16) Galatians 3:15-18
To give a human example, brothers: even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified. Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ. This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise. (Galatians 3:15-18, ESV Bible)
Four Hundred and Thirty Years
In the Torah's story of Israel's sojourn in Egypt, the children of Israel remained in Egypt 430 years before their departure:
"The time that the people of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years. At the end of 430 years, on that very day, all the hosts of the LORD went out from the land of Egypt" (Exodus 12:40-41).
Notice that "they lived in Egypt 430 years," and at the end of 430 years, "to the very day," they departed. To what very day? The Torah never indicates the "very day" that they began to live in Egypt. Of which "very day" is the Torah speaking?
Question One: On which “very day” did Israel enter Egypt?
The 430-year sojourn of the children of Israel in Egypt raises a problem. According to Genesis 46:11, Kohath the son of Levi entered Egypt with Jacob in the days of Joseph. Kohath had a son named Amram, who in turn had a son named Moses. Moses was 80 years old at the time of the Exodus. The math does not work out. Subtract the 80 years of Moses from the total 430-year sojourn in Egypt, and that leaves 350 years between Moses' birth and the year his grandfather Kohath entered Egypt. It's too long.
Question Two: How do we account for 430 years in Egypt over only three generations: Kohath, Amran, and Moses?
These are not really matters of critical concern. One should hold these sorts of details loosely and not demand too much of the biblical text. The biblical text was neither designed nor written to bear the weight of such critical literalism. The rabbis, however, can never leave well enough alone. The rabbis looked at this text, and they said, "This is a difficulty!"
To solve the difficulty, they factored in another text about the duration of Israel's sojourn in Egypt. In Genesis 15:13, the LORD predicted that Abraham's "seed" would sojourn for four hundred years.
Abraham’s Seed
In Genesis 15, the LORD made a covenant with Abraham. He promised to give Abraham a "seed." The Hebrew word is zera, which literally means "seed." English translators try to do us a favor when they translate zera as "descendants." For example:
And he brought him outside and said, "Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them." Then he said to him, "So shall your descendants [zera] be." And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:5-6)
Likewise, all of the other Abrahamic promises, including the promise that all nations would be blessed in him, were also given to his seed. For example, after the binding of Isaac, the LORD tells Abraham:
Because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your [seed] as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your [seed] shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your [seed] shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice. (Genesis 22:16-18)
The funny thing about a word like "seed" is that it is a singular noun that might also be plural, both in Hebrew and in English.
For example, you might say, "I needed to get seed for the field this spring, so I went to the seed store and bought some new seed." Those are all plural applications of the word "seed," but the word appears as a singular form. Other English words have the same plural/singular ambiguity. For example, a person may count one sheep or two sheep but not two sheeps. A person might see a moose or a whole herd of moose but not a herd of mooses. The Hebrew word zera ("seed") works exactly the same way. It might be singular, or it might be plural. Abraham's zera can refer to one person, as in the case of his son Isaac, or it can refer to all of his descendants.
Four Hundred Years
In Genesis 15, the LORD told Abraham, "Look toward the heaven, number the stars, so shall your [seed] be." Then the LORD made a covenant with Abraham. He told him to slaughter some animals and separate their parts. As the sun set that day, Abraham fell into a deep sleep, and a dreadful darkness fell upon him.
Then the LORD said to Abram. "Know for certain that your [seed] will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions." (Genesis 15:13-14)
Four hundred years? Another problem! God told Abraham that the exile in Egypt would last 400 years, but in Exodus 12, it said the children of Israel lived in Egypt 430 years. How can this be reconciled? Was God just giving Abraham an estimate?
430-year sojourn in Egypt (Exodus 12:40)
400-year sojourn in Egypt (Genesis 15:14)
A Rabbinic Solution
The rabbis looked at this thirty-year discrepancy and proposed a solution:
"Your seed will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years." This means that they will remain there until four hundred years have passed after seed shall be granted to you. Rabbi Yudan said, "The condition of being strangers, in servitude, and afflicted in a land not theirs was to last four hundred years, which was their decreed term." (Genesis Rabbah 44:18)
The rabbinic interpretation of the passage explains that God promised Abraham that his seed (plural) would inherit the land of Canaan four hundred years after he had borne a seed (singular), namely Isaac. In other words, his seed, the children of Israel, will come out from oppression and inherit Canaan four hundred years after the birth of his seed Isaac. The counting of the four hundred years will not start until the birth of Abraham's seed Isaac.
The oppression of Abraham's seed would not happen only in Egypt; rather, it is "the condition of being strangers and afflicted in a land not theirs which was to last four hundred years." This refers to Canaan. Isaac was a stranger in a land that did not belong to him, the land of Canaan. His descendants (seed) went down into Egypt where they were enslaved and oppressed until four hundred years had passed since the birth of Isaac, at which time they came out with many possessions. That's what the rabbis say.
That ambiguity of the word "seed" allowed the sages to account for the thirty-year discrepancy between the two passages. The rabbis simply said, "God made the promise to Abraham thirty years before Isaac was born. Therefore, the Exodus from Egypt took place exactly four hundred years after Isaac was born, but 430 years after God made the covenant with Abraham."
