Saints Translation

By Vincent Melli

Galatians — Greek text and reception

ReverendTrusting promise

Galatians 3 — Greek text and reception

Saints Translation: Galatians [V2]

Each card preserves the Greek reading and its textual and reception notes. This source provides a Greek study edition; Hebrew counterparts and Hebrew–Greek classifications are not supplied.

Chapter 3

Receiving the Spirit

Verse 3:1

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

O foolish Galatians, who bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 3:2

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

This alone I want to learn from you: did you receive the Spirit by works of law or by hearing with faith?

Textual & Reception Notes

Greek akoē pisteōs is literally hearing of faith; hearing with faith expresses a believing response. A message of faith is another possible analysis. The same choice occurs at 3:5.

Verse 3:3

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being brought to completion by the flesh?

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 3:4

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Did you suffer so much in vain—if indeed it was in vain?

Textual & Reception Notes

Paschō normally concerns suffering; experienced so much is a broader possible rendering. The qualifying if indeed it was in vain is preserved.

Verse 3:5

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

So then, does the One who supplies you with the Spirit and works mighty deeds among you do so by works of law or by hearing with faith?

Textual & Reception Notes

Abraham, faith, and the promise

Verse 3:6

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Just as Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 3:7

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Know, then, that those who are of faith are the sons of Abraham.

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 3:8

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

And Scripture, foreseeing that God justifies the nations by faith, proclaimed the gospel beforehand to Abraham: “In you all the nations will be blessed.”

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 3:9

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

So then, those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham.

Textual & Reception Notes

Pistos can mean believing or faithful. Believing follows the explicit statement about Abraham’s belief at 3:6 without excluding its fidelity dimension.

Verse 3:10

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

For all who are of works of law are under a curse, for it is written, “Accursed is everyone who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the law, to do them.”

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 3:11

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Now it is clear that no one is justified before God by law, because “The righteous one will live by faith.”

Textual & Reception Notes

The placement of by faith can be read with will live or with righteous. The translation retains the concise clause rather than fixing a fuller doctrinal paraphrase.

Verse 3:12

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

But the law is not of faith; rather, “The one who does these things will live by them.”

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 3:13

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Christ bought us free from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, because it is written, “Accursed is everyone who hangs upon a tree,”

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 3:14

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the nations, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

Textual & Reception Notes

The promise and the law

Verse 3:15

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Brothers, I speak in human terms: even when a human covenant has been ratified, no one sets it aside or adds provisions to it.

Textual & Reception Notes

Diathēkē can denote covenant or testament. Covenant preserves the connection with 3:17, while the human legal analogy remains a question of interpretation.

Verse 3:16

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. It does not say, “And to seeds,” as concerning many, but as concerning one, “And to your seed,” who is Christ.

Textual & Reception Notes

Seed and seeds preserve the explicit singular/plural word argument. Replacing both with an undifferentiated descendants would hide it.

Verse 3:17

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

What I mean is this: the law, which came four hundred and thirty years later, does not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to nullify the promise.

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 3:18

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

For if the inheritance is from law, it is no longer from promise. But God has graciously given it to Abraham through promise.

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 3:19

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Why, then, the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the seed should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator.

Textual & Reception Notes

Because of transgressions leaves open whether the law exposes, increases, or restrains them. By the hand of retains the mediation expression; no named mediator is inserted.

Verse 3:20

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Now a mediator is not of one, but God is one.

Textual & Reception Notes

The compressed Greek statement has been kept: a mediator is not of one. One party is an intelligible expansion but is not written in G; how the statement advances the argument remains open.

Verse 3:21

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Is the law, then, against the promises of God? May it never be! For if a law had been given that could give life, righteousness really would have come from law.

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 3:22

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

But Scripture confined everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

Textual & Reception Notes

Faith in Jesus Christ follows the objective-genitive choice at 2:16. The faithfulness of Jesus Christ remains a possible alternative.

Sons and heirs in Christ

Verse 3:23

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Now before faith came, we were guarded under law, confined until the faith that was to be revealed.

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 3:24

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

So the law became our guardian until Christ, so that we might be justified by faith.

Textual & Reception Notes

Paidagōgos denotes the person supervising a child, not simply a classroom teacher. Until Christ takes eis temporally with 3:23–25; toward Christ is another possible emphasis.

Verse 3:25

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 3:26

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 3:27

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 3:28

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G]: The last pair uses male and female, unlike the first two neither/nor pairs. That change of conjunction is preserved. Sons at 3:26 and seed at 3:29 retain the inheritance argument.

Verse 3:29

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to promise.

Textual & Reception Notes