Biblion Bible Commentary
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Children of the Free Woman
Galatians 4:27-31
27 For it is written, “Rejoice, you barren who don’t bear. Break out and shout, you who don’t travail. For the desolate women have more children than her who has a husband.” · WEB
A prophet's song to a barren woman is applied to the free Jerusalem, and the chapter ends with a command from Sarah's own mouth.
The quotation in verse 27 is a summons to celebrate: rejoice, you barren who do not bear — because the desolate women have more children than her who has a husband Isaiah 54:1.
It fits at the point of the barrenness. Sarah was childless while Hagar bore a son; the free line began in apparent failure. And the promise reverses the arithmetic — the one with nothing ends with more.
Verse 28 applies it: now we, brothers, as Isaac was, are children of promise. Not children who received a promise, but children constituted by one.
Then verse 29 acknowledges the cost. He who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now. Paul takes the hostility as a standing feature of the arrangement, and the last three words bring it into the letter's present tense. The pressure on the Galatians is not an anomaly.
Verse 30 delivers the command, and its source is the point: what does the Scripture say? — and the words quoted are Sarah's own Genesis 21:10. Throw out the servant and her son, for the son of the servant will not inherit with the son of the free woman.
The verb is harsh, and what is to be expelled is the arrangement, not a class of people; the letter's demand throughout is that the requirement be refused. Verse 31 states the conclusion the whole chapter has been building: we are not children of a servant, but of the free woman. And free is the word the next chapter opens on.
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