The verse closes the catalogue of τὰ ἔργα τῆς σαρκός (vv. 19-21) and then does something the catalogue itself does not do: it delivers a verdict. Three things are worth watching.

First, the list ends not with a total but with an open bracket — καὶ τὰ ὅμοια τούτοις, “and the things like these.” Paul is not legislating; he is characterizing a kind of life and leaving the enumeration deliberately incomplete. Any rendering that closes the list (“and other sins of this sort”) or tightens it into a code misreads the genre.

Second, Paul doubles the verb of warning: προλέγω … καθὼς προεῖπον, present and aorist of the same word. This is a written repetition of an oral warning already given in Galatia. The doubling is the point — he is not introducing new material but invoking prior testimony, which is why the sentence carries the weight of a formal notice rather than a fresh threat.

Third, the verdict is stated with a present participle and a future indicative: οἱ τὰ τοιαῦτα πράσσοντες … οὐ κληρονομήσουσιν. The participle is durative (those who go on practicing), the future is flat and unhedged (οὐ, not μή). The rendering must preserve both: a settled practice on one side, an unqualified exclusion on the other. §6 of the governing rules forbids softening the future into “may not” or “risk not” — if the text is hard, the translation is hard too.

The inheritance verb (κληρονομήσουσιν) is chosen with care: it belongs to the same κληρο- family Paul has been running since Gal 3:29 and 4:1-7, 30. The whole letter has been about who inherits. Here that vocabulary returns as a warning.

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

φθόνοι — the plural of a noun already fixed in this corpus as envy (Phil 1:15): strictly the pain felt at another’s good, with the wish to see it lessened. Greek gave the word no positive register at any period, unlike ζῆλος (v. 20), which is object-determined and can be commendable.

The plural is the interesting feature. An abstract noun pluralized in Greek denotes instances of the quality rather than the quality itself (BDF §142). So φθόνοι are acts or outbreaks of envy, not a disposition — consistent with the rest of the catalogue, where θυμοί, ἐριθεῖαι, διχοστασίαι, and μέθαι are all plural while ἔρις and ζῆλος in v. 20 are singular. Paul is naming occasions, not vices in the abstract.

Note the structural placement: φθόνος closes the social-conflict block that began with ἔχθραι in v. 20, and it stands immediately after αἱρέσεις (factions). Envy is presented as the engine of the factionalism, which is precisely the diagnosis of Gal 5:26 — ἀλλήλοις φθονοῦντες, the same root as the last word of the chapter’s argument. The catalogue and the closing exhortation are stitched together by this one lexeme.

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μέθαι and κῶμοι must be kept lexically distinct, and English translations regularly collapse them.

μέθη names the state of intoxication — drunkenness as a condition (LXX Jer 13:13; Ezek 23:33). The plural again individuates: bouts, occasions of being drunk. The corpus has already fixed οἰνοφλυγία (1 Pet 4:3) as “drunken bout / wine-swilling,” explicitly noting that μέθη is the state and must be kept separate; that decision is applied here in reverse.

κῶμος is fixed by the standing glossary entry as revel / carousing — originally the Dionysiac procession through the streets after a banquet, and by the first century a general term for riotous festal partying. The cultic origin is not wholly spent, which is why in 1 Pet 4:3 it stands beside εἰδωλολατρία, and why here it stands in a list whose earlier members include εἰδωλολατρία and φαρμακεία (v. 20). The rendering excludes “orgies” (imports modern sexual specificity the Greek does not carry) and “parties” (far too light).

The pairing μέθαι, κῶμοι is close to formulaic in Paul: Rom 13:13 has κώμοις καὶ μέθαις in the same coupling, and Gal 5:21 reverses the order. In both places the pair closes a vice-list.

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Article + neuter plural adjective, substantivized, with a dative of similarity: the things like these. The construction is ordinary (cf. Mark 7:8, 13 τοιαῦτα … παρόμοια), but its function here is rhetorically decisive.

The phrase converts a closed enumeration into an open class. Paul is not producing a penal code with a defined list of disqualifying offenses; he is offering specimens of a recognizable pattern and telling the Galatians they can extend the list themselves. This matters for how the verdict in the ὅτι-clause is heard: the τοιαῦτα that follows picks up τὰ ὅμοια, not just the fifteen named items. The judgment falls on a kind of life, not on a schedule of acts.

Render with a genuinely open phrase. “And the like” is idiomatic but drops the demonstrative that anchors the class to the preceding list; “and other sins of this sort” supplies the noun ἁμαρτίαι, which Paul did not write.

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The same verb twice, in two tenses, and the repetition is the argument.

προλέγω (present) + προεῖπον (aorist, from the same lemma with the older aorist stem εἶπον). The πρό- prefix is genuinely open between two senses:

1. temporal priority — to say in advance of the event, to forewarn (so 2 Cor 13:2 προλέγω ὡς παρὼν τὸ δεύτερον; 1 Thess 3:4 προελέγομεν ὑμῖν).
2. prior utterance — to have said on an earlier occasion, i.e. simply “I told you before.”

