Het Griekse woord dat vertaald is als ‘die u last bezorgen’ betekent iemand van een bepaalde rang of positie verwijderen. Door het woord καὶ te gebruiken, drukt hij nog sterker zijn verlangen uit dat de bedriegers niet alleen vernederd, maar volledig afgescheiden en afgesneden worden.

ἀποκόψονται] denotes castration (Arrian, Epict. ii. 20. 19), either by incision of the vena seminalis (Deuteronomy 23:1) or otherwise. See the passages in Wetstein. Comp. ἀπόκοπος, castrated, Strabo, xiii. p. 630; ἀποκεκομμένος, Deuteronomy 23:1. Owing to καί, which, after Galatians 5:11, points to something more than the circumcision therein indicated, this interpretation is the only one suited to the context: it is followed by Chrysostom and his successors, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, Cajetanus, Grotius, Estius, Wetstein, Semler, Koppe, and many others; also Winer, Rückert, Usteri, Matthies, Schott, Olshausen, de Wette, Hilgenfeld, Hofmann, Reithmayr, Holsten; comp. Ewald, who explains it of a still more complete mutilation, as does Pelagius, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and others. In opposition to the context, others, partly influenced by an incorrect aesthetical standard (comp. Calovius: “glossa impura”), and sacrificing the middle signification,—which is always reflexive in Greek prose writers (Kühner, II. p. 19), and is also to be maintained throughout in the N.T. (Winer, p. 239, [E. T. 316]),—have found in it the sense: “exitium imprecatur impostoribus” (Calvin, acknowledging, however, the word as an allusion to circumcision; Calovius, and others); or have explained it of the divine extirpation (Wieseler); or: “may they be excommunicated” (Erasmus, Beza, Piscator, Cornelius a Lapide, Bengel, Michaelis, Zachariae, Morus, Baumgarten-Crusius, Windischmann, and others);[233] or: “may all opportunity of perverting you be taken from them” (Elsner, Wolf, Baumgarten); or: “may they cut themselves off from you” (Ellicott).