Albert Barnes Commentary Galatians 3:16

"Now to Abraham were the promises spoken, and to his seed. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ." — Galatians 3:16 (ASV)

Now to Abraham and his seed. To him and his posterity.

Were the promises made. The promise here referred to was that which is recorded in Genesis 22:17-18:

In blessing I will bless you, and in multiplying I will
multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand
which is upon the sea-shore; and in your seed shall
all the nations of the earth be blessed.

He says not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, etc. He does not use the plural term, as if the promise extended to many persons; but he speaks in the singular number, as if only one was intended, and that one must be the Messiah. Such is Paul's interpretation; such is evidently the sentiment he intends to convey and the argument he intends to urge.

He evidently intends to be understood as affirming that in the use of the singular number sperma (seed), instead of the plural spermata (seeds), there is a fair ground of argument to demonstrate that the promise related to Christ, or the Messiah, and to him primarily, if not exclusively.

Now, no one has probably ever read this passage without feeling a difficulty and without asking himself whether this argument is sound and worthy of a man of candor, and especially of an inspired man. Some of the difficulties in the passage are these:

1. The promise referred to in Genesis seems to have related to the posterity of Abraham at large, without any particular reference to an individual. It is to his seed, his descendants, to all his seed or posterity. Such would be the fair and natural interpretation if it were read by hundreds or thousands of persons who had never heard of the interpretation Paul puts upon it here.

2. The argument of the apostle seems to proceed on the supposition that the word "seed," sperma (that is, posterity), here cannot refer to more than one person; if it had, he says, it would have been in the plural number. But the fact is that the word is often used to denote posterity at large, referring to descendants without limitation, just as the word posterity is with us. Moreover, it is a fact that the word is not used in the plural at all to denote a posterity; the singular form is constantly employed for that purpose.

   Anyone who opens Tromm's Concordance to the Septuagint, or Schmidt's on the New Testament, will see the most ample confirmation of this remark. Indeed, the plural form of the word is never used, except in this place in Galatians. The difficulty, therefore, is that Paul's remark here appears to be a trick of argument or a quibble more worthy of a trifling Jewish Rabbi than of a grave reasoner or an inspired man.

   I have stated this difficulty freely, just as I suppose it has struck hundreds of minds, because I do not wish to shrink from any real difficulty in examining the Bible, but to see whether it can be fairly met. In meeting it, expositors have resorted to various explanations, most of them, as it seems to me, unsatisfactory, and it is not necessary to detail them.

   Bishop Burnet, Doddridge, and some others suppose that the apostle means to say that the promises made to Abraham were not only appropriated to one class of his descendants, that is, to those by Isaac, but that they centered in one illustrious person, through whom all the rest are made partakers of the blessings of the Abrahamic covenant.

   Doddridge admits the apostle says this in "bad Greek," but still he supposes that this is the true exposition. Noesselt and Rosenmüller suppose that by the word sperma (seed) here, the Messiah is not meant, but Christians in general—the body of believers. But this is evidently in contradiction to the apostle, who expressly affirms that Christ was intended.

   It is also liable to another objection that is fatal to the opinion. The very point of the apostle's argument is that the singular, and not the plural form of the word, is used, and that, therefore, an individual, and not a collective body or a number of individuals, is intended.

   But, according to this interpretation, the reference is, in fact, to a numerous body of individuals—to the whole body of Christians. Jerome (as cited by Chandler) affirms that the apostle made use of a false argument which, although it might appear well enough to the "stupid Galatians," would not be approved by wise or learned men.

   Borger endeavors to show that this was in accordance with the mode of speaking and writing among the Hebrews. He argues especially that the Jewish Rabbis were accustomed to draw an argument like this from the singular number and that the Hebrew word "seed" is often used by them in this manner (see his remarks as quoted by Bloomfield on this passage).

   But the objection to this is that, though this might be common, it is nonetheless a quibble on the word, for certainly the very puerile reasoning of the Jewish Rabbis is no good authority on which to vindicate the authority of an apostle.

   Locke and Clarke suppose that this refers to Christ as the spiritual Head of the mystical body, and to all believers in him. Le Clerc supposes that it is an allegorical kind of argument that was fitted to convince the Jews only, who were accustomed to this kind of reasoning.

   It is possible this solution may be satisfactory to many minds and that it is capable of vindication, since it is not easy to say how far it is proper to use methods of argument employed by an adversary in order to convince them. The argumentum ad hominem is certainly allowable to a certain extent when designed to show the legitimate tendency of the principles advanced by an opponent.

