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Gal_3:4. After Paul, by the νῦν σαρκὶ ἐπιτελεῖσθε , has reminded his readers of all that they had most foolishly submitted to at the hands of the false apostles, in order to be made, according to their own and their teachers’ fancy, finished Christians, he now discloses to them the uselessness of it in the exclamation (not interrogation), “So much have ye suffered without profit!” What he means by τοσαῦτα ἐπάθετε , is therefore everything with which the false apostles in their Judaistic zeal had molested and burdened the Galatians,—the many exactions, in name of compliance with the law, which these had necessarily to undergo at the hands of their new teachers. Comp. Gal_1:6 f., Gal_4:10, Gal_5:2; Gal_5:8, Gal_6:12, Gal_2:4. Comp. 2Co_11:20. Bengel refers it to the patient endurance of the apostle’s ministry, produced through the Holy Spirit; but this view is not at all suggested by the context, and would not correspond to the sense of πάσχειν (but rather of ἀνέχεσθαι ). All the expositors before Schomer (in Wolf) and Homberg, as also Grotius, Calovius, Wolf, Semler, Michaelis, Morus, Rückert, Olshausen, Reithmayr, and others, understand it (following Chrysostom and Augustine) of the sufferings and persecutions on account of Christianity; so that Paul asks, “Have ye suffered so much in vain? Seeing, namely, that ye have fallen away from the faith and hence cannot attain to the glory which tribulation brings in its train” (2Co_4:17; Rom_8:17). But, apart from the fact that no extraordinary sufferings on the part of the Galatians are either touched upon in the epistle (Gal_4:29 is quite general in its character) or known to us otherwise, this interpretation is completely foreign to the connection. After Schomer and Homberg, others (including Schoettgen, Raphel, Kypke, Zachariae, Koppe, Rosenmüller, Borger, Flatt, Winer, Usteri, Schott, Baumgarten-Crusius, de Wette, Hilgenfeld, Wieseler, Hofmann, Matthias) explain it: “So many benefits (by means of the Spirit) have ye experienced in vain?” So also Fritzsche, Diss. I. in 2 Cor. p. 54, and Holsten. Certainly πάσχω , something befalls me, is a vox media (hence Matthies even wishes to understand it of the agreeable and disagreeable together), which, according to the well-known Greek usage, as the passive side of the idea of ποιεῖν , may be employed also of happy experiences (Xen. Anab. v. 5. 9: ἀγαθὸν μέν τι πάσχειν , κακὸν δὲ μηδέν ); but, as the latter use of the word always occurs with a qualitative addition either expressed ( εὖ , χάριν , τερπνόν , ἀγαθά , ὀνήσιμα , or the like) or indicated beyond doubt by the immediate context (as Joseph. Antt. iii. 15. Galatians 1 : ὅσα παθόντες ἐξ αὐτοῦ καὶ πηλίκων εὐεργεσιῶν μεταλαβόντες ), it is not to be found at all in the whole of the New Test., the LXX., or the Apocrypha (not even Est_9:29). Thus the interpretation, even if τοσαῦτα could convey any such qualitative definition of the text, is without precedent in the usage of Scripture. Paul in particular, often as he speaks about the experiences of divine grace, never uses for this purpose πάσχειν , which with him always denotes the experience of suffering. He would have written, as the correlative of the bestowal of grace, ἐλάβετε or ἐδέξασθε (2Co_6:1). Ewald’s suggestion of powerful and vehement movements of the Spirit is forced, and unwarranted by the text. The very word τοσαῦτα points to the suffering of evil, just as πολλά , μάλα πολλὰ παθεῖν , without κακά or the like, is frequently so used in Greek authors.
εἴγε καὶ εἰκῆ ] A hint that the case might be still worse than was expressed in εἰκῆ : if indeed it is only in vain (and not even to the positive jeopardy of your Messianic salvation) that ye have suffered. On καί , compare Hartung, Partikell. I. p. 136; Baeuml. Partik. p. 150. So, in substance, Beza, Grotius, Wolf, Semler, Kypke, Michaelis, Rosenmüller, Paulus, Matthies, Olshausen, Baumgarten-Crusius, de Wette, Ewald, Wieseler, Matthias, and others. Chrysostom and his followers discover a mitigation and encouragement to improvement in the words ( εἰ γὰρ βουληθείητέ φησιν ἀνανῆψαι καὶ ἀνακτήσασθαι ἑαυτοὺς , οὐκ εἰκῆ , Chrysostom), as also Ambrose, Luther,[119] Erasmus, Calvin, Clarius, Zeger, Calovius, Cornelius a Lapide, Estius, Zachariae, Morus, and others. In this case ΚΑΊ must be understood as really (Hartung, I. p. 132); but the idea of improvement, whereby the supposed case of the εἰκῆ would be cancelled, is not indicated by aught in the context. Even should the words be taken as merely leaving open the possibility, that matters had not actually already gone so far with the readers (Hofmann), Paul himself would have rendered his very earnest reproach τοσαῦτα ἐπάθ . εἰκῆ both problematical and ambiguous, and would thus have taken the whole pith out of it.
ΕἼΓΕ ] assuming, namely, that ye even only, etc., makes the condition more prominent, and serves to intensify the mere εἰ . Paul fears that more may take place than that which was only expressed by εἰκῆ . This, however, is conveyed by the context, and is independent of the ΓΈ , instead of which ΠΈΡ might have been used. See Baeuml. l.c. p. 64 f. Comp. on 2Co_5:3; Eph_3:2. Still more marked prominence would have been given to the condition by εἴπερ γε καί (Plat. Theaet. p. 187 D; Herod. vi. 16).
[119] “Objurgat quidem, sed ita ut semper oleum juxta infundat, ne eos ad desperationem adigat.… Non omnino abjeci spem de vobis.”