Verse 14 is the purpose-statement that v. 13 exists to serve. The chapter has run a single argument from v. 6: Abraham believed and it was reckoned to him; those out of faith are Abraham’s sons (v. 7); Scripture foresaw that God justifies the nations out of faith and pre-announced the good news to Abraham (v. 8); those out of faith are blessed with believing Abraham (v. 9). Then the counter-movement — ὑπὸ κατάραν (v. 10) — and Christ buying us out of the curse by becoming curse (v. 13).

Verse 14 pays out both halves. The curse removed, the blessing reaches its intended addressees: εἰς τὰ ἔθνη, fronted before its own subject, so that the destination lands first. And the blessing, when it arrives, turns out to have a name: τὴν ἐπαγγελίαν τοῦ πνεύματος — the thing Paul had already made them concede at 3:2 (“Did you receive the Spirit out of works of law, or out of the hearing of faith?”). The argument is a closed circuit: the Spirit they indisputably have is the Abrahamic blessing, and they got it the way Abraham got righteousness.

Three things in the verse repay close attention. (i) Two ἵνα clauses stand side by side with no connective, and whether the second is coordinate with the first or subordinate to it is a real question with consequences for Jew–Gentile relations in the argument. (ii) The subjects shift from third person (the blessing … to the nations) to first person plural (we might receive), and the identity of that “we” is the crux. (iii) The genitive τοῦ πνεύματος is open between “the promise consisting in the Spirit” and “the promise the Spirit brings,” and Paul’s bare genitives are left bare here as elsewhere in this corpus.

Two telic clauses, asyndetic. Per the standing policy (Gal 4:5), no connective is supplied: the absence of καί is as load-bearing as its presence would be, and English ‘and’ flattens a sequence into coordination.

The classifications on offer:

• Coordinate. Two parallel statements of one purpose, the second restating the first in different vocabulary (blessing → promise of the Spirit, nations → we). On this reading the asyndeton is appositional and the second clause glosses the first.
• Subordinate (second dependent on the first). The blessing reaching the nations is the means; our receiving the Spirit is the terminus. This matches the Gal 4:5 pattern exactly, where two asyndetic ἵνα clauses name means and end.
• Both dependent on ἐξηγόρασεν (v. 13). Two coordinate purposes of the buying-out, neither subordinate to the other.

Note that per standing policy ἵνα is rendered ‘so that’ rather than ‘in order that’: Koine ἵνα has broadened well past classical purpose (BDF §391), and while both clauses here are plainly telic, the broader English conjunction keeps the result-shading audible without asserting it.

Built onbdf · na28

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

The prepositional phrase stands before its own clause’s subject (ἡ εὐλογία), which is marked word order. Per the standing topicalization policy, the fronting is preserved in English where syntax permits, and the literal tier keeps it at the head of the clause.

Why it matters: the whole of 3:6-13 has been conducted in the first person plural and in Scripture-citation, with the nations named only in the quoted promise of v. 8 (Ἐνευλογηθήσονται ἐν σοὶ πάντα τὰ ἔθνη). Verse 14 puts them first. The destination is announced before the thing that travels.

ἔθνη is rendered ‘the nations’ in the literal tier per the standing entry, so the Israel/nations frame of the LXX substrate stays visible, and ‘Gentiles’ is available in smooth registers. ‘Pagans’ and ‘heathen’ are excluded (§5, §9). Note that Paul wrote εἰς + acc here (direction toward) where he writes ἐν + dat at 2:2 and 1:16 (among) — the distinction is maintained in rendering.

One syntactic caution: εἰς τὰ ἔθνη could in principle be taken with γένηται (the blessing comes to the nations) or construed more loosely as a goal-phrase for the whole clause. The difference is negligible in sense and need not be resolved.

Built onbdf · bdag

εὐλογία is the noun to the already-fixed εὐλογέω (‘bless’, LXX equivalent of בָּרַךְ). Here it is the exact counterweight to κατάρα in v. 13 — the chapter has set blessing and curse against each other since v. 10, which is the Deuteronomic covenant-sanction pairing (Deut 11:26; 27-30), and both nouns must be rendered strongly and as nouns so the opposition stands.

The article is anaphoric: the blessing, the one pronounced on Abraham and quoted at v. 8 and v. 9.

τοῦ Ἀβραάμ is a bare genitive and stays bare. Three construals are live:

• Possessive/recipient — the blessing Abraham received, now extended.
• Source/mediatorial — the blessing pronounced through Abraham (ἐνευλογηθήσονται ἐν σοί, v. 8 citing Gen 12:3 / 18:18 LXX).
• Characterizing — the blessing that belongs to the Abraham-covenant as such.

Built onbdag · muraoka-lxx · bdf

Aorist middle subjunctive of γίνομαι, already fixed in this corpus as ‘come to be / become’, preserving the contrast with εἰμί and ὑπάρχω.

