with a future verb or the cognate verb (δικαιόω, dikaioō) in the future tense except in a quotation that retains the future tense from the LXX. Nevertheless, in light of the entirety of Galatians, it appears that Paul was content to leave the grammar open to both readings, possibly in this case simply because he envisioned both together. Such righteousness/justification is “already but not yet”; the present foretaste nurtures our expectation for the consummation.

Hope here includes many conventional Jewish eschatological expectations that Paul elsewhere shares. But the English word “hope” does not fully communicate Paul’s thought, since it might convey merely a wish; Paul’s expressions of hope are secured in present reality, so the term “expectation” or “expectancy” better conveys the idea in English. God’s love in our hearts by the Spirit guarantees this hope (Rom. 5:5; cf. 15:13; Col. 1:27), and Scripture’s encouragement nourishes that hope (Rom. 15:4). The Spirit enables us to anticipate, or “eagerly wait for” (NRSV), this certain hope, just as, in other letters, we await Jesus’s return and the resurrection of our bodies (Rom. 8:23; 1 Cor. 1:7; Phil. 3:20). As suggested above, this is not the only text in which present experience of the Spirit demonstrates that the future expectation is also certain, provided we remain in Christ (e.g., Gal. 4:6–7; 6:8; 1 Cor. 2:9–10; 2 Cor. 5:1, 5).

5:6

6For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts as anything. Instead, what counts is faith expressing itself through love.

After Paul’s polemic against the Galatians embracing the law and especially his harsh words against circumcision in 5:2–4, we come to Paul’s more nuanced approach to circumcision—that is, what he thought when circumcision was not being used to challenge the sufficiency of Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 7:19). Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts as anything (Gal. 5:6), a thesis that he repeats in 6:15, almost at the letter’s end. What counts is only faith expressing itself through love, the equivalent in 6:15 of “a new creation.” If for Paul the promised new creation has begun to dawn, then gentiles are welcomed fully as gentiles.

Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision matters with respect to status in God’s family and with regard to eternal fellowship with the Lord; it does not mean that our various cultures are meaningless. Paul’s concern about circumcision was only about it being imposed on gentiles as a spiritual demand. Paul was not opposed to Jewish people circumcising their children, a nuance that was lost on some critics in his own day (Acts 21:21) as well as afterward. Instead, in the new creation, the old outward sign became a matter of indifference, just as complexion or nose shape would be in the choosing of athletes. Paul’s sayings about indifferents such as circumcision (Gal. 5:6; 6:15; 1 Cor. 7:19) are similar to Stoic adiaphora—that is, matters that are neither good nor bad inherently, but that may be used for good or bad depending on the situation.

Augustine thus judges that Paul was indifferent to circumcision, which “is no impediment to the one who does not believe that his salvation lies in it.” Even Luther, who in his later years spewed some inexcusably harsh anti-Semitic discourse, recognized that it was fine for Jewish believers in Jesus to maintain rituals, including circumcision, as part of their culture and heritage. Other Reformers agreed that the issue was not circumcision but rather its abuse.

One could read the term translated as working in 5:6 (ἐνεργέω, energeō) as “being activated” (if it is understood as in the passive voice) or “expressing itself” (if it is understood as in the middle voice). Patristic and medieval commentators often understood the phrase to promote faith activated by God’s love. Following the Latin rendering fides charitate formata (“faith formed by love”), some regarded faith as insufficient until completed with loving works. The strong majority of modern commentators, by contrast, read the voice as middle.

Although either reading is grammatically possible, the context decisively favors the middle-voice reading: faith expressing itself in love. Paul has spoken about faith throughout the letter so far; now, in this ethical section, he will show that genuine faith expresses itself in love (5:14, 22). The context thus indicates that we should translate the phrase here as faith expressing itself through love. Paul calls not for works of the law based on its stipulations (2:16), but rather for works that manifest dependence on Christ’s inward work and that fulfill the law’s heart by expressing love (5:14). Genuine faith, for Paul no less than for James (James 2:14–26), demonstrates itself in action (Rom. 1:5; 15:18; 16:26; Phil. 2:12–13; 1 Thess. 1:3). Thus no less a Reformer than Calvin noted, “It is not our doctrine that the faith which justifies is alone; we maintain that it is invariably accompanied by good works; only we contend that faith alone is sufficient for justification.”

The Galatians would not have heard Paul’s term for love (ἀγάπη, agapē) frequently in secular Greek, but it appears nineteen times in the LXX, most frequently for marital or other sexual love, but also for divine love and love for wisdom. It becomes commonplace especially in early Christianity. Unlike this noun, however, the cognate verb (ἀγαπάω, agapaō) was quite common (cf. Gal. 2:20; 5:14). It was not in any way restricted to Christians (Matt. 5:46 // Luke 6:32), so there is no reason to suppose that the Galatians would have any reason to misunderstand Paul. (For further discussion on love ethics, see comment on Gal. 5:14; on God’s love, see comment on 2:20.)

Beware of Your Deceivers (5:7–12)

5:7

7You’d been running well. Who cut you off so you would not be persuaded to obey the truth?

Paul earlier showed that he himself had not run his race in vain (2:2), but now the Galatians were at risk of falling (5:4) instead of running well (5:7). (On Paul’s athletic metaphors, see comment on 2:2.) Paul laments that though the Galatians were previously running well, someone had now cut them off. The term translated as cut off here (ἐγκόπτω, enkoptō) typically means to “slow progress” or “hinder,” but etymologically is “cut in” (ἐν + κόπτω, en + koptō).

In the context of running, obviously one could slow someone down by cutting in front of them, an action that most commentators infer here. Such an action could trip or break the stride of a fellow competitor, an action that violated the rules of Greek races. Commentators less frequently note a concomitant image: if cutting in front of the Galatians risks tripping them, it might cause them to stumble—risking their apostasy (note the term translated as fallen in 5:4 and comment there).

Most commentators also note Paul’s wordplay here. The Greek term ἐγκόπτω (“cut in”) may play on circumcision as a “cutting” of the flesh. Etymologically, the Greek term for “circumcise” (περιτέμνω, peritemnō) means “to cut around.” Although the LXX obscures the wordplay, the Hebrew text of Gen. 17:14 also may play on refusal of circumcision and being “cut off”; in Exod. 4:25 Moses’s wife “cuts [using the term περιτέμνω] the foreskin” of their son in order to preserve Moses’s life. Even without knowledge of Hebrew, however, Galatians would understand that circumcision necessarily involved cutting.

After this mention of cutting, Paul applies the cognate verb ἀποκόπτω (apokoptō) for an even more gruesome “cutting” in Gal. 5:12. So Paul hopes that those wanting to “cut around” the Galatians’ foreskins, who “cut in” to make them stumble, will instead “cut themselves off” in a manner discussed in 5:12. Ancient writers often displayed their rhetorical skill or even made arguments based on wordplays (see comment on 3:15).

Some commentators suggest that the one who hindered them here is Satan, since he is subject of the same verb (ἐγκόπτω [enkoptō]) in 1 Thess. 2:18. Paul clearly does believe in the existence and activity of Satan, and so presumably did the Galatians, but Satan is not mentioned explicitly anywhere in Galatians. One reference in a Pauline letter presumably unavailable to the Galatians seems insufficient reason to believe that they would make that connection here (after all, Paul does not use the Greek verb exclusively with this subject; see Rom. 15:22; cf. 1 Cor. 9:12). The hinderer is presumably the one who is unsettling you in Gal. 5:10, who becomes plural in 5:12.

