Galatians 3:16 → Genesis 22:18

Paul writes: "The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say, 'and to seeds,' meaning many, but 'and to your seed,' meaning One, who is Christ" (Gal 3:16). Text-form precision matters here: Paul's quoted lemma at 3:16 — καὶ τῷ σπέρματί σου, "and to your seed" — is the recipient-dative land-grant formula of Genesis 13:15; 17:8; 24:7, not this verse's instrumental "in your offspring" (ἐν τῷ σπέρματί σου), a formula Paul never uses as a lemma (at Gal 3:8 he quotes the "in you" of Gen 12:3/18:18, which carries Gen 22:18's blessing-content forward). Nor does his argument rest on the grammatical singularity of zeraʿ — a collective that takes singular concord as a matter of course; the warrant is canonical selection: the canon narrows its own seed-designation by divine speech (Gen 21:12; 49:10; 2 Sam 7:12-16), and Paul reads that narrowing christologically. Genesis 22:18 still belongs in this pair's orbit as the oath sworn at Moriah whose universal-blessing content the Pauline gospel proclaims fulfilled: the line of promised offspring narrows to a single representative head, Christ, in whom the many become Abraham's seed by faith (Gal 3:29), so that "all nations" are blessed not by descent from Abraham but by belonging to his singular Seed.