This also explains the meaning of the term "on that very day" in Exodus 12:41. The Exodus from Egypt took place 430 years, to the very day, from the day that God made the covenant with Abraham. Therefore, God made the covenant with Abraham on Passover, and thirty years later Isaac was born on Passover.
The Sojourn in Egypt
This explanation also solves the problem about the duration of the sojourn in Egypt. Isaac was born 30 years after God made the covenant promise to Abraham. Sixty years later, Isaac's wife gave birth to Jacob. Jacob was 130 years old when he and his sons entered Egypt:
30 + 60 + 130 = 220
Subtract the 220 years from the 430 reported in Exodus 12:41, and it leaves 210 years for the total sojourn in Egypt. Subtract the 80 years of Moses' life, and that leaves only 130 years between Moses and his grandfather Kohath, still a large number, but far more reasonable than 350 years.
To clarify, the sages overturned the literal meaning of the 430 years found in Exodus 12 and the 400 years in Egypt predicted in Genesis 15 in favor of 430 years from the day God made the covenant with Abraham and 400 years from the birth of Isaac, Abraham's singular seed. This is not what the Torah literally says, but this is how the rabbis interpreted it. One can only arrive at this solution through rabbinic tradition and interpretation.
The Blessing of Abraham
Paul encouraged the Galatian God-Fearers to take hold of the blessing available to them through faith. He described how the Messiah had suffered to free Jewish people from the curse of condemnation so that "in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles" (Galatians 3:14).
Paul quoted the LORD telling Abraham in Genesis 12:3, "In you shall all the nations be blessed" (Galatians 3:8). God repeated that same promise in Genesis 22 when he said to Abraham, "In your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." Paul described this "blessing in Abraham" as the faith of Abraham. Abraham believed in the promise; God credited it to him as righteousness.
Paul taught that through the Messiah, this blessing in Abraham has come also to the Gentiles, so that both Jew and Gentile might receive the promised Spirit through faith:
That in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. (Galatians 3:14)
The Diatheke
The rabbis often used what they called a parable of "flesh and blood" to illustrate an abstract, spiritual point about the Holy One, blessed be he. Paul did the same. He said, "To give a human example, brothers: even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified" (Galatians 3:15). The Greek word diatheke, translated here as "covenant," can also mean a person's last will and testament. The Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures (LXX) consistently uses the word diatheke to translate the Hebrew word for covenant (brit). But the larger Greco-Roman society of Paul's day used the word diatheke to mean the last will and testament by which a person left instructions assigning the inheritance of his possessions.
Paul said, "Even with a man-made covenant-a diatheke-no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified." In Greco-Roman society, however, a person could certainly add to or modify his diatheke, his last will and testament, up until the day of his death.
In Jewish society, the rabbis had strict rules regarding inheritance law. An entire tractate of the Talmud (Bava Batra) deals with inheritance law. In the Mishnaic Hebrew of the Talmud, the rabbis referred to a person's last will and testament as a deyateke, obviously a loan word from Greek, meaning exactly the same thing.
The Talmud's Tractate Bava Batra explains the rules. A person's deyateke cannot contradict the Torah's inheritance laws. For example, if a man has a son and daughter and he wants to split the inheritance between them and says so in his deyateke, the rabbis declare the document invalid because it contradicts the Torah's law that only sons inherit. Likewise, if a man wants to give a double portion to a different son than his firstborn and he says so in his deyateke, the rabbis declared the document invalid.
Contrary to what Paul said in Galatians 3:15, the rabbis did allow a man to change or add to his deyateke right up until his death. At the point of death, a man's deyateke became final, and no one could further add to it or change it so long as it did not contradict the Torah.
On the other hand, the rabbis did allow for an alternative route-a legal loophole--around the whole matter. They allowed a man to give away his property before he died. This gift required a different kind of document called a mattanah, i.e., a "gift document." If a man gave away his property before he died, the gift was permanent and could not be reversed at his death, even if it did not meet the Torah's expectations for inheritance laws. In that case, a man could split his property between his son and his daughter or give it to anyone he wanted, so long as he did it before he died.
The Talmud explains the difference between the two types of documents:
Which type of document is called a deyateke? Any in which it is written, "This shall be valid and enduring upon my death." And which type of document is a mattanah? Any in which it is written, "From today on and also after my death." (b.Bava Batra 135b)
The deyateke was inalterable after death. The mattanah was inalterable from the day it was issued.
The Point of the Background Information
All of the above information provides the background for Galatians 3:15-17:
To give a human example, brothers: even with a man-made covenant. no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified [i.e., becomes legally binding]. Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his [seed]. It does not say, "And to [seeds]," referring to many, but referring to one, "And to your [seed]," who is Christ. This is what I mean: the [Torah], which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void.
Notice how Paul played with the singular/ plural discrepancy with the word "seed," much as the sages did. The rabbis used that ambiguity to apply the 400-year-promise in Genesis 15 to the birth of Isaac, the singular seed of Abraham. Paul said that all nations will be blessed in Messiah, the singular seed of Abraham. According to Paul's rabbinic-style reading of the Torah, God made the promises to Abraham and to his seed, i.e., the Messiah. That is not literally what the Torah means, but Paul makes a midrash on the text, just like the sages did with Isaac as Abraham's seed. In Paul's interpretation, Yeshua is the Seed of Abraham.
