The Promise Arrives Before the Law and Survives It

“Foolish” is anoetos, lacking nous, not stupid but failing to think. “Bewitched” is baskaino, to cast the evil eye, a fear common across the ancient Mediterranean. “Evidently set forth” is prographo, to placard, the word for a public notice posted for all to read; the oldest manuscripts lack “among you”.

Paul asks the one question he thinks settles the case, the way an advocate asks what a witness cannot evade. “Hearing of faith” is akoe pisteos, which can mean hearing that believes or the message that calls for faith; Romans 10:17 uses the same noun, “faith cometh by hearing”.

“Begun” and “made perfect” are enarchomai and epiteleo, a pair used in Greek of starting and completing a sacrifice or rite. The contrast of Spirit and flesh may glance at circumcision itself, a rite in the flesh that the troublers offered as the finishing of conversion.

“Suffered” is pascho, which can mean to suffer or simply to experience. The letter never mentions persecution of the Galatian churches, so many read “experienced so many things”, the gifts of the Spirit just named; if these are the churches of Acts 14, suffering fits as well (Acts 14:22).

“Ministereth” is epichoregeo, the verb of 2 Corinthians 9:10 for the patron who funds a chorus: God supplies the Spirit lavishly. Both participles are present tense, so God is still supplying and still working “miracles”, dynameis, powers, as Paul writes.

The quotation is Genesis 15:6, which Paul also builds Romans 4 upon. 1 Maccabees 2:52 read the same line as Abraham’s reward for faithfulness under the test of Genesis 22; Paul reads it from where it stands, long before the binding of Isaac and before circumcision.

“Know ye” can be a command or a statement, “You see, then”. “Children” is huioi, sons, in the sense of heirs who carry the name and the inheritance. Jesus made a similar argument about Abraham’s true children in John 8:39, “If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham”.

Scripture is personified as seeing ahead and preaching. “Preached before the gospel” is one Greek word, proeuangelizomai, found only here. The quoted words join Genesis 12:3 and 18:18, and “nations” is ethne, the same word as “heathen” earlier in the verse.

“Faithful” is pistos, which can mean trustworthy or believing; here it means Abraham the believer. “With” matters: the blessing is shared alongside him at one table, not merely handed down from him to later generations.

The quotation is Deuteronomy 27:26 in its Greek form, which adds “every one” and “all things”, words not in the Hebrew. It is the last of twelve curses called out by the Levites at Mount Ebal, where the whole people answered “Amen” to each.

Habakkuk 2:4 was spoken to a prophet waiting through the Babylonian invasion. The Hebrew reads “by his faithfulness” and the Greek Old Testament “by my faithfulness”; Paul quotes it with neither pronoun. Romans 1:17 and Hebrews 10:38 use the same line.

Leviticus 18:5 supplies the words: “Ye shall therefore keep my statutes… which if a man do, he shall live in them”. Paul sets it beside Habakkuk as two different routes to life, doing and believing. Romans 10:5 cites it for “the righteousness which is of the law”.

“Redeemed” is exagorazo, to buy out, as a slave is bought out of the market. The quotation is Deuteronomy 21:23, about the body of an executed man hung on a tree and buried the same day. Some Dead Sea Scrolls already applied that verse to crucifixion.

Two purpose clauses run side by side, and the second restates the first: the blessing of Abraham turns out to be the promised Spirit. The phrase recalls the prophets who foresaw God’s Spirit given to his people, Ezekiel 36:27 and Joel 2:28.

“After the manner of men” means taking an illustration from daily life. “Covenant” is diatheke, which in ordinary Greek meant a will; the example works either way, since a ratified will cannot be changed by outsiders. “Disannulleth” is atheteo, the setting aside of 2:21.

The promises used the singular “seed”, as in Genesis 13:15, 17:8 and 22:18. The Hebrew zera, like English “seed”, is singular in form and collective in meaning, and Paul uses it collectively elsewhere (Romans 4:18); here he reads the singular as pointing to the one descendant in whom the many are gathered.

Four hundred and thirty years is the figure of Exodus 12:40 for Israel’s stay in Egypt; the Greek Old Testament reads “in Egypt and in the land of Canaan”, which counts from Abraham’s time and fits Paul’s use. “Of none effect” is katargeo, to render inactive.

“Inheritance” is kleronomia, the word for Israel’s allotment of the land in Joshua. “Gave” is charizomai, to give freely as a favour, in the perfect tense: a gift given and still standing. Law and promise are offered as two bases, and the verse allows no mixture.

“Ordained by angels” reflects a Jewish tradition, found in Deuteronomy 33:2 in the Greek, in Acts 7:53 and in Hebrews 2:2, that angels were present at Sinai. “Mediator” is mesites, a go-between, usually taken as Moses, who “stood between the LORD and you” (Deuteronomy 5:5).

A nineteenth-century commentator counted some three hundred interpretations of this line. The likeliest sense is that a mediator implies two parties, as at Sinai, while the promise to Abraham came from God alone, and God is one, the words of the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4).

“Given life” is zoopoieo, to make alive, the verb of 1 Corinthians 15:22 and 45. The law’s limit is not wickedness but inability: it can direct the living, but it cannot raise the dead, and in Paul righteousness and life belong together.

“Concluded” is synkleio, to lock in together, the verb for fish enclosed in a net (Luke 5:6). The same verb appears in Romans 11:32, “God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all”: the door is shut so that mercy can come in by another.

“Kept” is phroureo, to guard with a garrison, the verb 2 Corinthians 11:32 uses of the watch on Damascus. “Shut up” is synkleio again. The picture is custody with a release date: until the faith that was to be revealed.

“Schoolmaster” is paidagogos, the household slave who walked a boy to school, carried his things and kept him in line, not the teacher. Greek vases show him as an older man with a stick. “Unto Christ” may mean until Christ, a time limit, rather than a guide leading toward him.

When the boy came of age, usually in his teens, the paidagogos’ task ended, and grown men often remembered him with mixed feelings. “Is come” is aorist, the arrival of faith treated as an event in history and not only in each believer’s life.

The Greek order is “all sons of God ye are”, with “all” in front and stressed, taking in the Gentiles. The shift from the “we” of verses 23 to 25 to “ye” here names the Galatians directly: no longer wards but sons.

“Put on” is enduo, to dress, the verb of Romans 13:14, “put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ”. Roman boys put on the adult toga when they came of age, and some hear that ceremony behind the change from ward to son. Early Christian baptism involved taking off old clothes and putting on new ones.

The three pairs may answer a Jewish morning prayer, later recorded in the Tosefta, that thanked God for not being made a Gentile, a boor or a woman. The third pair is phrased differently in Greek, “male and female” rather than “male nor female”, quoting Genesis 1:27.

“Heirs” is kleronomoi, those who receive the inheritance of verse 18. The chapter moves from “children of Abraham” in verse 7 to “Abraham’s seed” here, first by faith and now by belonging to Christ, and the picture of the heir runs straight on into 4:1.