[3,1] He rightly says to them: O foolish Galatians! Who bewitched you? These words would not fit with people who had not advanced anything, but with those who, having made progress, would have fainted. Before whose eyes the crucified Christ has been banished. This is, before his eyes, Jesus Christ lost his inheritance and his possession. They would have removed it and from it they would have expelled the Lord who, from the grace of the faith for which the Gentiles are the possession of Christ, invited those who had believed to practice again the works prescribed by the law. In this way, Christ was robbed of his possession, that is, those in whom he lived by right of grace and faith. The Apostle wants to see that this happened in the person of the Galatians. To this the words refer: Before whose eyes. Well, what else happened before his eyes, but what took place in his own people? But, after saying: Jesus Christ was outlawed, he added: crucified. With this he intended, above all, to shudder when considering at what price he had bought the possession that he lost in his own persons, being insignificant the fact of having died in vain, already mentioned before. His words sound as if he had not come to possess the inheritance for which he had given his blood. The reality, however, is different. The outlaw is deprived even of what he had. Christ, however, does not harm his condition as an outcast, since, even so, he is Lord of everything by virtue of his divinity. The one who harms is the possession itself that lacks the cultivation that this grace brings.

From here on he begins to demonstrate how the grace of faith is sufficient to achieve justification, without the help of the works prescribed by law. He does so with the objective that no one should maintain that one should not attribute the complete justification of man only to the works prescribed by law or only to the grace of faith, since salvation results from both at the same time. But to examine this question diligently and to avoid that ambiguity misleads anyone, it must be known that the works prescribed by law are divided into two categories. One is the symbolic rites and the other the moral precepts. The circumcision of the flesh, the temporal sabbath, the new moon, the sacrifices and all the innumerable observances of the same style belong to the first. They belong to the second, the moral precepts, you will not kill, you will not commit adultery, you will not say false testimony, (Ex 20,13-16) etc. Can the Apostle disregard whether a Christian is a murderer or an adulterer, or chaste and innocent, just as he disregards whether he is circumcised or uncircumcised?

Now he deals mostly with the works classified among the symbolic rites, although he sometimes lets us understand that the others are also mixed. Near the end of the Charter, he will deal separately and briefly with laws classified as moral precepts. The former has considered them more carefully. Gentiles are more burdened with the burden of understanding them, because all these works are exposed to Christians with the sole purpose of understanding their value, without being forced to practice them. If such observances are not understood, the only consequence that derives is that of slavery, as that which was given and continues to be given to the present in the Jewish people. If, on the contrary, they are understood, even if they are observed they do not harm at all; rather they are of some use, if they respond to the moment. In this way Moses and the prophets observed them, accommodating themselves to that people who were still useful to such slavery, so that fear would protect them. In truth, nothing instills so much panic to the soul as a sacred rite not understood; but, once understood, it engenders a joy full of piety and you get the freedom to celebrate it, if the moment requires it. And if it does not require it, it is enough for the spirit to read it and expose it to experience how sweet it is. The understanding of every sacred rite has its end either in the contemplation of truth or in good morals. The contemplation of the truth is based on the love of the one God; good morals, in the love of God and of neighbor, the two precepts summarized by the law and the prophets (Mt 22,37-40). Let us now see how, once the grace of the faith is manifested, the carnal circumcision and the other works of the style prescribed by the law are no longer necessary.

