Fruits of the Flesh/Spirit

Galatians chapter 5 lists the fruits of the flesh and the fruits of the Spirit. Together the lists run the tribes twice, giving 2 views to the tribes.

Grid

The following table shows how the fruits of the flesh maps to the tribes. Followed below by a table showing how the fruits of the Spirit map to the tribes. The result is a degenerate pattern for each tribe and it's opposite fruit of the Spirit.

Fruits of the Flesh

Fruits of the Spirit

Notes on mapping

The odd challenge to this passage is the way the fruits of the flesh easily map to the tribes, but the fruits of the spirit are only 9 in number, and thus appear not to map to the tribes. The problem with just mapping the fleshy stuff is the lack of redemption it provides for our old friends. So the question has been how do the tribes map the fruits of the Spirit.

The trick is realizing the buffer statement between the fleshy list and spirit list is picking up a couple tribes as are the closing statements after the second list. When those pieces are included the list of 9 fruits grows to 13 items that relay aspects of the 13 tribes.

Given this approach, the buffer statement, "As I told you before and say to you now..." is the clue we've finished the first run of the tribes and we're starting a second, beginning, as always, with Judah.

Also, the fruit of the spirit known as "patience" is actually "patience of spirit" in the Aramaic and thus more text than the other fruit items since the others are only one word each. Typically Manasseh receives the longer passage in a list as the double portion holder. Obviously in this list there's more text for Judah, Reuben, Benjamin and Gad since they get the statements that wrap around the fruits list, but of the 9 fruits the one that is longer than the rest is Manasseh's and helps again to clarify that we're lined up correctly.

In the first list of fleshy stuff there are actually more fleshy fruits than tribes. The fix is doubling up in a few places, starting with Judah. That Judah has two items is a bit unusual, but confirmed in the second list where Judah aligns with the double statement, "As I've told you before and I'm telling you now..."

Beyond Judah, Manasseh and Joseph take two items in the fleshy list. This is normal since as the double portion holders these tribes often take two items in lists that are longer than 13.

Observations

There's enough correspondence to think the two lists are intended to be held side by side, the first list giving the degenerate behavior(s) most common for the tribe and the second list giving the fruit to grow to counteract the degenerate pattern. Some of the comparisons are not obviously related, which may be explainable by bad word choices during translation or something similar.