But if you bite and devour one another, take heed that you be not consumed one of another.
All Commentaries on Galatians 5:15 Go To Galatians 5
John Chrysostom
AD 407
That he may not distress them, he does not assert this, though he knew it was the case, but mentions it ambiguously. For he does not say, Inasmuch as you bite one another, nor again does he assert, in the clause following, that they shall be consumed by each other; but take heed that you be not consumed one of another, and this is the language of apprehension and warning, not of condemnation. And the words which he uses are expressly significant; he says not merely, you bite, which one might do in a passion, but also you devour, which implies a bearing of malice. To bite is to satisfy the feeling of anger, but to devour is a proof of the most savage ferocity. The biting and devouring he speaks of are not bodily, but of a much more cruel kind; for it is not such an injury to taste the flesh of man, as to fix one's fangs in his soul. In proportion as the soul is more precious than the body, is damage to it more serious. Take heed that you be not consumed one of another. For those who commit injury and lay plots, do so in order to destroy others; therefore he says, Take heed that this evil fall not on your own heads. For strife and dissensions are the ruin and destruction as well of those who admit as of those who introduce them, and eats out every thing worse than a moth does.
