The Pulpit Commentary — Galatians — Section 173

Spirit of God promised by him to his people Father as well a1 our own spiritual and upon their restoration from Captivity, de- eternal life. tected the pa.rtioular fact here indicated in Ver. 20.-This verse, closing the short Dent. nxiii. 2; Ps. lxviii. 17; Exod. xix. pamgraph commencing the verse which 16, 19. The conntless hosts of his "saints" precedes it, appears design<c'd to mark the who attended upon the Lord on that occa- difference of the relatioua which subsisted sion were not)1urely mere specrotors; and between the Lord and Israel at the timo of to their intervention acting out the volitions the giving of the Lnw, compared with tho~e of God might be most reason11,bly a.scribed which subsist between God and Abraham's all the physical sights 11,nd sounds which seed in the covenant of grace. Now a me- gave t.o tht: giving of the Law its sensible diator is not a mediator of one (o n µ.erriT 11 s awfulnees (comp. l Thess. iv. 16). "They i>l>s ovK lun11). The o.rticle with µ.eufr~r, Ji. raised the fire and smoke; they shook and tera.lly, "tbe mediator,'' marks th«;i noun as a rent the rock ; they framed the sound of the class noun, giving it the sense, "a mediutor trnmpet; they effected the articul11,te voices as such." Comp11re the use of the article in which conveyed the words of the Law to the Tou houT&~ou, in " the signs of an apostle " ears of the people, and therein proclaimed (2 Cor. xii. 12); in o a;,a8os l118ponros, "a and published the Law; whereby it became good man" (Matt. xii. 25); in o· lp-ytfT11s, 'the word spoken by angels'" (Owen, ' Ex- position of the Epistle to the Hebrews,' ii. 2). n "the labourer is worthy of his hire (Luke x. 7). The clause means this: a mediator In the h.e.nd of a media.tor ( ,,, X"Pl µ.•ul-rou) ; implies the existence of more ·than one by the hand of a mediator. 'E11 X"Pl, in or party, of two parties at least, for him, to by the band, is unquestionably a Hebraism, mediate between; of two parties not at one, being in the Septu11,gint the ordinary literal but standing on such terms towards each rendering of the Hebrew beyad ; see e.g. other e.s make his intervention necessary. Numb. iv. 37, 45; which passages likewise So far as it characterized the giving of the show us whom the apostle means to desig- Law viewed in contrast with the estab- nate e.s the mediator; in reference to which lishment of the covenant of grace, the oomp. also Dent. v. 5, "I stood between mediation of l\'loses,. as has been already (a11tfµ.,uo11) the Lord and you at that time observed, did not put an end to the estrange, [i.e. at the giving of the Law], to show you ment between the Lord and Ismel: the the word of the Lord." So Philo(' Vit. Mos.,' estrangement went on throughout Moses' 678) speaks of Moses e.s acting like a µ.•ui,..,,s life ; throughout, the Israelites. stand Kal o,aMtfK7'1/s, " mediator and reconciler." marked with the brand of" transgression." Schottgen (' Hor. Hehr.') gives numerous The genitive i11&s, "of one," is the .aame as examples from the rabbinical books of thiB the genitive in µ.,uh11s 0,ou Kai av8pt1nrow, application of the term" mediator" to Moses. literally, "Mediator of God and men," in This conception of Moses as a mediator 1 Tim. ii. 5 ; it marks the party or parties seems implied also in the words, " Mediator towards whom the function of mediation is of a better covenaut" aud" Mediator of a new exercised; so that what the apostle here eovene.nt,'' which we have in Heh. viii. 6 and affirms is that there cannot be only one xii. 24, with reference to Christ. Evidently such party. But God is one (o ~~ 0•bs tTs the mention of a mediator in the present luTw). When we consider the number pf passage iB intended to point to the relations interpretations given of this clause in con- between the Lord and Israei as being those nection with the preceding, which have of diste.n ce and estrangement. If it be literally been computed by huuclreds (the objected that the same inference would be reader will find a spicilegium of so~e sixty deducible from the description of Christ as or eighty of the.m in Meyer), we may "Mediat.or between God and men," in 1 Tim. infer with certainty that the sense which iL 5, we have it to say, in answer, that the apostle intended to convey is not an Christ, being in hie natnre both God and obvious one-not one which lies near the wan, not only mediates between God and surfa.ce. So much appe11.rs, however, in tho men, having made atonement or recon- highest degree probable, tbot ho refers ciliation by his cross, but in his own being either to some disadvantageous circum- unites God and man, abolishing actually stance attaching to the Law or to somo that state of mutual alienation which the advantageous circumstauco attaching to tlio mediation of Moses by figure implieJ. but covenant of promise, and is viewing the two could not in reality do away. We, too, were in contrast the one with the oLher. On enemies to God before we were recouciled these grounds the present writer bas long by the death of hiB Son (Rom. v. 10); but since acquiesced in the view propounded by now, being recouciled, we are at one with Windischmonn in his Commentary on this God in Christ : Christ's life in our nature Epistle, and which is accepted by Bishop both gnara.uteeing and effectuating our EllicotL, that the unity here predicated of . co.1L1JJu, <l state of reconciliution with the God ia the oneness subsisting between t.he en. III. 1-29.] THE EPISTLE TO 'rHE GALA'rIANS. 139