Galatians 6:11

11. Ye see how large a letter I have written More accurately, Behold ye, in what large letters I wrote to you with my own hand. “Letters” is the alphabetic characters; and it is unquestionable that he refers to their size, not to their unshapeliness, as some think. It may be, as Professor Lightfoot says, that the largeness of their size was intended by Paul to indicate the firmness of his purpose. So we have been inclined to think that John Hancock’s large signature on the Declaration of American Independence was intended as a manly defiance of the ignominious death he dared by it. But we are rather inclined to think that St. Paul calls the attention of the Galatians to the distinctive point between his handwriting and that of his amanuensis. The rapid professional writer, doubtless, wrote in the smaller and lighter hand. Yet both purposes may have blended.

I have written The term called the epistolary aorist I wrote. The writer speaks as at the standpoint, or rather timepoints of the reader’s perusal, and says, I wrote thus and so to you.

The summary of the epistle which follows seems intended, in some degree, for the same purpose as his autograph, namely, for identification. It is an after-piece adjustable to this epistle only. There is a triumphant tone in this entire peroration. Paul lays bare the motives of his opponents, and contrasts their cowardly courting the foe with his own heroic proclamation of the cross, 12-14. He pronounces the nothingness of circumcision, and this efficacy of the cross as the blessed canon of the true Israel; and sweeps away every obstacle as himself bearing the true mark of Jesus, 15-17.