Galatians — Chapter 4

Authorship & Background

Map & Geography

• Sinai (v.24, v.25): Mountain where God gave Moses the Law.
• Jerusalem (v.25, v.26): Capital of Judah; the holy city where the Temple stood.

Places on this map

• Mount SinaiJebel Musa, Sinai Peninsula, EgyptTraditionally Jebel Musa in the granite mountains of the southern Sinai peninsula, about 7,500 feet high. The identification dates from Christian monastic tradition rather than from the text, and other candidates have been proposed, but this has been the pilgrimage site since the fourth century. Wikipedia
• JerusalemJerusalemA hill town about 2,500 feet up in the central spine of Judah, roughly 35 miles inland from the Mediterranean and 15 miles west of the Jordan. It sits on no trade route and has no river, which is why it mattered as a fortress and a sanctuary rather than as a market. Wikipedia

Towns sit on their excavated or traditional site. Regions, rivers and seas are ringed rather than dotted, because for those a single point is only an anchor. Coastlines from Natural Earth.

Deep Dive

Setting: Paul writes to the churches of Galatia, in the interior of what is now Turkey. Many scholars place them in the southern towns of his first journey (Acts 13–14) and date the letter about AD 48–49, before the Jerusalem Council. Others think of ethnic Galatians farther north and date it to the mid-50s. Either way, the crisis is the same. After Paul left, teachers arrived insisting that Gentile believers be circumcised and keep the law of Moses to be full members of God's people. Chapter 3 ended with believers as "Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise" (3:29). Chapter 4 picks up that word "heirs" and moves from argument, to a personal plea, and back to Scripture with Abraham's two sons.

Sons and Heirs (vv1–7)

• "The heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave" (v1). "Child" is nēpios, an infant or legal minor. The picture is a wealthy family's son who on paper owns the whole estate but in practice has no more say than the household slaves.
• "Guardians and managers until the date set by his father" (v2). A guardian (epitropos) looked after the child's person and a manager (oikonomos) looked after his property. In Roman custom the father had wide freedom to decide when his son came of age. Paul's point: the period under supervision was always meant to end, and God the Father set the date.
• "Enslaved to the elementary principles of the world" (v3). The word is stoicheia, things that stand in a row. It was used of the letters of the alphabet, the ABCs of any subject, the physical elements of the universe (2 Pet 3:10), the heavenly bodies, and in some Jewish writings the spirits thought to rule them. Readers take it three main ways here: 1) the basic rules of religion, the "ABC" stage of knowing God; 2) the physical elements and stars that governed calendars and pagan worship; 3) spiritual powers behind them. The likeliest sense combines the first two. Startlingly, Paul's "we" puts Jews under the law alongside Gentiles under idols: both lived under a system that could not give life.
• "When the fullness of time had come" (v4). Plērōma means the full measure, the point at which something is filled up, like a jar filled to the brim. History reached the moment God had appointed. Many point to the Roman peace, Roman roads and a common Greek language as signs of a prepared world. Jesus' own first words in Mark are, "The time is fulfilled" (Mark 1:15).
• "God sent forth his Son" (v4). The verb (exapostellō) is used again in v6: God "sent forth" his Son, and God "sent forth" the Spirit of his Son. The double sending is the hinge of the paragraph. The Son was sent to us to make us sons, and the Spirit was sent into us to make us know it.
• "Born of woman, born under the law" (v4). "Born of woman" marks him as fully human (compare Job 14:1). Some hear a hint of the virgin birth (Isa 7:14), though Paul does not press it. "Born under the law" means he was a Jew who lived under Sinai's commands. He was circumcised on the eighth day (Luke 2:21).
• "To redeem those who were under the law" (v5). "Redeem" is buying a slave's freedom. Paul has just said Christ redeemed us "from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us" (3:13). He came under the law in order to bring people out from under it.
• "So that we might receive adoption as sons" (v5). Huiothesia means adoption as a son, a legal term in the Greek and Roman world. An adopted son received the full name, rights and inheritance of the family. "Sons" is about inheritance rights, which usually went to sons, and Paul grants them to every believer, "neither male nor female" (3:28).
• "God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!'" (v6). Abba is Aramaic for "father," the word Jesus used in Gethsemane (Mark 14:36). It is sometimes rendered "Daddy," but grown children used it too. The point is warmth and nearness, not baby talk. Greek-speaking believers kept Jesus' Aramaic word and set the Greek patēr beside it. Notice that the Spirit cries out in our hearts. In Romans 8:15 it is believers who cry. The Spirit prompts the cry, and believers voice it. The Father sends the Spirit of the Son: the whole Trinity is at work.
• "So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God" (v7). Paul switches to a singular "you," as if pointing at each Galatian in turn. The chain runs slave, son, heir, and the inheritance comes "through God," not through circumcision. Some later manuscripts read "an heir of God through Christ" (as in the KJV), but the oldest witnesses support the ESV's shorter reading.
• Commentators: All three see the Old Testament church as an heir under age. Henry describes it as "kept in a state of darkness and bondage," and JFB glosses v1 as having "no more freedom than a slave." On the timing of Christ's coming, JFB writes: "God does nothing prematurely, but, foreseeing the end from the beginning, waits till all is ripe." Guzik reads stoicheia as the world's basic logic of earning, which grace overturns. On v6 Henry draws a practical line: "The Spirit of adoption is always the Spirit of prayer." JFB calls "Abba, Father" a joining of a Hebrew and a Greek word in "one cry of faith." Strictly, the lexicon identifies abba as Aramaic, the everyday language of Jesus' Judea, not Hebrew, though the point about Jew and Gentile praying together stands.

