They zealously court you
The phrase "zealously court" in the original Greek is "ζηλοῦσιν" (zēlousin), which conveys a sense of intense enthusiasm or fervor. In the context of Galatians, Paul is addressing the Judaizers, who were fervently trying to win over the Galatian Christians to their legalistic views. Historically, this reflects the early church's struggle with maintaining the purity of the Gospel amidst competing teachings. The Judaizers' zeal was not for the truth of the Gospel but for their own agenda, highlighting the danger of misplaced zeal in spiritual matters.

but not for good
The Greek word for "good" here is "καλῶς" (kalōs), which implies something that is morally excellent or beneficial. Paul is warning the Galatians that the intentions of the Judaizers are not aligned with the true Gospel, which is inherently good and life-giving. This phrase serves as a reminder that not all enthusiasm in religious matters is beneficial; discernment is necessary to distinguish between what is truly good and what merely appears to be.

They want to isolate you
The word "isolate" comes from the Greek "ἐκκλεῖσαι" (ekkleisai), meaning to shut out or exclude. The Judaizers' strategy was to separate the Galatians from Paul's influence and the true Gospel. This reflects a common tactic of false teachers who seek to isolate believers from sound doctrine and community, making them more susceptible to deception. Historically, this mirrors the challenges faced by the early church in maintaining unity and doctrinal purity.

from us
The phrase "from us" indicates the relational and communal aspect of the early Christian church. Paul, as an apostle, represents the authentic teaching and fellowship of the Christian community. The Judaizers' attempt to isolate the Galatians from Paul underscores the importance of staying connected to true apostolic teaching and fellowship. This serves as a timeless reminder of the value of community and accountability in the Christian faith.

so that you may be zealous for them
The Greek word for "zealous" is "ζηλοῦτε" (zēloute), which again emphasizes fervor and enthusiasm. The Judaizers desired the Galatians' allegiance and enthusiasm for their own teachings, rather than for the Gospel of Christ. This phrase highlights the danger of spiritual manipulation, where leaders seek followers for personal gain rather than pointing them to Christ. It serves as a caution to remain vigilant and discerning, ensuring that our zeal is directed towards the truth of the Gospel and not towards human agendas.

(17-20) All this eagerness to court your favour springs from an interested motive: they wish to make a sect of you, in which they shall be masters and courted in their turn. Not but that it is a good thing for teachers and taught--you and I--to seek favour with each other, so long as it is done disinterestedly, and that, too, when I am absent as well as when I am present. My heart yearns towards you. I cannot forget that you owe your life, as Christians, to me. Now, once more, it seems as if all that long travail has to be gone over again. You must be re-fashioned in the likeness of Christ, as the infant is fashioned in the form of man. Would that I could be with you and speak in a different tone, for how to deal with you I do not know.

(17) They zealously affect you.--"Zealously affect" is a single word in the Greek, and means "to show zeal towards," "to court," "to curry favour with," "to canvass eagerly, so as to win over to their side." The subject of this verse is the Judaising teachers.

They would exclude you.--They desire to separate you from the rest of the Gentile churches, and to make a sect by itself, in which they themselves may bear rule. All the other Gentile churches had accepted the freer teaching of St. Paul; the Judaising party wished to make of Galatia an isolated centre of Judaism. They did this with personal motives, "not well"--i.e., from honest and honourable motives--but with a view to secure their own ascendancy.

That ye might affect them.--The same word as "zealously affect" above and in the next verse. They expect to have all this zeal on their part returned to them in kind. With them it is the proselytizing zeal of the faction leader; from you they expect the deferential zeal of devoted followers.

