Verse 12 is the second half of a two-part demonstration. Verse 11 argued from Habakkuk that no one is declared righteous in law, because the righteous one will live out of faith. Verse 12 forestalls the obvious objection — that law and faith might be two names for one thing — by citing a second text, Leviticus 18:5, in which life is promised to the doer.

Three things carry the argument, and all three are easy to lose in English:

1. One verb, twice. ζήσεται stands in v. 11 and again in v. 12. Paul sets two scriptural promises of life side by side and shows that they rest on different grounds.
2. One preposition, denied. ἐκ πίστεως is the formula running through the whole chapter (vv. 7, 8, 9, 11, 24). Verse 12 denies that law belongs to that source-category. The denial must use the same English words as the affirmations or the reader cannot see what is being denied.
3. No verb of saying. After ἀλλά Paul writes nothing — no γέγραπται, no λέγει. The citation lands bare. The ellipsis is original and must not be repaired in the reading text.

The verse makes a claim about provenance, not about moral quality. Paul does not say the law is bad, or that doing is bad; v. 21 explicitly denies the first and v. 10 has already quoted Deuteronomy’s own demand for doing. He says law and faith are not drawn from the same well.

Proposed — pending reviewJ. Louis Martyn, Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible 33A, New York: Doubleday, 1997.

The article is present here and absent in the two preceding verses: ἐξ ἔργων νόμου (v. 10), ἐν νόμῳ (v. 11), then ὁ … νόμος (v. 12). The corpus policy on anarthrous νόμος — law presented as a regime rather than as a named document — therefore does not apply, and the article must be rendered.

What the article points to is a further question. It may be anaphoric, taking up the νόμος just named in v. 11; it may be the article of a well-known entity (Torah); it may simply be the subject-article that Greek supplies when a noun is the subject of a copular clause with a predicate prepositional phrase.

The practical consequence is that the reading text must not weaken the article into a principle (“legal obligation,” “the principle of law”) nor expand it into a title (“the Law of Moses”). ‘The law’ stands.

ἐκ is the source preposition, kept distinct in this corpus from ἀπό (origin), διά (means), and ὑπό (agency). Galatians builds its argument on it: οἱ ἐκ πίστεως (vv. 7, 9), ἐκ πίστεως δικαιοῖ (v. 8), ὁ δίκαιος ἐκ πίστεως ζήσεται (v. 11), ἐκ πίστεως δικαιωθῶμεν (v. 24) — set against ἐξ ἔργων νόμου (vv. 2, 5, 10) and ἐκ νόμου (v. 18, 21).

Verse 12 is the only place in the chain where the phrase is negated, and the negation is what makes vv. 11 and 12 into one argument rather than two quotations. English must therefore use identical wording at every point: if v. 11 reads “by faith” and v. 12 “a matter of faith,” the chain is invisible.

The predicate is elliptical — Greek says literally “the law is not out of faith,” which in English requires either a supplied noun (“is not [a matter] of faith”) or a tolerance for the bare prepositional predicate. The literal tier keeps the bare form; the study tier brackets the supplement.

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

After ἀλλά Paul writes no governing verb. He does not say “but it says,” “but rather it is written,” or “but on the contrary the law says.” The citation simply follows.

This is not accidental brevity. Paul supplies γέγραπται at v. 10 and v. 13 and marks the Habakkuk citation in v. 11 with ὅτι. Here he supplies nothing, and the asyndetic drop is part of the rhetoric: the two texts of vv. 11 and 12 are set against one another with no connective tissue, like two documents laid side by side.

Per the corpus policy on elliptical constructions, nothing is supplied unbracketed in the reading text. A colon and the quotation carry it. Supplying “the law says” would also settle a real question — whether Paul attributes the Leviticus words to the law as speaker, to Scripture, or simply produces them as evidence — which the Greek leaves alone.

NA28 punctuates with a raised point after ἀλλʼ, signalling the break. That punctuation is editorial: the earliest majuscules are unpunctuated, and the decision rests on discourse analysis, not on manuscript evidence.

ποιέω is the verb already fixed in this corpus as ‘do’, and it is the verb Deuteronomy used in the v. 10 citation (τοῦ ποιῆσαι αὐτά). The repetition is deliberate: the curse falls on the one who does not remain in all things written to do them; the life is promised to the one who has done them. Same root, both halves.

The aorist participle is complexive: the doing viewed as a completed whole, not as a process under way. English ‘the one who has done them’ tracks this; ‘the one who does them’ (a present-tense habitual) is the standard rendering but flattens the aspect and, with it, the totality that v. 10’s πᾶσιν had insisted on.

