[126] Kalisch, _Commentary_, on Genesis xxi. 9.
The Apostle's comparison must have been mortifying in the extreme to the Judaists. They are told in plain terms that they are in the position of outcast Ishmael; while uncircumcised Gentiles, without a drop of Abraham's blood in their veins, have received the promise forfeited by their unbelief. Paul could not have put his conclusion in a form more unwelcome to Jewish pride. But without this radical exposure of the legalist position it was impossible for him adequately to vindicate his gospel and defend his Gentile children in the faith.
II. From this contrast of birth "according to flesh" and "through promise" is deduced the opposition between _the slave-born and free-born sons_. "For these (the slave-mother and the free-woman) are two covenants, one indeed bearing children unto bondage--which is Hagar" (ver. 24). The other side of the antithesis is not formally expressed; it is obvious. Sarah the princess, Abraham's true wife, has her counterpart in the original covenant of promise renewed in Christ, and in "the Jerusalem above, which is our mother" (ver. 26). Sarah is the typical mother,[127] as Abraham is the father of the children of faith. In the _systoichia_, or tabular comparison, which the Apostle draws up after the manner of the schools, _Hagar_ and _the Mosaic covenant_, _Sinai_ and _the Jerusalem that now is_ stand in one file and "answer to" each other; _Sarah_ and _the Abrahamic covenant_, _Zion_ and _the heavenly Jerusalem_ succeed in the same order, opposite to them. "Zion" is wanting in the second file; but "Sinai and Zion" form a standing antithesis (Heb. xii. 18-22); the second is implied in the first. It was to _Zion_ that the words of Isaiah cited in ver. 27, were addressed.
[127] Comp. Heb. xi. 11, 12; 1 Pet. iii. 6.
The first clause of ver. 25 is best understood in the shorter, marginal reading of the R. V., also preferred by Bishop Lightfoot (τὸ γὰρ Σινᾶ ὄρος ἐστίν κ.τ.λ.). It is a parenthesis--"for mount Sinai[128] is in Arabia"--_covenant_ running on in the mind from ver. 24 as the continued subject of ver. 25 _b_: "and it answereth to the present Jerusalem." This is the simplest and most consistent construction of the passage. The interjected geographical reference serves to support the identification of the Sinaitic covenant with Hagar, _Arabia_ being the well-known abode of the Hagarenes. Paul had met them in his wanderings there. Some scholars have attempted to establish a verbal agreement between the name of the slave-mother and that locally given to the Sinaitic range; but this explanation is precarious, and after all unnecessary. There was a real correspondence between place and people on the one hand, as between place and covenant on the other. Sinai formed a visible and imposing link between the race of Ishmael and the Mosaic law-giving. That awful, desolate mountain, whose aspect, as we can imagine, had vividly impressed itself on Paul's memory (ch. i. 17), spoke to him of bondage and terror. It was a true symbol of the working of the law of Moses, exhibited in the present condition of Judaism. And round the base of Sinai Hagar's wild sons had found their dwelling.
[128] Paul writes "the _Sinai_ mountain" (τὸ Σινᾶ ὄρος) in tacit opposition to the other, familiar _Mount Zion_ (Hofmann _in loc._). In Heb. xii. 22 the same inversion appears, with the same significance.
Jerusalem was no longer the mother of freemen. The boast, "we are Abraham's sons; we were never in bondage" (John viii. 33), was an unconscious irony. Her sons chafed under the Roman yoke. They were loaded with self-inflicted legal burdens. Above all, they were, notwithstanding their professed law-keeping, enslaved to sin, in servitude to their pride and evil lusts. The spirit of the nation was that of rebellious, discontented slaves. They were Ishmaelite sons of Abraham, with none of the nobleness, the reverence, the calm and elevated faith of their father. In the Judaism of the Apostle's day the Sinaitic dispensation, uncontrolled by the higher patriarchal and prophetic faith, had worked out its natural result. It "gendered to bondage." A system of repression and routine, it had produced men punctual in tithes of mint and anise, but without justice, mercy, or faith; vaunting their liberty while they were "servants of corruption." The law of Moses could not form a "new creature." It left the Ishmael of nature unchanged at heart, a child of the flesh, with whatever robes of outward decorum his nakedness was covered. The Pharisee was the typical product of law apart from grace. Under the garb of a freeman he carried the soul of a slave.