Verse 17. - They zealously affect you, but not well (zhlou = sin u(ma = ou) kalw = ); they admire you in no good way. Of the several senses of the verb ζηλοῦν, those of "envy," "emulate," "strive after," are plainly unsuitable in this verse and the one which follows. So also are the senses "to be zealous on one's behalf, to be jealous of one," which in Hellenistic usage crept into it, apparently from its having been in other senses adopted to represent the Hebrew verb qinne, and borrowing these from this Hebrew verb. The only phase of its meaning which suits the present passage is that which it perhaps by far the most frequently presents in ordinary Greek, though not so commonly in the Septuagint and in the New Testa ment, namely, "to admire," "deem and pronounce highly fortunate and blessed." When used in this sense, it has properly for its object a person; but with a suitable qualification of meaning it may have for its object something inanimate. Very often is the accusative of the person accompanied with the genitive of the ground of gratulation, as Aristophanes, 'Ach.,' 972, Ζηλῶσε τῆς εὐβουλίας "I congratulate, admire, you for your cleverness;" see also 'Equit.,' 834; 'Thes moph.,' 175; 'Vesp.,' 1450; but not always; thus Demosthenes, 'Fals. Legat.,' p. 424, "(Θαυμάζουσι καὶ ζηκοῦσι) they admire and congratulate and would each one be himself the like;" 'Adv. Lept.,' p. 500 (respecting public funeral orations), "This is the custom of men admiring (ζηλοὐντων) virtue, not of men looking grudgingly upon those who on its account are being honoured;" Xenophon, 'Mere.,' 2:1,19. "Thinking highly of themselves, and praised and admired (ζηλουμένους) by others;" Josephus, 'C. Ap.,' 1:25, "(ζηλουμένους) admired by many." It thus seems to be often just equivalent to ὀλβίζω or μακαρίζω, with the sense of which latter verb it is brought into close neighbourhood in Aristophanes, 'Nubes,' 1188, "' Blessed (μάκαρ), Strepsiades, are you, both for being so wise yourself and for having such a son as you have,' - thus will my friends and fellow-wardsmen say, in admiration of me (ζηλοῦντες)." Probably this is the sense in which the apostle uses the verb in 2 Corinthians 11:2, Ζηλῶ γὰρ ὑμᾶς Θεοῦ ζηκῷ, "I rejoice in your felicity with an infinite joy;" referring to the intense admiration which he felt of their present felicity, in their having been betrothed a chaste maiden to Christ; not till the next verse introducing the mention of his fear lest this paradisaical happiness might be darkened by the wiles of Satan. It is in a modified shade of the same sense that the word is employee - where it is rendered "covet earnestly" in our Authorized Version in 1 Corinthians 12:31; 1 Corinthians 14:1, 39. In the passage now. before us, then, ζηκιῦσιν ὑμᾶς probably means "they admire you," that is, they tell you so. They were expressing strong admiration of the high Christian character and eminent gifts of these simple-minded believers; the charisms which had been bestowed upon them (Galatians 3:2); their virtues, in contrast especially with their heathen neighbours; their spiritual enlightenment. No doubt all this was said with the view of courting their favour; but ζηλοῦτε can hardly itself mean "court favour," and no instance of its occurring in this sense has been adduced; and this rendering of the verb breaks down utterly in ver. 18. The persons referred to must, of course, be understood as those who were busy in instilling at once Judaizing sentiments and also feelings of antipathy to the apostle himself, as if he were their enemy (ver. 16). The Epistle furnishes no indication whatever that these persons were strangers coming among them from without, answering, for example, to those spoken of in Galatians 2:12 as disturbing the Antiochian Church. It is quite supposable that the warning which, not long after the writing of this Epistle, the apostle addressed to the Ephesian elders at Miletus (Acts 20:29, 30), when putting them on their guard against those who "from among their own selves should rise up speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them," was founded in part upon this experience of his in the Galatian Churches. Galatian Churchmen it may well have been, and no other, who now (as the apostle had just been apprised) were employing that χρηστολογία καὶ εὐλογία, that "kind suave speech" and that "speech of compliment and laudation," which in Romans 16:18 he describes as a favourite device of this class of deceivers, to win the ear of their unwary brethren. "In no good way;" for they did it insincerely and with the purpose of drawing them into courses which, though these men themselves knew it not, were nevertheless fraught with ruin to their spiritual welfare. Yea, they would exclude you; or, us (ἀλλὰ ἐκκλεῖσαι ὑμᾶς θέλουσιν); nay, rather, to shut you out is their wish. The reading "us," noticed in the margin of the Authorized Version, is probably a merely conjectural emendation made in the Greek text by Beza, wholly unsupported by manuscript authority. The ἀλλὰ is adversative to the οὐ καλῶς, the secondary thought of the preceding clause, in the same way as the ἀλλὰ in 1 Corinthians 2:7 is adversative to the secondary negative clauses of ver. 6. The verb "shut out," with no determinative qualification annexed, must have it supplied from the unexpressed ground for the "admiration" denoted by the verb ζηλοῦσιν. The high eminence of spiritual condition and happiness on the possession of which these men were congratulating their brethren, they would be certainly excluded from if they listened to them. Compare the phrase, "who are unsettling you," driving you out of house and home, in ch. 5:12, where see note. That ye might affect them (ἵνα αὐτοὺς ζηλοῦτε); that ye may admire themselves. The position of αὐτοὺς makes it emphatic. We may paraphrase thus: that, being detached from regard to my teaching, and made to feel a certain grave deficiency on your own part in respect to acceptableness with God, ye may be led to look up as disciples to these kind-hearted sympathetic advisers for instruction and guidance. The construction of ἵνα with ζηλοῦτε, which in ordinary Greek is the present indicative, ζηλῶτε being the form for the present subjunctive, is precisely similar to that of ἵνα μὴ with φυσιοῦσθε in 1 Corinthians 4:6. When it is considered how punctually St. Paul is wont to comply with the syntactical rule with reference to ἵνα, and that these two remarkable deflections therefrom are connected with contract forms of verbs in -όω, Ruckert's suggestion seems to be perfectly reasonable, that the solecism lies, not in the syntactical construction, but in the grammatical in flexion, contracting -όη into -οῦ instead of into-ῶ. This form of contraction may have been a provincialism of Tarsus, or it may have been an idiotism of St. Paul himself. Other expedients of explanation which have been proposed are intolerably harsh and improbable.

