Now to Abraham and his descendant were the promises made. He says not, And to descendants, as of many; but as of one,
And to your descendant
, who is Christ.
All Commentaries on Galatians 3:16 Go To Galatians 3
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
To Abraham and his seed were the promises made. Thisrefers to Gen. xxii16. From this we conclude that by his readiness to obey God in sacrificing his son he merited that from his own seed should Christ be born as a blessing to the Gentiles, and to fulfil the promises. The Apostle, therefore, rightly lays it down that these promises were made to Abraham and his seed, i.e, to Christ, who should spring from his loins; although the word of Genesis speaks of these promises being made to Abraham in his seed only, and not to his seed. Yet the very fact that they were to be fulfilled in his seed shows that they were made rather to his seed than to Abraham. Just as if a king should promise one of his nobles to exalt his family in his Song of Solomon , by making him a duke or a prince, and thereby makes a promise to the son rather than to the father, so did God to Abraham. It was in Christ, as the seed of Abraham, that the promise, "In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed," has been fulfilled, and justification assured to all who believe in Christ.
To thy seed which is Christ. This may be said to meet a possible objection that seed is equivalent to posterity or descendants, and is therefore a noun of multitude, and that S. Paul here denies this interpretation. But seed is sometimes used as a collective term, as for example, in the promise, "Thy seed shall be as the stars of heaven," and sometimes as a particular term; e.g, in Genesis 21:13: "Of the son of the bondwoman will I make a nation, because he is thy seed." S. Paul, in interpreting the word here in the latter sense, might have appealed to the practice of the Rabbinical expositors, who all understood it of Christ. Moreover, if it were to be taken in the former sense, the prophecy would have failed of fulfilment, for all the nations of the earth have not been blessed in Abraham"s posterity, if by them we are to understand the Jewish people; on the contrary, the Jews are for a reproach, and a curse among the Gentiles.
