Last week, we mentioned that Paul brings in the concept of slavery to his discussion about being heirs to the promise of Abraham. We also mentioned that later in the same chapter he takes that and expands upon it by tying it to an Abrahamic situation that involved slavery. We’re going to tie those two together this week to complete that thought, and we’ll come back to the middle part of chapter four next week.
Jumping down to verse 21, we see the beginning of Paul’s application to the situation with Hagar and Sarah (Galatians 4:21-23). In the middle part of chapter four, Paul transitions to this application by expressing how concerned he is for the churches of Galatia. He recounts how they reacted when he first preached to him, as compared to now when they have turned to other preaching.
He likens it to the situation where Abraham had fathered two sons by two different women. Abraham’s wife, Sarah (whose name was Sarai at that time), was barren and had not been able to provide Abraham (whose name was Abram at that time) with a child (Genesis 16:1-16). So, she told Abram to have a child with her maidservant, Hagar. As a result, Ishmael was born.
Right after this is when YHWH formally established the covenant with Abram for him to father many nations (Genesis 17:1-8). During this process, YHWH also changed his name to Abraham and his wife’s name to Sarah (Genesis 17:15). YHWH had previously told Abraham that he would be made into a great nation and all the families of the earth would be blessed through him (Genesis 12:1-3), however it was after Ishmael was born that YHWH called it a covenant and formalized it. This previous promise was the one Paul referenced earlier in this letter, and we looked at that previously.
To me, the unfolding of all these events are interesting on so many levels. First, the fact that YHWH had made a promise and didn’t formalize it until after a slave had bore a son to Abraham is quite interesting since we know YHWH knew that would occur, given Sarah’s barrenness and her desire to give a son to Abraham. That was a common course of action back then in those types of situations. Second, the fact that YHWH changed both of their names upon the establishing of the covenant is interesting because our mortal/earthly minds would think this to be a meaningless gesture. A name is essentially just a word we use to identify one person separately from another, right?
As for the second interesting point, we have learned through our studies that not only do words mean more than just the sounds we use to make them, because they have the ability to affect the spiritual part of creation, we also learned that certain Hebrew letters represent certain things or ideas. The changes of Abraham’s and Sarah’s names actually changed the composition of their meaning. In Sarah’s case, the last letter changed from the Hebrew letter yod to the letter hey, and when you look at the meaning of those letters you find something very cool.
The yod presents a very different meaning than the hey, and the difference in these meanings represents a transition from one focus to another. The yod is used to represent an arm with a closed hand, meaning work. This is a very physical idea, and focused on the earthly way of making things happen, so to speak. The hey, on the other hand, is used to represent a man with arms raised. What does that position mean to you when you picture it? To me, it’s a position of praise, which is a heavenly focused action. It’s a focus on recognizing YHWH’s work in our lives and showing Him that recognition. Sarai, originally focused on the earthly way of providing offspring for her husband, had him take the earthly way of using her maidservant to do it. She didn’t know it immediately at her name change, but once she bore a son to Abraham, she recognized YHWH’s work in her life (Genesis 21:1-7).
For Abraham, YHWH added that same letter, hey, to his name, again showing a change of focus towards heaven and YHWH. The other interesting part? The basic meaning of both of these names remained the same. The first two letters of Sarah’s name did not change, and together they mean “ruler,” or in her case, princess. None of Abrahams letters changed. YHWH only added the hey. When you look at those letters, the first two mean, “leader of house/family,” and the second two mean, “beginning of blood.” The hey, was added before the last letter, suggesting that at that point he became the beginning of heavenly blood. In other words, his name was changed to represent the fact that Isaac, who became father to Israel, started the bloodline that led to the Son of YHWH, Yeshua.
For the first interesting point mentioned earlier, the fact that YHWH waited until after the birth of Ishmael to start the bloodline to Yeshua makes it clear that He had a purpose for Ishmael’s birth. Paul points out the connection to slavery and the Law, which we’ll get to in a minute, but there’s also a connection to Adam and, in general, a connection to a theme from YHWH we can see many places in scripture. It’s a theme of a second being made greater than a first.
That may sound a little bit cryptic, so let’s look at some examples of this theme. In the account of Jacob and Esau, we see that while Esau was born first, and therefore would deserve the greater inheritance always given to the firstborn, Jacob was actually the one given that inheritance (Genesis 25:24-26, 27:22-23). This was in fact a fulfillment of Esau’s own actions however, since he sold that birthright to Jacob for a bowl of stew (Genesis 25:29-34).
