by Kent Leslie ✉️
For it is written that Abraham had two sons. [Ga 4.22] In this last part of chapter 4, Paul presents an allegory from the scriptures—or as he says in verse 24, these things are being taken figuratively. It’s not a proper literal interpretation of bible. But he’s not trying to present a proper literal interpretation. He’s trying to teach something, and borrowing a biblical story, and biblical imagery, in order to make his points.
It’s kinda trying to tell a parable like Jesus: “The kingdom of God is like two women who had two sons.” But rather than make up a story from scratch, Paul’s borrowing the Old Testament story of Sarah and Hagar. And rather than let his audience figure out for ourselves what the parable means (like Jesus usually does, because he trusts us to figure it out), Paul’s gotta tell the Galatians exactly what he does mean.
If you remember the story, the LORD promised Abraham a massive number of descendants, but Abraham and Sarah didn’t see it happening fast enough. In ancient Sumerian culture, patriarchs were allowed to have sex with any woman in their household, on the grounds that these were their women; they belonged to them; they were property. Obviously this attitude is evil and wrong; and can be, and was, hugely abused. Which is why God later made commandments forbidding patriarchs from doing any such thing, and telling them if they had sex with a slave they had to marry her. But in Abraham’s day it happened from time to time, and his wife told him he could have sex with her Egyptian slave Hagar, so he did.
So Hagar gave birth to Ishmael. And years later, Sarah finally gave birth to Isaac, and did not want her slave’s kid to share the patriarchal inheritance with her kid, and got Abraham to send them away. It’s a messed-up story all around.
Anyway Paul’s taking the idea of a free woman and her child, and a slave woman and her child, and saying we Christians like that. Hagar is the slave woman, represents Mt. Sinai because the mountain is in Arabia—where Hagar and Ishmael eventually go, where Ishmael becomes the ancestor of the Arabs. You remember in chapter 1 Paul spent some time in Arabia, in the Nabatean Empire: He would’ve considered those people to be Ishmaelites. Paul might even have been to Mt. Sinai. (Sinai is not in the Sinai peninsula in Egypt; the peninsula is called that because St. Catherine’s monastery is on a mountain in Egypt which the monks have named Mt. Sinai, but that’s not the Mt. Sinai. You remember the Hebrews had to cross the Red Sea before getting to Sinai; well that’d put them in Arabia. But I digress.)
In Paul’s allegory, Hagar represents Mt. Sinai, the Law, and Jerusalem, and the bondage of legalistically following the Law. And in verse 26, Sarah represents New Jerusalem, and God’s promises to Abraham, and God’s promises to restore Israel.
This is why Paul quotes Isaiah 54.1 in verse 27, which is Isaiah’s prophecy to the people of Jerusalem about how God’s gonna restore them after the Babylonians smite them. We’re like Isaac. We’re children of promise.
But just as then the child born as a result of the flesh persecuted the one born as a result of the Spirit. [Ga 4.29] Most commentators think Paul’s talking about Genesis 21.9, when Sarah catches Ishmael mocking her son Isaac. But mocking isn’t persecuting. I think it’s more likely Paul’s thinking about later in history, of the many, many times Ishmaelites and Israel didn’t get along, and sometimes persecuted one another. (Which is still happening.)
And much like Sarah says in Genesis 21.10 that her son will never share his inheritance with a slave’s son, we won’t either: Those people who are pushing legalism and gracelessness and works righteousness are gonna inherit a different kingdom, the kingdom they’re building, which after it gets tested by fire and burns up, is gonna be nothing but rubble and ash. We need to get away from those people lest they rope us into their mess. We need to stick to God’s promises.