The letter is nearly over. Paul has taken the pen from the amanuensis (v. 11), demolished the motives of the circumcision party (vv. 12-13), staked everything on the cross (v. 14), pronounced peace on those who keep in step with the new-creation rule (vv. 15-16) — and now, in one sentence, he closes the file.

The verse has two halves joined by γάρ, and the logic is judicial: a demand, and the credential that backs it. Let no one keep causing me trouble — a present imperative, so the trouble is ongoing and the order is that it stop. For I bear the brand-marks of Jesus on my body.

Everything turns on στίγματα. The word is a NT hapax and it does not mean scars in the abstract. A στίγμα is a mark pricked or burned into human skin — the mark of a slave, a captive, a soldier, or a devotee of a god. Paul has just spent two verses on people who want to make a display ἐν σαρκί (v. 12) and boast ἐν τῇ ὑμετέρᾳ σαρκί (v. 13). He answers with a mark in the flesh of his own: not one he chose and displays, but one that was inflicted, and that identifies whose he is.

The verb is βαστάζω, the third occurrence in fourteen verses. Bear one another’s burdens (v. 2); each will bear his own load (v. 5); I bear the brand-marks of Jesus (v. 17). The chapter’s whole ethic of carrying comes to rest on Paul’s own scarred body.

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

A genitive of time within which, and the case matters. Paul’s usual formula is the accusative τὸ λοιπόν (Phil 3:1; 4:8; 1 Thess 4:1; 2 Thess 3:1) — the discourse-boundary marker already fixed in this corpus as ‘for the rest.’ Here he writes the genitive, which BDF treats as marking the time-frame within which something holds rather than the remainder of a discourse.

The practical difference: τὸ λοιπόν can be a transition (‘as for the rest…’), while τοῦ λοιποῦ is temporal — ‘from this point on,’ ‘henceforth.’ Eph 6:10 has the same genitive. Given that Paul has already made his final transition at v. 11, the temporal sense is clearly right here: he is setting a boundary on the future, not opening a last topic.

Rendered ‘from now on’ in the reading text and ‘of the remaining [time]’ in the literal tier, with the supplied noun bracketed — Greek withholds it.

κόπος in its root sense is the weariness of exertion; the cognate verb κοπιάω is already fixed in this corpus as ‘labor to exhaustion’ (Phil 2:16; Gal 4:11). But κόπους παρέχειν is a set Koine idiom meaning ‘to cause trouble, to make difficulties for someone’ — the same idiom stands at Matt 26:10; Mark 14:6; Luke 11:7; 18:5. The dative names the person put out.

Two features must survive into English. First, the plural κόπους: not an abstract condition of being troubled but repeated acts of trouble-making. Second, the present imperative παρεχέτω, which is durative — the trouble is currently in progress and Paul orders it to stop, not merely warns against future instances.

The rendering ‘cause trouble’ is idiomatic; ‘furnish troubles’ is kept in the literal tier so the παρέχω (‘hand over, supply’) morpheme stays visible. Avoid ‘bother’ (register too light for a man citing his scars) and ‘annoy’ (relocates the injury into Paul’s feelings).

NT hapax. From στίζω, ‘to prick, puncture, tattoo.’ A στίγμα is not a wound and not a scar in general — it is a mark deliberately placed in human skin, by pricking with ink or by branding with a hot iron. The word carries no sentiment; it names a procedure.

First-century referents, all attested:

• Slaves. Runaways and thieves were branded or tattooed, often on the forehead, with the owner’s name or a legend. The Greek papyri and the Roman jurists both attest the practice; a branded slave was permanently identified as property.
• Captives and criminals. 3 Macc 2:29 has Ptolemy IV ordering Jews to be branded with the ivy-leaf of Dionysus — the closest LXX parallel and a striking one, since it involves a religious mark forcibly imposed.
• Soldiers. Recruits were tattooed on the hand as a mark of enlistment.
• Devotees. Adherents of certain cults bore the mark of their god; Herodotus (2.113) knows of a temple where a fugitive slave marked for the god could not be reclaimed.

