Galatians 4: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Paul compares the Galatians' earlier life to a young heir who is treated like a slave until the time his father has set, and says God sent his Son, born under the law, so they could be adopted as sons and receive his Spirit. He asks why they are turning back to keeping special days and seasons, reminds them how warmly they welcomed him when he first came to them ill, and warns about teachers who want to cut them off from him. He then reads Abraham's two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman, as a picture of two covenants, and concludes that believers are children of the free woman.

Claim by Claim

1. 4:1
   • Paul says that the heir, for as long as he is a child, differs in no way from a slave
   • The heir is owner of everything
2. 4:2
   • The heir is under guardians and stewards
   • The heir remains under guardians and stewards until the time appointed by the father
3. 4:3
   • When we were children, we were enslaved under the elemental principles of the world
4. 4:4
   • When the fullness of the time came, God sent forth his Son
   • The Son was born of a woman
   • The Son was born under the law
5. 4:5
   • God sent his Son in order to redeem those under the law
   • God sent his Son so that we might receive adoption as sons
6. 4:6
   • You are sons
   • Because you are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts
   • The Spirit cries out, Abba, Father
7. 4:7
   • You are no longer a slave but a son
   • If you are a son, then you are also an heir of God through Christ
8. 4:8
   • Formerly you did not know God
   • Formerly you served as slaves to beings that by nature are not gods
9. 4:9
   • Now you have come to know God
   • Rather, you have been known by God
   • Paul asks how you are turning back again to the weak and poor elemental principles
   • Paul asks whether you desire to be enslaved to them all over again
10. 4:10
    • You observe days and months and seasons and years
11. 4:11
    • Paul fears for you
    • Paul fears that he has labored over you in vain
12. 4:12
    • Paul urges the brothers to become as he is
    • Paul says he became as they are
    • Paul says they have done him no wrong
13. 4:13
    • You know that Paul preached the gospel to you the first time because of a weakness of the flesh
14. 4:14
    • Paul's condition in his flesh was a trial to you
    • You did not despise Paul
    • You did not reject Paul with contempt
    • You received Paul as an angel of God
    • You received Paul as Christ Jesus
15. 4:15
    • Paul asks where the blessedness you spoke of has gone
    • Paul testifies that, if it had been possible, you would have torn out your own eyes and given them to him
16. 4:16
    • Paul asks whether he has become your enemy by telling you the truth
17. 4:17
    • They are zealous for you, but not in a good way
    • They want to shut you out
    • They want you to be zealous for them
18. 4:18
    • It is good to be zealously sought after in a good thing at all times
    • It is good to be zealously sought after not only when Paul is present with you
19. 4:19
    • Paul calls them his little children
    • Paul is again in the pains of childbirth for them
    • Paul's labor continues until Christ is formed in them
20. 4:20
    • Paul wishes he could be present with them now
    • Paul wishes to change his tone of voice
    • Paul is perplexed about them
21. 4:21
    • Paul tells those who want to be under the law to tell him something
    • Paul asks whether they do not hear the law
22. 4:22
    • It is written that Abraham had two sons
    • One son was by the slave woman
    • One son was by the free woman
23. 4:23
    • The son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh
    • The son by the free woman was born through the promise
24. 4:24
    • These things are an allegory
    • These women are two covenants
    • One covenant is from Mount Sinai
    • That covenant bears children into slavery
    • That covenant is Hagar
25. 4:25
    • Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia
    • Hagar corresponds to the present Jerusalem
    • The present Jerusalem is in slavery with her children
26. 4:26
    • The Jerusalem above is free
    • The Jerusalem above is the mother of us all
27. 4:27
    • It is written: Rejoice, barren woman who does not bear
    • Break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor
    • The children of the desolate woman are more numerous than those of the woman who has a husband
28. 4:28
    • We, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise
29. 4:29
    • At that time the one born according to the flesh persecuted the one born according to the Spirit
    • It is the same now
30. 4:30
    • Paul asks what the scripture says
    • The scripture says: Cast out the slave woman and her son
    • The scripture says the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman
31. 4:31
    • Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman
    • We are children of the free woman

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

4:1

The KJV's "servant" here means a slave, not a hired worker. The picture is an ordinary legal one from the Greek and Roman world: a boy who has inherited an estate owns it in law from the moment his father dies, but until he comes of age he has no more say over it than the household slaves do.

4:2

"Tutors and governors" are two different officials. The first supervised the child himself; the second managed the property and accounts. Roman law normally fixed the end of guardianship at set ages, but a father could name the date in his will, which is what Paul's phrase "the time appointed of the father" points to.

4:3

"Elements" translates the Greek word stoicheia, which had a range of senses and is genuinely disputed here. It could mean the ABCs, the basic first lessons of a subject; it could mean the physical elements the world was thought to be made of, earth, water, air and fire; and it could mean the spiritual powers believed to stand behind the heavenly bodies and the calendar. Paul does not say which he means, and the rendering keeps the ambiguity.

4:4

"Made of a woman, made under the law" uses "made" in its older sense of born. The phrase "born of a woman" was a common Jewish way of saying simply that someone was a human being.

4:5

"Redeem" is a commercial word. It meant buying a person out of slavery or captivity by paying a price. "The adoption of sons" is a legal term as well: in Roman law an adopted son took his new father's name, his debts were cancelled, and he became heir with the same standing as a son born in the house.

