Galatians 4:24

‘Which things contain an allegory. For these two women are two covenants. One from Mount Sinai, bearing children to bondage, which is Hagar. Now this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and answers to the Jerusalem that now is, for she is in bondage with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above is free, which is our mother.'

And this was to be seen as an allegory. Note that the allegory or parable is drawn from the facts stated above about the sons, and not vice versa. The facts are Scriptural, the allegory is illustrative. In understanding what follows we need to remember that Sarah was barren and seemingly could not bear, so a son was born to Abraham on her behalf through a slave wife who had had no difficulty in bearing. Then later Sarah did have a child, Isaac, as a result of the seemingly miraculous intervention of God (Genesis 17:17; Genesis 21:2; Genesis 21:7).

By allegory the two women, slave and free, are like two covenants, the one enslaving, the other giving freedom. The covenant that enslaves is from Mount Sinai. This refers to the giving of the Law and its resulting covenant as outlined in Exodus to Deuteronomy, which brought the people ‘under the Law'. It also refers by allegory to the physical Jerusalem in Paul's time whose inhabitants were also in bondage to the Law. It kept men in slavery. They strove to keep the Law, and added to it, so that they might somehow make themselves worthy of God. But they could not. They were slaves to sin and condemned by the Law. Like Ishmael they were children of the flesh.

The corollary is therefore that the free-woman represents God's covenant with Abraham. And it also refers to the heavenly Jerusalem which is free. Under this covenant men are free and participate in the heavenly (Ephesians 1:19 to Ephesians 2:6). In the words of Jesus, they ‘worship the Father in Spirit and in truth' (John 4:23), and like Isaac they are the true seed, children of the promise, reckoned as righteous by faith and born through the miraculous working of God.

The first significance of this lies in the fact that the Judaisers were seeking to take the Galatians back to the old covenant of bondage and submission to the Law. They wanted to make them bondslaves. They wanted to make them like Ishmael. But Paul is seeking to bring them to the covenant of promise under which they find freedom and contact with the heavenly through the promises and covenant of God. He wants them to be the true seed of Abraham.

But the message about Jerusalem also has a second significance and that is that the earthly Jerusalem is now replaced by the heavenly Jerusalem (compare Hebrews 12:22; Hebrews 11:9), and that the people of God no longer look to an earthly city but to a heavenly, for that is where freedom is found. They are citizens of Heaven (Philippians 3:20). And this new Jerusalem, this heavenly Jerusalem, is their ‘mother'. In other words bears them, cares for them and looks after them. They are born anew from Heaven. The earthly Jerusalem no more has any meaning for them. They look to the heavenly Jerusalem, the heavenly birth, the heavenly upbringing.

‘Mount Sinai in Arabia.' Arabia is in the desert, and it was to the desert that Ishmael fled. It was away from the place where the promises were made under God's covenant with Abraham. It was a place of barrenness.