Also notice that Paul stated that the Torah came 430 years after God made the covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15. Paul followed the rabbinic interpretation of Exodus 12:41 that we learned above, not the literal reading of the passage.
Finally, he pointed out that the giving of the Torah, which defined Jewish identity and the nation of Israel, cannot annul a covenant (deyateke) previously ratified by God:
This is what I mean: the [Torah], which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. For if the inheritance comes by the [Torah], it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise. (Galatians 3:17-18)
The Torah defines Jewish identity, and it defines who is part of the nation and who is not. But the Torah came 430 years after the promise that all nations would find blessing in Abraham's seed.
Working Through the Maze
The entire passage is a complex, rabbinic-style parable invoking Torah, inheritance law, midrash, and messianic interpretations. Working through Paul's illustration feels something like groping blindfolded through a twisting maze. To help illustrate the illustration, I have composed the following parable:
To what can it be compared? It can be compared to a man of flesh and blood who had two wives, and sons by both. He left a deyateke for his descendants, designating the disposition of his possessions among his sons. After the man died, the sons of the one wife rose up and said, "We have written a new deyateke which says onlv the sons of our mother may inherit." The sons of the second wife said, "No one may annul or add to the original deyateke after our father's death." In a similar way, God made covenant (deyateke) promises to Abraham that all nations would be blessed in him and in his seed, the Messiah. Four hundred and thirty years later, Abraham's sons, the children of Israel, received the Torah, and they said, "This new deyateke is ours alone; no other nation can inherit Abraham's blessing." But a later covenant cannot overturn an earlier one, and the Torah given at Sinai cannot cancel God's promises to Abraham.
Paul says that the commandments of the Torah which define Jewish status came 430 years after God had already promised to bless all nations in Abraham's seed, the Messiah. Therefore, the Gentile nations need not come under the obligations of Jewish identity, "under the law," in order to receive the promised blessing in Abraham's seed, the Messiah.
This simple logic also reveals a corollary truth: Just as the Sinai covenant cannot overturn or nullify the Abrahamic covenant, neither can the new covenant overturn or nullify the Sinai Covenant. Instead, one covenant builds on another; they must all work together.
Passover
Paul followed the standard rabbinic interpretation when it came to explaining Israel's 430-year sojourn. He explained it as 430 years from the day God gave the covenant to Abraham in Genesis 15 until the Exodus from Egypt; as it said in Exodus 12:41: "At the end of 430 years, on that very day, all the hosts of the LORD went out from the land of Egypt." That is four hundred vears from the birth of Isaac to the Exodus. Thanks to Paul, these rabbinic explanations are no longer just rabbinic opinions. Now they are apostolic opinions, and that has important implications.
That interpretation makes Passover the birthday of Isaac, as it savs in Genesis 21:2: "And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time (mo'ed) of which God had spoken to him." The Hebrew word mo'ed means "appointed time." The Torah uses the same word in Leviticus 23 to mean a biblical festival.
The festivals are God's appointed times: "These are the appointed times (mo'adim) of the LORD" (Leviticus 23:2). The Talmud (b. Rosh Hashana 11a) concurs with this conclusion: "On Passover Isaac was born."
The same interpretation also makes Passover the anniversary of the covenant between God and Abraham. Four hundred and thirty vears before the first Passover, Abraham slaughtered the animals for his covenant on the fourteenth of Nissan. Then he waited. He drove off the birds. He waited for the LORD. The sun went down, darkness fell, and the fifteenth of Nissan began, which is the first day of the week of Passover. God appeared in the form of the blazing torch and made the covenant with Abraham. Four hundred and thirty years later, to the very day, Israel came out of Egypt.
This implies that on the anniversary of the day on which Abraham slaughtered the animals in order to make the covenant between the parts with the LORD-that very same day, the fourteenth of Nissan--the children of Israel slaughtered their Passover lambs in Egypt. According to the Gospel of John, our Master suffered and died on the anniversary of that same day. On the same day Abraham sacrificed the animals to make his covenant with the LORD, our Master died as the sacrifice of the new covenant. On that same day, he said to his disciples, "This is the cup of the new covenant." The day of Passover draws a line of connection from Abraham's covenant to his singular, promised seed, the Messiah.
The Torah says, "As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him" (Genesis 15:12). Out of the darkness, the LORD appeared to Abraham in the light of a flaming torch and passed between the sacrificial portions of the covenant. The LORD spoke to Abraham and made covenant promises to him about the birth of a seed and about his seed returning and possessing the land of Canaan. On the anniversary of that night, the angel of death slew Egypt's firstborn. On the anniversary of that night, as the sun set, they closed the Master's tomb-dreadful and great darkness, but out of the dark-ness, a light blazed forth.
Referneces
This lesson was curated from teachings from First Fruits of Zion “Holy Epistle to the Galatians.”