What was the law that was added because of transgressions (Gal. 3.19)?
© 2004 Mark Pitrone, 17 April 2004

In Gal.3.19, Rav Sha'ul (the apostle Paul) writes, "Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator." If we look to the dictionary that standardized American English in the early 19th Century, Noah Webster's 1828 publication "A Dictionary of the American Language", we find this entry for

"WHEREFORE, adv. [where and for.] 1). For which reason. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. Matthew 7. 2). Why; for what reason. Wherefore didst thou doubt? Matthew 14. (italics added)"

I believe the context dictates Sha'ul's meaning. In the previous verse he said that if the promise came by works of the law it must not be of promise. That's what raised the question 'Wherefore...' In this instance, Webster's 2nd definition (why) seems to fit the context better than the 1st, especially in light of the word the translators added. If that word is removed it doesn't change the meaning of the verse in the slightest, and it clears up the problem (at least in my mind). We get this meaning in our own language, "Why then the law?" or "What is the law's purpose?"

The answer has made men crazy for years, because they have refused to look at it from a Hebrew perspective. "It was added because of transgressions..." This raises at least 3 questions in my mind; 1) Which law was added?: 2) To what was it added?: and 3) What was the transgression because of which it was added?

To arrive at the answers we need to look at Israel's Exodus. The 1st Pesach has passed, the Israelites traveled through the wilderness for about a week (non-stop) and crossed the Sinai peninsula to the Red Sea crossing point at Nuweiba (I could be wrong about that, but it fits the history), the Yam Suf (Red Sea) was parted by YHWH and Israel crossed on dry ground, they traversed the Arabian desert for a few more days (I think they likely rested for a few days or weeks after Egypt's armies were wiped out and they were safely across), and were now camped at the foot of Sinai (Horeb) in Arabia (Gal.1.17, 4.25) just before Feast of Shavuoth (Weeks, or Pentecost). We are now going to look at Ex.19.3-8, "And Moshe went up unto Elohim, and YHWH called unto him out of the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel; 4Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself. 5Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: 6And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.
7And Moshe came and called for the elders of the people, and laid before their faces all these words which YHWH commanded him. 8And all the people answered together, and said, All that YHWH hath spoken we will do. And Moshe returned the words of the people unto YHWH." (emphasis added) V.5 gives the conditional promise of the covenant to Israel. 'If you will obey my voice, & keep my covenant, then you will be a treasure that I will protect (peculiar means 'shut up' or 'kept safely') ... and you shall be a kingdom of priests unto me (in my service) and a set apart nation.(a Mark paraphrase)' And in v.8 the people said, 'Okie Dokie' (also a Mark paraphrase). They'd just agreed in principle to the arrangement YHWH had set forth.

That's ONE.

YHWH told Moshe to set the people apart and wash their clothes and to make them ready against the third day. Then from the mount there came a trumpet blast like noone had ever heard, the trumpeter must have been doing some amazing circular breathing, because the blast started out loud and continuously grew in intensity until the people could stand no more. Then, as if they were not frightened enough by the volume and intensity of it, when the trumpet stopped, YHWH spoke directly to the people. This filled them with abject terror and they told Moshe that they did not want to hear YHWH's voice again. They said, "You speak to him and bring his instructions to us and we'll do them. (20.19, sh'ma = hear and obey. cf.Deut.6.4)" They had just initiated a second agreement and an addendum to listen through Moshe.

That's TWO.

Then Moshe went up to the mountain and received the meat of the covenant, of which the 10 commandments are bare bones. Please notice that provision is made for peace and burnt offerings, but none for trespass offerings. YHWH took them at their word that they would indeed do all that he commanded through Moshe. Remember that the first two commandments are; I am YHWH Elohecha, and You shall NOT have any other gods in my face (another Mark paraphrase).

The meat of the covenant takes about 3 chapters of Exodus and gives the basic rules, like how to construct an altar to YHWH, what to sacrifice thereon, how to deal with widows, the particulars about the sabbath day and year, restitution of loss, and a bunch of other stuff that dealt with particulars of each commandment.

At the end of the day, the same day that YHWH spoke to the people directly, Moshe came down off the mount and told them the particulars, word for word, as YHWH had laid it out to him, and the people said, "Exodus 24:3, "And Moshe came and told the people all the words of YHWH, and all the judgments: and all the people answered with one voice, and said, 'All the words which YHWH hath said will we do.'"

That's THREE. And all this happened in one day, the Feast of Shavuoth.

Next Mo went into his tent and wrote down the meat of the covenant. He came out the following morning (He HAD to be tired after a day like that) and read them to the people, who said in Exodus 24:7, "All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient."

That makes FOUR TIMES they said they would obey ALL YHWH instructed them to do.

Then YHWH called Mo up into the mount and he was there 40 days communing with Yah and getting the instructions for the tabernacle and the priest's garments and the furniture of the Kodesh Kadashim (Holy of holies) and the Kodesh place and etc. While he tarried up there a bunch of folks either forgot their promises or rebelled. They decided to try to help YHWH out, since Moshe was late (like Abraham in the matter of Hagar, like Saul when Samuel was late). They prevailed upon Aharon to make them some gods like they were used to in Egypt, golden calves, and to sponsor a 'mixer' before the idols. Well, they certainly did mix. They mixed a) their pagan religious practices with the name of YHWH, b) themselves with the 'mixed multitude' that came out of Egypt with them, and c) their own heads up with the pagan orgy.

