Observing with Hostile Intent

In most English Bibles, Galatians 4:10-11 reads something like this: “You observe days and months and seasons and years. I fear for you, that perhaps I have labored over you in vain.”

From there the usual argument seems straightforward. Days, months, seasons, and years sound like a calendar, and the only calendar God ever gave is the one in the Torah, with its Sabbaths, its new moons, and its feasts. Paul saw the Galatians keeping it and feared that his work had been wasted, and so, the argument concludes, the feasts must not be kept.

It is a short verse and a clean argument, but it rests on two things we have not yet checked. The first is what the verse is attached to, and the second is the verb that has been translated “observe.”

The Sentence Before

Verse 10 does not begin a new subject. It completes a thought that began two verses earlier. In Chapter 32 we read verse 8, where Paul reminded the Galatians that they had once been “slaves to those which by nature are no gods.” Here are the next three verses together:

Galatians 4:9-11 But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless stoicheia(elementary principles), to which you desire to be enslaved all over again? You are paratereo παρατηρέω par-at-ay-reh'-o(observe with hostile intent) days and months and kairos καιρός kahee-ros'(appointed-times: Moedim) and years. I fear for you, that perhaps I have labored over you in vain.

Followed without a break, the line of thought runs like this. Once they were slaves to gods that are no gods. Now they know God. How, then, can they turn back again to the weak and worthless stoicheia, to be enslaved all over again? They are watching days and months and appointed times and years, and Paul fears that he has labored in vain.

The key word in verse 9 is stoicheia, from stoicheion στοιχεῖον stoy-khi'-on, any first thing, the basic elements of something, as letters are the first things of writing. The direction of the verse is unmistakable: “turn back again,” “enslaved all over again.” The Galatians are going back to something they had served before, and as we saw, what they had served before was not the Torah but gods that are no gods. Paul is describing a return to their old slavery, not a first step toward Sinai.

Verse 10 comes in that same breath. Whatever the Galatians were doing with days and months, Paul sees it as part of that turning back, and that is why he is afraid.

Whose Days?

The list itself reads “days and months and kairos(appointed-times: Moedim) and years.” The word in the middle is kairos (καιρός), an appointed time or set season, and the YLV marks it with the Hebrew word moedim, the appointed times of God.

The days, months, appointed times, and years of Scripture belong to God. He set them on the fourth day of creation, when He made the lights “for signs (ot) and for appointed times (moadim מוֹעֵד mo-ade'), and for days and years” (Genesis 1:14). And He named them in the Torah:

Leviticus 23:2 Speak to the sons of Israel, and say to them: The appointed times (moadim) of the LORD, which you shall proclaim them holy convocations (miqra-qodesh מִקְרָא־קֹדֶשׁ mik-raw'), these are My appointed times (moadim).

Whatever the Galatians were doing, then, the times they were watching belonged to God. That brings us to the verb.

The Verb Paul Chose

The word translated “observe” is not tereo τηρέω tay-reh'-o. Tereo is the ordinary word for keeping or guarding, for holding on to something because it matters. It is the word Yeshua used when He said, “If you agapao ἀγαπάω ag-ap-ah'-o(love) Me, keep My commandments” (John 14:15).

Paul does not use that word here. He uses paratereo (παρατηρέω). Book 1 mentioned this word briefly, but it needs a fuller look, because the New Testament uses it six times, and the other five show exactly what kind of watching it is.

Mark 3:2 They were paratereo(observing with hostile intent) Him to see if He would heal him on the sabbatons(referring to every Moed of Leviticus 23), so that they might accuse Him.

Luke 6:7 The scribes and Pharisees were paratereo(observing with hostile intent) Him to see if He would heal on the sabbaton σάββατον sab'-bat-on(referring to every Moed of Leviticus 23), so that they might find a charge against Him.

Luke 14:1 And it came about when He went into the house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees on a sabbaton(referring to every Moed of Leviticus 23) to eat bread, that they were paratereo(observing with hostile intent) Him.

Luke 20:20 And they paratereo(observed with hostile intent) Him, and sent spies who pretended to be righteous, in order that they might catch Him in some statement, so that they could deliver Him to the rule and exousia ἐξουσία ex-oo-see'-ah(authority) of the governor.

Acts 9:24 but their plot became known to Saul; and they were also paratereo(observing with hostile intent) the gates day and night so that they might put him to death.

Read in order, these verses speak with one voice. Some watched Yeshua to accuse Him, and others to find a charge against Him. Some watched Him at a meal on a sabbaton. Some sent spies to catch Him in a statement, and others watched the city gates day and night in order to kill Saul.

In five places out of six, paratereo is the watching of someone who wants to catch, accuse, or kill. There is no reason for the same word to turn into “keep devoutly” in the sixth place alone.

Think of two people looking at the same old church building. One is the groundskeeper, who walks around it every morning, sweeps the steps, mends the gutter, and keeps it standing because he loves it. The other sits in a parked car across the street with binoculars, hired by someone who wants the building condemned, and he is looking for a crack he can report. Both watch the building closely, but only one of them is keeping it. The groundskeeper is tereo, and the man in the car is paratereo.

When Paul writes, “You are paratereo(observe with hostile intent) days and months and kairos(appointed-times: Moedim) and years,” he is not saying that the Galatians were keeping God’s feasts. He is saying that they were watching God’s appointed times as a spy watches a building, with hostility. He says it in the same sentence in which they are turning back to the weak and worthless stoicheia and to the slavery they had known. That, and not the keeping of the feasts, is what made Paul afraid that his labor had been in vain.

The text names the attitude; it does not list everything the Galatians did, and we should not invent such a list. What it does not say is that the feasts themselves had become forbidden.

How Paul Spoke About the Feasts

Had Paul wanted the feasts gone, his own life would be the strangest place to look for proof. He kept them, and he urged a church of the nations to keep them too. When he did so, he used a different word altogether:

1 Corinthians 5:8 Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven nor with leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and aletheia ἀλήθεια al-ay'-thi-a(truth).

The verb is heortazo ἑορτάζω heh-or-tad'-zo, to keep a feast or celebrate a festival. Paul writes it to Corinth, a church full of people from the nations, in a passage about Passover and unleavened bread. Heortazo is the word for keeping a feast; paratereo is not.

He also kept the feasts himself:

Acts 18:21 But taking his leave of them and saying, "I must by all means keep the coming heorte ἑορτή heh-or-tay'(festival) in Jerusalem; but I will return to you again if God wills," he set sail from Ephesus.

Later Luke tells us that Paul “was hurrying to be in Jerusalem, if possible, on the day of Pentecost” (Acts 20:16), a verse we met in Book 1. The man who wrote Galatians 4:10 planned his travels around the feasts of the Torah.

The verse that seemed to forbid the feasts, then, says something else. Paul feared for people who were turning back to their old slavery while watching God’s appointed times with hostile eyes. The problem was not the calendar but the eyes.

The word paratereo carries a small prefix at its front, para, and that prefix works on two other words in the New Testament as well, one of which is a name for the Spirit of God.