Paul has just said that those out of faith are blessed along with faithful Abraham (v. 9). Verse 10 states the counterpart, and it is the hinge of the whole chapter: the alternative party stands not under a lesser blessing but under a curse. The verse then grounds that verdict in Scripture — Deut 27:26, the closing malediction of the Shechem covenant ceremony, where the whole assembly says Amen to the curse on anyone who fails to stand by the law.

Four things make the verse hard, and all four are matters of exactly what the Greek says.

1. The predicate ἐξ ἔργων νόμου εἰσίν. Paul does not say “those who do works of law” but “as many as are out of works of law” — the same ἐκ-formula he has used positively of faith three times already (vv. 7, 8, 9). It names a source or basis of standing, not an activity. Whether it designates all Torah-observant Jews, or specifically those seeking justification on that basis, or the Galatian agitators’ programme, is the central contested question of the verse.

2. The move from v. 10a to v. 10b. The citation curses the one who fails to keep the law. Paul uses it to curse those who are out of works of law. The step requires an unstated premise — most commonly supplied as “and no one keeps it” — and whether Paul is suppressing that premise, assuming it from the Deuteronomic narrative itself, or arguing something else entirely, is a genuine and old dispute.

3. Two additions to the LXX wording. Paul writes πᾶς (“everyone”), which LXX Deut 27:26 lacks, and τοῦ νόμου after βιβλίῳ, which LXX Deut 27:26 also lacks though Deut 28:58 and 30:10 supply it. Both additions pull in the same direction: universal scope, and the written document as the standard.

4. The doubled verb. εἰσίν occurs twice, the second clause-final and emphatic: “as many as are out of works of law — under a curse they are.” English tends to smooth this away.

The rendering keeps the ἐκ-formula visible, the anarthrous νόμου without an article, the doubled εἰσίν, and the perfect γέγραπται as a standing verdict rather than a past event.

Two γάρ in one short verse, doing different work, and both must be rendered (§10).

The first grounds v. 10 in v. 9: the blessing of those out of faith is explained — and sharpened — by the fact that the only alternative party stands cursed. It is not a new topic but the negative half of a disjunction.

The second grounds v. 10a in the citation: the verdict is not Paul’s assertion but Scripture’s. This is the same move he makes at vv. 11, 13, and 16 — every claim in the paragraph is anchored in a written text.

The stacking produces slightly heavy English (“For … for …”), and the temptation is to vary the second to “because” or “since.” Resist it: the two occurrences are structurally parallel (claim grounded in prior claim; claim grounded in text), and varying the English hides that this is how the whole paragraph is built.

Note also what the argument does not supply. Between “cursed is everyone who does not remain in all the law” and “those out of works of law are under a curse” there is a gap. Greek supplies no premise, no διότι, no οὐδεὶς ἐμμένει. The gap is the text.

Built onbdf · na28

Ὅσοι is the quantitative-correlative relative, inclusive by nature: it draws a circle around everyone who answers to the following predicate rather than selecting a subset from a larger group. The corpus already fixes this (Phil 3:15; Gal 6:12, 16; Gal 3:27).

This matters here because “ὅσοι γάρ” is not “some who” or “those of you who.” The construction is categorical. Paul is defining a class by a predicate and then pronouncing on the whole of it.

Retain “as many as” in the literal tier so the correlative construction stays visible; “all who” in smooth registers. Do not render “those who rely on,” which both specifies the predicate and converts a correlative into a demonstrative.

Built onbdag · bdf

The phrase is anarthrous at both nouns and governed by ἐκ as source. Three features of the Greek are doing work, and all three are regularly erased in English.

First, it is an ἐκ-phrase, not a verb. Paul does not write οἱ ποιοῦντες τὰ ἔργα τοῦ νόμου. He writes the same prepositional formula he has just used three times of faith — οἱ ἐκ πίστεως (vv. 7, 9), ἐκ πίστεως δικαιοῖ (v. 8) — and will use again at vv. 11, 12, 18, 22, 24. The formula names a source or basis of standing. Rendering it “those who rely on observing the law” supplies a verb, an object, and a mental attitude, none of which are in the Greek.

