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Gal_5:12. The vivid realization of the doings of his opponents, who were not ashamed to resort even to such falsehood (Gal_5:11), now wrings from his soul a strong and bitterly sarcastic wish[232] of holy indignation: Would that they, who set you in commotion, might mutilate themselves! that they who attach so much importance to circumcision, and thereby create commotion among you, might not content themselves with being circumcised, but might even have themselves emasculated! On ὄφελον as a particle, see on 1Co_4:8. “Omnino autem observandum est, ὤφελον (as to the form ὄφελον , see Interpr. ad Moer. p. 285 f.) non nisi tum adhiberi, quum quis optat, ut fuerit aliquid, vel sit, vel futurum sit, quod non fuit aut est aut futurum est,” Hermann, ad Viger. p. 756. It is but very seldom used with the future, as Lucian, Soloec. 1. See Hermann l.c.; Graev. ad Luc. Sol. II. p. 730.
καί ] the climactic “even,” not that of the corresponding relation of retribution (Wieseler), in which sense it would be only superfluous and cumbrous.
ἀποκόψονται ] denotes castration (Arrian, Epict. ii. 20. 19), either by incision of the vena seminalis (Deu_23:1) or otherwise. See the passages in Wetstein. Comp. ἀπόκοπος , castrated, Strabo, xiii. p. 630; ἀποκεκομμένος , Deu_23:1. Owing to καί , which, after Gal_5:11, points to something more than the circumcision therein indicated, this interpretation is the only one suited to the context: it is followed by Chrysostom and his successors, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, Cajetanus, Grotius, Estius, Wetstein, Semler, Koppe, and many others; also Winer, Rückert, Usteri, Matthies, Schott, Olshausen, de Wette, Hilgenfeld, Hofmann, Reithmayr, Holsten; comp. Ewald, who explains it of a still more complete mutilation, as does Pelagius, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and others. In opposition to the context, others, partly influenced by an incorrect aesthetical standard (comp. Calovius: “glossa impura”), and sacrificing the middle signification,—which is always reflexive in Greek prose writers (Kühner, II. p. 19), and is also to be maintained throughout in the N.T. (Winer, p. 239, [E. T. 316]),—have found in it the sense: “exitium imprecatur impostoribus” (Calvin, acknowledging, however, the word as an allusion to circumcision; Calovius, and others); or have explained it of the divine extirpation (Wieseler); or: “may they be excommunicated” (Erasmus, Beza, Piscator, Cornelius a Lapide, Bengel, Michaelis, Zachariae, Morus, Baumgarten-Crusius, Windischmann, and others);[233] or: “may all opportunity of perverting you be taken from them” (Elsner, Wolf, Baumgarten); or: “may they cut themselves off from you” (Ellicott).
ἀναστατοῦν ] stronger than ταράσσειν , means here to stir up (against true Christianity), to alarm. Comp. Act_17:6; Act_21:38. The word, used instead of the classic ἀνάστατον ποιεῖν , belongs to the later Greek; Sturz, dial. Mac. p. 146.
[232] According to Hofmann, indeed, it is “quite earnestly meant,” and is supposed to contain the thought that “their perversity, which is now rendered dangerous by their being able to appeal to the revealed law, would thereby assume a shape in which it would cease to be dangerous.” How arbitrarily the thought is imported! And yet the wish, if earnestly meant, would be at all events a silly one. For a similar instance of a bitterly pointed saying against the Judaistic overvaluing of circumcision, see Php_3:2.
[233] Luther, in his translation, rendered it: to be extirpated (thus like Calvin); in his Commentary, 1519, he does not explain it specially, but speaks merely of a curse which is expressed. In 1524, however, he says characteristically: “Si omnino volunt circumcidi, opto, ut et abscindantur et sint eunuchi illi amputatis testiculis et veretro, i. e. qui docere et gignere filios spirituales nequeunt, extra ecclesiam ejiciendi.” On the other hand, in the Commentary of 1538, he says quite simply, “allusit … ad circumcisionem, q. d. cogunt vos circumcidi, utinam ipsi funditus et radicitus excindantur.”