Saturday, July 13, 2024

Hilary Le Cornu and Joseph Shulam on Galatians 5:4

  

Verse 4: Pual sums up the consequences of the Galatian’s seeking of social status in a chiastic sentence (ABA) which focuses on the fact that this act will cut them off from the Messiah. The idea of “severance (κατηργηθητε)” (cf. Orm. 7:2; verse 11 [Greek]) speaks both to the acceptance which the Galatians wish to gain within the Jewish community by means of conversion and their entry into the “messianic age” inaugured by Jesus’ coming (see 3:10ff and 4:1f). The two aorists—“severed” and “fallen”—together with the conative δικαιουσθε (dikaiousthe—“seeking to be justified”) highlight the dichotomous relationship between being “in the Messiah” and everything which lies within the realm of this world. As Paul declares to the Philippians, “If anyone else has a mind to put confidence, I far more . . . But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing the Messiah Jesus my Lord . . . being conformed to his death in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Phil. 3:4, 7-8, 190-11) (see below).

 

“Falling (εξεπεσατε)”—here lying in chiastic parallel with being “cut off” in the first part of the clause—relates literally to falling off/ from, and metaphorically to “losing” (cf. BAGD: 243-44). The LXX employs εκπιπτω (ekpiptō) in Isaiah 6:13 to render the Hebrew בשלכת (be-shalekhet): “Whose stump remains when it is felled אשר בשלכת מצבת בם.” If Paul understood the “mystery of Israel’s hardening” in the light of Isaiah 6:9-10 (cf. Acts 28:25-28), verse 13 also serves him as a source for the “holy root” in Romans 11 (cf. Kin, Paul: 124f, 239-57; Shulam and Le Cornu: 371). In this context, he warns his gentile readers that Israel have not stumbled “so as to fall (της χαριτος)” (Rom. 11:11) because “there has also come to be at the present time a remnant according to God’s choice of grace (εν τω νυν καιρω λειμμα καεκλογην χαριτος γεγονεν)” (Rom. 11:5).

 

Here is the reverse of Paul’s later argument in Romans, where he counters the Roman gentile believers’ understanding of the grace which God had extended towards them to mean that God had forsaken and abandoned Israel, His סגולה (sgula—“treasured possession”). In the present letter, Paul is arguing that his gentile Galatian disciples are risking “stumbling so as to fall” in seeking acceptance within the Jewish community by conventional procedures. They have “Lost” all benefit of Jesus’ act of redemption and resurrection on their behalf—if they continue to seek earthly approval. The notation of “grace (της χαριτος)” serves in a virtual locative sense, designating “a sphere from which the Galatians will exile themselves if they go forward with the action they are contemplating” (Hays, Galatians: 313). At the same time, it also suggests a titular sense—in much the same way as “faith(fulness)” functions as a messianic designation in 3:23 (see 3:10-14, 21-25 and 4:21-32 [end]). (Hilary Le Cornu and Joseph Shulam, A Commentary on the Jewish Roots of Galatians [Jerusalem: Netivyah Bible Instruction Ministry, 2005], 328-31)

 

“Severance” is the complete antithesis of “being in the Messiah”—the choice of the curse rather than of the blessing, of death rather than of life (see 3:10-14). It is tempting to think that Paul may have the motif of marriage in mind here. While the LXX does not employ καταργεω (katarageō) to render גרש (garash) or a similar verb, the allegory in 4:22-31, of which this section is an explanatory continuation, speaks (in)directly of God’s “divorce” of His “bride/wife” (see 4:21-32 . . . ) If so, Paul may be thinking of God having cut off intimate relations with His rebellious children, who have gone adultering/idolatoring after strange gods: “’And I saw that for all the adulteries of faithless Israel, I had sent her away and given her a writ of divorce . . . Surely, as a woman treacherously departs form her lover, so you have dealt treacherously with Me, O house of Israel‎ וארא כי על־כל־אדות אשׁר נאפה משׁבה ישׂראל . . . ‎ אכן בגדה אשׁה מרעה כן בגדתם בי בית ישׂראל” (Jer 3:8, 20). Such a speculation is supported by the fact that the biblical expression ספר כריתות (sefer kritut—“bill of divorce”) derives from the same root, כרת (karat). Paul may thus be playing on the significance of “making a covenant” (כריתת ברית—kritat brit), כריתה (krita) as “cutting off”—both of the foreskin and from the community, and כריתות (kritut) as “divorce” (cf. Rom 11:11ff.) (For הסתר פנים [hester panim], the “hiding of God’s face,” see 3:21-25). (Ibid., 329 n. 29)

 

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