[3,2-9] The Apostle says: Only this I want to know from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works prescribed by the law or by having listened to the announcement of the faith? The answer is: Obviously for having obeyed the faith. The Apostle preached to them lafe, preaching in which, in fact, they had perceived the arrival and presence of the Holy Spirit, in a similar way to how his presence manifested itself, even with sensitive prodigies, in the times when for the first time he was invited to faith, according to the Acts of the Apostles (Cf Act 2). The same thing had also happened among the Galatians, before Paul's adversaries came to them with the aim of keeping them from the straight path, by forcing them to be circumcised. This is what it means: If your salvation was in the works prescribed by the law, the Spirit would only have been given to you after you had been circumcised. From this he inferred: Are you so foolish that, having begun with the Spirit, you end up in the flesh? It is the same thing that he had said earlier in the beginning of the Letter: But there are some who disturb you and want to turn the gospel of Christ upside down (Ga 1,7). The disturbance is contrary to order. Now, order consists in rising from the carnal to the spiritual and not in precipitating from the spiritual to the carnal, as had happened to them. What they sought is equivalent to changing the meaning of the gospel, orienting it in the opposite direction. In fact, since it is not a good thing, when that is announced, the gospel is not announced. You have suffered so much, he says. In effect, they had already tolerated many sufferings by faith, and not by fear, as if they were subject to the law; on the contrary, in the same sufferings they had overcome fear with charity, since the charity of God was poured out in their hearts through the Holy Spirit they had received (Cf Rm 5,5). In vain, he tells them, you have suffered so much who, possessing the charity that you endured so much in your persons, want to return to fear. If you have suffered so much in vain. That which is claimed to have been done in vain is superfluous; Now, the superfluous neither takes advantage nor damages. You have to look if it leads to perdition. It is not the same not to get up than to fall. Although such had not yet fallen, they were on the verge of it, once the balance was lost. The Holy Spirit was still acting on them, as he says: He who gives you the Spirit and works miracles in you, does it by virtue of the works prescribed by the law or by having listened to the proclamation of the faith? The answer is: No doubt for having listened to the announcement of the faith, as we have explained before. He then presents the example of the patriarch Abraham, who he dealt with more broadly and clearly in the Letter to the Romans (Cf Rm 4,1-3). The fact that he stands out from the rest is that his faith was considered as justice, even before he had been circumcised. To him he refers with all justice to what he heard, namely, that in him all peoples would be blessed (Gn 22,18). Blessed, of course, insofar as they imitated the faith that justified him even before the rite of circumcision, which he accepted as an outward sign of that faith, and of all slavery from the law that was promulgated much later.

[3,10-12] All those who refer to the works prescribed by the law, are under the curse of the law. These words he wants to be understood in the sense that they are under fear, not freedom. That is, over those who do not observe what is written, a physical and present punishment falls, in order that they may fulfill it. Add to that the fear of the insult of the curse, coupled with physical punishment. But before God is justified whoever pays gratuitous worship, that is, not driven by the desire and appetite of something that is not himself, or the fear of losing it. Only in him is our authentic and full happiness. And, since he is invisible to the eyes of the flesh, he is worshiped in faith, according to what he said before: As soon as I live now in the flesh, I live in faith in the Son of God (Ga 2,20), and this is what Justice. This is what the words refer to: Because the just live by faith. With them he wanted to show that no one finds his justification in the law, since it is written that the just lives by faith. Therefore, it must be understood that the one in the law is equivalent to the present in the works prescribed by law, referring to those who are included within the circumcision of the flesh and other observances of the kind. Who lives in them is in such a way within the law that lives subjected to it. But, as indicated, he now put law in place of the works prescribed by law, as follows from what follows. He says: The law does not come from faith, but whoever does his works, will live in them. It does not say: whoever makes the law, will live in it, so that you understand that in this passage the law replaces the works prescribed by law. Those who lived in these works feared that, if they did not comply, they would have to suffer stoning, or crucifixion, or something similar. Therefore, whoever performs his works, he says, will live in them, that is, he will have as a reward not to perish with this kind of death. He will not have it in God whom he will possess as a reward in hand, once he has left this life, who has lived in it of faith in him. Thus, the one who wishes or fears the present and visible realities does not live by faith, since faith in God belongs to the invisible realities, which will be granted afterwards. If it does not remain without its reward, it is that there is a certain justice in the works prescribed by the law, so that whoever realizes them lives in them. For that reason he also says in the Letter to the Romans: For if Abraham was justified by works, he has glory, but not before God (Rm 4,2). It is one thing not to be justified at all, and another not to be justified before God. If someone does not obtain absolutely no justification, it is because he does not fulfill the precepts that have a temporary reward, nor those that have eternal reward. Those who, on the contrary, obtain their justification in the works prescribed by the law, are not justified before God, since they expect from it a temporary and visible reward. However, this is also, as I indicated, a certain earthly and carnal justice, so to speak. Even the Apostle himself calls justice, when he says in another place: I who lived without reproach according to the justice of the law (Philip 3,6).

