Paul is narrating the Jerusalem meeting of vv. 1-10, and at v. 4 the narration breaks. He begins a prepositional phrase — διὰ δὲ τοὺς παρεισάκτους ψευδαδέλφους, “but because of the smuggled-in false brothers” — loads it with a long relative clause, and never supplies the main verb it was reaching for. NA28 prints a dash at the end of the verse and resumes in v. 5 with a dative relative (οἷς) that has no grammatical anchor either. The sentence is genuinely broken, and every smooth English version of vv. 3-5 is repairing it.

What the verse itself says is clear enough, and it is a dense piece of invective built almost entirely from compounds with παρα- and κατα-. Two words are smuggling-words (παρείσακτος, παρεισέρχομαι); one is a military reconnaissance word (κατασκοπέω); one is a slave-trading word (καταδουλόω). The picture is of infiltrators put in place by someone else, reconnoitring a position with a view to taking its inhabitants captive. Against that stands the one positive term: ἡ ἐλευθερία ἡμῶν ἣν ἔχομεν ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ — a freedom presently possessed (durative ἔχομεν), which the whole of Galatians 4-5 will develop.

Three decisions carry weight. First, whether διά + accusative is causal at all here, or whether Paul’s syntax has collapsed under the pressure of the subject. Second, how the odd ἵνα with a future indicative is to be taken. Third, how far the rendering may sharpen the invective: §5 requires that the hostility be rendered at face value, neither softened into “some people who disagreed” nor amplified beyond what the lexis will bear.

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Proposed — pending reviewHans Dieter Betz, Galatians: A Commentary on Paul's Letter to the Churches in Galatia, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979)

The grammar of vv. 3-5 does not close. διὰ δὲ τοὺς παρεισάκτους ψευδαδέλφους is a causal prepositional phrase with nothing for it to modify: v. 3 has already completed its clause (οὐδὲ Τίτος … ἠναγκάσθη περιτμηθῆναι), and v. 5 opens with a relative pronoun (οἷς) rather than a finite clause that could take the διά-phrase as its cause.

The main construals:

1. Anacoluthon. Paul begins a new sentence, is carried off by the relative clause describing the opponents, and never returns. The dash in NA28 and the broken-off ἵνα clause both reflect this. On this reading the διά-phrase is left hanging and the reader supplies something like “[it was] because of the false brothers [that the question even arose]”.
2. The διά-phrase modifies v. 3. Titus was not compelled — and the reason the matter came up at all was the presence of the false brothers. This is grammatically possible but strained, since διά + acc normally gives the reason for an action, and here it would give the reason for a non-action, or rather for the occasion of a dispute.
3. The διά-phrase modifies v. 2’s ἀνέβην or ἀνεθέμην. Paul went up, and laid his gospel before them, because of the false brothers. This reads well as sense but requires leaping over the whole of v. 3.

Note also the position of δέ: postpositive particles cannot stand first, so it is displaced behind the preposition. This is ordinary Greek and carries no extra weight, but it does mean δέ governs the whole phrase, not just the noun.

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Proposed — pending reviewJ. B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, 10th ed. (London: Macmillan, 1890) · F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Galatians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982)

A hapax in the New Testament and rare anywhere: a verbal adjective from παρεισάγω (“bring in alongside, introduce secretly”), which occurs at 2 Pet 2:1 of those who παρεισάξουσιν destructive heresies. The adjective is passive in force: these men were brought in, not merely came in. Someone put them there.

That passive force is the first datum of the verse and is easy to lose. “Intruders” and “infiltrators” make the men the agents of their own entry; the Greek adjective makes them the object of someone else’s action, and the agent is pointedly unnamed. Paul could have written a participle of παρεισέρχομαι (as he does in the next clause) and did not.

The second datum is the παρα- prefix, which carries the sense of coming in beside or past a proper boundary — hence the secrecy that the lexica record for the whole παρεισ- family. “Smuggled in” holds both the passive shape and the irregularity of the entry.

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NT only here and 2 Cor 11:26 (κινδύνοις ἐν ψευδαδέλφοις), absent from the LXX; almost certainly a Pauline coinage on the ψευδο- pattern (ψευδαπόστολος, ψευδοπροφήτης, ψευδόχριστος, ψευδοδιδάσκαλος).

Both morphemes are load-bearing. ἀδελφός is the standing early-Christian designation for a member of the community — the corpus renders it “brother” throughout, with the mixed referent noted rather than expanded (§3) — and the compound asserts that these men stood inside that designation and were not entitled to it. The ψευδο- element does not say they were insincere in their convictions; it says the title was false. Paul is contesting membership, not sincerity.