In practice both are live and they reinforce each other: the aorist προεῖπον almost certainly refers to Paul’s oral teaching during the founding visit (cf. 1 Thess 4:6, the closest structural parallel, where Paul likewise cites a prior verbal warning about conduct), while the present προλέγω is the act performed in the letter itself. English “I tell you beforehand … just as I told you before” keeps both prefixes audible.

What must not happen is the flattening of the pair to a single English verb (“I warn you, as I warned you”), which loses the πρό- and turns a doubled formal notice into stylistic variation. Nor should προλέγω be rendered “I predict”: the object is not an event but a verdict, and Paul is not forecasting, he is putting on record.

The καθώς is comparative and correlates the two acts of telling exactly — the content is identical, only the medium has changed from speech to writing. That correlation is what gives the sentence its juridical feel: Paul is establishing that the Galatians have been told twice.

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Article + present participle with a preposed neuter object: the ones practicing such things. Three features carry weight.

τοιοῦτος — the standing corpus policy (fixed at Phil 2:29) is that the articular demonstrative adjective marks a recognized class generalized from named instances. Here it generalizes from the list, picking up τὰ ὅμοια τούτοις: things of this kind. Retain the class-language; a bare “these things” collapses the generalization the sentence needs.

πράσσοντες — the glossary fixes πράσσω as practice / carry out, kept lexically distinct from ποιέω, and notes that Paul leans on it for executing, transacting, putting into effect (Rom 1:32; 2:1-3; 7:15-19). The present aspect is durative: a sustained practice, not an isolated lapse.

The articular participle functions as a substantival designation of a class, not a description of individuals. Per §3, the masculine plural is the default form for a mixed-sex group and the referent in a congregation is certainly mixed; the form is rendered as it stands and the mixed reference is a matter of note, not of neutralization.

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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)

βασιλείαν θεοῦ — both nouns anarthrous. The absence of the article is not indefiniteness: a genitive-modified noun of this kind is regularly definite without the article in Koine (Apollonius’ canon; BDF §254-59), and the phrase is a fixed designation. English supplies “the kingdom of God.”

The noun denotes reign / rule primarily and realm derivatively; the LXX uses βασιλεία for מַלְכוּת with the same range. Paul uses the phrase sparingly (Rom 14:17; 1 Cor 4:20; 6:9-10; 15:50; Gal 5:21; Col 4:11; 1 Thess 2:12; 2 Thess 1:5), and every occurrence with κληρονομέω is future and eschatological. Render “kingdom” — “rule” loses the inheritable-realm sense that the verb κληρονομέω requires, and “reign” loses it entirely.

What is striking is the collocation. Inheriting a kingdom is not a natural Greek idiom; it is Septuagintal, and it comes from the land-promise vocabulary (κληρονομέω + γῆ, Deut 4:1; 6:18; 16:20). Paul has substituted βασιλεία θεοῦ for the land, in a letter whose whole argument turns on who inherits the Abrahamic promise (Gal 3:18, 29; 4:1, 7, 30). That substitution is deliberate and it is the theological hinge of the verse.

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οὐ κληρονομήσουσιν — the standing corpus decision (fixed at Gal 4:30) is one English root across the whole κληρο- family: κληρονόμος = heir, κληρονομία = inheritance, κληρονομέω = inherit. That policy is load-bearing here. Galatians has run the family through 3:18, 29; 4:1, 7, 30, and the reader must be able to see that the verb of the warning in 5:21 is the verb of the promise in 3:29.

The root is κλῆρος, the allotted portion; the LXX makes κληρονομέω the standard equivalent of יָרַשׁ, the possession of the land by allotment (Deut 4:38; Josh 1:6; Ps 36:9, 11 LXX). The word therefore carries entitlement to an assigned portion, not merely receipt of a gift. Do not soften to “have a share in” or “obtain,” which drop both the allotment and the concordance.

The negative is οὐ, not μή — a flat factual denial with the future indicative, the strongest simple negation Greek offers short of the emphatic οὐ μή (which Paul does use, four verses earlier: οὐ μὴ τελέσητε, v. 16). Render it plainly. Per §6 and the governing document’s working principle 6, the rendering is not shaded toward comfort: “will not inherit,” not “are in danger of not inheriting.”

Note the sharpness of the reversal. Gal 4:30 quoted Scripture to say that the slave woman’s son οὐ … κληρονομήσει with the free woman’s son. The same verb, the same negation, the same future tense now falls on those characterized by the works of the flesh. Paul turns his own earlier citation on the conduct of the community.