[3,13-14] For that reason, the Lord Jesus Christ, who was going to grant freedom to the believers, did not observe to the letter some of those observances. There is also his explanation of the answer he gave to those who were offended because his disciples, hungry, had plucked some ears: The son of man is also Lord of the Sabbath (Cf Mt 12,1-8). By not fulfilling such observances, he raised against himself the animosity of the carnal, and assumed the punishment proposed for those who did not comply. But he did it to rid of the fear of it to those who believed in him. This is what the following words refer to: Christ rescued us from the curse of the law, making himself a curse for us, for the Scripture says: Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. For those who understand it in a spiritual sense, this affirmation is a symbol of freedom; but for those who feel it carnally, if it is Jewish, it is a yoke that makes them slaves; if, on the other hand, they are pagans or heretics, it is a veil that equates them to the blind. Some Catholics, little instructed in the Scriptures, fearing too much what such a statement says, while approving with proper piety the Old Testament, judge that such words were not spoken thinking of the Lord, but of Judas who delivered him. They maintain that, if it was not said: Cursed is everyone who is nailed to a tree, but he who hangs on a tree, it is because in such words it was not meant to the Lord, but to whom it was hung by a rope. Those who think so are too far from the truth. They do not notice that they are opposed to what the Apostle says: Christ rescued us from the curse of the law, making himself a curse for us, since the Scripture says: Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. He became cursed for us is none other than who hung the stake, that is, Christ who delivered us from the curse of the law. The goal was that we would not find justification out of fear in the works prescribed by law, but before God through faith that does not work out of fear, but out of love. The Holy Spirit, who pronounced such words through Moses, took both possibilities into consideration. In this way, those who still could not live by faith in invisible realities could feel protected by the fear of visible punishment; at the same time it eliminated such fear, assuming in itself what was feared, the same that, after eliminating it, could grant the gift of charity.

Nor should it be considered as an affront to the Lord to call a cursed man who hangs on a tree, because he hanged him in the mortal part of his person. Now, believers know where the mortal condition comes from: it comes, no doubt, from the punishment and curse that originated in the sin of the first man. That curse was assumed by the Lord and in his body he carried our sins on the cross (Cf 1P 2,24). If he had said: Death has been cursed, nobody would have been horrified; But what else hung on the tree except the death of the Lord to overcome, dying, death? Therefore, the same one that has been defeated has been cursed. Similarly, if he had said: Sin has been cursed, no one would be surprised; but what else hung on the tree, but the sin of the old man that the Lord assumed on our behalf in the same mortality of the flesh? That is the reason why the Apostle neither blushed nor was afraid to say that he made him sin for us, adding: to condemn sin through sin (Rm 8,3). For our old man would not be crucified at the same time - as the Apostle himself says in another passage - if the figure of our sin did not hang in that death of the Lord to destroy the body of sin and so that we would no longer be slaves of sin (Rm 6,6). As a figure of that death and sin, Moses also nailed the serpent on a tree in the desert (Cf Nm 21,9). In fact, the man was sentenced to death due to the persuasion of the serpent. Therefore it was appropriate to raise the snake on a tree to signify the same death. On the wood hung the symbol of the death of the Lord. But who would object if it were said: Has the serpent that hangs on the tree been cursed? And yet, the serpent that prefigures the death of the Lord's flesh hung on a tree. From this prefiguration the Lord himself testifies when he says: As Moses raised the serpent in the wilderness, it is fitting that the son of man be raised on the earth (Jn 3,14). No one will say that Moses did this with the intention of facing the Lord. He knew the abundance of salvation for the men who lived on that cross and, to indicate it, he ordered that serpent to be raised with the sole purpose that those who, bitten by the serpents, were doomed to death, heal instantly by looking at it. The making of bronze had no other motive than to signify faith in the passion, of lasting effect, of the Lord. Even the vulgar designates as "of bronze" those things whose contexture remains. If men were forgotten and erased from the temporary memory that Christ died for men, then they would be dead indeed. But now the faith on the cross remains as a "bronze" reality, so that while some die and others are born, men find that it remains a sublime reality, looking at which they are healthy. There is nothing, therefore, of strangeness in that he has conquered the curse with the curse who overcame death with death, sin with sin and serpent with serpent. However, death has been cursed, cursed has been sin and the serpent has been cursed, things all defeated on the cross. Cursed everyone who hangs on a tree. Thus, since Christ justifies those who believe in Him not by the works prescribed by law, but by faith, the fear of suffering the curse that fell on the cross was eliminated; for the Gentiles, there remains the love for the blessing that Abraham was subjected to by the example of his faith. So that, through faith, we may receive the announcement of the Spirit, that is, so that those who will believe may be announced not what is feared in the flesh, but what is loved through the Spirit.