Crucially, the term concedes that the men were within the assembly. That is what makes παρεισῆλθον possible: one does not slip into a place one is outside of.

Per §5, the rendering is neither softened nor sharpened: Paul’s charge is severe and stands at face value, but who these men were — the agitators later addressed in the letter, a Jerusalem faction, or men otherwise unknown — is left unnamed and must not be supplied.

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The indefinite-qualitative relative, not simple ὅς. In Koine the distinction is partly eroded, but where the clause describes the kind of persons rather than identifying particular ones, the qualitative force is live — and here it is: Paul has just named them by a coined epithet and now characterizes the class.

The corpus policy renders this “who is of such a kind as to” in the literal tier and a plain “who” in smooth English, noting the class-describing sense. The literal tier is kept here because the qualitative force is doing argumentative work: Paul is not reporting the movements of a few identified individuals but defining a type, which is why the description can be reapplied later in the letter without renaming them.

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NT only here and Rom 5:20 (νόμος δὲ παρεισῆλθεν, where the sense is “came in alongside”). The compound is the active counterpart of παρείσακτος in the preceding phrase, and the repetition of the παρεισ- element within six words is deliberate: they were smuggled in, and they slipped in.

Both prefixes should be audible. παρα- gives the sideways or irregular manner of entry; εἰς gives the destination. “Slipped in alongside” keeps both in the literal tier; “slipped in” is adequate in reading tiers, with the compression noted.

The aorist is complexive: a single completed entry, not a process of gradual infiltration.

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NT hapax. The military-reconnaissance verb: the cognate noun κατάσκοπος is the LXX word for the spies Joshua sent into Jericho (Josh 2:1; cf. 1 Chr 19:3; 2 Kgdms 10:3) and for the spies of Gen 42, and Heb 11:31 uses it of Rahab’s visitors. The σκοπ- root links it to σκοπέω (“fix attention on”), already fixed in this corpus as deliberate, sustained, consequential attention — but the κατά- prefix makes the looking hostile and covert.

The infinitive is one of purpose: they slipped in in order to reconnoitre.

The image matters because it sets up what follows. A spy enters a position he intends to take, and καταδουλώσουσιν supplies the intention: the inhabitants are to be carried off. Per §8 the military metaphor is live and is retained — “to spy out” keeps the reconnaissance, and the LXX Jericho background should be recorded so the reader can see what kind of looking is in view.

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The two terms are set as exact antonyms, and the corpus already fixes both families on single English roots: ἐλευθερία / ἐλεύθερος / ἐλευθερόω = “freedom / free / set free”, and the δουλ- family = “slave / enslave / slavery”. Galatians runs this antithesis from 2:4 through 4:1-31 to 5:1, 13, and one English root at every point is required or the argument becomes invisible.

ἐλευθερία names the manumitted status of those formerly owned — not a civic right and not a psychological condition. “Liberty” is excluded from reading tiers: it imports the modern political register and, in modern English, the moral-license connotation Paul explicitly denies at Gal 5:13.

καταδουλόω is the intensive-perfective compound of δουλόω (“enslave”, already fixed), NT only here and 2 Cor 11:20 (εἴ τις ὑμᾶς καταδουλοῖ, in a list of indignities the Corinthians tolerate). The κατά- carries thoroughness: reduce to complete servitude. “Bring into bondage” is permitted in declared liturgical register; “make us slaves” and “reduce us to slavery” serve in reading tiers. Excluded: “subjugate” and “dominate” (drop the ownership), “put us under” (drops the institution). Per §9 the ancient legal institution is rendered at face value and not sanded down.

Note the possessive and the durative verb: τὴν ἐλευθερίαν ἡμῶν ἣν ἔχομεν. The freedom is already held — Paul does not say they hoped for it or were promised it — and ἔχομεν is present where the surrounding verbs are aorist. The relative clause is not decorative: it is the claim that the thing being reconnoitred is in present possession.

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Proposed — pending reviewMoisés Silva, New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis, 2nd ed., 5 vols. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014)

Per standing corpus policy the bare prepositional phrase is preserved and not expanded to “in union with Christ” or “as Christians”. The formula is usually incorporative in Paul but not invariably, and the reader must be able to see the ambiguity rather than receive a resolved paraphrase.

Note also the word order Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ, title before name, retained as written rather than normalized — the title-first sequence slightly foregrounds Χριστός as title, and transposition in the manuscript tradition is scribal assimilation to the commoner order.

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ἵνα … καταδουλώσουσιν is a purpose clause with a future indicative where Koine normally has an aorist subjunctive. The construction is attested (cf. 1 Cor 9:18 v.l.; Rev 22:14; and scattered papyrus instances) but is rare enough that the manuscript tradition corrected it: a substantial body of witnesses reads the subjunctive καταδουλώσωνται or καταδουλώσονται, and the harder future indicative is the better reading precisely because it is the one scribes would have wanted to fix.

