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§19 Paul’s Interpretation of the Scripture Used by the Rival Evangelists (Gal. 4:21–5:1)

4:21 / Paul’s tone changes somewhat at this point, turning from a personal appeal back to an argument from Scripture (cf. 3:6–9) and to teaching what he and the Galatian believers already have in Christ. Paul begins with a direct address, Tell me, you who want to be under the law. The wording of the question critiques their desire, for Paul presents the law as something under which people are held.

The passage beginning in this verse and extending to 5:1 works with several themes that have already been introduced: giving birth (3:19), slavery (3:8), freedom (3:25), Abraham (3:6–8, 16–18, 29), the promise (3:14, 18, 21–22, 29), sonship (4:5–7), a covenant (cf. 3:15), persecution of believers in Christ by Jews (1:13), and inheritance (3:18; 4:1–7).

Themes and features from Genesis 21 appear in Galatians 4:21–5:1—Abraham, Abraham’s wife, Hagar, the two sons, promise, inheritance, and the quotation from Genesis 21:10. Other themes from the Genesis text appear in the rest of the letter—circumcision, the legitimate offspring. The fact that Paul has worked indirectly with Genesis 21 throughout the letter and now deals with it head on suggests that it has been a key text for the circumcisers’ argument. The Galatians were Gentiles and so would not have known much of the Jewish writings unless they had been taught them in the context of their new religion. That Genesis 21 is so central to the letter, both implicitly and explicitly, suggests that Paul feels constrained to respond to an interpretation of it being promulgated by the rival evangelists.

The twice-repeated phrase “for it is written” (vv. 22, 27) and the question “but what does the Scripture say?” (v. 30) indicate that now Paul takes his primary task to be scriptural interpretation. He faces the challenge of undoing the rival evangelists’ interpretation of the passage, which most likely made more plain sense than the one he presents. This may be why he speaks of his interpretation as figurative (4:24). The rival evangelists could point to Genesis 21 in support of their argument that inheriting the promise of Abraham entailed circumcision. Only Isaac, the circumcised son, carries on Abraham’s line.

4:22–23 / Paul launches into an interpretation of the scriptural passage that the troublemakers had been using to promote their cause. He begins by noting that Abraham had two sons and that the difference between these two sons is that one was by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. He then moves to his figurative interpretation by explaining that the son by the slave woman was born in the ordinary way; but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a promise. In the Greek the phrase “born in the ordinary way” is “born according to the flesh (sarx).” While the Genesis text does understand Isaac to be the child of God’s promise (Gen. 21:1–3) Paul’s description of Ishmael as “born according to the flesh” goes beyond contrasting Isaac’s special birth with the normal birth of Ishmael. In the context of this passage, which uses dualistic categories, Paul’s use of “flesh” puts a particular slant on the story, casting the rivalry between Sarah and Hagar and Isaac and Ishmael in terms of the enmity between the promise or the Spirit (cf. 3:14) and the flesh, which is opposed to the Spirit (see esp. 5:16–25).

Paul’s reference to “promise” alludes to a concept that he and his readers agree is a good thing. The Galatians wish to be assured of receiving the promise of Abraham, and Paul builds a case that his gospel has secured the promise.

4:24–25 / Paul takes the allegory further by speaking of the two women as two covenants. This clearly goes well beyond Genesis, but Paul has admitted that he speaks figuratively. He equates Hagar with Mount Sinai. In doing so he also says that this covenant bears children who are to be slaves, emphasizing this by stating that Mount Sinai is in Arabia, the land in which Ishmael, the child of the slave woman, settled (Gen. 26:18). Whereas Judaism stresses the privilege that comes from the law, Paul here uses the Jewish Scriptures to say the opposite: the Jewish covenant enslaves. Going on with his allegory, Paul states that there is a correspondence between Hagar (i.e., Mount Sinai) and the present city of Jerusalem, a city in slavery with her children. The word corresponds (systoicheō) is built on the same root as the word translated “basic principles” in 4:3 and 9. It means “stand in the same line.” Paul’s point is that the Galatian congregation chose the wrong line to stand in when they agreed to be influenced by the present Jerusalem.

In Galatians the word covenant appears only here and in Paul’s illustration in Galatians 3:15–17. The word is especially fitting in the context of dealing with the Abraham tradition, for in the Septuagint the same word appears in the story of God establishing his covenant with Abraham and requiring from Abraham circumcision (Gen. 17:7–14).

Paul’s statement concerning two covenants would have been shocking to Jewish sensibilities. First, while the Jewish tradition held that God had made several covenants with Israel, among them the covenant with Noah, the covenant with Abraham, the covenant with Moses, covenants with Josiah and Nehemiah, the covenant with David, and the promise of a new covenant (Jer. 31:31–4; see also Rom. 9:4, which has the word “covenant” in the plural), these events were understood within the broad category of the Jewish religion as a religion of the covenant. In Judaism there was one covenant, just as for Paul there was only one gospel. Second, Paul argues that there is a covenant that does not require circumcision. For Jews the word covenant was almost synonymous with circumcision (see particularly Gen. 17:10).

