Six Greek words, and almost every one of them contested. Paul is mid-interrogation (vv. 1-5 are a chain of rhetorical questions), and this is the fourth blow: τοσαῦτα ἐπάθετε εἰκῇ;

Three things have to be decided, and only one of them can be decided confidently.

1. Is it a question? Greek manuscripts carry no punctuation. NA28 prints a question mark, and the surrounding verses (vv. 1, 2, 3, 5) are all questions, so the interrogative is the right editorial judgment — but it is judgment, not manuscript evidence.
2. What does ἐπάθετε mean? The verb’s dominant NT sense is ‘suffer hardship’; its bare lexical sense is ‘experience, undergo’, which can be neutral or even positive. If Paul means suffering, he is invoking a persecution of the Galatians the letter never otherwise mentions. If he means experience, he is pointing back to the Spirit and the miracles of vv. 2 and 5 — which the paragraph has mentioned. This is genuinely open and the apparatus leaves it so.
3. What is the second clause doing? εἴ γε καὶ εἰκῇ is a half-sentence with no main clause. It either softens the charge (‘if it really was for nothing — and I hope it wasn’t’) or sharpens it (‘and it really was, if you go on like this’). The first is the majority reading and the one adopted here.

The one firm point: the double εἰκῇ is deliberate. Paul says the word, then says it again and stops. English must do the same.

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

Correlative demonstrative of quantity, neuter accusative plural, standing substantivally with no noun. It is fronted before the verb, which is topicalizing: the magnitude is what the question is about.

The quantity is left unspecified — Paul writes no noun, and none may be supplied in the reading text. ‘So much suffering’, ‘so many trials’, and ‘such great experiences’ each fill in the blank and, worse, each tips the contested sense of ἐπάθετε one way or the other.

The word measures amount or extent, not intensity: it answers ‘how much’, not ‘how badly’. Rendering ‘did you suffer so terribly’ substitutes a degree-word for a quantity-word.

The decisive word, and the one the Greek does not settle.

The lexical range. πάσχω means to be on the receiving end of something — to have something happen to one. Classical and Hellenistic Greek uses it freely of good and bad alike, and the idiom εὖ πάσχειν / κακῶς πάσχειν (‘fare well / fare badly’) shows that the verb itself is neutral and takes its colour from a qualifier. But in the New Testament the qualifier has effectively been absorbed: of roughly forty occurrences, essentially all concern suffering — Christ’s passion (Mark 8:31; 1 Pet 2:21; 3:18), the believer’s afflictions (Phil 1:29; 1 Thess 2:14; 1 Pet 4:19), bodily distress (Matt 17:15). The corpus glossary already fixes πάσχω as ‘suffer’ on exactly that distribution.

Why the neutral sense is nevertheless live here. Three considerations:

• The paragraph’s named content is the Spirit received (v. 2) and miracles worked among them (v. 5). An ‘experience’ reading makes v. 4 continue that inventory; a ‘suffering’ reading introduces a topic from nowhere.
• Galatians never elsewhere mentions persecution of the Galatians. Paul speaks of his own persecution (5:11; 6:12, 17) and of a general pattern (4:29), but the addressees are nowhere said to have suffered.
• τοσαῦτα is a quantity-word suited to an inventory.

Why the suffering sense is nevertheless probable. Equally three:

• The verb’s NT distribution is overwhelming, and a reader of Paul would hear ‘suffer’ unless strongly steered otherwise.
• Acts 14:19-22 places real hardship in the south-Galatian cities and has Paul and Barnabas telling converts that διὰ πολλῶν θλίψεων they must enter the kingdom. Whatever one decides about the destination of the letter, the hardship of new congregations is not an invention.
• The patristic reading is unanimous on the suffering side. Chrysostom takes it as persecutions endured for the faith, and the Latin tradition’s passi estis fixed the Western reading permanently.

Policy. The reading text uses ‘go through so much’, which in English is as hospitable to both poles as the Greek is; the literal tier keeps ‘suffer’ so the corpus gloss and the Latin tradition stay visible; the study tier keeps ‘experienced’ so the minority reading is not buried. The alternative is flagged, not resolved.

The aorist is complexive: the whole course taken as one, not a repeated or drawn-out process.

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 · J. B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, 10th ed., London: Macmillan, 1890

Adverb of purposelessness — ‘to no purpose, without effect’. The corpus glossary already fixes it as ‘in vain / to no purpose’ and keeps it distinct from the spatial idiom εἰς κενόν (‘into emptiness’, Phil 2:16) and from δωρεάν (Gal 2:21), each of which Paul uses elsewhere and all three of which must remain distinguishable in English.

Galatians makes the word thematic. It stands twice here and again at 4:11 (μή πως εἰκῇ κεκοπίακα εἰς ὑμᾶς), where Paul fears his own labour has been purposeless. The two verses are a pair: v. 4 asks whether the Galatians’ course was void, 4:11 whether Paul’s was. One English rendering is required at both or the pairing disappears.

A secondary attested sense — ‘without cause, undeservedly’ (Vulgate elsewhere sine causa; cf. the variant at Matt 5:22) — is live enough to record but does not fit a clause about a course of experience. It is flagged, not adopted.

A protasis with no apodosis — four words, then a full stop. The ellipsis is original: no witness supplies a main clause, in a tradition that elsewhere fills gaps readily.

