Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Galatians 3:15-22, A will no one can change, and a law given through angels
Paul argues from the way a ratified will cannot be altered that the law, coming 430 years after the promise to Abraham and his seed, cannot cancel it, and says the law was added because of transgressions, put in place through angels by a mediator.
Galatians 3:15-22, in every translation this tool compares.
Paul uses the legal picture of a will: once ratified, no one can cancel it or add to it. God's promise to Abraham and his offspring, whom Paul takes to be Christ, came 430 years before the law, so the law cannot undo it. The law was added because of wrongdoing, delivered through angels by a mediator, and it was never against the promise; Scripture shut everyone up under sin so that the promise would be given through faith.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/adoption-and-heirs\/","n":"Adoption, heirs and wills","s":"A family's property passed to its heirs; in Jewish practice the land went to the sons, the eldest with a double share. Roman law also let a man adopt a son, often a grown one, who left his old debts and ties behind and became his heir. A will, sealed before witnesses, settled who inherited and who looked after an heir too young to inherit.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/children-of-abraham\/","n":"Children of Abraham","s":"Jews called Abraham our father, and many believed that being his descendants all but guaranteed a place among God's saved people. The Gospels and Paul argue over who his true children are.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/angels\/","n":"Angels","s":"God's messengers and his heavenly army. Jews of Jesus' day spoke of guardian angels, of the greatest angels standing before God's face, and of angels coming with God at the judgment.","r":""}
Paul's word for covenant, diatheke, was the ordinary Greek word for a will, while the Greek Old Testament used it for covenant, and Paul plays on its legal sense (Keener and his notes). The ESV and CSB Study Bibles read 3:15 as an everyday illustration from human wills; Wright holds that the covenant of Genesis 15 is the point and the will only a passing analogy. The word for seed can be singular or collective, and Paul argues from the singular the way the rabbis argued (Keener and his notes). Jewish tradition after the Old Testament said that the law came through angels, and Josephus has Herod tell his army that "we have learned from God the most excellent of our doctrines, and the most holy part of our law, by angels or ambassadors." What because of transgressions means is disputed: the ESV Study Bible lists four readings and prefers revealing human sin; Heiser notes early readers who took it as restraining transgression and sets out the view that "the transgressions that prompted the giving of the law were those of the Watchers."
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, introduction to Galatians 3:15-20, and on Galatians 3:15, 3:16, 3:17-18, 3:19 and 3:20
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Galatians 3:15, 3:16, 3:17 and 3:19
- ESV Study Bible, study notes on Galatians 3:15-17 and 3:19
- CSB Study Bible, note on Galatians 3:15
- N. T. Wright, Galatians, Commentary, The Unbreakable Covenant (3:15-18)
- Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 15.5.3, trans. William Whiston
- Michael S. Heiser, Reversing Hermon, ch. 7, The Sin of the Watchers and Human Depravity, section The Old Testament Law: Added Because of Whose Transgressions?
