Hagar and Sarah

Paul asks those who desire to be under the law whether they have heard what the law itself says about Abraham's two sons, one by the slave woman and one by the free. He then reads the two women illustratively as two covenants, setting Hagar with Sinai and present Jerusalem in slavery, and the Jerusalem above in freedom as the mother of God's people.

T²¹ell me, you who want to be under the law, do you not understand what the law says? ²²For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. ²³His son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but his son by the free woman was born through the promise. ²⁴These things serve as illustrations, for the women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children into slavery: This is Hagar. ²⁵Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present-day Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children. ²⁶But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. ²⁷For it is written:

Paul tells the Galatians that, like Isaac, they are children of promise, and that the old hostility between flesh and Spirit continues in the present. Scripture's command to cast out the slave woman and her son therefore becomes a way of saying that inheritance does not belong to slavery, and that believers are children of the free woman.

²⁸Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. ²⁹At that time, however, the son born by the flesh persecuted the son born by the Spirit. It is the same now. ³⁰But what does the Scripture say? “Expel the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son.” ³¹Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman.