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The Ancient World Behind the Text: Ideas
The customs, offices and ideas a first reader knew without being told, what each meant then, and the nearest thing you already know.
Curse and blessing
God's covenant set blessings for keeping it against curses for breaking it, and Deuteronomy spelled both out. Curses were also a familiar part of ancient religion, magic and everyday life.
The contract had two lists at the back: what you get if you keep your side, and what happens if you break it. In the Bible God's covenant came with blessings and curses. Genesis promises a blessing on those who bless Abraham and a curse on those who curse him, and Deuteronomy ends with long lists of blessings for keeping the law and curses for breaking it, the last of them being driven out of the land. People in the Greek and Roman world used curses too, often as secret spells against a rival. When Paul calls down a curse, or says that Christ became a curse, his readers heard all of that. Scholars disagree about what the law's curse meant for Paul.
Genesis 12:3 and Deuteronomy 28 set curses on those who oppose Abraham or break the covenant against blessings on those who keep it. Reasoning by opposites was normal Jewish reading, and Deuteronomy 27:26 summed up the curses. Jewish teaching held that human obedience was always imperfect, so God could not demand perfect obedience as a condition of salvation. Yet Paul, like a good rabbi, presses Deuteronomy 27:26 for all it can give (Keener). Wright reads the curse as an event in history. In Deuteronomy it is exile from the land, while blessing was "the original purpose of the covenant" and curse its opposite. Written curses are very old. Podany describes the succession treaty the Assyrian king Esarhaddon imposed on his vassals in 672 BC. It carried about a hundred lines of curses on anyone who damaged the tablet and more than 150 fiercer lines on anyone who broke the oath. The likeness to Deuteronomy's covenant curses is drawn here, not by Podany. Oaths and curses were familiar in religion, magic and everyday life. People cursed rivals in sport and romance, usually in secret magic rather than in public letters. The word for curse in Galatians 1:8-9 is the one the Greek Old Testament uses in Deuteronomy 13 for Israelites who followed false gods. Deuteronomy 21:23 curses anyone hung on a tree. Israelites hung only the dead, and the CSB Study Bible takes the tree in Galatians to be the cross. By Paul's day the blessing of Abraham included the whole world to come. Curse invocations were the opposite of blessings, and the synagogue prayer "Peace be on Israel" answers the curse on the law's distorters.
An analogy: a lease with a schedule of penalties at the back. Most tenants never read it until the landlord starts quoting it clause by clause.
Because the covenant joined blessing and curse, Paul can say in Galatians 3:13 that Christ took the law's curse by being hung on a tree, so that Abraham's blessing could reach the nations. Curse and blessing remain opposites in 1 Corinthians 16:22, where Paul curses anyone who does not love the Lord.
Not a contract between strangers. A lease binds parties who owe each other nothing beyond its terms. Deuteronomy's curses sit inside a covenant whose first purpose was blessing, and Wright reads the curse as a judgment in history, exile from the land, not a fine.
What the curse of Galatians 3:10 is. The ESV and CSB Study Bibles read it as falling on everyone, since no one keeps everything the law commands. Wright answers that "the curse in question wasn't a kind of other-worldly curse"; in Deuteronomy it is exile, a judgment in history on Israel, and Jesus bore it on a Roman cross. Keener notes that Jewish teaching did not require perfect obedience, and reads Paul as pressing Deuteronomy 27:26 to its limit.
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- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Galatians 1:8-9, 3:10, 3:13, 3:14 and 6:16, and on 1 Corinthians 16:22
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Galatians 1:8-9, 3:10, 3:13 and 3:14
- ESV Study Bible, study note on Galatians 3:10
- CSB Study Bible, notes on Galatians 3:10 and 3:13
- N. T. Wright, Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians, comment on Galatians 3:10-14
- Amanda H. Podany, Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East, ch. 18, The Succession Treaty and Imperial Expansion: Enlisting the Gods' Support
