Paul has asked one question (v. 2) and then interrupted himself twice (vv. 3-4). Verse 5 is the οὖν-resumption: the same disjunction, the same two prepositional phrases, word for word — ἐξ ἔργων νόμου ἢ ἐξ ἀκοῆς πίστεως. Nothing has been added to the alternatives. What has changed is the subject. In v. 2 the Galatians were the subject (ἐλάβετε, “you received”); here the subject is the one who gives, named only by two present participles under a single article.

Three features carry the verse.

1. The verb is missing. Greek has no finite verb in v. 5 at all. The sentence is a long substantivized subject followed by a bare disjunction. Whatever English supplies is a supplement, and the supplement is bracketed in the literal tier.
2. The participles are present, not aorist. In v. 2 the gift was a past event; here the supplying and the working are ongoing. Paul is no longer only appealing to the Galatians’ conversion but to what is still happening among them.
3. The alternatives are about source, not instrument. Both phrases are ἐκ + genitive, deliberately parallel. Rendering them “by works … by hearing” blurs source into means and hides that Paul has put two origins side by side and asked which one the ongoing supply comes out of.

The question is rhetorical, and the expected answer is the second member. But Paul does not state it, here or in v. 2, and the apparatus does not state it for him.

οὖν is inferential and, here, resumptive: it picks up the thread of v. 2 after the two interjected questions of vv. 3-4. Per the corpus policy on epistolary connectives (§10), it is always rendered and never dropped.

The position is worth noting. The particle stands second, immediately after the article, inside the subject phrase rather than at the head of the clause — which is where a postpositive naturally lands, the article plus particle being felt as the opening unit. English must put “then” or “therefore” somewhere it can be heard; placing it after “So” at the head of the sentence preserves the resumptive function without claiming a Greek position it does not have.

The corpus reserves bare “therefore” for tight logical inference within a single argument and “so then” for cases where οὖν both infers and marks a discourse move. The latter applies: Paul is returning to an unfinished question.

A single article ὁ governs two coordinated present participles (ἐπιχορηγῶν … ἐνεργῶν). Per the standing policy on one article over coordinated participles, this marks one composite referent described by two activities, not two agents. English must not repeat the article (“the one supplying and the one working”), which would manufacture two subjects.

The referent is unnamed. Paul writes no θεός, no κύριος, no Χριστός.

The compression matters for the argument: by refusing to name the giver, Paul makes the question turn entirely on the source-phrase, not on the identity of the donor.

Built onbdf · bdag

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

The glossary has already fixed ἐπιχορηγία / ἐπιχορηγέω as “supply / supply generously,” with a standing caution: the χορηγός background — the citizen who funded a dramatic chorus at his own expense — is real but largely spent by the Koine period, and must be noted rather than imported. That caution governs here. Renderings that press the liturgy-funding image (“lavishly bankrolls,” “underwrites”) overtranslate a faded etymology.

The ἐπι- prefix is intensive-directional, not a separate sense. The corpus decision at Phil 1:19 (ἐπιχορηγία τοῦ πνεύματος, strikingly the same collocation) stands: render the plain “supply,” and do not inflate.

Excluded from the reading text: “give” (loses the provisioning of a need), “pour out” (imports ἐκχέω, which Paul had available — Rom 5:5; Titus 3:6 — and did not use), “help” (too vague). “Minister” is permitted in declared liturgical register only, where the older English has fixed it.

Aspect. The present participle is durative: supply still going on. This is the single most important feature of v. 5 over against v. 2, where the aorist ἐλάβετε pointed to a completed receiving. Paul moves from how they got the Spirit to how they are still being supplied with him. The literal and study tiers mark the duration; the reading text carries it in the simple present, which in English readily bears a habitual sense.

Built onbdag · obrien-nigtc

Articular and anaphoric: the Spirit of v. 2, whom they received. The article is doing referential work and must be retained.

Capitalization: the corpus policy is to lower-case πνεῦμα where the referent is genuinely contested between the created human spirit and the Holy Spirit (Jas 4:5; 1 Pet 4:6), since Greek marks no distinction and English orthography should not manufacture one. Here the referent is not contested — the Galatians’ reception of the Spirit at conversion (3:2, 14; 4:6) and the σάρξ/πνεῦμα antithesis of v. 3 fix it — so the capital is warranted and recorded as a decision rather than an assumption.