The choice is deliberate and should be visible. Paul had ἔλθῃ available — he uses it eight verses later of the seed (ἄχρις οὗ ἔλθῃ τὸ σπέρμα, v. 19) and of faith (πρὸ τοῦ ἐλθεῖν τὴν πίστιν, v. 23). He did not use it here. γίνομαι does not describe a traveller arriving at a destination; it describes something coming into a state of being. The blessing does not journey to the Gentiles — it comes to be, among them, in Christ Jesus.

Excluded from the reading text: ‘might come to’ as a bare motion-verb (reads as ἔλθῃ), ‘might be extended to’ (supplies an agent who extends), ‘might be given to’ (imports δίδωμι, which Paul uses separately at 3:21-22). The literal tier keeps ‘might come to be’; the reading text’s ‘might come to’ is permitted with the compression recorded.

The aorist is complexive — the event viewed as a single whole, not a process of gradual extension.

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

Here the attachment is also worth noting: the phrase stands at the end of its clause and may be read as qualifying γένηται (the manner or sphere in which the blessing comes to be), as identifying the location of the blessed (the nations, in Christ Jesus), or as near-instrumental (by Christ Jesus, resuming the Χριστός of v. 13). The first is the natural reading given word order; the alternatives are recorded rather than excluded.

Word order Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ is retained as written and not normalized to ‘Jesus Christ’ — per standing policy, the title-first sequence is data the reader should be able to see.

Built onbdag · silva-becnt · bdf

ἐπαγγελία is already fixed as ‘promise’ — not a prediction but a formally binding undertaking, argued by Paul on the analogy of a ratified διαθήκη (3:15-18) and therefore capable of grounding an inheritance claim (3:29). The article is anaphoric to the promise-complex of vv. 8, 16-18.

The genitive τοῦ πνεύματος is genuinely contested:

• Epexegetical / appositional — the promise which is the Spirit. The Spirit is itself the promised thing. Supported by the chapter’s own logic: what they received (3:2, 14) is the Spirit, and the Spirit is what makes them heirs (4:6-7); supported too by Acts 2:33 (τὴν ἐπαγγελίαν τοῦ πνεύματος τοῦ ἁγίου) and Luke 24:49 / Acts 1:4.
• Subjective / source — the promise which the Spirit conveys or of which the Spirit is the guarantee (cf. the ἀρραβών of 2 Cor 1:22; Eph 1:13-14, where the Spirit is the earnest of a promise not yet fully paid).
• Objective — the promise concerning the Spirit, i.e. the promise whose content is the Spirit’s bestowal (Ezek 36:27; Joel 3:1-2 LXX).

On πνεῦμα: capitalized here because the chapter’s own usage fixes the referent (3:2, 3, 5 — the Spirit supplied by God and working δυνάμεις among them). This is not the contested-referent case of Jas 4:5, where lower case is required.

Built onbdag · silva-becnt · obrien-nigtc

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

The first clause speaks of the nations in the third person; the second says we might receive. The shift is the verse’s most consequential feature and the manuscript tradition does not touch it.

Who is the ‘we’?

• Jewish believers. On this reading Paul has been speaking as a Jew since 2:15 (ἡμεῖς φύσει Ἰουδαῖοι), and the ἡμᾶς of 3:13 (whom Christ bought out from the curse of the law) are those who were actually under law. The verse then says: the blessing goes out to the nations so that we Jews too receive the promised Spirit — the Gentile mission is the route by which the covenant promise reaches its own.
• All believers, Paul included. The ‘we’ is inclusive, gathering the Galatian Gentile readers with Paul, and the shift is simply from the objective statement of purpose to the experience shared by writer and readers. Supported by 3:26 (πάντες γὰρ υἱοὶ θεοῦ ἐστε) and by the fact that 3:2 addresses the Galatians’ own reception of the Spirit in the second person — the same event the first person now covers.
• Rhetorical only. The first person is the preacher’s inclusive plural with no referential weight.

Note also the aorist λάβωμεν, complexive: the receiving viewed as one whole event. λαμβάνω is the unmarked verb of receiving per standing policy, kept distinct from κομίζομαι (‘receive for oneself / collect what is due’) and ἀπολαμβάνω (‘receive back’) — nothing is owed here and nothing is recovered.

Built onsilva-becnt · bdf · bdag

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.

Instrumental-mediatorial διά + gen, kept lexically distinct from ἐκ (source) and ἀπό (origin) per standing policy — a distinction Galatians builds an argument on (1:1, 11-12, 15).

The switch of preposition is worth recording. Through this chapter Paul has written ἐκ πίστεως six times (3:7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 22, 24) and ἐξ ἀκοῆς πίστεως twice (3:2, 5). Here, and again at 3:26 (διὰ τῆς πίστεως), he writes διά. Whether the shift is semantically loaded (source → means) or merely stylistic variation is contested; most read the two as functionally equivalent in Paul, and Rom 3:30 sets ἐκ πίστεως and διὰ τῆς πίστεως in parallel within one clause, which weighs heavily for equivalence. The note records the variation; the English preserves it by rendering διά ‘through’ and ἐκ ‘out of’, which is what the standing policy requires in any case.

The article is anaphoric, pointing back to the faith under discussion since v. 6 — Abraham’s believing and its counterpart in those who are ἐκ πίστεως. English idiom drops it in the reading text; the literal tier keeps ‘the faith’.