Second, νόμου is anarthrous. Per standing policy the article is withheld in every tier: law is presented as a regime or principle, not as a named document. (Contrast τοῦ νόμου later in this same verse, where the article is present because a specific scroll is in view — see below.)

Third, the referent of ἔργα νόμου is open. The corpus policy stands: retain the bare phrase and flag the range.

Built onbdag · bdf · na28

Proposed — pending reviewRichard N. Longenecker, Galatians, Word Biblical Commentary 41 (Dallas: Word, 1990)

ὑπό + accusative is jurisdictional, not locative: it marks subjection to an authority or a regime. Galatians makes this preposition the spine of its argument — ὑπὸ κατάραν (3:10), ὑπὸ ἁμαρτίαν (3:22), ὑπὸ νόμον (3:23; 4:4, 5, 21), ὑπὸ παιδαγωγόν (3:25), ὑπὸ ἐπιτρόπους (4:2), ὑπὸ τὰ στοιχεῖα (4:3) — and one English word must serve every occurrence or the analogical argument becomes invisible.

κατάρα is the standard LXX rendering of Hebrew קְלָלָה, the covenant malediction (Deut 11:26, 28, 29; 28:15; 29:19-20; 30:1, 19). It is not an expression of ill-will or a wish for harm but a declared sanction with legal standing — which is why it is the counterpart of εὐλογία (v. 9) and why the Deuteronomic ceremony has the people ratify it with Amen.

The noun is anarthrous here and qualitative: curse as a condition under which one stands. At v. 13 Paul writes τῆς κατάρας τοῦ νόμου with both articles, which is a different and more specific claim. Preserve the distinction: do not supply “the” at v. 10, and do not render “cursed” as a predicate adjective, which would delete the preposition and with it the jurisdictional force.

Excluded: “under God’s curse” (supplies a subject the clause withholds), “condemned” (that is κατάκριμα/κρίμα and names a verdict rather than a standing), “doomed” (register and fatalism).

Built onbdag · halot · bdf

Paul writes ἐξ ἔργων νόμου εἰσὶν ὑπὸ κατάραν εἰσίν — the verb twice, once completing the subject-defining relative clause and once as the main predicate, the second in clause-final position.

The construction is not redundant. The first εἰσίν closes the definition of the class (“as many as are out of works of law”), and the second asserts the verdict on it (“under a curse they are”). The clause-final placement throws the whole weight of the sentence onto the final word, and the word is the bare copula — the sentence lands on the sheer fact of the standing.

English idiom resists this, and almost every modern rendering collapses the two into one (“all who rely on works of the law are under a curse”). The collapse costs the emphasis. The literal tier retains both, and the smooth tier retains the inverted order of the predicate (“under a curse they are”) where English will bear it.

There is no textual variation here: the doubling is unanimously attested, which tells against treating it as a slip.

Built onbdf · na28

γέγραπται is the perfect passive with documentary force: a completed act of writing whose result remains legally operative. Per standing policy, “it stands written” where the register permits, “it is written” in liturgical register, and never “it was written,” which converts a standing verdict into a past event.

The recitative ὅτι that follows introduces the citation verbatim rather than reporting its content, so punctuation as direct quotation is legitimate — though the quotation marks in printed editions are editorial judgment, not manuscript evidence, since the earliest majuscules are unpunctuated.

What deserves notice is that the same lemma recurs inside the citation: τοῖς γεγραμμένοις, perfect passive participle, “the things having been written.” Paul’s formula and the text’s own self-description use one word. The citation is about remaining in what stands written, introduced by a formula asserting that this stands written. Keep one English root at both points (“stands written … the things written”) so the figure survives; varying to “Scripture says … what is recorded” destroys it.

The divine agent is unexpressed in both the finite verb and the participle, and must stay unexpressed: “as God has written” and “what God commanded” supply what the passive withholds.

Built onbdag · bdf

ἐπικατάρατος is the LXX standard for Hebrew אָרוּר, the passive participle that heads each malediction of the Shechem ceremony (Deut 27:15-26) and the serpent and ground curses of Gen 3:14, 17. NT only here and Gal 3:13 (citing Deut 21:23, where the LXX in fact has κεκατηραμένος — see Versions).

