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a will had been confirmed, the heir appointed, the adoption made, then "no man
disannulleth or added thereto". If this be so, continues the Apostle, see how this bears
upon the problem before us. The blessing of Abraham comes to you by a covenant made
by God four hundred and thirty years before the giving of the law at Mount Sinai; how
then can you believe that such a law, coming so long afterwards should either disannul,
or make the promise of none effect?
Before this conclusion is reached, however, Paul interposes another rather startling
statement:
"Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds,
as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ" (Gal. 3: 16).
We must handle with extreme care this argument of the Apostle, otherwise we may do
ourselves or others damage. First we remember that Paul was both a good Hebraist and a
master of Greek, and he would know that the plural of the Hebrew word "seed" which is
zeraim could not possibly be used in the original promise to Abraham, for zeraim means
"various kinds of grain" just as the plural spermata does in I Cor. 15: 38. Ellicott's note
here seems so sane and so sound that we feel every reader would benefit by it. He says:
"We may here pause to make a brief remark on the great freedom which so many
commentators have allowed themselves to characterize St. Paul's argument as either
artificial or Rabbinical, or as Baur, Apost. Paul, p. 665, has even ventured to assert
`plainly arbitrary and incorrect'. It may be true that similar arguments occur in
Rabbinical writers; it may be true that sperma (like the Hebrew zera) is a collective
noun, and that when the plural is used as in Dan. 1: 12 `grains of seed' are implied. All
this may be so--nevertheless we have here an interpretation which the Apostle, writing
under the illumination of the Holy Ghost, has deliberately propounded, and which,
therefore (whatever difficulties may at first sight appear in it) is profoundly and
indisputably true. We hold, therefore, that there is as certainly a mystical meaning in the
use of zera in Gen. 13:15, 17:8 as there is an argument for resurrection in Exod. 3:6,
though in neither case was the writer necessarily aware of it."
It may be that the true solution of the problem raised by this argument as to the word
"seed" lies in the fact that He Who knew the end from the beginning, and intended that
Christ should be the true Seed and the one Heir, so worded the original statement,
avoiding all plurality, that when in the fullness of time He sent forth His Son, made of a
woman, made under the law, there should be no obstacle in the way of believing this
great and important truth.
If we read on in Gal. 3: we shall come to the words:
"And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the
promise" (Gal. 3: 29),
which is an evident reference back to the statement of verse 16.
The argument is now resumed with verse 17, and continues to verse 20, but as these
verses contain much important teaching and at least one great exegetical problem, we
must devote another article to its consideration.