Translation
Tell me, you who want to be under the law, have you heard the law? For it has been written that Abraham had two sons, one from the slave woman and one from the free woman. But the one from the slave woman was born by way of the flesh, but the one from the free woman by way of a promise. These two are an allegory; for there are two covenants. One from Mount Sinai giving birth into slavery, which is Hagar. Hagar, Mount Sinai, is in Arabia, and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is a slave, along with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, the one which is our mother. for it has been written, “Rejoice, barren one who is not bearing; burst out, cry out, you who is not suffering birth pain! Because the desolate woman has more children than the one who has a husband!”
You, brothers, are children of Isaac’s promise. But just as then, the one born by way of flesh persecuted the one by spirit, so it is now. But what does the scripture say? ”Throw out the slave woman and her son; for the son of the slave woman will not inherit along with the son” of the free woman. Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman. Into freedom Christ has set us free! Stand, then, and do not again be subject to the yoke of slavery.
Reflections
A few weeks ago, my friend Josh tipped me off to J. Louis Martyn’s work on Paul. Martyn’s commentary on Galatians looks very promising, but I’m holding off on reading it until I finish my preliminary translations and reading, just for the sake of giving a good honest look before I start chewing on his interpretations. I did start reading some articles by him though. Alas, I can’t help but be swayed by his interpretation of this passage that showed up in one of them. (Pure objective reading, you and I were never the friends I hoped we would become. I’m sorry, it’s over.)
Martyn does some good interpretive work setting up a reading for Jerusalem in this passage to specifically mean the church in Jerusalem, as opposed to the more typical reading of Judaism in general. So this passage wouldn’t be read as critical to all of first century Jewish religion per se, but the way that some in the Jerusalem church had allowed practices like circumcision to be determinate for whether or not someone was a part of the church and her fellowship.
Honestly, I’ve never really liked this passage, or felt like I understood it at all. I think I kind of resent it because it feel like Paul is ripping on Hagar, and I feel sorry for her. She really gets the short end of the stick in Genesis, why does Paul have to pile on?
I don’t know that Martyn’s reading really changes any of that, but it at least had made it possible for me to listen to the point of what Paul seems to be saying here, which really is quite simple: If you have a choice between freedom and slavery, why the heck would you pick slavery? Clearly, that’s the question he wants to be ringing in the Galatians’ ears.
Those who come to God through Christ come to him in a free relationship, as if they were children of God themselves. There aren’t second class members of the family, as there were in Abraham’s family. There isn’t another layer of family status that we obtain by ritual or sacramental acts. In Christ we are heirs of God, full holders of the promises of God. What madness it is to suggest that any of us could ever become anything more than that!
Hallelujah!