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Vice-catalogues of this shape are common in Hellenistic-Jewish moral instruction and in the philosophical schools, and Paul uses them repeatedly (Rom 1:29-31; 13:13; 1 Cor 5:10-11; 6:9-10; 2 Cor 12:20-21; Gal 5:19-21; Col 3:5-8). Two observations bear on translation.

The list is asyndetic until the final καί (πορνεία, ἀκαθαρσία, ἀσέλγεια, εἰδωλολατρία …). Per the standing asyndeton policy (fixed at Phil 3:2 and 4:8), no connectives are supplied where Greek has none: the accumulation without joints is the rhetorical force, and scribes and versions regularly smooth it. The single καί before τὰ ὅμοια is the one connective Paul wrote and it marks the closing bracket, not another item.

The list is also structured, in loose blocks: sexual (πορνεία, ἀκαθαρσία, ἀσέλγεια), cultic (εἰδωλολατρία, φαρμακεία), social-conflict (ἔχθραι through αἱρέσεις, plus φθόνοι), and convivial (μέθαι, κῶμοι). The social-conflict block is by far the largest — eight of fifteen items — and that is not accidental in a letter addressed to a congregation Paul describes as biting and devouring one another (5:15) and provoking and envying one another (5:26). The catalogue is not generic boilerplate dropped into the argument; it is weighted toward the Galatians’ actual condition. Translation should not obscure the weighting by varying the register of individual items.

On genre grounds this is paraenesis, not casuistic law (§10). The formula is not “if a man does X, then Y” but a characterization plus a verdict. Preserving the nominal, verbless accumulation of vv. 19-21a and then the full sentence of 21b keeps the shift from description to pronouncement audible.

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

The Greek Fathers concentrated on exactly the point the aspect of πράσσοντες raises.

Chrysostom, commenting on this verse, presses that Paul writes οἱ πράσσοντες — those who do, in the ongoing sense — not those who have once done, and takes this as leaving the door open for repentance while closing it on settled practice. He also draws attention to the doubling προλέγω … προεῖπον, reading it as evidence that Paul had already given this warning in person and is therefore not innovating under pressure from the crisis in Galatia.

Jerome, in his commentary on Galatians, notes the open bracket of τὰ ὅμοια τούτοις and observes that the list is exemplary rather than exhaustive — an observation that anticipates the syntactic point exactly. His Vulgate rendering et his similia keeps the construction transparent; praedico vobis sicut praedixi likewise preserves both prefixes, which is more than most modern English versions manage.

The patristic instinct on both points is sound: the verse is a formal restatement of prior teaching, and the verdict falls on a pattern of life rather than on enumerated acts.

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, 1889) · Jerome, Commentarii in Epistulam Pauli ad Galatas, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 77A (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006)

NA28 prints the verse without brackets, but two variants deserve note.

φθόνοι φόνοι — a substantial body of witnesses (including the Byzantine tradition and some Western witnesses) adds φόνοι (“murders”) after φθόνοι. The shorter reading is supported by the earliest and best witnesses and is printed by NA28. The addition is easily explained as a scribal expansion produced by the near-identity of the two words in sound and sight (φθόνοι / φόνοι), assisted by the fact that the pair occurs together at Rom 1:29. Homoeophony generating an addition is a well-documented mechanism, and there is no plausible reason a scribe would delete φόνοι from a vice-list. The shorter text is original.

οἷς for ἅ — some witnesses read a dative relative, assimilating to the dative ὑμῖν or construing προλέγω with a dative of the thing. The accusative ἅ is the better-attested and syntactically ordinary reading (προλέγω takes an accusative of content).

Neither variant affects doctrine, and both illustrate the pattern the governing document describes: the manuscript tradition disagrees in ways that are traceable and, here, inconsequential.

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Vulgate: invidiae homicidia ebrietates comesationes et his similia quae praedico vobis sicut praedixi quoniam qui talia agunt regnum Dei non consequentur.

Three things to note. Jerome’s text includes homicidia, confirming that the φόνοι reading was current in the Latin tradition early. His praedico … praedixi preserves both πρό- prefixes exactly, which is a better model than most modern English. But non consequentur (“will not attain”) drops the inheritance metaphor entirely — κληρονομέω becomes a verb of arrival rather than of allotted entitlement, and the link to heredes in Gal 3:29 and 4:7 is broken. Per §2 and §11, that rendering is reception, not evidence, and it must not be allowed to weaken the κληρο- concordance in English.

LXX background: the collocation κληρονομέω + a divinely assigned possession is thoroughly Septuagintal (Deut 4:1; 6:18; 16:20; Ps 36:9, 11, 22, 29 LXX, where the meek/righteous κληρονομήσουσιν γῆν). Paul’s substitution of βασιλείαν θεοῦ for γῆν is the move the English must let the reader see, which is one more reason not to vary the verb.

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Proposed — pending reviewBiblia Sacra Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem, ed. R. Weber and R. Gryson, 5th ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2007)