5:8

8This contrary persuasion is not from the one who calls you.

In addition to the wordplay about “cutting,” Paul may include another in 5:7–8. Obey in 5:7 translates the Greek verb πείθω (peithō), which also means “persuade.” A cognate noun, πεισμονή (peismonē, “persuasion”), appears in 5:8, with the verb again in 5:10. Whoever has hindered the Galatians from their persuaded obedience to the truth, this new persuasion is not from the one who called them; but Paul himself is persuaded that whoever is confusing them will be judged by the one who called them. “The truth” in 5:7 is the truth mentioned earlier in Galatians—the “truth of the gospel” (2:5, 14).

In 5:8, Paul warns that whoever it was who caused their current disobedience to the truth, it was not the one who calls them. God called them in grace (1:6) and for freedom (5:13). Although God called them before, he is calling them again (probably implied by Paul’s use of the present tense, in contrast to 1:6; 5:13).

5:9

9It takes only a little yeast to leaven the entire batch of dough.

Leaven, or yeast, is a fermenting agent that makes dough rise; unless one wanted to start from scratch each time one baked bread, it was necessary to retain some dough from a previous batch for a new batch. Yeast, though small in itself, can spread throughout the dough and thus affect the entire loaf. The entire batch of dough thus refers to the Galatian congregations. The leaven’s corrupting influence has not yet finished its work, but if left unchecked it can destroy their faith in the gospel.

Many scholars suggest that Paul was using a common proverb in 5:9, because he quotes the same saying in 1 Cor. 5:6 and appeals to the Corinthians’ knowledge of the principle. The proverb would be something like our proverb in English today, “One bad apple spoils the bunch.” The suggestion that Paul presses into service a widespread proverb is plausible, but it is likelier that it was specifically an early Christian proverb, or simply an illustration that Paul commonly used and had probably also used when first teaching Corinthian believers in person. Although the idea was certainly well known, the proverb itself remains currently unattested in pre-Christian sources so at most was fairly rare and at least was not actually a pre-Christian proverb.

Other writers used leaven in various figurative ways, and commentators cite examples of the image being used negatively. Because leaven can spread, it provides a useful metaphor for corruption. The context of the similar use in 1 Corinthians might shed light on Paul’s thinking here. For reasons that are disputed, Corinthian Christians are proud of a member who is in a biblically proscribed incestuous relationship with his stepmother. Paul warns them that a little yeast will pervade all the dough (1 Cor. 5:6); they need to remove the old yeast so that they can be like the unleavened bread at the passover festival (5:7–8). In context, the removal specifically and explicitly involves the excommunication of the incestuous man (5:3–5, 13).

Whether or not Paul specifies excommunication here, the idea would not necessarily be foreign to his audience, and would certainly be familiar to Paul’s rivals. Paul did not originate excommunication. Early rabbinic sources did not get the idea from Paul, and use of exclusion as a community discipline predates them both. Like the Qumran community and later rabbinic courts, Paul presumably believed in various levels of exclusion (2 Thess. 3:14–15). For an offense as serious as voluntary incest, however—a capital offense in the OT—Paul requires full banishment from the church community, a “handing over to Satan” (1 Cor. 5:5; cf. 1 Tim. 1:20; Matt. 18:15–22). Paul’s rivals in Galatia are probably not members of the Galatian congregations per se, but either way their influence must be expunged.

The saying’s meaning is “small causes, big results.” But what does the advice mean in the Galatians’ setting? By a little yeast, Paul might mean what seems to be just a small divergence from the gospel that he gave them. In view of similar language in 1 Cor. 5:6–7, however, Paul probably refers here to the cancerous influence of the relatively small number of persons who have diverted them from obeying the truth (5:7). If the Galatians heed Paul’s warning, they should “drive out the slave and her child” (4:30); that is, they should stop welcoming these purveyors of a false gospel.

5:10

10I’m persuaded about you in the Lord that you won’t think differently from what I’m saying. But whoever it is who is unsettling you will bear his judgment.

As noted at 5:7, Paul’s use of persuaded here (using the verb πείθω, peithō) plays on wording he has used in 5:7–8. Expressions of confidence were common and were often meant to inspire compliance with an implicit request. Confidence in others’ perseverance (e.g., Heb. 6:9) could be grounded in believers’ faithfulness so far (Phil. 1:6–7). Paul’s basis for confidence that they will agree is “in the Lord,” a phrase that appears forty-six times in the Pauline corpus in this exact form. Paul uses the expression “persuaded in the Lord” elsewhere as well (Rom. 14:14; Phil. 2:24; 2 Thess. 3:4; cf. Phil. 1:14); comparing these texts suggests that it usually reflects Paul’s prayerful trust that the Lord will bring the favorable outcome.

Because the subject in whoever it is who is unsettling you is singular in form in Greek, some scholars think that Paul here focuses on the presumed “ringleader” among his rivals. Probably, however, Paul simply continues speaking generically as he did in the question in 5:7. He refers to the same ones who are unsettling you in 1:7, the only other use of the verb in Paul’s extant letters. Paul is confident that they will bear their judgment; the term that Paul here uses for judgment (κρίμα, krima) is one that he often uses for divine judgment (1 Cor. 11:29–34), sometimes judgment meriting destruction (Rom. 2:2–5; 3:8; 5:16).

5:11

11Brothers and sisters, if I myself am still proclaiming circumcision, then why am I still being persecuted? If that’s the case, then the offensiveness, the obstacle-character, of the cross has been nullified!

In 5:11, Paul might simply speak hypothetically, implying only that preachers of circumcision preach it to avoid persecution. Most scholars, however, think that Paul seems to answer the charge that he himself is still proclaiming circumcision. That Paul does not explain the charge suggests that the Galatians were already aware of it. The charge seems to imply two components: first, that he used to preach circumcision, which Paul does not appear to dispute; and second, that he is still doing so. Since he obviously had not preached it in Galatia, perhaps he is being accused of watering down his gospel for them in order to make their conversion simpler yet incomplete, or of hypocrisy (cf. 2:13) or at least inconsistency (cf. 1 Cor. 9:19–23), making him a people-pleaser (Gal. 1:10).

When had Paul preached circumcision in the past? Many scholars argue that he insisted on circumcising gentiles before his conversion, when he was a zealot for the traditions (Gal. 1:13–14). This might suggest that he originally held the strictest albeit perhaps minority Jewish view: gentiles needed full conversion in order to qualify for eternal life. Paul would have been like Eleazar in Josephus’s account of Izates’s conversion, insisting on the necessity of circumcision.

Others contend that Paul’s past preaching of circumcision was in his first ministry to gentiles after his conversion, since we know of no direct ministry to gentiles before his conversion. This is not impossible, nor is it incompatible with a preconversion preaching of circumcision. Granted, Paul may have (and I think he likely did, before his conversion) advocated circumcision for gentiles without advocating it to them; regardless of the audience of his preaching, however, the main point of this approach is that Paul need not have changed all his views overnight. Did Paul’s christological conversion instantly change his outlook on gentile circumcision? Perhaps the gradual acceptance of this approach in Antioch, where perhaps no hard line was drawn between proselytes and God-fearers, influenced him. If we must choose, however, on the whole we have more evidence for his preconversion stance than for his preaching circumcision after his conversion.

