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Gal_4:5. The object for which God sent forth His Son, and sent Him indeed γενόμ . ἐκ γυναικ ., γενόμ . ὑπὸ νόμον .
τοὺς ὑ̔ πὸ νόμον ] The Israelites are thus designated in systematic correspondence to the previous γενόμ . ὑπὸ νόμον . Comp. Gal_3:25, Gal_4:21, Gal_5:18; Rom_6:14.
ἐξαγοράσῃ ] Namely, as follows from τοὺς ὑπὸ νόμον , from the dominion of the law, Gal_4:1-3 (in which its curse, Gal_3:11, is included), and that through His death, Gal_3:13. Erasmus well says: “dato pretio assereret in libertatem.”
ἵνα τὴν υἱοθεσ . ἀπολάβ .] The aim of this redemption; for of this negative benefit the υἱοθεσία was the immediate positive consequence. But Paul could not again express himself in the third person, because the υἱοθεσία had been imparted to the Gentiles also, whereas that redemption referred merely to the Jews; but now both, Jews and Gentiles, after having attained the υἱοθεσία no longer ὑπὸ τὰ στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου ἦσαν δεδουλωμένοι (Gal_4:3): hence Paul, in the first person of the second sentence of purpose, speaks from the consciousness of the common faith which embraced both the Jewish and the Gentile portions of the Christian body, not merely from the Jewish-Christian consciousness, as Hofmann holds on account of ἐστέ in Gal_4:6. Comp. the change of persons in Gal_3:14.
The υἱοθεσία is here, as it always is, adoption (see on Eph_1:5; Rom_8:15; and Fritzsche, in loc.),—a meaning which is wrongly denied by Usteri, as the signification of the word allows no other interpretation, and the context requires no other. Previously not different from slaves (Gal_4:1-3), as they were in the state of νηπιότης , believers have now entered into the entirely different legal relation towards God of their being adopted by Him as children. Comp. Weiss, bibl. Theol. p. 338 f. The divine begetting (to which Hofmann refers) is a Johannean view; see on Joh_1:12. In the divine economy of salvation the gracious gift of the υἱοθεσία was needed in order to attain the κληρονομία ; while in the human economy, which serves as the figure, the heir-apparent becomes at length heir as a matter of course. Accordingly Paul has not given up (Wieseler) the figure on which Gal_4:1 ff. was based—a view at variance with the express application in Gal_4:3, and the uninterrupted continuation of the same in Gal_4:4; but he has merely had recourse to such a free modification in the application, as was suggested to him by the certainly partial difference between the real circumstances of the case and the figure set forth in Gal_4:1-2. Comp. Gal_4:7.
ἀπολάβ .] not: that we might again receive, as is the meaning of ἀπολαμβ . very often in Greek authors (see especially Dem. 78. 3; 162. 17), and in Luk_15:27; for before Christ men never possessed the υἱοθεσία here referred to (although the old theocratic adoption of the Jews was never lost, Rom_9:4): hence Augustine and others are in error when they look back to the sonship that was lost in Adam. Nor must we assume with Chrysostom, Theophylact, Bengel, and others, including Baumgarten-Crusius, Hofmann, and Reithmayr, that, because the υἱοθεσία is promised, it is denoted by ἀπολάβ . as ὀφειλομένη ,—a sense which is often conveyed by the context in Greek authors and also in the N.T. (Luk_6:34; Luk_23:41; Rom_1:27; Col_3:24; 2Jn_1:8), but not here, because it is not the υἱοθεσία expressly, but the κληρονομία (Gal_3:29, Gal_4:7), which is the object of the promise. As little can we say, with Rückert and Schott, that the sonship is designated as fruit ( ἀπο = inde) of the work of redemption, or, with Wieseler, as fruit of the death of Jesus apprehended by faith: for while it certainly is so in point of fact, the verb could not lead to it without some more precise indication in the text than that given by the mere ἐξαγορ . On the contrary, ἀπολάβ . simply denotes: to take at the hands of any one, to receive, as Luk_16:25; Plat. Legg. xii p. 956 D, and very frequently in Greek authors.