Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Galatians · About this commentary
You Were Running Well
Galatians 5:7-9
7 You were running well! Who interfered with you that you should not obey the truth? · WEB
The image is a race interfered with, and the two short sentences that follow name the source and the mechanism.
You were running well! The exclamation is genuine praise, in the past tense. Paul uses athletic images for ministry often, and here the Galatians are the runners, and the running had been good.
Then the question: who interfered with you? The verb is a technical one — cutting in on a runner, blocking his lane, breaking his stride. It is not a word about persuasion. Someone got in the way, and the letter has already declined to name him Galatians 5:10.
What the interference produced is stated as a failure of obedience rather than of belief: that you should not obey the truth. Truth in this letter is something one walks according to Galatians 2:14 and obeys, which is why a table at Antioch could be a doctrinal crisis.
Verse 8 is four words in effect: this persuasion is not from him who calls you. The noun means the act of being convinced. Paul does not argue against the content here; he identifies the source, and the God who calls has been the letter's subject since its second paragraph Galatians 1:6. Whatever is persuading them, it did not come from the one who summoned them.
Verse 9 supplies the mechanism as a proverb: a little yeast grows through the whole lump. It is a statement about proportion — the quantity introduced is not the measure of the effect. A requirement that looks minor, negotiable, one item among many, does not stay one item.
That is Paul's answer to anyone who thought the dispute was small.
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