To say that YHWH was not pleased is a bit of an understatement. He was righteously ticked. He told Moshe in 32.9-10 that he should stand aside and let him remove their idolatrous genes from the pool. But Mo 'reminded' him of his promises to Avraham, Yitzak and Ya'akov, and that he would be seen by the pagans as just another capricious god if he killed Israel.

(An aside: I never noticed until recently that the original tables of stone were entirely the work of YHWH, he made the tables and wrote the 10 words on them. The second tables to replace the ones Mo broke were cut out by Moshe and written on by YHWH. The original was, like our salvation, purely YHWH's work. The ones after Israel's sin were a mixture of man's work and YHWH's word. I think this reflects the difference in Yah's dealing with man. It had been entirely the grace of Elohim, now there was human effort involved. Moshe was the mediator of this covenant, as Yahshua is ours.)

Now comes the point of the article. The answers to the 3 questions posed above are these, in reverse order of their asking:

3). The 'transgression' was the pagan idolatry the people practiced with the golden calves and the temple prostitution they'd engaged in while 'worshipping the LORD',
2). The law was added to the covenant they'd all agreed to FOUR TIMES,
1). The law that was added was the law of sacrifices for intentional sins - transgressions of YHWH's covenant.

There had been no transgression of the covenant until now and, therefore, no sin, since sin is the transgression of the law (1Jn.3.4). The only law that the people had agreed to was the covenant. In fact, they'd agreed to it FOUR TIMES! YHWH had taken them at their word (even though, in his omnipresence and omniscience he knew it would not last and had already made an eternal provision for it) that they would obey all the words he spoke through Moshe. When they rebelled, they had to see just how awful their transgression had been and so, instead of a few burnt and peace offerings, they now had to make an offering for every sin they would ever commit. There was even provision for sins they didn't know they'd committed, called sin offerings. Their efforts in the trespass offerings were like Moshe's effort in the second set of tablets, and Yahshua's effort in his once for all sacrifice of his own life on the tree. And it was all due to that transgression of the covenant because of which the law of sacrifice for sin was added.

We see support for this position in Jeremiah 7:22-24, "For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices: 23But this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be Elohecha, and ye shall be my people: and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well unto you. 24But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went backward, and not forward." So you see that the transgression was in their going back to what had been familiar to them in Egypt for those 430 years of exile, so familiar that they'd all but forgotten that there was such a thing as YHWH. When the mixed multitude saw the miracles of YHWH they knew that this was truly the only Elohim. And in this transgression they probably rationalized away, to their human point of view, the 2nd (no other gods) and 3rd (YHWH's name) commandments by calling the golden calf (an Egyptian god) YHWH. Going backward to Egypt in their doctrine was 'walking in the counsel and imagination of their evil heart (plural ownership of one evil heart = agreement in the transgression)." YHWH expected them to walk forward in trust and faith that he would continue to deliver them. He expects the same of us. Our Father never intended in his perfect plan for there to be a need for sacrifices to atone for sin (Jer.7.22). We'd agreed to follow him and keep his covenant, 10 simple instructions (Jer.7.23). But we wanted to do things our way while calling it his way (Jer.7.24), to our own peril. And we do so to this day in far too many incidences by walking according to our sight (back to the works of Egypt) rather than by our trust in the faith of Yahshua (forward to Canaan's rest).

After the transgression and Moshe's destruction of the tablets of YHWH, Mo asked, "Who is on YHWH's side?" The tribe of Levi came to Moshe en masse. My human reasoning sees a couple of reasons they may have done so; 1) tribal loyalty to Moshe, 2) actual personal loyalty to YHWH. I'd like to think it was loyalty to YHWH, but suspect they were no better people than I, and that they acted in self-interest. Whatever the case, they came to the side of YHWH and were rewarded with the promise of Ex.19.6. Exodus 19:5-6, "Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: 6And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel." Levi obeyed and kept covenant with YHWH and they became his peculiar treasure and priests of the people of Israel. They were not the law itself, but the ministers of the law of sacrifices for sin.

This law of sacrifices led us to the actual sacrifice they prefigured, Yahshua's sacrifice of himself on the tree as both our Pesach and our atonement (kippur, the offering itself/kaphar, the act of offering - same root). This law was our schoolmaster until Messiah came to make and be our atonement. THAT law was quite literally nailed to the tree and paid for. It was that law of sacrifices for our transgressions that kept us mindful of our enmity with YHWH (Eph.2.15-16). Now the penalty for all the sins of all the world has been paid in full. The gift of eternal life is everyone's for the accepting.

Yahshua is the mediator of the better covenant (Heb.8.6), not that it is better or different in its content (see Jer.31.31-34 and tell me to whom the new covenant was given and what it stipulates - is there any change in the covenant or is it merely renewed?), but in the medium upon which it is written. That covenant was written on stoney tablets to look at and obey, but this is written on the fleshy tables of our hearts to feel, to know intuitively, to carry around with us everywhere we go and to obey; that was a promise to which they had to look forward in trust, this is one to which we look back in history; they looked in trust to a future fulfillment, we look back to trust in a fulfilled promise. These are some of the things that make it better. We are essentially no different than they, but they had to look forward in trust that YHWH would provide, while we look back to the provision he's already made!

So, to summarize the answers to the questions that arose from reading Gal.3.19; 1) The law spoken of was the law of sacrifices for atonement for sin, it was 2)added to the covenant to which we'd agreed 4 times, and 3) breeched at the foot of Horeb in the pagan idols and practices of Egypt.

I am open to questions, comments, critiques, diatribes and hate mail.

Contact me at mark@fulfillingtorah.org.

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