αὐτά has no antecedent in Paul’s own sentence. In Lev 18:5 LXX the pronoun refers back to τὰ προστάγματά μου καὶ πάντα τὰ κρίματά μου. Paul cites the clause without its antecedent, trusting the reader to supply it from the law-context of vv. 10–12. The literal tier therefore keeps the bare ‘them’; supplying ‘these commandments’ in the reading text imports a noun Paul withheld.

ζήσεται is the same verb and the same form as in the Habakkuk citation one verse earlier (ὁ δίκαιος ἐκ πίστεως ζήσεται). The identity is the hinge of the argument: two scriptures, both promising life, differing in the prepositional phrase attached. English must use ‘will live’ at both points without variation.

ἐν αὐτοῖς is the harder element. The underlying Hebrew of Lev 18:5 has בָּהֶם, where the preposition is instrumental-or-locative in the same open way; the LXX reproduces it with ἐν + dative.

The future ζήσεται should not be hedged or spiritualized. Whether the life promised is the life of the land, covenantal well-being, or eschatological life is a question about Leviticus and about Paul’s use of it, not about the verb, and belongs in the note.

The corpus policy forbids manufacturing antitheses with δέ where the particle is ascensive or continuative. Here, however, the clause genuinely contradicts: v. 11 has established that righteousness is not ἐν νόμῳ because life is ἐκ πίστεως, and v. 12 blocks the escape route of identifying the two. The adversative rendering is warranted by the content, not merely assumed from the particle.

The structure is therefore:

• v. 11a: negative thesis — no one is justified in law before God
• v. 11b: proof text 1 (Hab 2:4) — the righteous one will live ἐκ πίστεως
• v. 12a: supporting denial — but the law is not ἐκ πίστεως
• v. 12b: proof text 2 (Lev 18:5) — the doer will live ἐν αὐτοῖς

The two proof texts are joined by nothing but the verb they share. Paul’s whole demonstration rests on ζήσεται standing in both.

The words are Lev 18:5, where the LXX reads: ἃ ποιήσας ἄνθρωπος ζήσεται ἐν αὐτοῖς (“which, having done, a man shall live in them”). Paul compresses: he drops the relative ἅ and the noun ἄνθρωπος, substantivizes the participle with the article, and so produces ὁ ποιήσας αὐτά ζήσεται ἐν αὐτοῖς.

The Hebrew (Lev 18:5) reads אֲשֶׁר יַעֲשֶׂה אֹתָם הָאָדָם וָחַי בָּהֶם — “which, if a man does them, he shall live by them.”

The same verse is cited at Rom 10:5 in a very similar compressed form, and the clause is picked up in the prophets (Ezek 20:11, 13, 21; cf. Neh 9:29). Within the Hebrew Bible it functions as a promise of covenantal life within the land, not as an offer of a way to earn salvation. That the verse says what Paul says it says is not in dispute; what is disputed is what Paul is doing with it.

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. · Alfred Rahlfs and Robert Hanhart, eds., Septuaginta: Id est Vetus Testamentum graece iuxta LXX interpretes, editio altera, Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2006.

The text of NA28 is secure. Two minor matters are worth recording:

• Some witnesses supply ἄνθρωπος after ὁ ποιήσας, assimilating toward the fuller LXX wording of Lev 18:5. This is a harmonization to the source text and is secondary; the compressed substantival participle is the harder reading and matches the compression at Rom 10:5.
• A number of later witnesses insert ὅτι or expand ἀλλʼ with a verb of saying, filling the ellipsis. The direction of this activity is clear and confirms that the bare ἀλλʼ is original.

The raised point after ἀλλʼ and the quotation punctuation in printed editions are editorial judgments resting on discourse analysis, not on manuscript evidence; the earliest majuscules are unpunctuated throughout.

Chrysostom (Hom. in Gal.) takes the verse as a straightforward contrast of two paths: the law requires deeds, faith requires belief, and since the deeds were not forthcoming the path of faith was opened. He is careful not to read Paul as impugning the law itself, and anchors that care in v. 21.

Jerome (Comm. in Gal.) renders the citation Qui fecerit ea, vivet in illis and takes ἐν αὐτοῖς locatively — life lived within the commandments — which is closer to the Hebrew idiom than most later English versions.

Augustine, in the anti-Pelagian writings, presses the verse toward the impossibility of fulfilment: the law tells what is to be done but does not supply the doing, which is given through the Spirit. That is an inference from the Pauline argument as a whole rather than from this verse, and should be recorded as reception rather than as exegesis of the clause.

Theodoret notes the pairing of the two ζήσεται promises explicitly, observing that the same word of life is attached to two different conditions and that the argument turns on which condition can be met.

Proposed — pending reviewJohn Chrysostom, Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 13, ed. Philip Schaff. · Jerome, Commentarii in Epistulam Pauli ad Galatas, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 77A, Turnhout: Brepols, 2006.