Rendering: brand-marks. It keeps the mark-in-the-skin concreteness, keeps the ownership overtone available without asserting it, and blocks the medieval sense. ‘Marks’ alone is too thin — it loses that these are inflicted, deliberate, and identifying. ‘Scars’ names the aftermath of an injury but drops the marking-as-designation that is the whole point. ‘Stigmata’ is excluded. Note also the reversal of modern English ‘stigma’: Paul’s mark of disgrace is his credential.

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 critical text reads the bare τοῦ Ἰησοῦ — the name alone, articular, with no Χριστοῦ and no κυρίου. This is unusual for Paul, who overwhelmingly writes Χριστός, Χριστὸς Ἰησοῦς, or κύριος Ἰησοῦς Χριστός; the bare articular Ἰησοῦς appears in contexts where the historical, crucified man is in view (2 Cor 4:10-11).

The manuscript tradition expands it in every available direction — κυρίου Ἰησοῦ, Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, κυρίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. The expansions are typical scribal enrichment of a divine name and cluster in the later witnesses; the shortest reading is also the one that best explains the others. NA28 prints τοῦ Ἰησοῦ without brackets.

The exegetical payoff of the short reading is considerable. Paul’s marks are the marks of Jesus — the man who was flogged and crucified — not of an exalted title. It pairs directly with 2 Cor 4:10, τὴν νέκρωσιν τοῦ Ἰησοῦ ἐν τῷ σώματι περιφέροντες, where the same bare name governs the same bodily image.

The genitive is best taken as possessive: the marks that belong to Jesus, identifying whose Paul is. A source genitive (‘marks Jesus gave’) and an objective one (‘marks that display Jesus’) both shade in, and the bare ‘of’ is retained so all remain available.

The nominative pronoun is expressed where the verb ending already carries the person — marked, and here strongly contrastive. Set against οὗτοι (v. 12) and οἱ περιτεμνόμενοι (v. 13): they want a display in the flesh; I carry marks in mine.

The pronoun is also fronted before the object, so the emphasis is doubled. Per the corpus policy on expressed nominatives, it is rendered visibly (‘I, for my part’ in the study tier) rather than absorbed into the verb.

γάρ grounds the prohibition. This is not decoration: the second clause is the reason the first clause is enforceable. Whether that reason works by moral authority (‘I have suffered enough for this gospel to be past questioning’) or by something closer to a legal claim (‘I am marked as another’s property; hands off’) is the substance of the contested note under στίγματα. The particle is rendered in every case (§10).

σῶμα, not σάρξ — and the choice is deliberate three verses after Paul twice used σάρξ of the circumcisers’ arena of display (vv. 12, 13). σάρξ there is a theological category, the sphere of credential-seeking; σῶμα here is the physical thing that gets flogged. The corpus policy already fixes σῶμα in suffering contexts as the concrete body an authority can imprison or kill (2 Cor 4:10; Gal 6:17; Phil 1:20).

ἐν + dative: locative. English idiom prefers ‘on my body’ for surface marks; ‘in my body’ is retained in the literal tier and is defensible, since flogging scars are in the flesh, not merely on it. Either way, do not render ‘in my person’ or ‘in myself’ — that abstracts the physical body away, which is exactly what the verse refuses to do.

The corpus entry fixes βαστάζω as ‘bear / carry,’ a physical load-carrying verb with the metaphor kept live. This is its third occurrence in Galatians 6 and the pattern is unmistakable:

• v. 2 βαστάζετε — imperative, plural: carry one another’s burdens (τὰ βάρη).
• v. 5 βαστάσει — future, distributive: each will carry his own load (τὸ ἴδιον φορτίον).
• v. 17 βαστάζω — present, first person singular: I carry the brand-marks of Jesus.

