“WHEREFORE then serves the law? It was added because of transgressions” (Gal. 3:19).
The Greek term that is here translated “added,” is the same word that, in Heb. 12:19, is translated “spoken,” in the clause referring to the voice of God speaking from Sinai, “which voice they that heard entreated that the word should not be spoken [or added] to them any more.” It is the same word that is used also in Deut. 5:22 where it is translated “added,” in the sentence, “These words the Lord spoke unto all your assembly in the mount out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice: and he added [or spoke] no more.”
In both Hebrews and Deuteronomy the word is used with direct reference to the giving of the law of God, the Ten Commandments. This passage in Galatians, therefore, would certainly seem to suggest that the law here referred to would be the same law. And this is further sustained by the expression later, in this verse, that the law referred to was ordained “in the hand of a mediator.” Now, since there is only “one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus,” it was certainly Christ’s hand in which this law was ordained. And Deut. 33:2, speaking of the same scene referred to in Deut. 5:22 and Heb. 12:20, says: “The Lord came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them: he shined forth from mount Paran, and he came with ten thousands of saints: from his right hand went a fiery law for them.”
Now the Ten Commandments were not only written by the hand of the Lord himself, but they were written on tables of stone, which “tables were the work of God,” as well as the writing, which was the writing of God. And these tables were given by the hand of the Lord, unto Moses. And even when Moses had broken these tables, and had been directed to make other tables, the Lord wrote again with his hand on these tables the same law that at first he had written on the tables that he himself had made.
But this is not true of any other law. It is true that the ceremonial law—the law concerning sacrifices, offerings, the sanctuary, the whole Levitical system—was also given by the Lord to Moses; but it was not given by the hand of the Lord to Moses. It did not come forth from his hand, either in writing by his own hand, or upon tables made with his own hand. It was given to Moses by the Lord, and was written altogether by Moses, and not at all by the Lord.
Some, taking the English word “added” in this clause in Gal. 3:19, and holding it in the restricted English sense of “added,” have supposed that it is here taught that whatever law is referred to was necessarily added to something as a part of that thing, and so have held that it was added to the covenant with Abraham. But such a view as that would plainly be a mistake, because, in Gal. 3:15, it is positively stated that “though it be but a man’s covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man . . . adds thereto.” Thus it would be impossible for anything to be added to that covenant. The word translated “adds,” in Gal. 3:15, is not the same in Greek as that translated “added” in Gal. 3:19, nor are the words akin.