Parallel Commentaries ...


[Those people] are zealous for you,
Ζηλοῦσιν (Zēlousin)
Verb - Present Indicative Active - 3rd Person Plural
Strong's 2206: From zelos; to have warmth of feeling for or against.

[but] not
οὐ (ou)
Adverb
Strong's 3756: No, not. Also ouk, and ouch a primary word; the absolute negative adverb; no or not.

in a good way.
καλῶς (kalōs)
Adverb
Strong's 2573: Well, nobly, honorably, rightly. Adverb from kalos; well.

Instead,
ἀλλὰ (alla)
Conjunction
Strong's 235: But, except, however. Neuter plural of allos; properly, other things, i.e. contrariwise.

they want
θέλουσιν (thelousin)
Verb - Present Indicative Active - 3rd Person Plural
Strong's 2309: To will, wish, desire, be willing, intend, design.

to isolate
ἐκκλεῖσαι (ekkleisai)
Verb - Aorist Infinitive Active
Strong's 1576: To shut out, exclude, separate. From ek and kleio; to shut out.

you [from us],
ὑμᾶς (hymas)
Personal / Possessive Pronoun - Accusative 2nd Person Plural
Strong's 4771: You. The person pronoun of the second person singular; thou.

so that
ἵνα (hina)
Conjunction
Strong's 2443: In order that, so that. Probably from the same as the former part of heautou; in order that.

you will be zealous
ζηλοῦτε (zēloute)
Verb - Present Subjunctive Active - 2nd Person Plural
Strong's 2206: From zelos; to have warmth of feeling for or against.

for them.
αὐτοὺς (autous)
Personal / Possessive Pronoun - Accusative Masculine 3rd Person Plural
Strong's 846: He, she, it, they, them, same. From the particle au; the reflexive pronoun self, used of the third person, and of the other persons.


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NT Letters: Galatians 4:17 They zealously seek you in no good (Gal. Ga)