Hagar, Sarah, and Sinai

The last chapter ended at the door of Galatians 4, where Paul turns to “you who want to be under nomos νόμος nom'-os(law)” and tells a story about two women. For many readers this passage settles everything. Hagar is a slave, Hagar is Mount Sinai, and Sinai is the Torah. The Torah, then, is slavery, and a few verses later Paul seems to say so plainly: do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.

In full, the claim is usually made like this: “The yoke of slavery in Galatians 5:1 is the law. Galatians 4 has already told us that the law was given to those born according to the flesh.”

This is not a careless reading. It strings together real words from the real letter, and it sounds like a chain without a weak link. We will test each link in turn and let the letter tell us what its own words mean.

Do You Not Listen?

Paul opens the story this way:

Galatians 4:21 Tell me, you who want to be under nomos(law), do you not listen to the nomos(law)?

Paul does not tell those who want to be under the nomos to forget it. He asks whether they are listening to it. He sends them to the Torah itself, and his very next words are “For it is written,” followed by a story from Genesis. Every piece of the argument that follows comes out of the books of Moses.

That alone should make us careful. No one can argue from the Torah that the Torah should be thrown away. Paul calls the Torah as a witness because it still speaks.

The Two Sons

Galatians 4:22-23 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and one by the free woman. But the one by the slave woman was born according to sarx σάρξ sarx(flesh), and the one by the free woman through the promise.

There are two sons, two mothers, and two ways of being born.

To learn what “according to sarx(flesh)” means here, we can open the very story Paul’s readers could open:

Genesis 16:2 And Sarai said to Abram, "Behold now, the LORD has restrained me from bearing; go in, I pray you, to my handmaid; perhaps I shall be built up from her." And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai.

God had promised Abram a son. Years went by and no child came, so Sarai made a plan, and Abram “listened to the voice of Sarai.” Ishmael was born of that plan. He was born “according to sarx(flesh)” because he came from human arranging, from people reaching for God’s promise by their own means. Isaac came the other way. God named him before he was conceived and said, “I will establish my covenant (berit בְּרִית ber-eeth') with him” (Genesis 17:19). He was born through the promise.

For the claim to hold, Scripture would need to say that the law was given to those born according to the flesh, and no such sentence appears in verse 21 or anywhere in the story. Ishmael was born centuries before anyone stood at Sinai. What Paul sets side by side is not law against no law, but reaching for God’s promise by one’s own effort against receiving it as a gift.

Hagar and Mount Sinai

Then come the words that seem to close the case:

Galatians 4:24-26 This is speaking allegorically, for these women are two diatheke διαθήκη dee-ath-ay'-kay(covenants): one proceeding from Mount Sinai bearing children who are to be slaves; she is Hagar. Now this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free; she is the mother of us all.

Paul says plainly that this is an allegory and that the two women stand for two covenants. Hagar is linked with Mount Sinai. That is in the text, and we should not run from it.

The rest of verse 25, though, deserves a slow reading. Hagar “corresponds to the present Jerusalem.” The word is systoicheo συστοιχέω soos-toy-kheh'-o, to stand in the same row, as soldiers line up in a rank. Paul lines Hagar up with “the present Jerusalem,” the city of his own day, and says that “she is in slavery with her children.” He does not say that the Torah is Hagar. He says that Hagar stands in the same row as a Jerusalem whose children are in slavery.

Paul does not leave us to guess what slavery he means. He names it at the start of Galatians 5.

The Yoke

Galatians 5:1 Keep standing firm therefore in the freedom with which Messiah set us free, and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.

A yoke is a wooden beam laid across the neck of an ox so that it can pull. Any farmer knows that a yoke is not evil in itself. What matters is whose yoke it is and what it hitches the animal to. A yoke that joins an ox to a team going the right way is a gift. A yoke that ties it to a load it was never meant to drag will break its neck.

The very next sentence names the yoke Paul is warning about: “if you receive circumcision, Messiah will be of no benefit to you” (Galatians 5:2). Verses 3 and 4 complete the thought: “You have been severed from Messiah, you who are seeking to be justified by nomos(law).” That is the slavery. It is not the commandments of God but the demand that a man be circumcised in order to be justified.

The same yoke appears by name at the council in Jerusalem. Men had come “from Judea,” teaching, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved” (Acts 15:1). Peter answered:

Acts 15:10 Now therefore why do you put God to the test by placing upon the neck of the disciples a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?

The Greek word for yoke here is zygos ζυγός dzoo-gos', the same word Paul uses in Galatians 5:1. Peter is describing what was being laid on the necks of the disciples that day: the teaching that salvation hangs on circumcision. Peter says that neither the fathers nor “we” had been able to bear it. Then, as we saw in Chapter 6, he says how they are saved: “we believe that we are saved through the charis χάρις khar'-ece(grace) of the Lord Yeshua.”

As for the Torah’s commandments, John says that “His commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3), and Yeshua says, “My yoke is easy” (Matthew 11:30). We looked at both in Chapter 21. Scripture has a yoke it calls easy and a yoke it calls slavery, and it never treats them as the same thing.

Born According to the Flesh, Now

Galatians 4 deserves one more look, because Paul adds a line that brings the story into his own day:

Galatians 4:29 But as at that time he who was born according to sarx(flesh) persecuted him who was born according to pneuma πνεῦμα pnyoo'-mah(spirit), so it is now also.

Paul sees the old story playing out again. At the end of the letter he tells us who was pressing hard on the believers in Galatia: those who wanted “to make a good showing in sarx(flesh)” were trying to compel the Galatians to be circumcised (Galatians 6:12). For now, it is enough to see that this is the same word, sarx. In this letter, “according to sarx(flesh)” is not a name for people who keep God’s commandments. It describes people reaching for God’s promise by their own means, through a mark cut in the flesh and something to boast about.

What Freedom Is For

The same chapter tells us what Messiah set us free for. As we saw in Chapter 29, Paul says, “do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for sarx(flesh), but through agape ἀγάπη ag-ah'-pay(love) serve one another,” and in that love “the whole nomos(law) is fulfilled” (Galatians 5:13-14). A few verses later he lists what the flesh actually produces:

Galatians 5:19-21 Now the deeds of sarx(flesh) are evident, which are: moicheia μοιχεία moy-khi'-ah(adultery), sexual immorality, akatharsia ἀκαθαρσία ak-ath-ar-see'-ah(impurity, uncleanness), sensuality, idolatry, pharmakeia φαρμακεία far-mak-i'-ah(sorcery-drug-mixing), enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, murders, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Adultery, idolatry, sorcery, and murder are each forbidden by name in the Torah. The flesh, in Paul’s own list, is not the keeping of God’s commandments but the breaking of them.

The chain, then, breaks at every link. The story comes from the Torah. “Born according to sarx(flesh)” describes Ishmael’s birth by human arranging. The slavery is the demand to be justified by circumcision. And the freedom is freedom to love, in which the whole nomos is fulfilled.

One basic question remains: who were these Galatians, and what exactly were they turning back to? The claim says that they had been saved and then went back to the Torah, but the letter itself shows where they had come from.