Galatians 4:24

Which things are an allegory:— The original may be rendered, Which things are allegorical, or have been allegorized. It seems to have been in compliance with the disposition of the Jewish Christians, who were fond of allegoric interpretations, that St. Paul, above all the other apostles, used that way. He seems to intimate as much, when, upon the allegory of Abraham's two sons, he argues for the discharge of the believing Gentiles from the legal rites. He had, in his former chapter, offered them several good reasons in proof of their liberty, before he comes to this, which he introduces with the preface, "My little children, &c." Galatians 4:19. He goes on, "I will try what an allegory will do. Tell me, you who desire, &c." St. Paul had no intention to prove by this allegory the truth of Christianity to the unbelievingJews;buttoshew the Christian exemption from Jewish rites, to Jews who professed themselves Christians. To such persons his arguments, built upon this passage in Moses's writings, were very convincing, because they against whom he disputed approved of this sort of reasoning upon scripture history, and admitted the general principles upon which this and other allegorical principles were built. They had learned, that all things happened to their fathers in a figure, and that things in the law included a mystery relating to future times. And when an exact coincidence of all the circumstances in the history, and some after-event, was made out, it was to them a strong argument, because it suited their genius, and was a method of proof to which theyhad been accustomed. In Philo, we see this history allegorized to a moral sense; Sarah being put for virtue by that author, in his book of allegories: and Agar, for that knowledge of the sciences which ought to be subservient to virtue, or else to be expelled: and who can say that this history was not allegorized by others in St. Paul's sense, especially as there is an obvious analogy between the family of Abraham, the father of the faithful, and the church of the faithful; which St. Paul might improve, in comparing all the parts of that history with the state of the present Christian and Jewish church, to accommodate the whole to the subject of their controversy. Be this as it may, the Galatians could not mistake him, as if he was about to impose a false sense of the law upon them, after he had forewarned them in what sense he interpreted that history. He does not give the least intimation that the words in Genesis literally signified the two covenants: on the contrary, he tells them, these things being allegorized, have this sense. And if they were allegorized, then they were transferred from their genuine signification to other things illustrated in the figure. The history did not predict, but figured the other by unforced accommodation.

These are the two covenants— That is, These two persons, Hagar and Sarah, may well be considered as representing the two covenants, or dispensations, of the law and the gospel. This Hagar, I say, (Galatians 4:25.) whose name signifies a rock, is a representation of those who are under the law, given from mount Sinai in Arabia, in the desarts of which the Hagarenes, who descended from Ishmael, were settled: and it answers in the allegory to the present state of the earthly Jerusalem, which, with her children, is in bondage under the law. The particle γαρ cannot have its illative force in Galatians 4:25 since it would be very injurious to the Apostle to suppose that he meant to argue thus: "Mount Sinai is Agar; for this Agar is mount Sinai." It must therefore signify the same with I say, and only introduce the repetition of a thought which the Apostle was desirous to inculcate; as it often does elsewhere.