⁵³ You are the ones who received the law as ordained by angels, and yet you have not kept it.”^(A)

² For if the message declared through angels proved valid, and every transgression or disobedience received a just penalty,^(A)

The Purpose of the Law

¹⁹ Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring^[a] would come to whom the promise had been made, and it was ordained through angels by a mediator.^(A)

³⁸ He is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai and with our ancestors, and he received living oracles to give to us.^(A)

² He said,

¹³ Even the circumcised do not themselves obey the law, but they want you to be circumcised so that they may boast about your flesh.

¹⁹ “Did not Moses give you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Why are you looking for an opportunity to kill me?”^(A)

²³ You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by your transgression of the law? ²⁴ For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed^[a] among the gentiles because of you.”^(A)

²⁵ Circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law, but if you are a transgressor of the law your circumcision has become uncircumcision.^(B)

¹⁸ I said to their children in the wilderness, “Do not follow the statutes of your parents, nor observe their ordinances, nor defile yourselves with their idols. ¹⁹ I the Lord am your God; follow my statutes, be careful to observe my ordinances,^{(A) 20} and hallow my Sabbaths that they may be a sign between me and you, so that you may know that I the Lord am your God.” ²¹ But the children rebelled against me; they did not follow my statutes and were not careful to observe my ordinances, by whose observance everyone shall live; they profaned my Sabbaths.

Then I thought I would pour out my wrath upon them and spend my anger against them in the wilderness.^(B)