Galatians 4:9

But now that ye have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how turn ye back again to the weak and beggarly rudiments, whereunto ye desire to be in bondage over again?

To know God, rather to be known by God ... There is a distinction in this that Paul always observed, as in 1 Corinthians 8:3; because, as Leon Morris noted, "The really important thing is not that we know God, but that he knows us!"[14] All true knowledge of God comes from God, and even that conveyed by the blessed Saviour himself came from the Father. See Matthew 16:17, where Peter's confession of Christ as the Son of God was said by Jesus not to have been revealed by "flesh and blood," but by "the Father in heaven."

Weak and beggarly rudiments ... In that Paul declared that the Galatians were again coming into "bondage" to such things, it is clear enough that the RSV translation of Galatians 4:3 is erroneous. Whatever the word means here, it means there; and there cannot be any doubt of what it means here, namely, that they were on the verge of becoming entangled again with observing the regulations, sabbaths, etc., of the Jewish law.

Why were these things called "weak and beggarly"? See MacKnight's lucid comment under Galatians 4:3. They were also beggarly in the sense of being "poor" in contrast to the unsearchable riches of Christ. Dummelow thought that such a defection by the Galatians into Judaism "was a return, not, indeed, into idolatry, but into an imperfect and rudimentary religion."[15] Of course, such a view of Judaism's superiority over paganism is true of it before the First Advent of the Son of God and the Jewish rejection of him; but in this dispensation, such a superiority no longer pertains. As Russell put it:

Jewish laws and ceremonies were but symbols of Christ, through which they were to know God as Father, and be known by him as sons. Turning back to exalt mere forms was idolatry.[16]

[14] Leon Morris, Tyndale Commentary, 1Corinthians (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1958), p. 93.

[15] J. R. Dummelow, Commentary on the Holy Bible (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1937), p. 953.

[16] John William Russell, Compact Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1964), p. 468.