Biblion Bible Commentary
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Have I Become Your Enemy
Galatians 4:15-16
15 What was the blessing you enjoyed? For I testify to you that, if possible, you would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me. · WEB
Two verses that ask what happened to a friendship, and the second is the question every honest messenger eventually faces.
What was the blessing you enjoyed? The question assumes something has gone. Paul is not asking where their doctrine went but where their gladness did.
Then the measure of the old affection, and it is startling: if possible, you would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me. A hyperbole, plainly — but a chosen one, and the choice may not be accidental. The letter has just said he came to them in bodily weakness Galatians 4:13, and it ends by drawing attention to the size of his handwriting Galatians 6:11. Whether the trouble was with his eyes the text does not say, and nothing here needs it to be true; the sentence works as the most extravagant thing a person could offer.
Verse 16 is the pivot: so then, have I become your enemy by telling you the truth?
The question is put without self-pity, and the grammar is exact — not have I become your enemy, but have I become it by telling you the truth. Paul concedes that something has changed in how they regard him and locates the cause precisely. The affection of verse 15 and the estrangement of verse 16 are separated by nothing except what he said.
It is the sentence that makes this the most personally exposed of his letters. He has the authority to command, has already used it, and here simply asks the question a friend asks. Two verses later he will call them my little children and speak of being in labor over them again Galatians 4:19.
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