Verse 12 charged the agitators with a motive: they push circumcision so that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. Verse 13 adds a second, independent charge and makes it worse. Not only is their motive self-protective — they are not even doing what they demand. οὐδὲ γάρ is ascensive: not even the circumcision party itself keeps law.

The sentence has a tight shape. Negative charge (they do not keep law), strong pivot (ἀλλά), positive charge (they want you circumcised), purpose clause (so they can boast in your flesh). The final word lands on the vocabulary Paul has been dismantling since 6:4 — καύχημα, the ground for boasting — and on σάρξ, the word that has run through 5:13-24 and 6:8 and 6:12. Their whole enterprise turns out to be a boast in someone else’s body.

Two real difficulties. First, what does νόμον φυλάσσουσιν mean — that they are hypocrites who break individual commands, or that circumcision by itself does not amount to law-keeping (5:3: the circumcised man is a debtor to do the whole law)? Second, the participle περιτεμνόμενοι is present, not perfect, and middle/passive in form; whether Paul means those undergoing the rite or those pressing it is a live question that changes who is being accused.

Built onobrien-nigtc · silva-becnt · bdag

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

γάρ grounds the whole of v. 13 in the accusation of v. 12 — per §10 it is rendered, never dropped. οὐδέ is not a mere second negative but ascensive: it adds a further, more damning item. The force is not even, and English must show it, since dropping to a flat ‘neither’ loses the escalation that makes v. 13 a climax rather than a restatement.

The combination οὐδὲ γάρ is standard Koine for introducing a confirming reproach a step beyond what precedes (cf. Rom 8:7; 1 Cor 3:2). Word order is fixed: οὐδέ takes the clause head, postpositive γάρ follows.

Built onbdf · bdag

The form is a present middle/passive participle. Two questions, and they are separable.

Tense. Not perfect (οἱ περιτετμημένοι, ‘the already-circumcised’) but present. On the corpus policy fixed at Gal 5:2-3, the present participle names those now undergoing or on the point of undergoing the rite, and Paul is not indicting men circumcised in infancy — including himself (Phil 3:5). So the referent is the circumcision party as an ongoing campaign, not Jews as such. That matters for §5: the verse is a charge against a faction, not an ethnic verdict.

Voice. Middle and passive are morphologically identical. The permissive middle (‘those who have themselves circumcised’) is adopted in the reading text, consistent with the policy at 5:2-3 and with the second-person accusations of 5:4, 7. The plain passive stands in the literal tier.

Built onbdag · silva-becnt · bdf

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

αὐτοί stands in predicate position (not τοὶ αὐτοί, which would be the identity-adjective ‘the same’). It is therefore intensive: they themselves. The pronoun is doing argumentative work — the contrast is between what they demand of others and what they do themselves, and the whole force of the reproach hangs on it.

Per the corpus policy on expressed nominative pronouns, the pronoun must be rendered visibly. English ‘themselves’ carries it. Do not absorb it into the verb, and do not add further emphasis words beyond what the pronoun warrants.

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νόμον is anarthrous. Per the standing policy on anarthrous νόμος in Galatians (κατὰ νόμον, ἐκ νόμου, ὑπὸ νόμον, ἐν νόμῳ), the article is withheld in English even where it reads stiffly: law is presented as a regime, not as the named Mosaic document. Supplying ‘the law’ narrows a categorical claim.

The verb is present indicative — a statement about their standing practice, not about a single failure.

Built onsilva-becnt · obrien-nigtc · bdf

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)

Root sense is to guard, keep watch over, protect — the verb of a sentry (φύλαξ) and, in the LXX, the standard equivalent of שָׁמַר for keeping the commandments (Exod 20:6; Deut 4:2; Ps 118:34 LXX). The custodial image is not fully spent.

What is notable is that this is Paul’s only application of φυλάσσω to Torah-observance. His usual verbs are ποιέω (Gal 3:10, 12; 5:3) and πράσσω; τηρέω is available and unused. φυλάσσω is the Lukan and Johannine verb for commandment-keeping (Luke 11:28; Acts 7:53; 21:24; John 12:47), and its appearance here may reflect the agitators’ own vocabulary being quoted back at them. That is a reasonable inference, not a demonstration.