Paul's Concern for the Galatians (vv8–20)

• "When you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods" (v8). Now Paul speaks directly to Gentile believers. Before the gospel came, they served the gods of Asia Minor, such as Zeus and Hermes at Lystra, where the crowds once tried to sacrifice to Paul and Barnabas (Acts 14:11–13).
• "Now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God" (v9). Paul corrects himself mid-sentence. Knowing God is real, but it rests on something prior: God knew them first, chose them and called them. Being "known" by God means being claimed and loved by him (1 Cor 8:3).
• "Weak and worthless elementary principles" (v9). "Worthless" is ptōchos, the ordinary word for a beggar, someone who crouches and has nothing. The old stoicheia have no power to save ("weak") and nothing to give ("beggarly," KJV). The shock is "turn back again": in taking up the law as a ladder to God, they are returning to the same anxious performance they knew as pagans.
• "You observe days and months and seasons and years!" (v10). The verb (paratēreō) means to watch closely or keep scrupulously. This likely means Sabbaths, new moons, the annual feasts and perhaps sabbatical years, kept as conditions of acceptance with God. Paul does not condemn a calendar (Rom 14:5–6). He objects when special days become a way of earning a place in God's family. Colossians 2:16–17 calls them "a shadow" of Christ.
• "I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain" (v11). If they trust the law to make them right with God, the gospel will do them no good (5:2–4).
• "Become as I am, for I also have become as you are" (v12). Paul, a Pharisee by training, gave up relying on the law and lived like a Gentile among Gentiles (2:14; 1 Cor 9:21). Now he asks the Gentiles to become like the free man he is, not the Jew he used to be.
• "Because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first" (v13). Paul had not planned to preach in Galatia. Illness detained him or redirected him there. We do not know what it was. Suggestions include malaria, injuries from the stoning at Lystra (Acts 14:19), an eye disease, or the "thorn in the flesh" (2 Cor 12:7). None can be proved.
• "You did not scorn or despise me" (v14). "Despise" translates ekptuō, literally "spit out," and so "spit at in disgust, loathe." In the ancient world people sometimes spat to ward off sickness or the evil eye, and some scholars think Paul's condition might have provoked exactly that reaction. Instead the Galatians welcomed him "as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus." "Angel" (angelos) also means messenger. They received the messenger as if Christ himself had come (Matt 10:40).
• "What then has become of your blessedness?" (v15). The word makarismos means a declaring of someone blessed, the joy of counting oneself happy. Paul uses it in Romans 4:6–9 for the blessedness of the forgiven.
• "You would have gouged out your eyes and given them to me" (v15). This may hint that Paul's ailment affected his eyes. That fits his "large letters" in 6:11, though that may simply be emphasis. Or it may be a common way of describing giving up what is most precious (Deut 32:10; Ps 17:8). Both readings have support.
• "Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth?" (v16). Their friend has become, in their eyes, an opponent.
• "They make much of you, but for no good purpose" (v17). The verb (zēloō) can mean "be jealous of" or "earnestly seek after." Here it is courtship: the teachers are paying the Galatians eager attention. They want to "shut you out," making the uncircumcised feel like outsiders who need the teachers to get in.
• "It is always good to be made much of for a good purpose" (v18). Paul has nothing against eager attention in itself. He only wishes their zeal for the good had stayed steady in his absence.
• "My little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth" (v19). Ōdinō means to suffer labor pains. A male apostle uses the image of a mother in labor, and the word "again" makes it worse: he went through this once when they came to faith, and now he must go through it a second time. The goal is "until Christ is formed in you." The verb (morphoō) appears only here in the New Testament and means to give shape or form. The aim is not people shaped like Paul or like Moses, but like Christ (Rom 8:29; 2 Cor 3:18).
• "I wish I could be present with you now and change my tone" (v20). A letter cannot soften its voice or read faces.
• Commentators: Henry on v9: "All our acquaintance with God begins with him; we know him, because we are known of him." JFB says the same, that God "first, in His electing love, knew and loved them," and calls the elements "beggarly" in contrast with the riches of the believer's inheritance, which the lexicon's "beggar" for ptōchos supports. On the ailment, Guzik walks through the main theories (Lystra, malaria, eyes, epilepsy) and concludes none is certain. JFB reads "temptation" in v14 as "BODILY TRIAL" and ties the Galatians' passionate welcome to their Celtic temperament, an idea that only works if the letter went to ethnic Galatians in the north. On v16 Henry observes: "It is no uncommon thing for men to account those their enemies who are really their best friends." On the teachers' zeal he adds: "There may appear to be a great deal of zeal where yet there is but little truth and sincerity." Guzik stresses that the goal of v19 is Christ formed in people, never the preacher.

