But now, after you have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn you again to the weak and beggarly elements, to which you desire again to be in bondage?
All Commentaries on Galatians 4:9 Go To Galatians 4
Gaius Marius Victorinus
AD 400
When he introduces the “beggarly elements of this world,” this seems rather to concern the pagans, who make gods for themselves even from the elements of this world…. Since, however, the whole of his discourse and the whole of this treatise were undertaken to reprimand the Galatians for their conversion to Judaism, and all these things are to be understood of the Jews, how do we understand “you are turned again to the weak”? When therefore he says “the beggarly elements” of this world, he means those who, understanding the law carnally, have clung to the contingent elements of this world. For the flesh is always hungering. It yearns for the sustenance of food and drink and objects of desire, all of which, however, are weak . .
