Next he states another inducement to them to abide in his doctrine.
[98] ["This reference of nepios to mental immaturity is quite in opposition to the context."--Meyer. "The heir in his nonage represents the Jewish people and the state of the world before Christ."--Schaff. So Meyer: "The kleronomos nepios represents the Christians as a body regarded in their earlier pre-Christian condition."--G.A.]
[99] [This interpretation is rejected by Schaff, Meyer, Ellicott, Lightfoot et al. Schaff says: "Elements' here represents the religion before Christ as an elementary religion full of external rites and ceremonies. * * Comp. v. 10, for a specimen."--G.A.]
[100] ["The proposition here (apo) simply means to receive from or at the hands of anyone."--Meyer.--But Lightfoot holds that hapo labomen cannot be the same as labomen, the simple verb.--G.A.]
[101] ["It is clear from the context that here the apostle is not speaking of the Jewish race alone but of the heathen world also before Christ. He distinctly refers to their previous idolatrous worship (v. 8.) and describes their adoption of Jewish ritualism as a return' to the weak and beggarly discipline of childhood. * * * Heathenism had been in respect to the ritualistic' element, which is the meeting-point of Judaism and heathenism, a disciplinary training like Judaism. They were made up of precepts and ordinances, as opposed to grace' and promise,' and in an imperfect way they might do the same work. They might by multiplying transgression and begetting a conviction of it prepare the way for liberty in Christ."--Lightfoot.--G.A.]
[102] ["Paul in the following paragraph (ver. 12-20.) interrupts his argument for a moment by an affectionate appeal to the feelings of the Galatians."--Schaff.--G.A.]
[103] ["'Egenomen must be supplied in the second clause and not emenas Chrysostom would understand: Become as I, free from Judaism, for I also have become as you. For when I abandoned Judaism I became as a Gentile and put myself on the same footing with you."--Meyer.--G.A.]
[104] ["Ye did me no wrong' probably means: I have no personal ground of complaint."--Schaff and Lightfoot.--G.A.]
[105] ["On account of some weakness of the flesh,' means he was compelled by reason of bodily weakness to make a stay there which did not form part of his plan, and during that forced sojourn he preached there."--Meyer.--G.A.] "He was detained there by some bodily infirmity or sickness and was thus induced to preach the Gospel."--Schaff.--G.A.]
[106] [This word does not here mean "they vie with you," as Chrysostom interprets it, but "they zealously seek you or pay court to you," (1 Cor. xii. 31.).--G.A.]
[107] ["They desire to shut you out" (not from a state of true knowledge, as Chrysostom interprets) but "from other teachers," anti-judaizing teachers, (according to Meyer) or from me (Paul) and so virtually from Christ Himself (according to Schaff) or from Christ (Lightfoot).--G.A.]
[108] ["A mode of address common in St. John but nowhere else found in St. Paul."--Lightfoot. "It expresses Paul's tenderness and their feebleness."--Schaff.--G.A.]
[109] ["I travailed with you once in bringing you to Christ. By your relapse you have renewed a mother's pangs in me."--Lightfoot. "Until Christ be formed in you,' is not an inversion of the metaphor he has begun with, but means, till you have taken the form of Christ as the embryo develops into the child.'"-- Lightfoot.--G.A.]
[110] [The digression which contains his "affectionate appeal" (see note above) ends with verse 20, after which he resumes--G.A.]
[111] ["The Apostle resumes his argument for the superiority of the Gospel over the Law and illustrates the difference of the two by an allegorical interpretation of the history of Hagar and Sarah."--Schaff.--G.A.]
[112] ["The story of Hagar and Sarah has another (namely a figurative, typical) meaning besides (not instead of) the literal or historical. Paul does not deny the fact but makes it the bearer of a general idea which was more fully expressed in two covenants. He uses allegorical here in a sense similar to the word "typical" in 1 Cor. x. 11."--Schaff.--G.A.] [See on this difficult passage Schaff's Excursus in Com. and Lightfoot's Excursus xiii. Com. p. 368.--G.A.]
[113] [So Meyer: "In Arabia the name Hagar (to Agar) signifies Mt. Sinai." But Schaff says: "It cannot be satisfactorily proven that the name Hagar was an Arabic designation for Mt. Sinai, as the testimonies of Chrysostom and the traveler Harant are isolated and unconfirmed. The shorter reading, For Sinai is a mountain in Arabia' (to gar Sina oros estin en te 'Arabi& 139;) given by the Sinaitic and other mss. and preferred by Lachmann, Tischendorf and Lightfoot (Excursus p. 361 of Com.) is quite intelligible and easily gives rise to the longer reading."--G.A.]
[114] ["This interpretation of Chrysostom is hardly the right one. The subject of sunstoichei is Hagar and not Mt. Sinai--a view which runs counter to the context. It means that Hagar belongs to the same category with the present Jerusalem, is like it in that she was a bondwoman as Jerusalem with its children is also in bondage." Meyer.--G.A.]
[115] ["Against this view of Chrysostom it may be urged that hetis esti meter hemon (which is our mother) is proved by (gar). The passage of the O.T. quoted in v. 27 and the hemon includes all' Christians."--Meyer. (See his long and good note in loc.)--G.A.]
[116] ["Chrysostom assumes the prevailing conception of a real priesthood and sacrifice, baptismal regeneration, etc."--Schaff, Prolegomena, p. 8.--G.A.]
[117] [See note above on this interpretation.--G.A.]
[118] ["Before the emergence of the Christian people of God, the heavenly Jerusalem was still unpeopled, childless, steira, barren,' ou tiktousa not bearing,' and so like Sarah before she became the mother of Isaac. But with the emergence of the Christian people of God this heavenly Jerusalem has become a fruitful mother richer in children than the Jerusalem that now is."--Meyer.--G.A.]