Example of Hagar and Sarah (vv21–31)

• "You who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law?" (v21). "Law" here means the Torah, the five books of Moses, Genesis included.
• "Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman" (v22). Ishmael was born to Hagar, Sarah's Egyptian slave (Gen 16), and Isaac to Sarah (Gen 21). Ancient marriage customs (attested in texts from Nuzi and in the Code of Hammurabi) allowed a childless wife to give her slave to her husband so that the slave's child would count as hers. The plan was respectable by the standards of the day, but it was an attempt to help God along.
• "According to the flesh… through promise" (v23). Ishmael's birth came by ordinary human means. Isaac's came only because God kept his word to a ninety-year-old woman who was past childbearing (Gen 17:17; 18:11).
• "This may be interpreted allegorically" (v24). The verb (allēgoreō) means "to speak allegorically" or "to speak figuratively." Paul is not denying the story happened. He treats Hagar and Sarah as real women whose story also pictures something larger. Philo of Alexandria and other Jewish teachers used allegory freely. Paul's use is restrained and anchored in the history. Many think the Judaizers had been using Abraham's story against him ("true sons of Abraham are circumcised"), and Paul turns it around.
• "These women are two covenants" (v24). One is "from Mount Sinai," the covenant of law given through Moses. The other, implied, is the covenant of promise, first made with Abraham and fulfilled in Christ (3:15–18). Scholars of the ancient world note that the Abrahamic covenant resembles a royal grant, a free gift secured by the giver's oath, while Sinai resembles a treaty with conditions for the vassal. The comparison helps explain Paul's point: a grant made first cannot be cancelled by conditions added 430 years later (3:17).
• "Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia" (v25). This is a bold pairing, since Hagar lived centuries before Sinai. In Paul's day "Arabia" covered the region south and east of Judea, including the Sinai peninsula and the lands of Ishmael's descendants (Gen 25:12–18). Some ancient manuscripts read simply "Sinai is a mountain in Arabia," which makes the verse a geographical note, but the ESV follows the reading with "Hagar." Some interpreters also suggest a play on an Arabic word for rock, hajar, though that is uncertain.
• "She corresponds to the present Jerusalem" (v25). The verb (systoicheō) means to stand in the same row, as soldiers lined up in a column. Paul is setting two columns side by side: Hagar, slavery, Sinai, the present Jerusalem, on one side; Sarah, freedom, promise, the Jerusalem above, on the other. "The present Jerusalem" means the city as the center of a religion that rejected Jesus and sent out the teachers now troubling Galatia (2:12). The reversal is startling: Paul's opponents traced their line to Sarah, yet anyone relying on the law to be right with God belongs in Hagar's column.
• "The Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother" (v26). The heavenly city appears in Hebrews 12:22 and Revelation 21:2. Psalm 87 pictures foreigners "born" in Zion. Believers, Jew and Gentile, already belong to that city.
• "Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear" (v27). Paul quotes Isaiah 54:1, written to Jerusalem after the exile, when the city lay empty like a childless wife. Isaiah echoes Sarah's barrenness (Isa 51:2 names her) and promises more children than anyone could imagine. Isaiah 54 follows straight on from the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, whose death brings the barren woman her children. Paul sees the promise fulfilled as Gentiles stream into the family of faith. Psalm 113:9 sings the same: God makes the barren a joyful mother.
• "You, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise" (v28). Believers owe their place in the family to a promise and a miracle, not to human effort.
• "He who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit" (v29). Genesis 21:9 says Sarah saw Ishmael "laughing" (Hebrew metsachaq, from the same root as Isaac's name, "he laughs"). The word can mean simply to play or jest, and the ESV translates it "laughing." Jewish tradition and many interpreters read it as mocking, and Paul calls it persecution. "So also it is now": Paul had felt it himself in Galatia (Acts 13:50; 14:19).
• "Cast out the slave woman and her son" (v30). Sarah's words in Genesis 21:10, which God told Abraham to heed (21:12), now introduced as "the Scripture". This is not hostility to Jewish people but a principle: law-keeping as a way to inherit and grace as a way to inherit cannot share the house. "Shall not inherit" is an emphatic double negative in Greek, "will by no means inherit."
• "We are not children of the slave but of the free woman" (v31). This line closes the argument and opens chapter 5: "For freedom Christ has set us free" (5:1).
• Commentators: JFB explains that the stories are "allegorical," that is, they "have another besides the literal meaning," and on v27 says the spiritual Jerusalem was "barren" while the law constrained Israel. On v29 it notes Ishmael "mocked" Isaac, which "contained in it the germ and spirit of persecution." On v25 JFB takes "Hagar" as the Arabian name for Sinai, a suggestion many modern scholars find possible but unproven. Henry reads the allegory as a sign that "the Spirit of God might design to signify something further to us," and on v30 sees the outcome: "Judaism would sink, and wither, and perish; but true Christianity should flourish and last for ever." Guzik sets the two sons side by side (slavery and freedom, flesh and promise, persecutor and persecuted) and notes that Sarah could put up with Hagar until the son of promise was born. In the same way, the law had its place until Christ came, but cannot remain as a rival way of standing before God.