Since Paul is accused of “still” proclaiming circumcision, when would he have “proclaimed circumcision” after his conversion more recently? Paul obviously had no problem allowing Jews to circumcise their children. Also, as many commentators note, Luke, whom I take to be a sometime companion of Paul, offers a report (from apparently shortly before Luke joined Paul; cf. Acts 16:10) of Paul circumcising Timothy, someone who was (partly) Jewish (16:3). Assuming the South Galatian view and the reliability of Luke’s report, the Galatians themselves would know that Paul had circumcised Timothy, since the incident occurred with one of their own and in their own region (16:1–3). Luke uses this account to qualify Paul’s opposition to circumcision being imposed on gentile converts in the preceding chapter (Acts 15:1–2); Timothy’s circumcision is done specifically for the sake of mission. Such a nuance, however, could easily be lost on Paul’s detractors.

Paul is persecuted, however, because, whenever he may have demanded gentile circumcision in the past, he no longer preaches it for gentiles. For Paul, this persecution is intimately related to the offensiveness, the obstacle-character, of the cross. Indeed, the claim that Christ’s execution on the charge of treason is the means of salvation would have been offensive generally, and not only because in Paul’s view it obviated the need for circumcision. But ignoring gentile converts’ circumcision relates to the cross because Paul regards the cross as absolutely sufficient to provide entrance to the covenant.

In Greek the term for “offense” here is σκάνδαλον (skandalon), which can imply a stumbling stone, a stone over which people trip. It is offensive not in a mild sense such as someone’s breath after consuming tuna or garlic, but rather in the much more serious sense of an obstacle or stumbling block for faith. This terminology continues the likely image of falling in 5:4 and being tripped in 5:7. Those who demanded additional means of salvation treated Christ’s sacrifice on the “mere” or horrifying cross as a tripping stone. Paul’s detractors felt that he was compromising the demands of the covenant; he, conversely, felt that they were compromising the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrificial death. Paul may also imply a contrast here between the wounds of Jesus (cf. 6:17) and the flesh wound of circumcision.

We cannot be sure that Paul himself coined the phrase “offensiveness of the cross,” but he clearly used it on other occasions (1 Cor. 1:23). The offensiveness—that is, the stumbling stone—may go back to Jesus’s identification of himself as a rejected stone, using Ps. 118:22–23 (Mark 12:10–11), which he or some of his early followers linked with the stumbling stone in Isa. 8:14–15 (Matt. 21:42–44, probably including also Dan. 2:34). One of the “stone” texts, Isa. 8:14–15, is used by both Paul (Rom. 9:33, where it is combined with Isa. 28:16) and 1 Pet. 2:8 in almost identical wording. Paul inherited the recognition that people would stumble over Christ (cf. also Mark 4:17; 6:3; 9:42–47; 14:27; Matt. 18:7 // Luke 17:1; esp. Matt. 11:6 // Luke 7:23); he understood that this stumbling applied most directly to Jesus’s execution by Rome, his being hanged on a cursed tree.

The cross’s nature as an offensive stumbling block or obstacle shows why its proclaimers could be persecuted (Gal. 5:11). Paul’s commitment to face persecution rather than preach circumcision suggests that his rivals were preaching circumcision to avoid persecution (a thesis consistent with 6:12). Who were the persecutors? There could be pressures on the rivals from local Jewish communities, people who had earlier rejected Paul (Acts 13:45, 50; 14:2, 4, 19). Some scholars also suggest concerns that only those who were identifiably Jewish would be exempt from the imperial cult. But such an exemption may not have mattered very much in many cities. The imperial cult was popular, and Roman authorities did not hunt down absentees to persecute (although civic authorities could well respond to neighbors’ complaints, if local opposition noted above continued). More likely, Paul’s rivals were from Judea (cf. Gal. 4:25–26) and were responding to pressures there (although pressures there and regional pressures are not mutually exclusive or even completely unrelated options).

As noted in the introduction, nationalism was on the rise in Judea in the 40s and 50s of the first century, probably generating an increase of nationalism among Jesus’s Judean followers as well (cf. Acts 21:20–21). When less nationalist Jewish believers welcomed gentiles without circumcision, they appeared to water down a heritage for which Jews had suffered and died. Jews had also vigorously defended the exemptions from military service and for Sabbath celebrations granted them by various authorities; an influx of uncircumcised gentiles could make Rome suspect that others were now exploiting these privileges.

The history of Christian missions provides subsequent analogies where the sending churches imposed their cultures’ values on their mission fields, with some missionaries more concerned about pressures back home than about the needs of their converts. Like some of his subsequent followers in mission, Paul provides a different, more culturally sensitive model for mission.

5:12

12I wish that those who are disturbing you would even lop off their private parts!

Paul’s anger-arousing pathos hits a vituperative climax in 5:12. His rivals now do not merely unsettle the Galatians (1:7; 5:10), but also are disturbing (ἀναστατόω, anastatoō) them. The Greek term here was used in political denunciations of those stirring unrest; in the Roman Empire this offense was a capital charge. Gentiles sometimes leveled this charge against Jews, including Paul. Although Paul does not use the term politically, its dramatic associations in publicly recognized political contexts underscore how seriously he takes his rivals’ interference.

Paul wishes that such troublemakers would even lop off their private parts (5:12), thus making themselves unfit for the community of God’s people (Deut. 23:1 [MT/LXX 23:2]) just as they claimed the uncircumcised were. In Greek, Paul merely wishes that they would “cut themselves off” (ἀποκόπτω [apokoptō]), but the meaning of the euphemism is transparent enough, as most modern translations make clear. As Chrysostom put it, “If they will, let them be not only circumcised but emasculated.”

Ancient Latin commentators rendered Paul’s sense delicately and ambiguously; “cutting themselves off” might simply refer to them removing themselves from Paul’s churches. But ancient Greek commentators, who knew firsthand the language in which Paul wrote, consistently agreed with Chrysostom’s understanding here, as do most modern commentators.

Some pagans associated circumcision with castration, an association that Paul might expect his hearers to catch; the further widespread association of castration with the Galli (see discussion below) would seal Paul’s warning that by accepting circumcision they would be returning to the form of ritual religion that they had followed before (Gal. 4:8–10).

A CLOSER LOOK: CASTRATION AND EUNUCHS

Various reports about removal of male organs circulated in antiquity. Ancients castrated some animals in order to make them grow heavier and gentler, but also at times they did this with boys and some men. In earlier times rulers could use castration to punish particular sexual crimes. Some wealthy men also castrated young male slaves in order to prevent their maturation and retain their sexual service as long as possible. Dealers catered to this segment of the slave market, but not only philosophers but even some emperors reacted against this exploitation.

Rulers often had eunuch servants, especially outside the Roman Empire; eunuch status was particularly important for those who might be in contact with the royal harem. Persia had long used eunuchs, and those sent to Persia as captives or tribute were sometimes made eunuchs.

Despite some eunuchs being courtiers and officials, castration or being a eunuch carried a severe stigma, and one who was castrated would want vengeance if possible. Some men considered castration worse than death, because it supposedly deprived one of manhood. (Eunuchs might lack beards and have shriller voices.) Calling a man a “eunuch” insulted his masculinity. Most men did not regard eunuchs as male (or, less importantly by their standards, as female), ridiculed them for effeminacy, and ridiculed as eunuchs those who lacked some male traits. Nevertheless, some wondered whether eunuchs might still have sexual desire. Christians in subsequent centuries barred from ministry those who castrated themselves, but explicitly distinguished this condition from those who were castrated for medical reasons or against their will.