The particles. All three must be rendered (§10).

• εἰ heads a first-class condition entertained as real for argument’s sake. Per standing policy it is not rendered ‘since’, which would close the gap the conditional leaves open.
• γε is enclitic, restrictive-emphatic, focusing what it attaches to. Paul uses εἴ γε five times (Rom 5:6 v.l.; 2 Cor 5:3; Eph 3:2; 4:21; Col 1:23), and in each the particle leaves the protasis hanging between confidence and reservation. It is not translatable by a single English word; ‘if indeed’ or ‘if it really’ carries it.
• καί is ascensive-adjunctive, not a connective. It attaches to εἰκῇ and heightens it: ‘if it really was for nothing’. Dropping it (as English versions regularly do) deletes the word that makes the clause a second thought rather than a repetition.

The force of the ellipsis. This is where the disagreement lies.

Policy. The reading text marks the break with a dash and renders ‘if it really was for nothing’, which in English is open in the same direction the Greek is: the sentence can be heard as a hope or as a sting, and the reader is left to weigh vv. 1-5 against 4:11 and 5:10. No apodosis is supplied in any tier. Renderings that complete the sentence — ‘if it really was for nothing!’ with an exclamation, or ‘— if indeed it was for nothing, which I doubt’ — adjudicate, and the second writes a clause Paul did not write.

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

The earliest majuscules are unpunctuated, so whether v. 4a is a question is an editorial decision resting on discourse analysis, not on manuscript evidence. NA28 and UBS5 print a question mark; the surrounding verses (vv. 1, 2, 3, 5) are all interrogative, and the diatribe pattern of the paragraph makes the interrogative overwhelmingly probable.

A declarative reading is grammatically available — ‘You suffered so much for nothing’ — and would be a flat accusation rather than an elicited admission. It is recorded here and not adopted, but the grounds for not adopting it are contextual, and that must be stated rather than concealed behind the printed punctuation.

The same applies to the dash between the two clauses: it is modern typography representing an ancient asyndeton. Greek supplies no connective, and per standing asyndeton policy none is inserted in English.

The text of the verse is stable in all principal witnesses; NA28 prints it without an apparatus entry of substance, and UBS5 does not list it among the variation units selected for translators.

Two minor points worth recording:

• The accentuation εἰκῇ (with iota subscript) is the standard editorial form; some editions print εἰκῆ. The variation is orthographic and carries no weight.
• The adjunctive καί in the second clause is occasionally omitted in later witnesses and in parts of the versional tradition. Where the omission occurs it shows the direction of smoothing — the particle is felt as redundant and dropped — and the harder reading with καί is to be retained.

The Latin tanta passi estis sine causa? si tamen sine causa fixes both the suffering sense of ἐπάθετε and, with sine causa, the ‘without cause’ value of εἰκῇ. Both are reception rather than evidence (§11), but the second is worth noting because it shows that the ‘without cause’ sense was live enough in antiquity to be chosen here.

Chrysostom (Homilies on Galatians, ad loc.) takes ἐπάθετε of real persecutions endured for the faith and reads the second clause as consolation held open: Paul, he says, does not shut the door but leaves repentance possible, since the outcome still depends on them. He also observes that Paul will not let the sufferings be wasted — the appeal is to a cost already paid.

Jerome (Commentary on Galatians) likewise reads suffering, and his Latin si tamen sine causa leans toward leaving the matter open; later Western readers took the clause in both the mitigating and the aggravating direction.

Theodoret and the Greek catena tradition follow Chrysostom on the suffering sense.

So far as the Fathers go, the question of whether the Galatians had suffered was simply not felt as a problem: the verb carried the sense, and the historical gap in the letter did not trouble them. The modern hesitation arises from reading Galatians as a closed body of evidence about the Galatian situation, which is a legitimate method but a different one.

Proposed — pending reviewJohn Chrysostom, Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, vol. 13, ed. Philip Schaff, Buffalo: Christian Literature, 1889 · Jerome, Commentary on Galatians, trans. Andrew Cain, Fathers of the Church 121, Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010

Verses 1-5 are a single interrogative assault with five questions, structured as follows:

• v. 1 — who bewitched you? (with the crucified Christ placarded before their eyes)
• v. 2 — the Spirit: out of works of law, or out of hearing with faith?
• v. 3 — having begun by Spirit, are you now being completed by flesh?
• v. 4 — did you go through so much for nothing?
• v. 5 — the one supplying the Spirit and working miracles: out of works of law, or out of hearing with faith?

Verse 4 is the only member of the chain that looks backward to what the Galatians have undergone rather than to the source of what they have received. That is precisely why its content is disputed: if ἐπάθετε means ‘experienced’, the verse stays inside the Spirit-and-miracles inventory of vv. 2, 3, and 5; if it means ‘suffered’, it adds a new line of evidence.

Either way the logic is the same. Paul argues from what has already happened to the Galatians, not from doctrine imposed on them. The question at stake throughout is whether their beginning (ἐναρξάμενοι, v. 3) was of a kind that could be carried to completion by a different principle — and v. 4 presses that the whole of it stands to be voided if they change course.

The εἰκῇ of v. 4 and the εἰκῇ of 4:11 bracket the central section of the letter. Paul’s own labour and the Galatians’ own course are put at the same risk by the same word.