Two questions follow.

Does the future weaken the telic force? Some have read the indicative as asserting that the enslavement would in fact have followed — purpose shading into certain result. BDF treats the future indicative after ἵνα as a late-Koine equivalent of the subjunctive with no semantic gain. Per corpus policy on ἵνα (telic force preserved, purpose and result left open where both are live), the rendering keeps “so that”, which in English is as open as the Greek, and does not substitute “in order that” (closing to purpose) or “with the result that” (closing to result).

Is the voice active or middle? The critical text’s active καταδουλώσουσιν makes the false brothers the enslavers outright. The variant middle καταδουλώσωνται would mean “so that they might enslave us to themselves” — reduce us to their own service. The middle is the reading of 2 Cor 11:20’s parallel in part of the tradition and is attractive in sense, but it is secondary here.

Note finally the fronted ἡμᾶς: the pronoun stands before its verb, which is emphatic. “Us” — the same “us” who hold the freedom in the preceding clause. English preserves the emphasis by keeping the pronoun early in the clause.

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Three points in this verse.

καταδουλώσουσιν (future indicative). Read by 𝔓46 and the primary Alexandrian witnesses; a large part of the tradition reads the aorist subjunctive middle καταδουλώσωνται, and others the future middle καταδουλώσονται. The future indicative after ἵνα is the harder construction and the direction of correction is unmistakable — toward the expected subjunctive and toward the middle voice familiar from 2 Cor 11:20. The active future stands.

Punctuation. The dash printed at the end of v. 4 in NA28 and UBS5 is an editorial judgment about where Paul’s sentence breaks, not a feature of the manuscripts, which are unpunctuated at this point. Editions and commentators differ over whether to break here, at the end of v. 3, or not at all. This must be reported as editorial, never as textual support for a particular construal of the διά-phrase.

Order of Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ. Some witnesses transpose to Ἰησοῦ Χριστῷ, the commoner sequence; the transposition is assimilation and the printed order is retained.

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The Greek commentators took the verse as a sharp aside and felt the broken syntax. Chrysostom, in his homilies on Galatians, reads the ψευδάδελφοι as men who entered the assembly in order to bring the believers back under the law’s observances, and he presses the espionage image: they came as scouts to see whether the Gentile believers had been circumcised, so that they might report and compel. He also treats the passive force of παρείσακτος as significant — the men were introduced, and so had backers.

Jerome, commenting on Galatians, renders the key terms with subintroductos and explorarent, both exact calques, and takes the διά-phrase with the preceding verse: the question of Titus arose because of these men. His Latin thus commits to construal (2) above, and the Vulgate’s wording has carried that reading into the Western tradition.

Augustine, in his exposition of Galatians, is more interested in the ἐλευθερία than in the syntax, and reads the freedom as freedom from the ceremonial observances rather than from the moral law — a distinction that is reception rather than exegesis of this verse, since Paul supplies none here.

What the Fathers do not do is soften the designation. None of them reads ψευδάδελφοι as a term for the merely mistaken.

Proposed — pending reviewJohn Chrysostom, Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 13 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark; repr. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans) · Jerome, Commentarii in epistulam Pauli ad Galatas, ed. G. Raspanti, CCSL 77A (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006) · Augustine, Epistulae ad Galatas expositionis liber unus, ed. and trans. E. Plumer, Augustine's Commentary on Galatians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)

The verse’s vocabulary is drawn from two fields that Paul develops elsewhere.

The espionage field is LXX: κατάσκοπος is the standard word for the spies of Gen 42:9-34, Num 13, and Josh 2:1-3 (whence Heb 11:31). The irony is that in the LXX narratives the spies serve God’s people; here the reconnaissance is directed against them.

The freedom/slavery field is Galatians’ own. The antithesis stated here is not developed until ch. 4, where the two women and their sons become the figures for δουλεία and ἐλευθερία (4:21-31), and it is discharged in the imperative of 5:1 (τῇ ἐλευθερίᾳ ἡμᾶς Χριστὸς ἠλευθέρωσεν· στήκετε οὖν καὶ μὴ πάλιν ζυγῷ δουλείας ἐνέχεσθε) and qualified at 5:13. Gal 2:4 is the first appearance of the letter’s governing antithesis, and the rendering must use the same English roots at all these points.

2 Cor 11:20, 26 supplies the only other occurrences of both ψευδάδελφος and καταδουλόω, and the two stand within a few verses of each other there as well — evidence that the pairing was fixed in Paul’s vocabulary for a recognizable kind of opponent.

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