Paul addresses here not simply castration, but self-castration, an act that most viewed as senseless and that Jews deemed wicked. Most scholars think that Paul’s allusion to castration plays on an image that would resonate particularly well in Galatia: the Galli. (For specifically Phrygian-Galatian connections for the mother goddess, see discussion at Gal. 4:8–10.) The Galli, who were known for begging, reportedly were named after the river Gallus because of their rites there.

In the common myth about Cybele, Attis, a boy she loved, castrated himself; Cybele mourned for him. During her seasonal rites, her worshipers joined the mourning and her lower-level priests followed Attis’s example. Inspired by wild music, they would enter a mad frenzy and would castrate themselves in honor of the Anatolian mother goddess Cybele. This was not the only rite of the mother goddess, but it was the one that easily generated the most interest. G. Walter Hansen suggests that in Gal. 5:12 Paul may have in mind “a barbaric ritual that actually took place in his day in Galatian pagan temples. The priests of Cybele, the mother goddess of the earth, castrated themselves with ritual pincers and placed their testicles in a box.” Not everyone approved. When Romans adopted the cult of Cybele, they refused to use a eunuch as priest.

People regularly ridiculed the Galli, especially with regard to their self-castration. They were counted effeminate, a condition that most Mediterranean men viewed negatively (for men). Although other cultic settings also include some reports of castrations, the Galli were the most visible representatives of this activity.

Paul and his rivals may know that Jesus spoke hyperbolically of cutting off (the extant Greek version using the same verb, ἀποκόπτω [apokoptō]) any organ that causes its possessor to stumble (Mark 9:43, 45). This verb is not used in the LXX for cutting off a person from the community, but it is used for cutting off an organ (Deut. 25:12; Judg. 1:6–7; for cutting off clothes, see 2 Sam. 10:4). Paul (or, on some other views, the Paulinist) probably plays on this image figuratively in Col. 3:5. In the context of priests of Cybele, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus complains that cutting off (again, ἀποκόπτω, apokoptō) organs cannot cut off men’s sexual desires.

Many scholars rightly point out the ironic consequences of such self-mutilation. With one extra slice, Paul’s rivals would exclude themselves from the covenant people from which they excluded all uncircumcised persons! They would “cut themselves off” in more ways than one! The Hebrew text of Deut. 23:2 (ET 23:1) prohibits from entering God’s community those with crushed testicles and those whose male organ has been cut off. The LXX (23:2) prefers a euphemism for the latter: it prohibits those with crushed testicles and those who have been “cut off” (ἀποκόπτω, the same verb as in Gal. 5:12) from God’s ἐκκλησία (“community,” the NT term usually translated as “church”).

Jewish people took this matter very seriously; one who eunuched himself (Josephus calls them Galli) was counted as if he had murdered his own children. Rabbis warned that the piercing of a single testicle or cutting off the penis would exclude one from the congregation. Because castration resulted in exclusion from the covenant, later rabbis deemed it worse than death.

Paul is not explicit, but others sometimes alluded to the Galli implicitly to make their point. “When saying something offensive,” a person of status would often gain protection by using words that could possibly be construed less offensively. Insinuation was often a more effective way to communicate a point, especially if the point would seem crude if stated more explicitly: “I wish their knives would slip and they’d sever their own . . .” Orators and presumably other cultured people knew how to deploy euphemisms, including in sexually charged contexts. Compare here the later Stoic Epictetus: if you want to pluck out your hairs to look like a woman, against nature, “make a clean sweep of the whole matter; eradicate your—what shall I call it?—the cause of your hairiness; make yourself a woman all over, so as not to deceive us, not half-man and half-woman.”

The image might seem particularly striking to those gentiles who already associated circumcision with castration. Some envisioned castration as an appropriate punishment for those impinging on others’ sexuality; for example, one poet opines that whoever cut off the eunuch’s genitals ought to have the same done to him. Or a satirist comments to Cybele, “Castrate wretched paederasts: here, here is matter long since worthy of your knife!” Hans Dieter Betz thus not surprisingly suggests that “Paul is conforming here to the practice of diatribe preachers, when he salts his arguments with this joke.”

Persuaders did not object to using harshness or even crudeness when necessary. Eulogies decorated speech, but forensic speech deliberately left some sentences ending roughly. It was customary to slander one’s opponents in court or debate as viciously as possible; one could use the same tactic in essays. In public, one might resort to sarcasm rather than direct attack; sarcasm was appropriate here, toward the end of Paul’s invective against his opponents. Cicero emphasized that ridiculing opponents in a way that generated laughter gained the audience’s goodwill, as long as the humor rested on wit rather than buffoonery.

Paul has a similar wordplay in Phil. 3:2–3, where he calls advocates of physical gentile circumcision (περιτομή, peritomē, which sounds like “cutting around”) instead “the mutilation” (κατατομή, katatomē, which sounds like “cutting against”). Paul was hardly the only person in antiquity to make a wordplay regarding castration, and a wordplay is hardly surprising here. Advocates of cutting the Galatians’ organs have cut in on them (ἐγκόπτω, enkoptō, 5:7); Paul wishes they would instead cut themselves off (ἀποκόπτω, apokoptō, 5:12), mutilating themselves in a manner that would disqualify them as they have disqualified others.

Subsequent readers have evaluated differently the propriety of Paul’s remarks. Since Jesus urged followers to bless those who cursed them, Jerome regards Paul’s outburst here as a mark of human frailty. By contrast, Luther, himself a polemicist hardly averse to crude language, deems such language acceptable in defense of the gospel. We may wish to consider that this curse, although more crude, is actually less harsh than the implied pronouncement of eternal damnation in 5:10 or Paul’s explicit curse in 1:8–9. From Paul’s perspective, only such punishments can begin to match his opponents’ crime of damning others with their false gospel (1:7; 5:7).

. Betz, Galatians, 128; cf., e.g., Cicero, Quinct. 11.37–27.85.

. E.g., Xenophon, Anab. 5.8.4–5; Lysias, Or. 24.24–25, §170; Aeschines, Leg. 160; Cicero, Sest. 21.47; 52.1; Quintilian, Decl. 376.5; Dio Chrysostom, Or. 46.8–9; Lucian, Tyr. 10; Apuleius, Apol. 102; Libanius, Topics 1.10; in letters, Fronto, Amic. 2.7; M. Caes. 1.6.4.

. E.g., Musonius Rufus, Lect. 11, p. 80.22–25; 13B, p. 90.13–16; 15, p. 98.25–27; Dio Chrysostom, Or. 38.47; Herm. 1.7; refutation in, e.g., Epictetus, Diatr. 1.6.12; 1.19.2–6; Seneca Y., Lucil. 102.18. Cf. Socrates’s use of rhetorical questions, e.g., Plato, Apol. 27C; Xenophon, Mem. 2.9.8; Maximus of Tyre, Or. 10.8.

. Anderson, Rhetorical Theory, 162. A rapid series of questions was intended to leave opponents unable to reply (Anderson, Rhetorical Theory, 237).