Render ‘keep’ in smooth English; ‘guard’ where the custodial root should be visible. Avoid ‘obey’ (that is ὑπακούω, already fixed) and ‘observe’ (drifts toward the ritual-calendar sense of παρατηρέω, Gal 4:10).

Built onbdag · muraoka-lxx

ὑμέτερος is the possessive adjective, not the enclitic genitive ὑμῶν. It is the marked, emphatic option — rare in Paul (Rom 11:31; 1 Cor 15:31; 16:17; 2 Cor 8:8) — and it stands here between article and noun in full attributive position. The stress is on whose flesh: yours, not theirs. English cannot mark the difference morphologically, so per the corpus policy on emphatic possessives the emphasis is carried by placement and stress and noted here rather than overtranslated to ‘your own.’

σάρξ keeps the single gloss ‘flesh’ per standing policy. The immediate referent is the Galatians’ physical bodies, in which a surgical mark would be visible — the same concrete sense as ἐν σαρκί in v. 12. But Paul has spent 5:13-24 using the identical word for the hostile power opposed to the Spirit, and 6:8 has just contrasted sowing to the flesh with sowing to the Spirit. The double resonance is deliberate and would be destroyed by rendering ‘in your bodies’ (which imports σῶμα, a word Paul uses four verses later at 6:17) or ‘by your physical condition.’

Built onbdag · silva-becnt · bdf

Per the standing entry, one English root ‘boast’ across both polarities of Paul’s usage. Here it is plainly pejorative, and the aorist subjunctive is complexive — the boast conceived as a single achieved act, presumably a report carried back and tallied.

The word placement is the point. καυχήσωνται is the last word of the sentence, and it answers τὸ καύχημα at 6:4, where Paul had said that each should test his own work and then have his ground for boasting with reference to himself alone and not with reference to the other (εἰς ἑαυτὸν μόνον … καὶ οὐκ εἰς τὸν ἕτερον). The agitators are doing precisely the forbidden thing: taking their boast from someone else’s account. Verse 14 then supplies the only legitimate object — the cross.

So Galatians 6 runs a single καυχ- thread: 6:4 (the rule), 6:13 (the violation), 6:14 (the redirection). All three must share one English root or the argument becomes invisible.

Built onbdag · silva-becnt

NA28 prints περιτεμνόμενοι (present) with no bracketing, supported by 𝔓⁴⁶ א A B C and the great majority. A group of witnesses including 𝔓⁴⁶* and some Latin and Greek minuscules reads the perfect περιτετμημένοι, ‘those who have been circumcised.’ The perfect is the easier reading — it identifies the party by settled status rather than ongoing practice — and it is exactly the smoothing a scribe would produce if he wanted the sentence to name Jews rather than a campaign. The present is to be retained, and the variant is worth flagging precisely because it bears on the disputed referent discussed above.

The article οἱ before the participle is secure. A handful of witnesses vary the order of αὐτοὶ νόμον; the variation is stylistic and carries no exegetical weight.

No variant here touches the sense of the second half of the verse.

Built onna28 · metzger-tc

Chrysostom takes the charge as one of transparent self-interest: the agitators do not care about law but about a following, and the boast is in numbers won. His reading of ἐν τῇ ὑμετέρᾳ σαρκί is that they wanted disciples to display, and that Paul exposes the vanity by locating the trophy in someone else’s body.

Jerome, commenting on Galatians, presses the incoherence rather than the vanity: circumcision cannot be a partial obedience, so the whole position collapses on its own terms — a reading that leans toward the ‘impossibility’ construal above and connects 6:13 with 5:3.

The Vulgate renders glorientur for καυχήσωνται, preserving the boast-word, and custodiunt for φυλάσσουσιν, which keeps the guarding root visible in a way English ‘keep’ does not. Its qui circumciduntur is a present passive and so preserves the tense faithfully while resolving the voice question toward the passive.

Built onsilva-becnt · obrien-nigtc

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, Commentary on Galatians, trans. Andrew Cain, Fathers of the Church 121 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010)