Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world:
All Commentaries on Galatians 4:3 Go To Galatians 4
Jerome
AD 420
He has used the name “elements of the world” for those whom he called tutors and overseers above…. Some hold that these are angels that preside over the four elements. … Many think that it is the heaven and earth with their inhabitants that are called the elements of the world, because the wise Greeks, the barbarians and the Romans, the dregs of all superstition, venerate the sun, the moon, … from which we are liberated by Christ’s coming, knowing them to be creatures and not divinities. Others interpret the elements of the world as the law of Moses and the utterances of the prophets, because, commencing and setting out with these letters, we imbibe the fear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom…. The Mosaic law and the prophets can be taken as the elements of writing, because through them syllables and names are put together, and they are learned not so much for their own sake as for their usefulness to others…. Regarding our interpretation of the law and the prophets as the elements of the world, “world” is customarily taken to signify those who are in the world. .
