Observe how bitterly he speaks here against their deceivers.129 At the outset he directed his charge against those who were deceived, and called them foolish, once and again. Now, having sufficiently corrected and instructed them, he turns to their deceivers. And you 39 should remark his wisdom in the manner in which he admonishes and chastens the former as his own children, and as capable of receiving correction, but their deceivers he cuts off, as aliens and incurably depraved. And this he does, partly, when he says, “he shall bear his judgment whosoever he be;” partly when he utters the imprecation against them, “I would that they which unsettle you would even cut themselves off.” And he says well “that unsettle you.” For they had compelled them to abandon their own fatherland, their liberty, and their heavenly kindred, and to seek an alien and foreign one; they had cast them out of Jerusalem which is above and free, and compelled them to wander forth as captives and emigrants. On this account he curses them; and his meaning is as follows, For them I have no concern, “A man that is heretical after the first and second admonition refuse.” (Tit. iii. 10.) If they will, let them not only be circumcised, but mutilated. Where then are those who dare to mutilate themselves130; seeing that they draw down the Apostolic curse, and accuse the workmanship of God, and take part with the Manichees? For the latter call the body a treacherous thing, and from the evil principle; and the former by their acts give countenance to these wretched doctrines, cutting off the member as being hostile and treacherous. Ought they not much rather to put out the eyes, for it is through the eyes that desire enters the soul? But in truth neither the eye nor any other part of us is to blame, but the depraved will only. But if you will not allow this, why do you not mutilate the tongue for blasphemy, the hands for rapine, the feet for their evil courses, in short, the whole body? For the ear en- chanted by the sound of a flute hath often enervated the soul; and the perception of a sweet perfume by the nostrils hath bewitched the mind, and made it frantic for pleasure. Yet this would be extreme wickedness and satanic madness. The evil spirit, ever delighting in slaughter, hath seduced them to crush the instrument, as if its Maker had erred, whereas it was only necessary to correct the unruly passion of the soul. How then does it happen, one 129 [“The vivid realization of the doings of his opponents, who were not ashamed to resort even to such falsehood, now wrings from his soul a strong and bitterly sarcastic wish of holy indignation.”—Meyer. Paul wishes that the circumcisers would not stop with circumcision but go beyond it to mutilation (make themselves eunuchs) like the priests of Cybele. A severe irony and similar to the one in Philip. iii. 2, 3, where Paul calls the boasters of circumcision “the Concision.” Self mutilation was a recognized form of heathen worship especially in Pessinus in Galatia and therefore quite familiar to the readers. Thus by their glorying in the flesh the Galatians relapsed into their former heathenism,—Schaff and Lightfoot. The Revised Version here has, “would even cut themselves off,” the American Committee has, “would go beyond circumcision.”—G.A.] 130 [᾽Αποκοπτειν ἐαυτούς. Chrysostom here, as often, “goes off at a word” into a digression on a subject which is only remotely suggested by the passage in hand.—G.A.] 77 Galatians 5:1