Galatians 6:11 Commentary and Bible Study

The meaning is not, ‘how large a letter’ in the sense of how long a letter, for it was relatively short and certainly not as long as the Corinthians letters or the letter to the Romans, but ‘with what large letters’. He does not use his usual word ‘epistle’, but plural ‘letters’ or ‘writings’, so that even though the Greek could refer to the entire message or letter, it must here refer to the size of the letters. Paul writes this to confirm his authorship of the epistle, for there must be no doubt about his directions to them. The matters are too important and the Galatians will only act on its far reaching exhortations if they are convinced that it is genuine. It was his practice to write a closing salutation at the end of each epistle to make this clear and in three other epistles he draws his readers’ attention to this confirmatory mark (2 Thessalonians 3:17; 1 Corinthians 16:21; Colossians 4:18). The majority of the letter was written by dictation through an amanuensis and since this might be a different individual in each case, the letter could not be identified as genuine through the handwriting of the scribe – in the epistle to the Romans, the amanuensis gives his own separate greeting (Romans 16:22). Paul therefore makes it a matter of standard practice to add his own hand to the end of the letter. It is likely then that the large letters referred to here, apply only to this closing paragraph. It is especially needful for Paul to do this because he knew that there were those who might wish to fake an epistle from him. Why large letters? Many have concluded that this was how Paul wrote because of his eye condition which affected his sight and necessitated the use of large letters in order for him to see what he had written, a condition which he has already referred to in chapter 4:13-15.