[3,15-18] For that reason he also mentions the human testament, which, obviously, is less firm than the divine one. No one cancels or adds any clause to a final will. When the testator changes the will, it changes a not yet definitive testament, which becomes final with his death. The death of the testator has the courage to make his testament final, since it is no longer possible to change his will; The same value has the immutability of the divine promise to make definitive the inheritance promised to Abraham, to whom his faith was reckoned as justice (Cf Rm 4,9). And that is why the Apostle calls Abraham's offspring, the recipient of the promises, to Christ, that is, to the Christians who imitate the faith of Abraham. If you express it in the singular, emphasizing that it was not said: And to the descendants, but to your offspring, it is because faith is also unique and can not be justified in the same way those who live, according to the flesh, of the works and those who live, according to the Spirit, of faith. The following deduction does not leave a leaf: The law had not yet been given, nor could it be given after so many years with the consequence of annulling the promises made to Abraham beforehand. If it is the law that justifies, Abraham was not justified because he existed long before the law was given. As this can not sustain it, they are forced to recognize that man receives justification not from the works prescribed by law, but by faith. And, at the same time, it forces us to understand that as many people were justified in the Old Testament time, they were justified by virtue of the same faith. We saved ourselves by believing a part referring to the past, the first coming of the Lord, and another part referring to the future, its second coming; they, on the other hand, believed both coming as future, having revealed it to the Holy Spirit so that they could be saved. The words also refer to this: Abraham wished to see my day, and saw it, and was filled with joy.

[3,19-20] [From the above] an issue is derived whose approach is quite necessary. If faith justifies and the first saints who were justified before God were justified by it, what need was there to promulgate the law? Question that introduced, to examine it, with the question: What, then? So far the question; in what follows it provides the answer: The law was given by reason of the transgression, until it comes, he says, the offspring to whom the promise was destined, disposed by angels through the work of the Mediator. The mediator, however, is not one; God, on the other hand, is unique. That Jesus Christ is called Mediator in his condition as a man is more clear from another affirmation of the same Apostle in which he says: For there is only one God, and only one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. Therefore, there can be no mediator between God and God, because there is only one God. The mediator is not one person, because he is in the middle of several. The angels who did not move away from the presence of God do not need a mediator to reconcile them; In turn, the mediator does not reconcile those other angels who, without any persuasion from anyone, prevaricated spontaneously and moved away. [Only] it remains that the man who was overthrown through the mediation of the devil who proudly persuades pride, be raised through the mediation of Christ who, humble, persuades humility. If the Son of God had wanted to remain in his natural equality with the Father, and would not have been annihilated (Cf Philp 2,7), he would not mediate between God and men, since the Trinity itself is one God, it is the same in the three, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, remaining the eternity and equality of the deity. The only Son of God became mediator between God and men, when, being the Word of God, God next to God, deposed his majesty to the human and raised human humility to the divine, to be mediator between God and the men, as a man who, through his divine condition, transcends men. For he is the most beautiful among the children of men, (Ps. 44,3) and he was anointed with the oil of gladness more than his companions. They have been healed of the impiety of pride, to be reconciled with God, all men who, believing, loving and loving, imitated the humility of Christ, either by revelation before it happened, or by the gospel after it happened. But this justice of faith, since it was not granted to men by their merits, but by the mercy and grace of God, had not reached the people before God was born as a man among men. The offspring to which the promise was destined means the people, not the very few who, contemplating it as future thanks to revelations, even if they were personally saved by it, could not save the people. People who, if considered as spread throughout the world (since it brings together the Church, the heavenly Jerusalem, of the whole world), are few, since the narrow path is followed by few; nevertheless, gathered in unity, the group of those who could have existed since the beginning of the preaching of the Gospel and of all those that could exist in all the peoples until the end of time, added also those who, although very few in number, received salvation of grace by faith in the Lord, faith of a prophetic nature, prior to his two adventures, they complete the group of citizens who enjoy the highest bliss and constitute the eternal city. The law was given, then, to a proud people. The purpose was that, since he could not receive the grace of charity more than humiliated, and without this grace he could not fulfill the precepts of the law, the transgression made him humble, so that he would ask for grace and not judge that he could save yourself by your own merits, proud thinking. Thus justice would reach, not by its power and forces, but by the mediator who justifies the ungodly. All the salvific economy of the Old Testament was dispensed through angels, acting in them the Holy Spirit and the same Word of truth, not yet incarnate, but always present in every administration of truth. That bestowal of the law was dispensed by means of angels, sometimes in self-representation, sometimes in representation of God, according to what was also the custom of the prophets. On the other hand, by means of this law that discovered evils, but did not eliminate them, pride was also crushed with the crime of prevarication. The offspring were disposed by angels, through the work of the Mediator, so that he would free from sins those whom the transgression of the law had forced to confess that they needed the grace and mercy of the Lord. In this way their sins were forgiven and, in the new life, they were reconciled with God, through whom they had shed their blood for them.