4:26 / The name and symbol of Jerusalem appear to have had a strategic position in the rhetoric of the rival evangelists and of Paul (see esp. 1:13–2:21). The troublemakers were no doubt claiming that the authority of the Jerusalem church stood behind their gospel. Paul is willing to concede that his opponents may have the present Jerusalem on their side, but he asserts that he too can claim the backing of Jerusalem—the Jerusalem that is above, that is free, that is our mother.

Paul assures his readers that they already have all they need through faith in Christ when he supplements the metaphor of a son inheriting the father’s will with the image of the “Jerusalem above” as the mother of believers. The statement is a simple declarative one in which Paul states what he considers to be a fact: his converts have been born from the free woman, which is to say that they are the ones “born as the result of a promise” (4:23). It follows that the Galatians should stop seeking the promise through the present Jerusalem, which can offer only the inheritance of slavery (cf. 4:24–5).

4:27 / Paul supports his interpretation with a quotation from the Septuagint of Isaiah 54:1. Even though in Genesis it is Hagar, not Sarah, who is unmarried, Sarah is the referent for the barren woman. The “Jerusalem above” who is “our mother” is also a reference to Sarah (v. 26).

The quotation uses the imperative mood, commanding the “barren woman” to break forth and cry aloud. As Paul has just stated that he and his converts share the Jerusalem above as their mother (4:26), he may be using this text to encourage his readers to recognize and participate in rejoicing over the miraculous birth that is theirs. The underlying theme of who is a legitimate child, which has surfaced at various places in the letter (e.g., 3:29–4:7), is again in evidence. While the agitators maybe characterizing the Galatians’ mother as unmarried and the Galatians as illegitimate children, Paul is saying that their mother has received her promise of numerous children, and they should see themselves as part of the fulfillment of that promise.

Since Paul has earlier spoken of himself as birthing the Galatians (4:19), he may be employing the quotation from Isaiah to refer also to himself. He is shouting forth that his children are the children of the promise.

4:28 / Paul states his meaning plainly. The allegorical utterance of Scripture can be applied directly to the Galatians: they, like Isaac, are children of promise. Paul’s interpretive boldness in declaring that his uncircumcised converts are kin to Isaac, who was circumcised on the eight day (Gen. 21:4), is in line with his conviction that his gospel and his converts manifest the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham.

4:29 / Continuing to apply the scriptural story to the current situation—it is the same now—Paul makes the point that Ishmael (the son born in the ordinary way) persecuted Isaac (the son born by the power of the Spirit). The contrast of the child born in the ordinary way and the one born by the power of the Spirit resonates with the contrast Paul set up in 4:23, although there the second child was “born as the result of a promise.”

The Genesis story contains no reference to Ishmael persecuting Isaac or to the Spirit, but Paul is applying the text of Scripture to the text of life. Having identified his readers with Isaac, he maintains that they are being persecuted by Ishmael, who in Paul’s mind likely corresponds primarily to the Jewish Christian troublemakers and perhaps secondarily to Jews in general (4:24–5). As is clear from 4:17, Paul understands the influence of the rival evangelists on his converts as a form of harassment.

Paul sets up a parallelism here with the previous statement, so that “children of promise” are equated with the son born “according to the power of the Spirit.” This is typical of the correspondence Paul makes throughout the letter between the promise and the Spirit (e.g., 3:14). In the remainder of Galatians the focus will shift from the promise to an increasing attention on the Spirit.

4:30 / Paul cites Sarah’s expression of distress over whether Ishmael might be included in the inheritance (Gen. 21:10). As Paul has made it plain that he is using the Scripture in direct reference to the Galatians’ own circumstances, his question what does the Scripture say? implicitly includes the words “to us.” Paul takes Sarah’s command that Hagar and Ishmael be driven out as a command on target for the Galatians. The inheritance belongs to his converts, and it shall not be shared with those who preach a different gospel.

The quotation dramatizes the choice before the Galatians. Through association with the rival evangelists Paul’s converts are identified with Hagar and Ishmael, which means they are the ones driven out and excluded from Abraham’s inheritance.

4:31 / In order to be sure his readers understand, Paul declares we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman. Like Isaac, the Galatians are Abraham’s heirs. The troublemakers were undoubtedly suggesting that unless Paul’s Gentile converts followed the law they were not part of the people of God, but Paul says the opposite.

5:1 / The means by which the Gentile Galatians have become children of the free woman is through Christ. This is another way of saying what Paul said earlier—that “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law” (3:13). Paul declares that the purpose of Christ’s work was for freedom. The concept of freedom, which is a basic theme of Galatians, is connected throughout Paul’s letters primarily with freedom from: freedom from the law (Rom. 7:3–4), from sin (Rom. 6:18–22), or from death (Rom. 8:2). Freedom is also equated with the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17) and is used as a way to describe the Christian life (Gal. 2:4). In an expansive command, Paul directs his readers to stand firm against the influence of the rival evangelists. Underscoring the point he has made repeatedly, Paul charges his converts not to put themselves in a position of submitting to a yoke of slavery. To such a fate, Paul warns, his readers’ attraction to the alternative gospel leads.

Throughout the letter Paul has described the adding of law to faith and the Galatians’ former life (4:8–9) as enslavement, which is why he can warn that the Galatians’ attraction to the rival evangelists’ message will mean that they are slaves once again.