. Anderson, Rhetorical Theory, 162. In Rom. 2:3–4, 21–23; 3:1–9 the questions address and/or stem from an imaginary interlocutor; in 1 Cor. 9:1–10 they follow a less intense style, though that letter includes rebukes as well.

. Aune, Environment, 208; Aune, Rhetoric, 128. On diatribe style, see, e.g., Kustas, “Diatribe”; Schenkeveld, “Philosophical Prose,” 230–47. This style appears also in some letters of the period, including Seneca’s and the various Cynic epistles (Aune, Environment, 168). In its more narrow sense, diatribe would dwell on a matter to reinforce it; see Hermogenes, Method 5.417–18.

. See, e.g., Stowers, Diatribe and Romans, 39–41, 69; Ulmer, “Advancement”; Backhaus, “Kohelet.”

. See, e.g., Stowers, Diatribe and Romans, 86–93, 122–33.

. Kennedy, Interpretation, 155; Stowers, “Diatribe,” 73; Anderson, Rhetorical Theory, 243; Malherbe, Moral Exhortation, 129. Many scholars trace it to the Cynic Teles in the third century BCE (see Goulet-Cazé, “Teles”); but contrast chap. 1 in Fuentes González, “Diatribas,” cited in Downing, Cynics, 28; now Fuentes González, Diatribes de Télès.

. Hermogenes, Method 10.425. Chrysostom (Hom. 1 Cor. 3.5, on 1 Cor. 1:13) opines that Paul employs such questions when he deems the opposing understanding “absurd.”

. With, e.g., Witherington, Grace, 246; Wright, Faithfulness, 972.

. De Boer, Galatians, 167.

. Cf. Hays, Faith, 197; cf. the similar appeal to the audience’s conversion experience in 1 Cor. 2:1–5 (Lull, Spirit in Galatia, 58). On the connection with Paul’s preaching, see Lull, Spirit in Galatia, 54–56.

. With, e.g., Wright, Justification, 94, 216; cf. the correct appeal of Hays, Faith, 233, to the underlying narrative of 3:1–4:11, though I remain unpersuaded regarding the “faithfulness of Jesus” (see comment at Gal. 2:16). The overarching importance of Abraham can be obscured in an outline such as that in Howard, Crisis in Galatia, 49.

. A speaker might hope to make hearers well disposed by praising their ancestors (Socratics, Ep. 28), but Paul’s canon and understanding of salvation history gave him greater reason for the appeal.

. With Trick (Descent, 6), who also notes Abraham’s role in Rom. 4, without a polemical situation.

. See, e.g., Rhet. Her. 4.15.22; Hermogenes, Inv. 4.3.179; Menander Rhetor, Treat. 2.16, 435.30; Usher, “Apostrophe”; Rowe, “Style,” 139; Aune, Rhetoric, 55–56; for examples, see Epictetus, Diatr. 1.2.33; 1.4.9; 1.9.16; 1.18.9; 1.19.26; 1.22.20; 1.25.27; 1.29.41; 2.1.23; 2.7.6; 2.16.41; 2.20.4, 7; 2.21.11; Marcus Aurelius, Medit. 5.36.1; Libanius, Declam. 36.22–23; Law 1.5; Philo, Moses 2.199; Spec. Laws 2.82; cf. Isa. 22:17 (but not in the LXX); Mic. 6:8. For the practice here in Gal. 3, see Porter, “Paul and Letters,” 581.

. See Josephus, Life 340.

. Rowe, “Style,” 148; cf. exclamatio (ἐκφώνησις [ekphōnēsis]) in Rowe, “Style,” 143. On the practice here, see Porter, “Paul and Letters,” 583.

. BDF §146.2; Moo, Galatians, 181; see similarly 2 Macc. 7:34; 4 Macc. 10:10; Mark 9:19; Luke 24:25; Acts 13:10; 18:14; Rom. 2:1, 3; James 2:20; 1 Clem. 23.4; Philo, Alleg. Interp. 2.46; Josephus, J.W. 6.124, 348.

. E.g., LXX Gen. 27:20; 1 Esd. 3:24; 4:2, 12, 32; 4 Macc. 7:10; Matt. 15:28; Acts 1:1; 27:21; 1 Tim. 6:11, 20; Josephus, Ant. 1.228, 252; 2.80, 84; Fronto, M. Caes. 2.3.1 (in Latin).

. Meeks, Urban Christians, 42–43.

. Pages 16–22.

. As Das (Galatians, 284n42) points out, “Whether ethnic (north) or provincial (south) Galatians, the adjective would still sting.” South Galatia had worked hard to overcome the stereotype, making it all the more painful (see Ramsay, Galatians, 322–23). On the stereotypes, see “Paul’s Audience in Galatia” in the introduction (pp. 13–16).

. See Haimo of Auxerre (ninth century) on Gal. 3:1 (Levy); Robert of Melun (mid-twelfth century) on Gal. 1:1 (Levy); Luther, Second Lectures on Galatians, on Gal. 3:1; Soards and Pursiful, Galatians, 120.

. Charges of foolishness appear in rebuke letters; see Hansen, Abraham, 42.

. As in, e.g., Epictetus, Diatr. 1.18.10; 2.16.13; 2.21.2; 2.22.4–5; 3.13.17; 3.22.85; Maximus of Tyre, Or. 38.5.

. Anderson, Rhetorical Theory, 161; though cf. exceptions in Rhet. Alex. 4, 1426b.33–35, and third-person denunciations in, e.g., Cicero, Phil. 2.12.29.

. Descriptively, Musonius Rufus, Lect. frg. 41, p. 136.24. Cf. Cynic boldness in Branham, “Humor.”

. E.g., Deut. 32:6; Ps. 94:8; Isa. 1:3–4; 42:18–19; Jer. 5:21.

. Longenecker, Galatians, 97.

. For “fool” as a title in rhetorical insults, see, e.g., Plutarch, Pleas. Life 2 (Mor. 1086EF); Martial, Epigr. 10.100.1; Marcus Aurelius, Medit. 5.36.1; Phaedrus, Fab. 3.15.2; Diogenes Laertius, Lives 10.1.7–8; Sipre Deut. 309.1.1; 309.2.1.

. Wolfgang Musculus, Comm. Gal., on Gal. 3:1 (Bray); cf. Johannes Brenz, Explanation of Galatians, on Gal. 3:1, on a teacher’s or parent’s responsibility.

. Cf. Still, “Fullness,” 248.

. With Longenecker, Galatians, 100; Oakes, Galatians, 102. In today’s English, Neil (Galatians, 47) suggests that Paul is remarking “wryly” that surely these false teachers “must have hypnotized you.”

. Dunn, Galatians, 152; deSilva, Readings, 149.

. Bligh, Galatians, 227.

. Sir. 14:6, 8; Ignatius, Rom. 3.1; Philo, Agriculture 112; Flaccus 143; Josephus, Ant. 10.250, 257; Life 425; Ag. Ap. 1.72; 2.285; Hermogenes, Inv. 1.1.95; perhaps Alciphron, Fish. 18 (Halictypus to Encymon), 1.15; cf. Matt. 6:23; the cognate βασκανία (baskania) in 4 Macc. 1:26; 2:15; Wis. 4:12; βάσκανος (baskanos) in LXX Prov. 23:6; 28:22; Sir. 14:3; 18:18; 37:11; Josephus, Ant. 1.260; 6.59; J.W. 1.208.

