Biblion Bible Commentary
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Abraham Had Two Sons
Galatians 4:21-23
21 Tell me, you that desire to be under the law, don’t you listen to the law? · WEB
Those who want to be under the law are invited to listen to it, and the story chosen is the one their own argument depends on.
Tell me, you that desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? The question turns their appetite against their attention. They want the law's authority; Paul proposes that they read it.
The phrase desire to be under the law says something about their motive. Nobody was forcing them; the letter describes a wish rather than a compulsion — they desire bondage all over again Galatians 4:9 and desire to be justified by law Galatians 5:4. A system of requirements was attractive.
Verse 22 states the facts of the case and nothing more: Abraham had two sons, one by the servant, and one by the free woman. The names are held back until the next paragraph. What is put first is the bare structure — one father, two mothers, two statuses.
Verse 23 supplies the difference that matters, and it is not the mothers' characters or the sons' merits: the son by the servant was born according to the flesh, but the son by the free woman was born through promise.
Those two terms have been running through the letter since chapter 3. Flesh is what the Galatians were being urged toward Galatians 3:3; promise is what was given to Abraham four hundred thirty years before Sinai Galatians 3:18. Here they appear as two ways of having a son.
And the point of choosing this story is that it is Abraham's. The people urging circumcision were appealing to him; Paul opens the household and shows two lines coming out of it.
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