Two points of register.

It is declarative, not imprecatory. The word does not invoke harm; it states a standing that already obtains by the covenant’s own terms. The Deuteronomic liturgy has the people answer Amen, which is ratification of a fact, not a wish. Render “cursed is,” supplying the copula bracketed in the literal tier; “let him be cursed” is excluded as converting a declaration into an imprecation, and belongs with ἀνάθεμα ἔστω (Gal 1:8-9), a different construction Paul uses when he wants it.

It must stay lexically distinct from ἀνάθεμα (already fixed as “anathema / accursed”), which Paul has used twice in this letter at 1:8-9. The two words are not interchangeable in his usage: ἀνάθεμα names the devoted thing, ἐπικατάρατος the one on whom a declared malediction rests.

Excluded: “damned” (register plus developed doctrine), “under a curse” as a rendering of the adjective (duplicates the ὑπὸ κατάραν of v. 10a and erases the distinction between the preposition-phrase and the adjective).

Built onbdag · muraoka-lxx · halot

Paul’s citation contains πᾶς (“everyone”) where LXX Deut 27:26 has none, and πᾶσιν τοῖς γεγραμμένοις where the LXX has πᾶσιν τοῖς λόγοις τοῦ νόμου τούτου. Both occurrences of πᾶς bear directly on the argument, and the corpus distinguishes their constructions.

πᾶς + anarthrous singular (πᾶς ὅς) is distributive — everyone, item by item, no exceptions. This is the word that makes the citation universal in scope and so applicable to a class rather than to individual defaulters.

πᾶς + articular plural (πᾶσιν τοῖς γεγραμμένοις) is collective: the whole bounded set of written requirements, taken together. This is the word that makes the requirement total — not most of the law, all of it.

The two constructions pull in different directions and together produce the sentence’s force: every single person, with respect to the whole of what is written. Keep “everyone” for the first and “all” for the second, per standing policy; levelling both to “everyone … everything” loses the distributive/collective distinction, and levelling to “all … all” loses the item-by-item force of the first.

Whether the πᾶς is Paul’s own addition or stood in a Greek text known to him is a textual question taken up below.

Built onbdf · muraoka-lxx · bhs

ἐμμένω is ἐν + μένω: remain in, abide by, stand by — of a place, a covenant, an agreement, a course. Four NT occurrences (Acts 14:22; 28:30; Heb 8:9 citing Jer 31:32; Gal 3:10), and the Hebrews occurrence is decisive for register: οὐκ ἐνέμειναν ἐν τῇ διαθήκῃ μου, of Israel not standing by the covenant.

Two things must survive in English.

The ἐν- prefix, which is doubled by the following ἐν-phrase (ἐμμένει … ἐν τῷ βιβλίῳ). The idiom is not “obey the law” but “remain inside what is written” — a spatial image of standing within a boundary, which is at home in the Deuteronomic covenant-document frame. Per §8 the image is retained: “remain in,” not “obey” or “keep.” Paul had ποιέω, φυλάσσω, τηρέω, and ὑπακούω available (and he uses ποιέω at the end of this very verse), so the choice of ἐμμένω is deliberate.

The durative present, which presents the failure as a standing condition rather than a single lapse. The verb joins the μένω family already fixed in this corpus (μένω / παραμένω / ἐπιμένω / διαμένω), and one English root is required across all of them.

Excluded: “continue in” (permitted in liturgical register, where the older English fixed it; now ambiguous in modern English between persistence and sequence), “abide by” (drops the spatial ἐν-), “keep” (spent on τηρέω/φυλάσσω), “do” (that is ποιέω, which stands four words later and must remain distinct).

Built onbdag · muraoka-lxx

βιβλίον is the written roll — a scroll, a document, and in legal contexts a deed or certificate (βιβλίον ἀποστασίου, Matt 19:7). “Book” is the standard English equivalent and is retained, with the realia noted: a first-century reader would picture a scroll, not a codex (§9).