Note what Paul does not say: no qualifier (ἅγιον, τοῦ θεοῦ, τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ, all of which he uses elsewhere in this letter at 4:6). The bare articular noun is enough because v. 2 established the referent.

ἐνεργέω is already fixed as “work (effectively) / produce,” with all ‘energy’-derivatives excluded as importing a modern impersonal-force concept (§9). The verb is near-technical in Paul for supernatural operation — divine (Phil 2:13; 1 Cor 12:6, 11; Eph 1:11, 20) or hostile (Eph 2:2; 2 Thess 2:7) — which is the strongest internal argument for a divine subject here.

The construction is transitive with δυνάμεις as object, so English needs a transitivity marker: “works powerful deeds,” “brings about powers.” A bare “works among you” leaves the accusative stranded.

δύναμις is fixed as “power” — effective capacity actualized, not latent potential — with ‘might’ (archaic), ‘strength’ (belongs to ἰσχύς), and ‘miracle’ excluded, except where the plural denotes concrete deeds. That exception applies here. The plural δυνάμεις in Paul regularly names particular acts of power (1 Cor 12:10, 28-29; 2 Cor 12:12; cf. Matt 7:22; Heb 2:4), and the English must concretize without adopting the modern category of ‘miracle,’ which carries a violation-of-natural-law frame foreign to the first century (§9).

Built onbdag · fee-nicnt

The pronoun occurs twice in one clause — dative ὑμῖν with the supplying, then ἐν ὑμῖν with the working. The repetition is retained in English per the corpus policy on pronominal accumulation (1 Pet 4:12): Koine reinforces where modern editors would prune, and the insistence that both the Spirit and the powers land on the same “you” is the point.

There is no finite verb. The Greek runs: substantivized participial subject — then a bare disjunction of two prepositional phrases — then a question mark supplied by modern editors.

This is the same ellipsis as v. 2b (ἐξ ἔργων νόμου τὸ πνεῦμα ἐλάβετε ἢ ἐξ ἀκοῆς πίστεως;), except that v. 2 at least has a verb in the first member. Here there is nothing to carry over except from v. 2 itself, three verses back.

Policy, per the corpus ellipsis entries (Gal 5:6, 5:17; Jas 1:10): the literal tier supplies nothing unbracketed, the reading tiers mark the seam with a dash, and any supplement is recorded. Candidates for the supplement:

• “does he do it” — makes the prepositional phrases answer the participles. Least additive; adopted in the reading text.
• “is it” — a bare copula with the whole question as subject. Also minimal, but slightly vaguer.
• “did you receive the Spirit” — carries over ἐλάβετε from v. 2. This is what the Vulgate effectively does, and it is intelligible, but it converts the verse into a restatement of v. 2 and erases the shift of subject from the Galatians to the giver, which is the whole point of the οὖν-resumption.

The disjunctive ἤ is a genuine alternative here — two mutually exclusive sources — and must be distinguished in the parsing from the ἤ that reformulates a question already put (as at Jas 4:5; Gal 1:10).

Built onbdf · na28

Verbatim from v. 2, and verbatim from Gal 2:16 (three times). The standing glossary decisions apply without modification:

• Anarthrous νόμου is kept anarthrous: “works of law,” not “works of the law.” Supplying the article narrows a categorical phrase to the Mosaic document and settles a contested referent by translation.
• ἔργα νόμου is left unexpanded. Whether the phrase names Torah-obedience generally or the specific boundary-markers at issue in Antioch (circumcision, food, calendar) is genuinely contested, with 4QMMT’s מעשי התורה bearing on the question. Every paraphrase adjudicates: “observing the law,” “doing what the law requires,” “legalistic observance.”
• ἐκ is rendered “out of” in the literal tier and kept distinct from διά (means) and ὑπό (agency). Where ἐκ πίστεως and ἐξ ἔργων νόμου are set as competing sources within one sentence, the grammatical parallelism is the argument, and “by works … by hearing” hides it.

The repetition across vv. 2 and 5 is deliberate and must receive identical English wording at both points; varying for style would conceal that Paul is asking the same question twice.

Built onsilva-becnt

The phrase occurs in the NT only at Gal 3:2 and 3:5, and it is one of the genuinely open constructions in the letter. Two questions compound: what ἀκοή means, and what the genitive πίστεως does.

