3:23 Now before faith 6 came we were held in custody under the law, being kept as prisoners 7 until the coming faith would be revealed.
4:17 They court you eagerly, 8 but for no good purpose; 9 they want to exclude you, so that you would seek them eagerly. 10
1 tn Grk “slaves, nor did we…” Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, οὐδέ (oude) was translated as “But…even” and a new sentence started in the translation at the beginning of v. 5.
2 tn Or “we did not cave in to their demands.”
3 tn Grk “even for an hour” (an idiom for a very short period of time).
4 sn In order that the truth of the gospel would remain with you. Paul evidently viewed the demands of the so-called “false brothers” as a departure from the truth contained in the gospel he preached. This was a very serious charge (see Gal 1:8).
5 tn Or “so that the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles in Christ Jesus.”
6 tn Or “the faithfulness [of Christ] came.”
7 tc Instead of the present participle συγκλειόμενοι (sunkleiomenoi; found in Ì46 א A B D* F G P Ψ 33 1739 al), C D1 0176 0278 Ï have the perfect συγκεκλεισμένοι (sunkekleismenoi). The syntactical implication of the perfect is that the cause or the means of being held in custody was confinement (“we were held in custody [by/because of] being confined”). The present participle of course allows for such options, but also allows for contemporaneous time (“while being confined”) and result (“with the result that we were confined”). Externally, the perfect participle has little to commend it, being restricted for the most part to later and Byzantine witnesses.
tn Grk “being confined.”
8 tn Or “They are zealous for you.”
9 tn Or “but not commendably” (BDAG 505 s.v. καλῶς 2).
10 tn Or “so that you would be zealous.”