No genitive stands with πίστις here, so the πίστις Χριστοῦ debate does not arise at this verse. Note nonetheless that it stands eight verses later at 3:22 (ἐκ πίστεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ), where the standing bare-genitive policy applies.

Built onbdf · bdag · silva-becnt

NA28 prints the verse without obelized variation of substance. Three points are worth recording.

τὴν ἐπαγγελίαν τοῦ πνεύματος. A scattering of witnesses read the plural τὰς ἐπαγγελίας or add τὴν ἐπαγγελίαν τοῦ πνεύματος τοῦ ἁγίου. The expansion to ‘Holy Spirit’ is the characteristic direction of scribal filling-out (cf. the same pressure at Gal 4:6, where witnesses expand πνεῦμα τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ) and is secondary; the singular with the bare πνεύματος is the harder and better-attested reading and matches v. 16’s deliberate singular/plural play with αἱ ἐπαγγελίαι.

λάβωμεν. A few witnesses read the second person λάβητε, levelling the first-person shift back to the second-person address of 3:2 and 3:5. This is precisely the smoothing the verse invites, and the first person is to be retained. Its presence in the tradition is itself evidence that ancient readers found the person-shift awkward.

Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ. The transposition to Ἰησοῦ Χριστῷ in part of the tradition is the usual assimilation to the commoner order and is secondary; per standing policy the order as written is preserved.

None of these affects the sense materially. The genuinely contested matters in this verse are syntactic and lexical, not text-critical.

Built onna28 · metzger-tc

The blessing in view is the one Paul quoted at v. 8: Ἐνευλογηθήσονται ἐν σοὶ πάντα τὰ ἔθνη, a conflation of Gen 12:3 LXX (ἐνευλογηθήσονται ἐν σοὶ πᾶσαι αἱ φυλαὶ τῆς γῆς) and Gen 18:18 / 22:18 (ἐνευλογηθήσονται ἐν αὐτῷ πάντα τὰ ἔθνη τῆς γῆς). Paul’s wording takes πάντα τὰ ἔθνη from the latter and ἐν σοί from the former. That τὰ ἔθνη of v. 14 is the same τὰ ἔθνη of the citation is the hinge of the paragraph.

The curse of v. 13 is likewise LXX: Deut 21:23 (κεκατηραμένος ὑπὸ θεοῦ πᾶς κρεμάμενος ἐπὶ ξύλου), with Paul dropping ὑπὸ θεοῦ and substituting ἐπικατάρατος to match the ἐπικατάρατος of Deut 27:26 cited at v. 10. The two curse-texts are bound by a shared adjective that neither LXX text supplies at the point Paul needs it — a deliberate catchword link.

For the Spirit as the promised thing, the prophetic substrate is Ezek 36:27 (τὸ πνεῦμά μου δώσω ἐν ὑμῖν) and Joel 3:1-2 LXX (ἐκχεῶ ἀπὸ τοῦ πνεύματός μου ἐπὶ πᾶσαν σάρκα), the latter being the text Acts 2 uses to interpret Pentecost and the source of the Lukan phrase ἡ ἐπαγγελία τοῦ πατρός (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4). Paul does not cite either, but the collocation ‘promise’ + ‘Spirit’ is not his coinage.

Built ongoettingen-lxx-xii · muraoka-lxx · metzger-tc

Chrysostom reads the two clauses as a single movement and presses the person-shift: the Gentiles receive the blessing, and ‘we’ — he takes this of believers generally — receive the Spirit as the seal that the blessing has in fact arrived. He makes much of the fact that the Spirit is the evidence Paul can appeal to, not a doctrine he must establish.

Jerome, in the commentary on Galatians, takes promissionem Spiritus epexegetically: the Spirit is the promise, not merely its herald. He connects the verse to Gen 12:3 explicitly and reads the Gentile blessing as consummated in the Spirit’s bestowal.

Augustine, in the exposition of Galatians, makes v. 14 the point where law and promise are decisively separated: what the law could not give, the promise gives, and the Spirit is the given thing. The verse becomes a pillar of his argument in De spiritu et littera that the Spirit is the content, not merely the instrument, of grace.

The Vulgate’s ut in gentibus benedictio Abrahae fieret in Christo Iesu renders εἰς with in + ablative, which reads locatively (‘among the Gentiles’) where the Greek accusative is directional. This is a Latin constraint rather than an interpretive judgment, but it is the probable route by which some older English versions arrived at ‘upon the Gentiles’.

Reception is recorded here as reception (§11) and supplies no evidence for the rendering decisions above.

Proposed — pending reviewJohn Chrysostom, Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 13, ed. Philip Schaff, Buffalo: Christian Literature Company, 1889. · Jerome, Commentarii in epistulam Pauli apostoli ad Galatas, ed. Giacomo Raspanti, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 77A, Turnhout: Brepols, 2006. · Augustine, Expositio epistulae ad Galatas, ed. and trans. Eric Plumer, Augustine's Commentary on Galatians, Oxford Early Christian Studies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.