Galatians 3:20 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Now a mediator, &c.— To understand this verse, we must carry in our minds what St. Paul is here doing; and from Galatians 3:17 it is manifest that he is proving that the law could not disannul the promise; and he does it upon this known rule, that a covenant, or promise, once ratified, cannot be altered, or disannulled, by any other, but by both the parties concerned. Now, says he, God is but one of the parties concerned in the promise; the Gentiles and Israelites together made up the other, Galatians 3:14. But Moses, at the giving of the law, was a mediator only between the Israelites and God, and therefore could not transact my thing to the disannulling the promise which was between God and the Israelites and Gentiles together, because God was but one of the parties to that covenant; the other, which was the Gentiles (as well as Israelites), Moses appeared or transacted not for. And so what was done at Mount Sinai, by the mediation of Moses, could not affect a covenant made between parties, whereof one only was there. How necessary it was for St. Paul to add this, we shall see, if we consider that, without it, his argument, of 430 years' distance, would have been deficient, and hardly conclusive. For, if both the parties concerned in the promise had transacted by Moses, the mediator, (as they might, if none but the nation of the Israelites had been concerned in the promise made by God to Abraham), they might, by mutual consent, have altered, or set aside, the former promise, as well four hundred years as four days after. That which hindered it was, that, at Moses' mediation at Mount Sinai, God, who was but one of the parties to the promise, was present; but the other party, Abraham's seed, consisting of Israelites and Gentiles together, was not there. Moses transacted for the nation of the Israelites alone; the other nations were not concerned in the covenant made at mount Sinai, as they were in the promise made to Abraham and his seed, which, therefore, could not be disannulled without their consent: for that both the promise to Abraham and his seed, as well as the covenant with Israel at mount Sinai, was national, is in itself evi