. P.Oxy. 292.11–12 (ca. 25 CE); Rev. ég. 1919 p. 204.3–4 (second century); Aelian, Nat. An. 11.18; Pliny E., Nat. 7.2.16–18; Aulus Gellius, Att. 9.4.8; Symmachus, Ep. 1.48; Aristaenetus, Erotic Letters 1.1, lines 40–41 (p. 4); Derrett, Audience, 123; Elliott, “Fear”; Pilch, “Eye”; Bryen and Wypustek, “Evil Eyes”; Malina and Pilch, Letters, 359–62; Dickie, “Evil Eye”; b. Ber. 20a; 55b; b. Sanh. 93a; Lev. Rab. 16:8; 17:3; Num. Rab. 12:4; Tg. Ps.-J. on Gen. 42:5; Kern-Ulmer, “Evil Eye”; probably 4Q560 f1.i.6. Elsewhere, e.g., Mbiti, Religions, 259; Papademetriou, “Exorcism,” 49–52 (with a prayer for exorcising the evil eye on 50–51).

. Cf. Barclay, Gift, 389n3.

. E.g., Lightfoot, Galatians, 133; Bligh, Galatians, 227; Elliott, “Evil Eye.” For extensive background, see now Elliott, Evil Eye.

. Chrysostom on Gal. 3:1, in Witherington, Grace, 201.

. Yamauchi, “Magic or Miracle?,” 138; Elliott, “Evil Eye.”

. Das, Galatians, 285.

. Witherington, Grace, 203.

. Eastman, “Evil Eye.” These verses, however, may simply involve envy (as in BDAG).

. Haimo of Auxerre (ninth century) on Gal. 3:1 (Levy); Robert Grosseteste (thirteenth century) on the evil eye in Gal. 3:1 (expressing uncertainty; Levy); Luther, Second Lectures on Galatians on Gal. 3:1 (Bray); Rudolf Gwalther, Serm. Gal., on Gal. 3:1 (Bray). Luther (Second Lectures on Galatians, on Gal. 3:1) contends that all believers are sometimes bewitched by the devil’s deceptive suggestions, though Christ triumphs.

. Jerome, Comm. Gal. 1.3.1 (Edwards); perhaps Bruno the Carthusian on Gal. 3:1 (late eleventh century; Levy); Soards and Pursiful, Galatians, 120. Appealing to the vastness of Rome’s armies, Josephus (Life 150) discounts rumors that the Romans used witchcraft against their enemies.

. Plato, Men. 80A; Dio Chrysostom, Or. 16.1; Porphyry, Marc. 33.509; Betz, Galatians, 131 (citing Plato, Phaed. 95B); de Boer, Galatians, 170.

. On Satan’s role as deceiver, cf. also John 8:44; Eph. 6:11; 2 Thess. 2:9; Rev. 12:9; 20:8; CD 4.15–16; T. Benj. 6:1; T. Dan 3:6; T. Levi 3:3; T. Jud. 25:3; T. Job 3:3/4; 3:6/5; 26:6/7; 27:1; probably 2 Cor. 11:3.

. See Hansen, Galatians, 79n.

. Neyrey, “Bewitched”; Dunn, Galatians, 151; Hansen, Galatians, 79n; Witherington, Grace, 202–3; Longenecker, “Formed”; Moo, Galatians, 181.

. E.g., PGM 1.88–89; and sources noted in 209n66; cf. 512nn283–84.

. E.g., m. Sanh. 7:11; and sources noted in the excursus below.

. Here I condense some of the discussion in Keener, Acts, 2:1500–1507.

. See Theissen, Miracle Stories, 239–42; Graf, Magic; Aune, “Magic”; Martin, Religions, 27–29; MacMullen, Enemies, 95–127; Yamauchi, “Magic in World”; Kippenberg, “Magic”; Frankfurter, Religion in Egypt, 198–237; Keener, Acts, 2:1500–1507. On problems with the terminology, see, e.g., Remus, Conflict, 52–62; Horsley, Jesus and Magic.

. See Kadetotad, “Practices,” 383–84; Shorter, Witchcraft, 99; Mbiti, Religions, 196, 200, 203–4, 221, 258, 275, 278, 328; Wyk, “Witchcraft,” 1202; Azenabor, “Witchcraft,” 30–31; McNaughton, Blacksmiths, 69; note confessions in Shoko, Religion, 46; Mayrargue, “Expansion,” 286; and other anthropological and related studies cited in Keener, Miracles, 2:803–7. In 2016, Cameroon’s president openly urged use of witchcraft to combat Boko Haram (widely reported, e.g., by the BBC and USA Today, though not clarifying his intent).

. Klauck, Context, 223–26; Harder, “Defixio,” 175; see, e.g., Jordan, “New Curse Tablets.” This is also true in some more recent forms of magic (cf. Mbiti, Religions, 276; Peters, Healing in Nepal, 61, 63; Lewis, “Possession,” 189, 214; traditions about sorcerers “sending” spirits in Shorter, Witchdoctor, 198).

. Faraone, “Spells.”

. Dickie, “Love-Magic”; cf. Lewis, Life, 96.

. See, e.g., PGM 13.304; 32.1–19; 36.69–133, 187–210, 291–311, 333–60; 62.1–24; 101.1–53; Pliny E., Nat. 27.35.57; 27.99.125; Philostratus, Her. 16.2; T. Reu. 4:9; Frankfurter, “Perils”; Jordan, “Erotic Spell”; cf. Theocritus, The Spell (in Edmonds, Greek Bucolic Poets, 26–39); the charm in Horsley, Documents 1, 33–34. In a novel, a witch might attract young men or other things once she had a piece of their hair (Apuleius, Metam. 3.16–18). In more recent societies, see, e.g., Tippett, Solomon Islands Christianity, 15.

. PGM 4.2211–16. Cf. comment in Rives, Religion, 171.

. Graf, “Death.” Apuleius had to defend himself against this charge (Apuleius, Apology; Bradley, “Apologia”).

. See some examples in Whittaker, Jews and Christians, 219–20 (along with “black magic”); Faraone, “Stopping Evil.” Cf. Jewish apotropaic use of Scripture in amulets and devices (Lincicum, “Apotropaism”).

. E.g., Dunand, Religion en Égypte, 114.

. See, e.g., PGM 1.88–89, 164–66, 179–85, 252–53; 2.52–54; 4.3043–44; Lucian, Men. 9; Alex. 13; cf. Aristaenetus, Erotic Letters 2.18, lines 10–11, 30; Klauck, Context, 228; Nilsson, Piety, 171; Smith, Magician, 97–99; Arnold, Power, 18. For modern shamans manipulating spirits, see, e.g., Shorter, Witchdoctor, 178.

. CD 12.2–3 (which compares those controlled by demons to necromancers; see also Gaster, Scriptures, 85); L.A.B. 34:2–3; b. Sanh. 67b.

. See Smith, “Occult in Josephus.” On Jewish magic, see, e.g., Schäfer, “Magic and Religion”; in PGM, see Betz, “Jewish Magic.” For Jewish magic from the late empire to the early medieval period, see Schäfer, “Magic Literature.”

. See, e.g., T. Jud. 11:3–5; Gen. Rab. 74:4.

. Lesses, “Speaking with Angels”; cf. Arnold, “Sceva,” 18–20.