We also see this theme when the Israelites were entering the promised land. Similar to Esau, their own actions resulted in their offspring being able to enter the promised land rather than them. For Moses, he broke faith in YHWH (Deuteronomy 32:51-52), and for the rest of the Israelites, they also did not have faith, but theirs was a lack of faith in YHWH’s ability to help them conquer the people that were settled in that land (Numbers 32:9-13).
The last example we’ll look at is Adam and Yeshua. Through his own actions, Adam sold all of man into a slavery to sin (Genesis 3). He was the first man ever created directly from YHWH. The second man ever created directly from YHWH was Yeshua. He was made ruler over all creation (Ephesians 1:20-21), including heaven and earth, and through Him mankind was able to be freed from the slavery to sin. Paul called Him the “last Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45).
In his letter to the churches in Galatia, Paul ties this first/second theme to covenants. His idea here is connecting slavery with following the Law in order to achieve righteousness, which is represented by Hagar and her son Ishmael (Galatians 4:24-25), and freedom with following Yeshua in order to achieve righteousness, which is represented by Sarah and her son Isaac (Galatians 4:26-28). Paul also provides the first hints we see in scripture of two types of Jerusalem, an earthly one and a heavenly one.
We see these two types of Jerusalem also in the book of Revelation. As stated in the most recent study we did on some of the things written in that book, my view is that the woman riding the beast, named “Mystery Babylon,” represents the earthly Jerusalem (Revelation 17:1-6). She is destroyed by the beast, which represents the Roman Empire, and this occurred in 70AD during the siege and destruction of Jerusalem (Revelation 17:16-17). The heavenly Jerusalem is not seen until after Satan being cast into the lake of fire, and it is seen coming down to a new earth from YHWH (Revelation 21:1-2).
Paul connects the earthly Jerusalem, the one at the time of his writing, with slavery because that continued to be the capital city of those who continued to follow the Law even after Yeshua’s death, and the location of their temple of course, with them believing that adherence to the Law was the requirement to attain righteousness. Her “children” were all the non-believing Jews who rejected Yeshua, and as Paul said, they were persecuting the believers just as Esau had persecuted Jacob (Galatians 4:29). The Roman Empire, in general, was very tolerant of different cultures and beliefs. They knew that as they conquered more and more lands, an occupied people that generally maintained their status quo were a lot more compliant than people that were ruthlessly oppressed. At the beginning, at least, of the birth of Yeshua’s ekklesia, the persecution of believers was largely instigated by non-believing Jews.
The destruction of the earthly Jerusalem and its temple was not just a judgment on these non-believing Jews as a result of their rejection of Yeshua. Although Paul might not have known it at the time since it was a future event, it was also a fulfillment of Sarah’s reaction to Hagar, which Paul quotes (Galatians 4:30, Genesis 21:10). Once Isaac was born, Sarah had Hagar and Ishmael expelled from the household and into the wilderness. Similarly, over the course of the first Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire, many non-believing Jews were expelled from their towns and cities, with the culmination of that expulsion being the destruction of Jerusalem. While a horrifying number of them were killed in various horrendous ways during the siege and fall, the ones who escaped fled into the wilderness in an attempt to survive.
The close of this chapter is Paul summarizing his comparison to Hagar and Sarah with a statement that believers are children of the free woman, Sarah, vice the slave woman, Hagar (Galatians 4:31). However, there is something we didn’t quite touch on yet that is interesting. During Paul’s comparison, he quotes a certain verse in Isaiah talking about a barren woman who bears no children (Galatians 4:27, Isaiah 54:1).
The fact that Paul connects this verse to Sarah, and by extension to all believers, tells us that we can read that whole chapter of Isaiah from that perspective. When we do that, we see statements like “your husband is your Maker,” “the Holy One is your Redeemer,” (Isaiah 54:5) and “this is like the days of Noah,” (Isaiah 54:9) which are clearly connected to things like Yeshua’s ekklesia being the bride of Christ, Him being our Savior, and references to the days of Noah in certain prophecies of the New Testament. This is a great chapter to read in order to remind us of promises we have from YHWH as believers in Yeshua.
Next week, we’ll cover the middle part of chapter four briefly and move into the next chapter of Galatians. Until then, we hope you have a wonderful week! Shabbat shalom and YHWH Bless you!
-Rob and Sara Gene
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