[3,21-22] The transgression of the law served to break the pride of those who, boasting of having Abraham as their father, boasted of possessing a kind of natural justice and boasted to other peoples their merits derived from the circumcision, in a way that is more damaging and more arrogant; the Gentiles, on the other hand, would humble themselves with great ease, even without the transgression of such a law. For the grace of the gospel also found the slaves of idols, men who did not foresee that they could bring forth any source of justice from their ancestors. The Jews could not be told that the justice of their father, Abraham, had been false, just as the Gentiles could be told that there was no justice that they believed in their fathers to worship idols. That is why they are told: Produce, therefore, a fruit worthy of penance, and do not keep repeating: we have Abraham as our father. For God is powerful to raise up these children for Abraham. To the others, on the other hand, they are told: Therefore, you remember that, at another time, you Gentiles according to the flesh, called uncircumcised by what is called circumcision-by an operation practiced in the flesh-were at that time without Christ, excluded from the citizenship of Israel and strangers to alliances, without the hope of promise and without God in this world (Eph. 2,11-12). To finish, they are shown as infidels torn from their olive tree (Cf Rm 11,17); these, as faithful who, coming from the wild olive tree, have been grafted into their olive tree. The pride of the Jews was to be broken by the transgression of the law. Like, accumulating his sins with words of Scripture, he says in the Letter to the Romans: You know that everything the law says, it says for those who are under the law, so that all mouth is silent and everyone is incarcerated before God (Rm 3,19). That is, the Jews by virtue of the transgression of the law and the Gentiles by virtue of their impiety, even without law. That is why he says yet again: For God shut up all things in unbelief, to take pity on everyone (Rm 11,32). This also says now, scrubbing the same question: Is the law then against the promises of God? No way! If we had been given a law capable of vivifying, justice would actually come from the law. But the Scripture contained everything under sin, so that the promise would be granted to believers through faith in Jesus Christ. Therefore, the law was not given to eliminate sin, but to enclose everything under sin. For the law showed that sin existed, a sin that they, blinded by custom, could judge as justice: so that, humiliated in this way, they would know that their salvation was not in their power, but in that of the Mediator. It is humility above all that revokes us from the place where pride has thrown us. And the same humility is accommodated to the reception of the grace of Christ, who constitutes a unique example of humility.

