Galatians 4:9

Are known of God,— Or, are approved of God. The Apostle having said, ye have known God, he subjoins, or rather are known of him, in the Hebrew latitude of the word known; in which language it sometimes signifies, "knowing with choice and approbation." See Amos 3:2. 1 Corinthians 8:3. The law is here Called weak, because it was not able to deliver a man from bondage and death into the glorious liberty of the sons of God; and it is called beggarly, or poor, because it kept men in the poor estate of pupils, from the full possession and enjoyment of the inheritance, Galatians 4:1. The Apostle makes it matter of astonishment how they who had been in bondage to false gods, having been once set free, could endure the thoughts of parting with their liberty; of returning into anysort of bondage again; much more to a bondage under the weak and wretched external institutions of the Mosaical law, which was not able to make themsons, and instate them in the inheritance. For in Galatians 4:7 he expressly opposes bondage to sonship.

The word Παλιν, again, evidently refers here, not to elements which the Galatians had never been under hitherto, but to bondage, which he tells them, Galatians 4:8 they had been in to false gods.