Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Galatians 4:3

Galatians 4:3. So we also, when we were minors, the Jewish Christians before their conversion, comp. Galatians 3:23. In a wider sense the words are applicable to the heathen Christians also, whose former religion was still more childish, though not divinely appointed as a preparatory school.

Enslaved under the elements (or rudiments) of the world. Comp. Galatians 4:9. This is understood by the church fathers in a physical, by most modern interpreters in an ethical sense.

(1.) The elementary substances of the external world or physical universe (so 2 Peter 3:10; 2 Peter 3:12), as earth, fire, and especially the heavenly bodies. (a) The Jewish festivals (sabbaths, new moons, and passovers) which were regulated by the course of the sun and moon, and so far by the powers of nature. (Chrysostom.) (b) The heathen worship of the stars and other material substances. (Augustine.) (c) Religion of earthly, sensuous forms and rites generally (both Jewish and heathen), as distinct from spiritual religion and rational worship. (Neander.) Against this interpretation in all its forms is the omission of world after elements in Galatians 4:9.

(2.) The elementary lessons, rudimentary instruction, the alphabet of learning (as Hebrews 5:12; comp. Colossians 2:8; Colossians 2:20). So Jerome, Calvin, Olshausen, Meyer, Wieseler, Ellicott, Lightfoot. This is much simpler and better suited to the context. Paul represents here the religion before Christ, especially the Jewish, as an elementary religion or a religion of childhood, full of external rites and ceremonies, all of which had a certain educational significance, but pointed beyond themselves to an age of manhood in Christ. This falls in naturally with what he said in the preceding chapter of the pedagogical mission of the law. The whole Old Testament dispensation was an elementary or preparatory school for the gospel, a religion of types and shadows, of hope and promise, destined to lose itself in Christianity, as its substance and fulfilment.

Of the world, not the physical universe (as in the first interpretation of the ‘elements'). but mankind which needed such a training for Christianity. The expression seems to imply that Paul comprehends the heathen also, comp. Galatians 4:8. But the Jews were in fact the religious representatives of the whole race in its motion towards Christ.

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Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Galatians 4:3

Old Testament

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