The phrase τὸ βιβλίον τοῦ νόμου is itself Deuteronomic vocabulary for the Torah scroll deposited beside the ark and read in the hearing of the assembly (Deut 28:58, 61; 29:20; 30:10; 31:26; Josh 1:8; 2 Kgs 22:8-11). It is not a general reference to Scripture but to the specific document whose sanctions are being recited.

Note the article-shift inside the verse. Earlier Paul writes anarthrous ἐξ ἔργων νόμου — law as regime. Here he writes articular τοῦ νόμου — the law as a named written document, because a scroll is in view. The shift is deliberate and must be preserved: supplying “the” at the first occurrence or withholding it at the second flattens a distinction the verse maintains within thirteen words.

τοῦ νόμου is not in LXX Deut 27:26 (which has τοῦ νόμου τούτου modifying λόγοις, not βιβλίῳ). Paul’s phrase corresponds to the wording of Deut 28:58 and 30:10. See the Septuagint section below.

Built onbdag · muraoka-lxx

τοῦ ποιῆσαι αὐτά is a genitive articular infinitive with a neuter plural object, and per standing policy the construction is rendered with a marker loose enough to leave more than one reading standing.

Koine has broadened the genitive articular infinitive well past classical purpose to cover result, content, and epexegesis (BDF §400), and in LXX-influenced Greek it frequently renders Hebrew לְ + infinitive construct as a loose complement with no determinate logical force. That is the situation here: the phrase translates לַעֲשׂוֹת אוֹתָם, and the Greek inherits the Hebrew’s looseness.

“So as to do them” is retained because it is loose in English in roughly the way the Greek is loose. “In order to do them” closes it to purpose; “which is to do them” closes it to epexegesis; “and do them” converts a subordinate infinitive into a coordinate verb and reproduces a scribal and versional simplification rather than the text.

The neuter plural αὐτά refers back to τοῖς γεγραμμένοις, the written things. Retain the plural: “to do it,” while idiomatic in the modern tier where “everything written” precedes, obscures the agreement in the literal tier.

Built onbdf · muraoka-lxx

Verse 10a and 10b do not join without a further step. The citation curses the one who does not remain in all the law; Paul uses it to curse those who are out of works of law. Something must connect the two, and Greek supplies nothing — no διότι, no οὐδεὶς ἐμμένει, no explanatory clause.

This is not a translator’s problem but an exegetical one, and it has been argued since antiquity. The translation’s obligation is to leave the gap exactly where Paul left it. Renderings that insert the premise — “because no one can keep the whole law,” “since nobody succeeds in doing it all” — write into the verse what the author withheld, and that is forbidden (§4, §6).

Built onsilva-becnt · bauckham-god-crucified

Proposed — pending reviewJ. Louis Martyn, Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible 33A (New York: Doubleday, 1997) · John M. G. Barclay, Obeying the Truth: Paul's Ethics in Galatians (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988)

The citation is Deut 27:26, the last of the twelve maledictions of the Shechem ceremony.

MT Deut 27:26: אָרוּר אֲשֶׁר לֹא־יָקִים אֶת־דִּבְרֵי הַתּוֹרָה־הַזֹּאת לַעֲשׂוֹת אוֹתָם — “Cursed be the one who does not uphold the words of this law, to do them.”

LXX Deut 27:26: Ἐπικατάρατος πᾶς ἄνθρωπος ὃς οὐκ ἐμμενεῖ ἐν πᾶσιν τοῖς λόγοις τοῦ νόμου τούτου ποιῆσαι αὐτούς.

Paul: Ἐπικατάρατος πᾶς ὃς οὐκ ἐμμένει πᾶσιν τοῖς γεγραμμένοις ἐν τῷ βιβλίῳ τοῦ νόμου τοῦ ποιῆσαι αὐτά.

Three differences bear on meaning.

πᾶς. The LXX already has πᾶς ἄνθρωπος where MT has only אֲשֶׁר — a universalizing expansion in the Greek, most likely harmonizing to the other maledictions of the chapter, several of which do have כֹּל-type phrasing in the LXX. Paul has πᾶς without ἄνθρωπος. So the much-discussed πᾶς is in the Greek text Paul inherited; what is distinctively his is the omission of ἄνθρωπος, which if anything is a reduction rather than an addition. This matters: arguments that Paul manufactured the universal scope to serve his case must reckon with the LXX reading.