. E.g., Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 1:241; Gager, Anti-Semitism, 107–10; on the prevalence of Jewish magic, see, e.g., Goodenough, Symbols, 12:58–63; Koester, Introduction, 1:380–81; Gaster, Studies, 1:356ff.; Arnold, “Sceva,” 10–19. For Jewish charms and amulets (or those exploiting Jewish elements), see Goodenough, Symbols, 2:153–295. Some Aramaic magic bowls echo curses from Deut. 27 (so British Museum 91767; Morgenstern, “Magic Bowl”). Signer (“Balance,” 112–13) notes that Jewish miracle-workers claimed to offer signs; “The very same deeds, when performed by non-Israelites, were considered magic or manifestations of idolatry.”

. Gager, Moses, 134–61 (esp. 161); Whittaker, Jews and Christians, 56–57; Apuleius, Apology, in Stern, Authors, 2:201; PGM 5.107–9; 13.345. Cf. the later Sword of Moses text (Harari, “Moses”). Celsus accused Moses of teaching Jews sorcery; Origen (Cels. 1.26) replies that Moses expressly condemns sorcery.

. E.g., CIJ 2:373–74, §1448; later, CIJ 2:90–91, §849. The connection between angels and magic becomes more dominant in medieval Judaism (Fass, “Angels”).

. Kern-Ulmer, “Depiction of Magic”; cf. the piling up of divine names in CIJ 2:62–65, §819. Even late fourth- and early fifth-century CE amulets in Galilee, though syncretistic, remain monotheistic (Kotansky, “Amulet”). Sefer ha-Razim probably goes beyond this (Smith, Magician, 69, dating it to Late Antiquity).

. E.g., Wis. 17:7; Ps.-Phoc. 149; 2 Bar. 60:2; 66:2.

. Also, e.g., m. Sanh. 7:10–11; b. Ber. 21b (Tannaitic tradition); for mediums, CD 12.3; Sipra Qed. pq. 9.207.3.3; eternal punishment in 2 En. 10:4.

. So m. Sanh. 7:11; Sipra Qed. pq. 6.203.2.1–2; Sipre Deut. 171.6.1; b. Sanh. 67b; cf. mere illusions in Diogn. 8.4; Tertullian, Test. 57; Hippolytus, Ref. 6.34. On performing illusions, see further Sipre Deut. 171.4.1. Amoraim sought to further distinguish sorcerers who worked through demons and those who depended only on enchantment (b. Sanh. 67b).

. See 1 En. 9:6–7; 64:2; 65:6 (cf. the Greeks’ Prometheus); 3 En. 5:9; Sib. Or. 1.96; cf. also Origen, Cels. 1.60; 2.51; 3.39, 59; Hippolytus, Ref. 6.34.

. E.g., CD 5.18; Mart. Isa. 2:5 (this may be a Christian work); cf. CD 12.2–3; demons in T. Jud. 23:1; T. Sol. 25:3–4.

. Shorter, Witchdoctor, 99; Wyk, “Witchcraft,” 1202; Shoko, Religion, 46; Mayrargue, “Expansion,” 286. In a very different form than in the West (cf. Hutton, “Status”; Magliocco, “Spells”; Hayes, “Responses,” 340–42), witchcraft is flourishing in Africa (Harries, “Worldview,” 492; Hill, “Witchcraft,” 323–25; Bähre, “Witchcraft,” 300, 329; Wyk, “Witchcraft,” 1203–4; cf. Bennett, Afraid).

. Hair, “Witches,” 140; Grindal, “Heart,” 66; Hoare, “Approach,” 127–28; Obeyesekere, “Sorcery,” 3, 22 (though the intention usually fails; cf. 21); Turner, “Actuality,” 5; West, Sorcery, 3–5, 9–10, 88; Krippner, “Medicine,” 193; Scherberger, “Shaman,” 57–59; Azenabor, “Witchcraft,” 30–31; McNaughton, Blacksmiths, 69; Binsbergen, “Witchcraft,” 243; Favret-Saada, Witchcraft, 124–27.

. E.g., Reynolds, Magic, 41–47. The BBC often reports the killing of albinos to secure their body parts for charms; see, e.g., “Burundi Albino Boy ‘Dismembered,’” Oct. 24, 2010 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11614957); Will Ross, “Kenyan Arrested by Tanzania Police over ‘Albino Sale,’” Aug. 17, 2010 (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-11001791); “Tanzania Albino Attacks: ‘My Neighbour Hacked Off My Hands” (http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-40300824/tanzania-albino-attacks-my-neighbour-hacked-off-my-hands).

. Harries, “Worldview,” 497–99; Lagerwerf, Witchcraft, 14–15; Hill, “Witchcraft,” 323–25; cf. Hayes, “Responses,” 344–45.

. Ranger, “Religion,” 353–58.

. E.g., Eliade, Shamanism, 363–64; Beattie and Middleton, “Introduction,” xxiii; Field, “Possession,” 11; Beattie, “Mediumship,” 164; Gray, “Cult,” 183; Middleton, “Possession,” 225; Craig, “Divination”; Jules-Rosette, “Healers,” 142; Wyk, “Witchcraft,” 1217–19; Kassimir, “Politics,” 250; cf. Garbett, “Mediums,” 123; Adeyemi, “Healing Systems,” 140, 142. In indigenous churches, prophecy can be used to identify witchcraft (Ayegboyin, “Heal,” 238), not always accurately (e.g., Jules-Rosette, “Healers,” 137, 139).

. Wyk, “Witchcraft,” 1201.

. Harries, “Worldview,” 493; Hayes, “Responses,” 343, 347; Hill, “Witchcraft,” 332; Kgatla, “Moloi,” esp. 84, 89; Wyk, “Witchcraft,” 1202–3; West, Sorcery, 15–17, 55, 60, 88; Favret-Saada, Witchcraft, 192, 263; Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, 31–32, 122–26; Shorter, Witchdoctor, 94; Singleton, “Spirits,” 471; Gray, “Cult,” 183–84; Bongmba, “Witchcraft,” 53; Shoko, Religion, 43; cf. Lubkemann, “Ancestor,” 344; Rüther, “Representations,” 401, 405–6; Welbourn, “Healing,” 353–55; earlier, Rosen, “Psychopathology,” 231; Berger, “Women,” 25; Marshman, “Exorcism”; Goodare, “Act”; Hultkrantz, Healing, 53; Arnold, “Conflicts,” 223, 225; Kirkaldy, “Vhuloi.”

. For suffering and death caused by curses, see, e.g., Prince, “Yoruba Psychiatry,” 91; Dawson, “Urbanization,” 328–29; Mbiti, Religions, 258; cf. Remus, Healer, 110; Welbourn, “Healing,” 364; voodoo and taboo deaths in Benson, Healing, 40–41; especially Knapstad, “Power,” 84, 89.

. Note Cannon, “Voodoo Death” (cited in Benson, Healing, 40–41; Remus, Healer, 109); Frank, Persuasion, 39–42. Cf. the “nocebo effect” in Beauregard and O’Leary, Brain, 145–47; Benson, Healing, 39, 53, 59, 63, 267–69; Walsh, Shamanism, 213; deaths from emotive trauma in Engel, “Death” (as cited in Benson, Healing, 42). Ancient sorcerers also sought to terrify victims by leaving physical evidence of their intent (Trombley, “Paganism,” 198).

. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Lysias 7; Lit. Comp. 18; Seneca E., Suas. 3.2; Rhet. Frag. 1; Hermogenes, Inv. 3.15.169–70; Libanius, Topics 1.8–11; 2.11; 3.14; 5.13. On enargeia, ekphrasis, etc., see Hermogenes, Inv. 3.15.166–68; Fowler, “Narrate”; Boehm and Pfotenhauer, Beschreibungskunst; Anderson, Glossary, 34, 40, 43–44; Rowe, “Style,” 143–44; Aune, Rhetoric, 143–45; Fantuzzi, “Ekphrasis”; Reitz, “Ekphrasis”; Chinn, “Eyes”; Beck, “Ecphrasis”; Webb, Ekphrasis; Keener, Acts, 1:135–36; examples in the falsely attributed Lucian Hippias; deSilva, “Paideia,” 505–8.

. E.g., Cicero, Sull. 26.72; Theon, Progymn. 7.53–55 (making scenes “visible”); Quintilian, Decl. 281.3; 291.8; 306.15; 314.20; 329.14; 347.9; Hermogenes, Method 15.432; Apuleius, Flor. 18.6–9; Libanius, Topics 1.31; 2.23; Descr. 1.2; cf. Aeschines, Ctes. 157. Cf. also hearing, e.g., Pliny Y., Ep. 2.18.3; Philostratus, Her. 25.18; through a dancer, Lucian, Dance 63. In modern oratory, cf. James McGready in Beougher, “Know,” 2.

. Aristotle, Rhet. 3.11.1–2, 1411b; Cicero, Or. Brut. 40.139; Longinus, Subl. 15.2; Hermogenes, Progymn. 10, “On Ecphrasis” 22–23; Aphthonius Progymn. 12, “On Ecphrasis” 46–49S, 36–41R; Philostratus, Her. 10.5; 23.2; 33.38; 44.5–45.1; Josephus, Ant. 20.123; Betz, Galatians, 131; Anderson, Rhetorical Theory, 162; Buscemi, Lettera, 237.

. Rhet. Her. 4.55.68; Cicero, De or. 3.53.202; Quintilian, Inst. 9.2.40.

. Quintilian, Inst. 6.1.31 (trans. H. E. Butler, LCL, 2:403; cf. similarly 8.3.65, 81).

. Cicero, Fam. 14.3.2; Silius Italicus, Pun. 9.40; 10.584–86; 11.114–16; 12.547–49; Pliny Y., Ep. 2.1.11–12; 4.16.4; Plutarch, Demosth. 18.2; Tacitus, Dial. 16; Xenophon of Ephesus, Eph. Tale 1.5; 3.5.

. Polybius, Hist. 2.56.8 (complaining of it being done inappropriately); Velleius Paterculus, Comp. 2.89.5–6.

. Pliny Y., Ep. 2.18.3; 5.6.44; Fronto, Ant. imp. 1.4; Symmachus, Ep. 1.84; cf. letters communicating presence, as in 1 Cor. 5:3–4 and Col. 2:5, see P.Oxy. 32; Cicero, Fam. 1.7.1; 3.11.2; Att. 12.53; Seneca Y., Lucil. 32.1; 67.2; Dio Chrysostom, Ep. 3; Achilles Tatius, Leuc. Clit. 5.20.5; Symmachus, Ep. 1.84; cf. Seneca Y., Lucil. 75.1–3; Lucian, Lucius 4; see further Malherbe, “Theorists,” 15; Stowers, Letter Writing, 58–60. Such representations of presence (e.g., Isocrates, Nic. 51–52) are not intended as metaphysical statements, as in Origen’s understanding (noted in Kovacs, 1 Corinthians, 85); or Funk, “Parousia,” 264–65; Fee, Corinthians, 205.

. Heinrich Bullinger, Commentary on Paul’s Epistles, on Gal. 3:1 (Bray).

. Still, Hays (“Galatians,” 250–51) plausibly but tentatively suggests that Paul might have in mind here communicating the story of Jesus’s death through lament psalms, such as that of the righteous sufferer in Ps. 69:9 cited in Rom. 15:3–4. Although the predictive use of the verb is less common, it does appear (see Wendt, “Allusion,” 386; she views Paul as interpreting texts construed prophetically).

. BDAG, citing IG 10.4.24; P.Flor. 99.11; and other sources. Cf. Muir, “Imagery,” 78, 81–82.

. Aristotle, Rhet. 2.8.14, 1386a (trans. J. H. Freese, LCL, 22:229).

. Pliny Y., Ep. 2.3.9–10. Ideally, written works were also meant to be delivered orally; see Shiell, Reading Acts, 102–36, esp. 107. One who delivered a letter would ideally mimic even the sender’s facial expressions (Cicero, Fam. 12.30.3).

. Cicero, Brut. 55.203; Valerius Maximus, Mem. 8.11.ext. 1; Philostratus, Vit. soph. 1.25.537–38. Even some Stoics, when teaching about communication, might appeal to actors’ voices (Diogenes Laertius, Lives 7.1.20). Just as George Whitefield’s background assisted his own dramatic delivery, which influenced much subsequent preaching, theater mattered also in ancient rhetoric.

. Hall, “Delivery,” 230 (with many references), 234.

. Valerius Maximus, Mem. 8.10.pref. (trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey).

. Betz, Galatians, 131, citing Quintilian, Inst. 6.1.32. Note also Caesar’s garment in Quintilian, Inst. 6.1.31. Pantomime also could depict scenes (cf. the use of γράφω [graphō] in Aristaenetus, Erotic Letters 1.26, line 6 [p. 58]), sometimes for rituals depicting myths (Strabo, Geogr. 10.3.7, 11; cf. Smith, Symposium, 116–18). But in Paul’s day comedy (Apuleius, Flor. 5.2), especially with sexual dimensions (Valerius Maximus, Mem. 2.6.7b; Seneca Y., Nat. 1.16.1; Apuleius, Apol. 74; Libanius, Anec. 4.12; cf. Friedländer, Life, 1:218; 2:90–95, esp. 92; Reynolds, “Mime”; Furley, “Mime,” 925; Jensen, “Nudity,” 299; Toner, Culture, 104–5, 139), dominated this art; Judeans (Cousland, “Theaters,” 1220) and many gentile thinkers thus discouraged it (Dio Chrysostom, Or. 7.119; Pliny Y., Ep. 7.24.5; Philostratus, Vit. Apoll. 4.2).

. Cf. Witherington, Grace, 205; Davis, “Meaning”; Hays, “Poiēsis,” 212n28; Muir, “Imagery,” 78, here 84; Das, Galatians, 287; Bowens, Apostle, 114n190.

. Anderson, Glossary, 34–35.

. Some interpreters also note local statues of dying Galatians that commemorated Roman triumph (Balch, “Portrait,” 105); reenvisioning Christ as the hero (cf. 2 Cor. 5:16) subverted Roman values (Balch, “Portrait,” 107–8; Lopez, Apostle, 151). Fitting some conventional artistic models, early Christian art often focuses on the cross (Balch, “Suffering”).

. This may be “Paul’s shorthand expression” for the entire gospel message (deSilva, Readings, 150; cf. 5), at least where suffering was an embarrassment (1 Cor. 1:27–29; Gal. 6:14, 17). For crucifixion, see discussion in, e.g., Keener, Acts, 1:939–41; Hengel, Crucifixion; Samuelsson, Crucifixion; Cook, Crucifixion.