The chapter’s ethic of load-bearing ends on the apostle’s own body. Any English rendering must use the same verb at all three points or the pattern vanishes; ‘bear’ does the work at each.

The present tense is durative and stative: an ongoing carrying, not a past event. The marks are healed; the bearing continues. That is why ‘I have scars’ would be a mistranslation of both the verb and the tense — Paul is not reporting a medical history but describing a present condition of being marked. Compare 2 Cor 4:10 περιφέροντες, ‘carrying about.’

The Fathers read the verse as a boast rather than a complaint, and read the marks as scars of persecution.

Chrysostom (Hom. in Gal.) notes that Paul does not say ‘I have’ the marks but ‘I bear’ them, as a soldier bears his decorations or a herald his trophies — the participle of display, not of endurance. He also takes the first clause as closing the argument: Paul will not re-litigate, because his body has already testified.

Jerome, in his Galatians commentary, connects the marks to the branding of slaves and notes the implication that Paul belongs to another master — the reading that has proved most durable in modern scholarship. The Vulgate’s stigmata Domini Iesu in corpore meo porto preserves the concrete noun and adds Domini, reflecting the expanded Greek reading circulating in the Latin tradition.

Augustine (Exp. Gal.) reads the clause as evidence that Paul’s apostleship is authenticated by suffering rather than by credential — the same contrast Paul draws in vv. 12-14.

The medieval reading of στίγματα as miraculously imprinted crucifixion wounds — from which the modern English word descends — is later reception (§11) and supplies no evidence for the rendering, though it explains why the transliteration must be avoided in the reading text.

Proposed — pending reviewJ. B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, London: Macmillan, 1890 (repr. Peabody: Hendrickson). · John Chrysostom, Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 13. · Jerome, Commentarii in Epistulam Pauli ad Galatas, ed. G. Raspanti, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 77A, Turnhout: Brepols, 2006.

Two points in the verse where the tradition moves.

τοῦ Ἰησοῦ. The short reading is supported by the early Alexandrian witnesses and is printed in NA28. Later witnesses expand: κυρίου Ἰησοῦ, Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, κυρίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. All are explicable as devotional enrichment of a bare divine name — a scribal tendency well documented across the Pauline corpus — and none reverses easily. The short reading is original.

κόπους / κόπον. A scattering of witnesses read the singular. The plural is better attested and is the harder reading in the sense that it individuates the acts of trouble-making rather than naming a state; the singular is a simplification.

Neither variant is doctrinally consequential, and both illustrate the ordinary transmission pattern: names get fuller, plurals get tidier.

Recording the choices made, per §4.

1. τοῦ λοιποῦ → ‘from now on’ (reading text), ‘of the remaining [time]’ (literal). Genitive of time, distinguished in the note from the accusative τὸ λοιπόν already fixed for Phil 3:1 and 4:8. The supplied noun is bracketed.
2. κόπους παρεχέτω → ‘let no one cause me trouble.’ Set idiom rendered idiomatically; ‘furnish troubles’ retained in the literal tier to show παρέχω. Present imperative marked as durative (‘keep causing’) in the modern tier.
3. στίγματα → ‘brand-marks.’ Concrete, keeps the mark-in-skin sense and the ownership overtone available without asserting it. ‘Stigmata’ excluded (reception freight); ‘scars’ excluded (drops the marking-as-designation).
4. τοῦ Ἰησοῦ → ‘of Jesus.’ Short reading adopted; genitive left bare so possessive, source, and objective readings stay open.
5. ἐν τῷ σώματί μου → ‘on my body’ (reading text), ‘in the body of me’ (literal). σῶμα kept concrete against the σάρξ of vv. 12-13.
6. βαστάζω → ‘bear.’ Same English root at 6:2, 6:5, 6:17, without exception.
7. ἐγώ rendered visibly; γάρ rendered, not dropped.

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