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 κα’ εκλογην
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)