Galatians 4:22-25

Living Bible

²² For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one from his slave-wife and one from his freeborn wife. ²³ There was nothing unusual about the birth of the slave-wife’s baby. But the baby of the freeborn wife was born only after God had especially promised he would come.

^24-25 Now this true story is an illustration of God’s two ways of helping people. One way was by giving them his laws to obey. He did this on Mount Sinai, when he gave the Ten Commandments to Moses. Mount Sinai, by the way, is called “Mount Hagar” by the Arabs—and in my illustration, Abraham’s slave-wife Hagar represents Jerusalem, the mother-city of the Jews, the center of that system of trying to please God by trying to obey the Commandments; and the Jews, who try to follow that system, are her slave children.