[3,23] Arrived here, no one should be so incompetent to ask: Why, then, was it of no benefit to the Jews, since, by means of the angels who promulgated the law, they were disposed by the work of the Mediator? It really worked for them in an impossible measure to say. For what churches of the Gentiles sold all their possessions and put what was collected at the feet of the apostles, something that so many thousands of people did spontaneously? (Cf Acts 4,34) You do not even have to set your eyes on the mass of those who did not believe; all was in many of its parts more straw than grain. To what, if not to the sanctification of the Jews, do those words of the same Apostle in the Letter to the Romans refer? What to say, then? Has God rejected his people? In no way! I am also an Israelite, of the lineage of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people, whom he knew beforehand (Rm 11,1-2). However, praising the Church of the Thessalonians above the other Churches of the Gentiles, he tells them that they became similar to the Churches of Judea, because they had suffered much because of faith on the part of their compatriots, as also they of the Jews (Cf 1Ts 2,14). From here also comes what he says in the same Letter to the Romans, which I mentioned shortly: If the Gentiles have participated in their spiritual goods, they must also serve them with their material goods (Rm 15,27). Consequently, he also says with the logic of the Jews themselves: But before the faith came, we were guarded under the law, locked in the hope of that faith that was later revealed. Indeed, they were so close and from so close they agreed, once all their possessions were sold, to God, that the Lord commanded them to put their will in being perfect (Cf Mt 19,21). This happened thanks to the law under which they were guarded, locked in the expectation of that faith, that is, of the arrival of faith in him, which then manifested itself. The confinement of them was then identified with the fear of the one God. And the fact that they were found to be prevaricators with respect to the law, to those who believed was not harmful to them, but beneficial; the knowledge that the illness was more serious made them want the doctor with greater intensity and they loved it with greater ardor. To whom much is forgiven, much loves (Cf Lc 7,43.47).

[3,24-27] So, he said, that the law has been our pedagogue towards Christ. It is the same as it says: We were guarded under the law, locked in it (Ga 3,23). Once the faith arrives, we are no longer under the pedagogue. Now, therefore, he rebukes those who annul the grace of Christ, because, as if there had not yet come who called to freedom, they want to be still under the pedagogue. If you affirm that you are all children of God by faith, since all who have been baptized in Christ have put on it, look to the Gentiles not to lose hope for themselves for not having been guarded under the law and , consequently, do not judge children. By being clothed with Christ by faith, everyone becomes a child. Not by nature, as the only Son of God who is also his wisdom, nor by the exalted power and singularity that means having been assumed to possess by nature and incarnate the person of Wisdom. It is the case of the Mediator himself, made one thing with the Wisdom that assumed it without intervening any other mediator. They become children by participating in Wisdom, participation that prepares and bestows faith in the Mediator. Now he calls this grace of faith dressed, so that those who have believed in Christ are clothed with him and, therefore, are children of God and brothers of whom he mediates with him.

[3,28-29] Within that faith there is no difference between Jews and Greeks, neither between slaves and free, nor between male and female. Inasmuch as all possess the faith, they are all one in Christ Jesus. And if this is achieved by the faith that makes you walk in holiness for this life, how much greater perfection and abundance will the vision itself make when we see you face to face? (Cf 1Co 13,12) Although now we have the firstfruits of the Spirit that is life mercy to the justice of faith, as the body is still dead because of sin (Cf Rm 8,23.10), the difference based on nationality, social status or sex, has already been eliminated from the unity founded on faith, but still it remains in mortal existence. Moreover, its ordering must be maintained in the course of this life. The apostles send it, who give extremely healthy norms about how they should coexist, according to their different race, Jews and Greeks; according to their different social status, masters and slaves, and according to their different sex, husbands and wives, or according to any other differentiated situation that may occur. The same Lord did the same beforehand, who said: Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God (Mt 22,21). Some are the norms that we keep within the unity of the faith eliminating all differences, and others that we observe, as people on the way, in the ordering of this life, so that it is not an object of blasphemy, neither the name of God nor his doctrine. . And this we do not only thinking about anger, that is, to avoid offending men, but also for reasons of conscience. We do not pretend, so that men see us, but, from the pure consciousness of love, in attention to God, who wants all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (1Tm 2,4). So, he says, you are one in Christ Jesus. Then he added: But if you are one in Christ Jesus to qualify and emphasize and then infer: therefore you are the offspring of Abraham. The meaning is this: Therefore, you are all one in Christ Jesus; and if you are one in Christ Jesus, then you are descendants of Abraham. Previously he had affirmed: It does not say: And to the descendants, as if they were many; but as referring to only one: to your offspring, which is Christ (Ga 3,16). Here it shows that, under this single offspring that is Christ, it is not only the Mediator himself who must be understood, but also the Church, his body of which he is the head. So in Christ all are one and, according to the promise, receive the inheritance by faith. With a view to that inheritance was enclosed; that is, with a view to his coming, as under a pedagogue, the people were guarded until they reached the necessary age, in which they were to be called to freedom those who in the same town have been called according to the divine plan, that is, , those who were found to be grain in that era.