What Does Galatians 3:15 Mean in the King James?
Brethren, I speak after the manner of men; Though it be but a man’s covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man disannulleth, or addeth thereto.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The covenant is not a draft: once confirmed, no one can cancel it or add terms that rewrite it.
THE MEANING
You stand within a promise whose force does not depend on later additions or another person’s power to cancel what is already established. The verse uses an ordinary human covenant as its measure: once ratified, it remains binding in its settled form.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that a later rule or added condition can erase a promise already given.
THE ROOT
διαθήκη
diathēkē
GROWS FROM
διατίθημι
diatithēmi
To arrange, set forth, or make a disposition.
Beneath the familiar sense of covenant, διαθήκη carries the sense of an arrangement or disposition set forth. Its word family grows from τίθημι, meaning to place or set: the verse pictures something deliberately established, not left open to be casually rewritten.
ALSO GROWS
diatithēmi: Arrange, set forth, or make a covenant.
διατίθημι
This is the verb from the same word family; the covenant is something deliberately set out.
thesis: A setting, placement, or position.
θέσις
From the same base verb τίθημι, it echoes the image of an arrangement placed in position and given a settled form.
THE PATTERN
What is established as covenant remains intact when later claims or conditions arise.
My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips.Where in God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath:THE THREAD
And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect.The same Greek word, διαθήκη (diathēkē, covenant), returns in the next verse. There, the promise remains in force even when a later law appears, making the human covenant in this verse a lens for seeing the promise’s permanence.
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