πᾶσιν (MT has no כֹּל). The LXX’s πᾶσιν τοῖς λόγοις corresponds to MT’s דִּבְרֵי without a totalizing word. Whether the LXX translator read a Hebrew text with כָּל or supplied it is not recoverable; the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Syriac also read a totalizing form, which may indicate a variant Hebrew tradition rather than a Greek expansion. State the uncertainty rather than guessing.

τοῖς γεγραμμένοις ἐν τῷ βιβλίῳ τοῦ νόμου for LXX τοῖς λόγοις τοῦ νόμου τούτου. This is Paul’s own substitution, and it is not random: the phrase τὰ γεγραμμένα ἐν τῷ βιβλίῳ τοῦ νόμου is itself Deuteronomic (Deut 28:58, 61; 29:19-20; 30:10), and Paul has evidently assimilated the Deut 27:26 malediction to the formula of the curse-section that follows it. The effect is to tie v. 10’s citation to the broader Deut 28-30 sanctions, which is relevant to the salvation-historical reading of the unstated premise above.

Paul also writes ἐμμένει (present) where LXX has ἐμμενεῖ (future). The forms differ only in accent, which is editorial in unaccented witnesses, so the difference may be no difference at all — but the present suits a gnomic statement and the future a covenant-sanction formula. Record it; do not build on it.

Finally, Paul drops ἐν before πᾶσιν. This is trivial for sense — the ἐν- of the prefix carries it — but note that part of the manuscript tradition restores it, assimilating toward the LXX.

Built onmuraoka-lxx · bhs · bhq · halot

Proposed — pending reviewF. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Galatians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982)

The verse is textually stable in its substance. Three points worth recording.

ἐν πᾶσιν. A number of witnesses insert ἐν before πᾶσιν, agreeing with LXX Deut 27:26. The shorter reading is printed in NA28 and is to be preferred on two grounds: assimilation of a citation toward its LXX source is a well-attested direction of scribal activity, and the reverse (deletion of a preposition matching the source text) has no motive.

ἐμμένει / ἐμμενεῖ. The accented distinction between present and future is editorial, since the earliest majuscules are unaccented. The printed present at Gal 3:10 reflects editorial judgment, not manuscript evidence, and must be reported as such rather than cited as a difference from the LXX future.

τοῦ ποιῆσαι / ποιῆσαι. Some witnesses omit the genitive article, levelling toward the LXX’s bare ποιῆσαι. Again the assimilating direction is the suspect one; the articular infinitive is the harder reading and is retained.

βιβλίῳ. A few witnesses read βίβλῳ. Orthographic/lexical variation of no exegetical weight; record it, do not render it differently.

Built onna28 · metzger-tc

The verse was a battleground early, and the lines of the modern dispute are mostly visible in the Fathers.

Chrysostom (Homilies on Galatians, ad loc.) reads the argument as turning on completeness: the law pronounces the curse on anyone failing in any part, and since no one has kept the whole, those under law stand cursed. He stresses that Paul does not blame the law but shows what the law itself says.

Jerome (Commentary on Galatians) takes up the problem that Paul’s wording diverges from the Hebrew of Deut 27:26 — which lacks a word for “all” — and discusses whether Paul is citing a Greek text or arguing from the sense. The discussion is significant for the history of the textual question treated above: Jerome had already noticed the issue and did not resolve it by emending Paul.

Augustine connects v. 10 to his account of the law as revealing sin without supplying the power to fulfil it, and the inability premise becomes standard in the Latin West through him.

In the later tradition the verse carries heavy freight in the sixteenth-century debates over law and gospel, where it functions as a proof-text for the impossibility of justification by works. That reception is real but supplies no lexical evidence (§11), and the modern reopening of the question — whether Paul argues from human inability or from Israel’s covenant history — rests on the exegesis of Deut 27-30 and of Gal 3:13, not on the tradition’s weight.

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, Commentary on Galatians, trans. Andrew Cain, Fathers of the Church 121 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010)