Galatians 5:12
I would they were even cut off, who trouble you.
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- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Utinam et abscindantur qui vos conturbant.
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- ὄφελον καὶ ἀποκόψονται οἱ ἀναστατοῦντες ὑμᾶς.
Haydock's commentary
On verses 8 to 12
This persuasion of yours is not from him who calleth you; is not from God: and I hope you will be shortly again of no other mind than what I taught you. (Witham)
This was a Jewish proverb, and alluded to the time of the Pasch, when it was not permitted to eat of any but unleavened bread; during which time the least leaven made the whole mass unclean to a Jew....Some Greek copies read, mikra zume olon to phurama zumoi, when the sense will be, "a little leaven causes the whole mass to rise." (Calmet)
Hence the introduction of any, however small, share of the ceremonial and Jewish rites, will greatly disfigure the purity and simplicity of the Christian institute.
As for me, my adversaries misrepresent me, when they say I preach circumcision; which if I did, I should not be persecuted as I am by the Jews. I never preach it necessary for Gentiles converted, though I have not condemned the use of it in the Jewish converts, provided they do not oblige other converts to it.
The scandal of the cross is therefore made void. The sense is, according to St. Jerome, that the Jews' greatest objection against St. Paul used to be, because he preached that circumcision and the law of Moses need not be observed: another objection against him was, that he preached Jesus, who was crucified on an infamous cross, to be their great Messias. He reasons then in this manner, that if the Jews think he again preacheth the necessity of circumcision and the precepts of the old law, they will no longer be offended that he preacheth Christ crucified, because they were not so much offended with the latter as with the first. Thus also St. Chrysostom on this verse. Others expound it thus: If I preach circumcision and the ceremonies of the law, therefore according to my doctrine, the cross of Christ, and justification by the merits of Christ crucified, is abolished, because justification is still to be sought for by the works of the law.
Read on
I would they were even cut off: separated from your communion by excommunication. This seems the true sense; so that I need not mention any other exposition. See Cornelius a Lapide. (Witham)
Where a note speaks of the Jewish people, the Church teaches that the Passion cannot be charged against all the Jews then living, nor against the Jews of today, and that all sinners were its authors (CCC 597, 598).
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
Tertullian A Treatise on the Soul, The Soul's Parts. Elements of the Rational Soul
That position of Plato’s is also quite in keeping with the faith, in which he divides the soul into two parts, the rational and the irrational. To this definition we take no exception, except that we would not ascribe this twofold distinction to the nature (of the soul). It is the rational element which we must believe to be its natural condition, impressed upon it from its very first creation by its Author, who is Himself essentially rational. For how should that be other than rational, which God produced on His own prompting; nay more, which He expressly sent forth by His own afflatus or breath? The irrational element, however, we must understand to have accrued later, as having proceeded from the instigation of the serpent, the very achievement of (the first) transgression, which thenceforward became inherent in the soul, and grew with its growth, assuming the manner by this time of a …
Tertullian On Modesty, Chapter I
This too, therefore, shall be a count in my indictment against the Psychics; against the fellowship of sentiment also which I myself formerly maintained with them; in order that they may the more cast this in my teeth for a mark of fickleness. Repudiation of fellowship is never a pre-indication of sin. As if it were not easier to err with the majority, when it is in the company of the few that truth is loved! But, however, a profitable fickleness shall no more be a disgrace to me, than I should wish a hurtful one to be an ornament. I blush not at an error which I have ceased to hold, because I am delighted at having ceased to hold it, because I recognise myself to be better and more modest. No one blushes at his own improvement. Even in Christ, knowledge had its stages of growth; through which stages the apostle, too, passed. …
St Augustine Reply to Faustus the Manichæan, Faustus willing to believe not only that the Jewish but that all Gentile prophets wrote of Christ, if it should be proved; but he would none the less insist upon rejecting their superstitions. Augustin maintains that all Moses wrote is of Christ, and that his writings must be either accepted or rejected as a whole
22. In the passage, "Thou shalt see thy life hanging, and shalt not believe thy life," Faustus is deceived by the ambiguity of the words. The words may be differently interpreted; but that they cannot be understood of Christ is not said by Faustus, nor can be said by anyone who does not deny that Christ is life, or that He was seen by the Jews hanging on the cross, or that they did not believe Him. Since Christ Himself says, "I am the life," and since there is no doubt that He was seen hanging by the unbelieving Jews, I see no reason for doubting that this was written of Christ; for, as Christ says, Moses wrote of Him. Since we have already refuted Faustus’ arguments by which he tries to show that the words, "I will raise up from among their brethren a prophet like unto thee," do not apply to Christ, because Christ is not like Moses, we need not insist on this other prophecy. …
St John Chrysostom The Commentary and Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on Galatians and Ephesians, Galatians 5:1
Ver. 12 . “I would that they which unsettle you, would even cut themselves off.”
St Gregory Nazianzen Letters on the Apollinarian Controversy, To Cledonius the Priest Against Apollinarius
But there is a matter which is graver than these, a special point which it is necessary that I should not pass over. I would they were even cut off that trouble you, and would reintroduce a second Judaism, and a second circumcision, and a second system of sacrifices. For if this be done, what hinders Christ also being born again to set them aside, and again being betrayed by Judas, and crucified and buried, and rising again, that all may be fulfilled in the same order, like the Greek system of cycles, in which the same revolutions of the stars bring round the same events? For what the method of selection is, in accordance with which some of the events are to occur and others to be omitted, let these wise men who glory in the multitude of their books shew us.
The Fathers are given as they wrote. Where a passage lays the Passion on the Jewish people, the Church teaches that it cannot be charged against all the Jews then living, nor against the Jews of today, and that all sinners were its authors (CCC 597, 598).