What Does Galatians 3:20 Mean?
Now the go-between is not of one, but God is one.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one.THE KEY
The mediator’s “between” reveals the split in the arrangement, while God’s oneness remains whole.
THE MEANING
A mediator stands in the space between parties; God is one. The verse holds the divided relationship and the undivided God side by side, without making them the same thing.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that mediation makes God a divided party set against another.
THE ROOT
μεσίτης
mesitēs
GROWS FROM
μέσος
mesos
Middle; the space between.
“go-between” in this verse is mesitēs. The Greek word for mediator grows from the word for “middle”: it names someone positioned between parties. A related verb means to interpose, revealing how this word family can describe a relation being secured across a gap.
ALSO GROWS
mesos: Middle, midst.
μέσος
The mediator is defined by occupying the middle between parties.
mesiteuō: Interpose, act as an intermediary.
μεσιτεύω
In Hebrews 6:17, this related verb describes God confirming the promise by an oath, showing how interposition can secure a relation.
THE PATTERN
Mediation occupies the space between parties, while God’s oneness remains the ground of the relation.
Hear and respond, O Israel. The LORD our God is one LORD.For there is one God, and one who stands in the middle between God and humankind, the human Jesus, the Anointed One.But now he has reached a service more distinct, by as much as he is also the one who stands in the middle of a stronger covenant, which has been set down as instruction upon stronger promises.THE THREAD
For there is one God, and one who stands in the middle between God and humankind, the human Jesus, the Anointed One.The same Greek word for mediator appears in both verses. Galatians names the space between parties; Timothy places that mediation beside the oneness of God.
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