ἀκοή has an established range. (i) The faculty or act of hearing (1 Cor 12:17; 2 Pet 2:8). (ii) The thing heard — report, message — which is the standing LXX sense rendering שְׁמוּעָה (Isa 53:1 LXX, τίς ἐπίστευσεν τῇ ἀκοῇ ἡμῶν, quoted at Rom 10:16, where Paul immediately glosses ἀκοή with ῥῆμα Χριστοῦ in v. 17). (iii) The ear as organ (Mark 7:35; Acts 17:20).

Note also that πίστεως here is not a πίστις Χριστοῦ construction — no divine-person genitive follows — so the subjective/objective debate attaching to those phrases does not apply.

Built onbdag · silva-becnt · muraoka-lxx

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 the critical editions; NA28 prints no variation unit, and the Greek as given stands without serious challenge in the principal witnesses.

The only matters worth recording are not variants at all but editorial:

• The question mark is modern. The earliest majuscules are unpunctuated and the interrogative construal rests on discourse analysis — the parallel with v. 2, the disjunctive ἤ — not on manuscript evidence.
• Some minuscules and the Byzantine tradition show minor orthographic variation in ἐξ before vowels and in the spelling of the participles; none bears on sense.

The versional tradition is more interesting than the Greek tradition here. The Latin supplies a finite verb drawn from v. 2 (qui ergo tribuit vobis Spiritum et operatur virtutes in vobis, ex operibus legis an ex auditu fidei?), which keeps the ellipsis but makes the participles finite; the pressure to repair the construction is visible in the versions, and that is the direction of smoothing the English must avoid.

Built onna28 · metzger-tc

The two questions are not duplicates, and the difference is aspectual.

Paraphrases that carry ἐλάβετε forward into v. 5 (“did you receive the Spirit by works of law?”) collapse the table into a single row. The aorist of v. 2 asks about an event; the presents of v. 5 ask about a continuing state of affairs. The argument gains force from the pairing: the Galatians cannot appeal to their conversion as a one-off and then account for present Spirit-activity on a different basis.

The English must therefore keep the present participles present and must not supply a past-tense verb into the ellipsis.

Chrysostom, commenting on Galatians, reads the verse as an appeal to what the Galatians can still see: Paul is not arguing from a doctrine but from the miracles among them, and the point is that these did not begin and do not continue on the footing of law-observance. He takes the unnamed subject as God without discussion, and he treats the δυνάμεις as public and verifiable — which is the ground of the argument’s force. His handling supports taking ἐν ὑμῖν as “among you” rather than internally.

Jerome, in his commentary, likewise supplies God as the subject and reads the question as closed in favor of the second alternative. Neither father is troubled by the missing verb; both supply it as a matter of course from the surrounding Greek, which indicates that the ellipsis was felt as natural rather than as a difficulty.

Recorded as reception, not as evidence for any rendering (§11).

Proposed — pending reviewJohn Chrysostom, Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 13

Verse 5 closes the opening salvo of the chapter and sets up the Abraham argument that follows.

• v. 1 — the rebuke, with the crucified Christ as the thing placarded before their eyes.
• v. 2 — the single question: how did you receive the Spirit?
• vv. 3-4 — two interjected questions pressing the absurdity (σαρκί after πνεύματι; so much suffered εἰκῇ).
• v. 5 — οὖν resumes v. 2, now from the giver’s side and in the present tense.
• v. 6 — καθώς pivots to Abraham: the pattern of ἐπίστευσεν … ἐλογίσθη.

The pivot at v. 6 is what the ἀκοὴ πίστεως of v. 5 is reaching toward. The πίστις of the final two words becomes the subject of vv. 6-9, and the ἔργα νόμου of the first alternative becomes the subject of vv. 10-12. Verse 5 therefore functions as the hinge: it states the disjunction one last time in bare prepositional form, and the rest of the chapter unfolds each member in turn.

The Spirit of v. 5 returns at v. 14 (τὴν ἐπαγγελίαν τοῦ πνεύματος λάβωμεν διὰ τῆς πίστεως) as the terminus of the whole argument — note the shift there from ἐκ πίστεως to διὰ τῆς πίστεως, which should be preserved in rendering rather than levelled.

Built onsilva-becnt · obrien-nigtc

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