Pointing to Christ

The whole chapter turns on one sentence: "God sent forth his Son… God has sent the Spirit of his Son." The Son was born under the law so that people under the law could go free, and he gave his own cry, "Abba," to those he adopted. Isaac, the long-promised son born by a miracle, already pointed to a greater Son, also born by God's promise and power, through whom the barren woman's children became more than anyone could count. Christ formed in believers is the goal, and children of the free woman is what they are.

Commentary

• Enduring Word (David Guzik): enduringword.com Guzik examines the heir illustration, the fullness of time, adoption, Paul's personal appeal, and the Hagar/Sarah allegory.
• Jamieson-Fausset-Brown (1871): blueletterbible.org A critical and explanatory commentary on the whole Bible, more concise than Matthew Henry and closer to the Hebrew and Greek, with attention to historical and geographical detail. Public domain.
• Matthew Henry's Exposition (1710): blueletterbible.org A devotional verse-by-verse commentary in the Puritan tradition, still among the most widely read three centuries on. Public domain.

Videos

Articles

• GotQuestions.org: gotquestions.org On the whole book: an overview of the book of Galatians -- who wrote it, when, why, and how it fits the rest of Scripture.

Links open on the publisher's own site. Nothing here is reproduced on this page.

Reflection

• Adopted Sons, Not Slaves (vv.6-7) — The Spirit lets believers cry "Abba, Father," proof that they are children and heirs rather than servants. Do you relate to God out of fear and duty, or out of the confidence of a son?
• Why Return to Bondage? (v.9) — Paul is baffled that the Galatians would turn back to religious rule-keeping after being set free. What weak, empty rules or performance are you tempted to go back to?
• Truth Over Popularity (v.16) — Paul asks if he has become their enemy simply for telling them the truth. Are you willing to speak the truth even when it costs you a relationship?
• Christ Formed in You (v.19) — Paul's goal for the Galatians isn't just belief but Christ visibly shaped in their lives. Is Christ being formed in you in ways others could actually see?
• Children of the Free Woman (v.31) — Paul concludes that believers belong to the covenant of promise and freedom, not the covenant of slavery. Are you living like someone who is truly free, or still acting like a slave to old patterns?