4:6

"Abba" is Aramaic, the everyday language Jesus spoke, and it is the ordinary family word for father, used by children and grown sons alike. Paul leaves it untranslated and then gives the Greek for it, which suggests the Aramaic word was already fixed in the prayers of Greek-speaking congregations. Manuscripts differ here between "your hearts" and "our hearts"; the KJV follows the first, most modern editions the second.

4:7

The ending of this verse varies in the manuscripts. Some read "an heir through God," some "an heir of God," and some "an heir of God through Christ," which is the reading the KJV follows.

4:8

"Did service unto" means were enslaved to. The Galatians were not Jewish; before hearing Paul they had worshiped the local and Roman gods. Paul's phrase "by nature are no gods" says those beings are not gods in reality, whatever people called them.

4:9

"Beggarly" in 1611 English meant destitute, bankrupt, having nothing to give. "Known of God" means known by God. Paul's "turn again" is pointed: his readers are not Jews returning to their own past, so he is classing a move toward law-keeping with the pagan religion they left.

4:10

The list points to a religious calendar: weekly sabbaths, new moon festivals at the start of each month, the annual feasts, and the sabbatical years that came every seventh year. The verb can be read as a statement or as an exclamation of dismay.

4:11

"Bestowed upon you labour in vain" means the work I put into you has been wasted.

4:12

The Greek is extremely compressed, with no verb in the second half: literally "become as I, because I also as you." What Paul means by having become like them is not spelled out and has been read in more than one way, most often as his having lived like a Gentile rather than keeping the requirements that set Jews apart.

4:13

"Infirmity of the flesh" means bodily illness. "At the first" is ambiguous in the Greek: it can mean on the first of two visits, or simply originally, when he first came. Paul never says what the illness was.

4:14

"Temptation" in 1611 English meant a trial or test, not an enticement to do wrong. The word behind "rejected" literally means spat out; spitting was a common gesture to ward off the evil thought to lie behind a disease or a disfigurement, so Paul is saying they did not treat his condition as something to be warded off. "Angel" means messenger, a being sent by God.

4:15

"Blessedness" here is the Greek makarismos, the act of calling someone fortunate, so the sense is the congratulation or self-congratulation they once expressed. "I bear you record" means I testify on your behalf. Tearing out one's eyes and handing them over was a way of naming the most precious thing a person could give; some readers connect it to the illness of verse 13, but Paul does not.

4:17

"Zealously affect" uses "affect" in its old sense of courting someone, seeking their favor, paying eager attention to them. The word Paul uses for what these rivals want, "exclude you," is the word for shutting someone out, as of locking a door.

4:18

The same verb from verse 17 runs through this sentence. Paul is granting that being courted, or being eager, is not wrong in itself; it depends on the cause and on whether it lasts when he is away.

4:19

"Travail in birth" means the pains of labor. Paul is comparing himself to a woman giving birth to these people a second time, an unusual image for a man to use about a congregation, and he means it to sting.

4:20

"Change my voice" means change my tone, speak to them differently in person than this letter sounds. "I stand in doubt of you" means I am baffled by you, not that he suspects them of lying.

4:21

The word "law" is used in two senses in one sentence. First it means the law's requirements, which his readers want to take on; then it means the books of Moses as a written text, the first five books of the Bible, which is what he is about to quote from.

4:22

The story is in Genesis 16 and 21. Abraham, promised a son but still childless, fathered Ishmael by Hagar, an Egyptian slave in the household, at Sarah's own suggestion. Isaac was born later to Sarah herself, Abraham's wife and a free woman, when both parents were long past the age of having children.

4:23

"After the flesh" means by the ordinary workings of human arrangement and human biology. The contrast is not between a sinful birth and a pure one but between a son produced by the household's own planning and a son who arrived only because God had said he would.

4:24

"Allegory" translates a Greek verb meaning to speak so that one thing stands for another; it was the standard term for the method by which teachers found a second level of meaning in old texts. "Gendereth" is 1611 English for gives birth to. A covenant is a formal binding agreement between two parties, the word used throughout the Hebrew Bible for the terms on which God and Israel were bound to each other; the agreement at Mount Sinai is the one where Moses received the law.

4:25

"Agar" is the KJV's spelling of Hagar, taken from the Greek form of the name. Arabia here means the desert region east and south of Judea, where Hagar's descendants were held to live. The manuscripts differ over whether the name Hagar appears in the first clause at all. "Answereth to" means corresponds to, lines up with, in the way one column of a table matches another.

4:26

"The Jerusalem which is above" was a familiar idea in Jewish writing of the period: a heavenly city, existing already with God, which the earthly Jerusalem imperfectly copies. Some manuscripts read "the mother of us all," others simply "our mother."

4:27

The quotation is Isaiah 54:1, in its Greek version. In Isaiah it is addressed to Jerusalem, pictured as a woman abandoned and childless during the exile, and promised more children than she had when her husband was with her. "Travailest not" means has not gone through labor; "the desolate" is the wife who has been deserted or widowed.

4:28

Isaac was the son God promised to Abraham and Sarah.

4:29

Genesis 21:9 says only that Sarah saw Ishmael "mocking" or laughing, and the Hebrew is unclear about what he was doing. Jewish interpretation of Paul's day commonly read the scene as mistreatment of Isaac, which is the reading Paul assumes here.

4:30

The quotation is Genesis 21:10, where these are Sarah's words to Abraham demanding that Hagar and Ishmael be sent away. Paul quotes it with small changes, most notably ending with "the son of the freewoman" where Genesis has "my son, with Isaac."