Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Galatians 4:6 - 4:6

Online Resource Library

Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | Download

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Galatians 4:6 - 4:6


(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)

This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

6. With this and Gal 4:7 cf. Rom 8:15-17. Sonship implies privileges, in this case spiritual, yes, the possession of the Spirit of God’s Son with His utterance within us of dependence on the Father. In Gal 3:26-27 sonship is connected with putting on Christ, here with receiving His Spirit.

ὅτι δέ ἐστε υἱοί. ὅτι is demonstrative “But as a proof that,” rather than strictly causal, ἐστε, for St Paul will bring the truth home to the Galatians.

ἐξαπέστειλεν. Gal 4:4 note. The parallel is exact; as His Son into the world, so the Spirit of His Son into our hearts. For the thought compare Col 1:12 note on τῷ πατρί.

ὁ θεὸς τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ. Compare Isa 48:16, rightly translated by Bengel (on Gal 4:4): Dominus Jehovah misit me suumque Spiritum, and so probably the LXX. κύριος Κύριος ἀπἐστειλέν με καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα αὐτοῦ. On τὸ πνεῦμα see Appendix, Note F.

εἰς τὰς καρδίας ἡμῶν. St Paul reverts quickly to the first person, cf. Gal 2:18 note. Bp Chase writes “confirmation is the Pentecost of the individual soul” (Confirmation in the Apostolic Age, p. 88).

κρᾶζον, i.e. τὸ πνεῦμα. In Rom 8:15 St Paul has modified his words to πνεῦμα υἱοθεσίας ἐν ᾦ κράζομεν Ἀββά ὁ πατήρ. The close conjunction of the Holy Spirit with our own personality forms a contrast to Mar 5:9 and parallels.

Ἀββά ὁ πατήρ. For the Aramaic Abba cf. Bar-abbas. The bilingual phrase occurs also in Rom 8:15 in a context similar to our passage, and in Mar 14:36[120], our Lord’s utterance in the Garden. Thus in all three passages it is expressive of the deepest feeling. But why both terms? In the Gospel the second may perhaps be by way of explanation for Gentile readers, but this hardly suits the thought of the Epistles. Rather Abba had lost somewhat of its original force, and the fervour of the human speaker was not satisfied without adding the equivalent in his ordinary Greek tongue. If so St Paul’s mother tongue would seem to have been not Aramaic but Greek.

[120] Is affixed to a word it means that all the passages are mentioned where that word occurs in the New Testament.

For a similar case see Rev 1:7 (ναί, ἀμήν) where the change is in the reverse order, from Greek to Hebrew, as was natural if St John was the author. Akin to this explanation is another that the readiness of the bilingual Palestinian Church to use both Aramaic and Greek in prayer had spread to other countries.

Perhaps all the passages are to be connected with the Lord’s Prayer, of course in the form answering to that of St Luke’s narrative, in which alone the first word in Aramaic would be Abba, the Aramaic being here retained from peculiar sacredness of association (Moulton, Proleg., p. 10; cf. Chase, Lord’s Prayer, p. 23). It is possible that St Paul by using both terms also wished to suggest the impartiality of the Spirit’s work in believers, whether they be Jews or Gentiles. Dr Swete thinks that if the double phrase is a reminiscence of the words used by our Lord it suggests that “the adopted children of God reveal their sonship in the same spirit of filial submission which marked the Only Son” (The Holy Spirit in the N.T. p. 205).

The only other Aramaic words employed as such by St Paul are Μαρὰν ἀθά in 1Co 16:22.

Illustrations of similar bilingual or even trilingual expressions are given in Schoettgen on Mar 14:36 : e.g. T. B. Erubin, 53b, a Galilean woman is ridiculed as saying mâri kiri (χείριος) “my lord, my servant,” though intending mâri qiri (κύριος) “my lord, my lord,” and Shemoth R., § 46, 3, in a Mashal a physician’s son addresses a mountebank (presumably a quack) as qiri, mâri, âbi, “my lord, my lord, my father,” much to his own father’s displeasure.