<p>5:12 <i>I would that they that unsettle you</i>- A mild translation; the same word is used of how Paul had turned the Jewish world upside down by his preaching (Acts 17:6). We catch a sense here of how destabilizing all these arguments were; people had had their lives and world turned upside down by the Gospel, and were not having their new world turned upside down again by false teachers.</p><p><i>Would even go beyond circumcision and emasculate themselves</i>- This contains a play on words which may seem quite inappropriate to us; so much so that many a Bible translator and expositor has had problems with it. The idea is that Paul wishes that the circumcision party would go further and fully emasculate themselves. This just isn&rsquo;t the way men would use language if they wrote the Bible uninspired by God. See on Lk. 17:37.</p>