   But here there is no evidence that Paul was reasoning with an adversary. He was showing the Galatians, not the Jews, what was the truth. Justice to the apostle's character requires us to suppose that he would use only such arguments as are in accordance with the eternal principles of truth and such as may be seen to be true in all countries and at all times.

   The question then is whether the apostle's argument here, drawn from the use of the singular word sperma (seed), is one that can be seen to be sound. Or is it a mere quibble, as Jerome and Le Clerc suppose? Or is it to be left to be presumed to have had a force which we cannot now trace?

   This is possible. Socrates and Plato may have used arguments of a subtle nature, based on some fine distinctions of words which were perfectly sound but which we, from our necessary ignorance of the delicate shades of meaning in the language, cannot now understand. Perhaps the following remarks may show that there is real force and propriety in the position the apostle takes here. If not, then I confess my inability to explain the passage.

1. There can be no reasonable objection to the opinion that the promise originally made to Abraham included the Messiah and that the promised blessings were to descend through him. This is so often affirmed in the New Testament that to deny it would be to deny the repeated declarations of the sacred writers and to make war on the whole structure of the Bible (see particularly Romans 4). If this general principle is admitted, it will remove much perplexity from the controversy.

2. The promise made to Abraham in Genesis 22:18, and in your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed (where the words both in Hebrew and in Greek—Septuagint: en tō spermati sou—are in the singular number), cannot refer to all the seed or the posterity of Abraham taken collectively. He had two sons, Isaac by Rebecca and Ishmael by Hagar, besides numerous descendants by Keturah (Genesis 25:1 and following).

   Through a large part of these, no particular blessings descended on the human family, and there is no sense in which all the families of the earth are particularly blessed in them. On any supposition, therefore, there must have been some limitation of the promise; or the word "seed" was intended to include only some portion of his descendants—it does not yet appear whether this was a particular branch or an individual. It must have referred to a part only of the posterity of Abraham; but to what part is to be learned only by subsequent revelations.

3. It was the intention of God to confine the blessing to one branch of the family—to Isaac and his descendants. The peculiar promised blessing was to be through him, and not through the family of Ishmael. This intention is often expressed (Genesis 17:19–21; Genesis 21:12; Genesis 25:11; Hebrews 11:18). Thus the original promise of a blessing through the posterity of Abraham became somewhat narrowed down, so as to show that there was to be a limitation of the promise to a particular portion of his posterity.

4. If the promise had referred to the two branches of the family, if it had been intended to include Ishmael as well as Isaac, then some term would have been used that would have expressed this. So unlike were Isaac and Ishmael, so different in the circumstances of their birth and their future life, so dissimilar were the prophecies respecting them, that it might be said that their descendants were two races of men; and in Scripture, the race of Ishmael ceased to be spoken of as the descendants or the posterity of Abraham.

   There was a sense in which the posterity of Isaac was regarded as the seed or posterity of Abraham in which the descendants of Ishmael were not; and the term sperma, or "seed," therefore, properly designated the posterity of Isaac. It might be said, then, that the promise to your seed did not refer to the two races, as if he had said spermata, "seeds," but to one, sperma, "the seed" of Abraham, by way of eminence.

5. This promise was subsequently narrowed down still more, so as to include only one portion of the descendants of Isaac. Thus it was limited to the posterity of Jacob, Esau being excluded. Subsequently, the peculiar blessing was promised to the family of Judah, one of the twelve sons of Jacob (Genesis 49:10). In subsequent times it was still further narrowed down or limited to the family of Jesse, then to that of David, then to that of Solomon, until it terminated in the Messiah. The original intention of the promise was that there should be a limitation, and that limitation was made from age to age until it terminated in the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ.

   By being thus narrowed down from age to age and limited by successive revelations, it was shown that the Messiah was eminently intended—which is what Paul says here. The promise was indeed, at first, general, and the term used was of the most general nature; but it was shown from time to time that God intended that it should be applied only to one branch or portion of the family of Abraham, and that limitation was finally so made as to terminate in the Messiah.

   This I take to be the meaning of this very difficult passage of Scripture. And though it may not be thought that all the perplexities are removed by these remarks, yet I trust they will be seen to be so far removed that it will appear that there is real force in the apostle's argument and that it is not a mere trick of argument or a quibble unworthy of him as an apostle and a man.