Paul has argued from the Galatians' experience, from Abraham, from the law's own curse, and from the paidagōgos. Now he does something different and, by his own admission, unusual: he reads the story of Abraham's two wives as an allegory — and the assignment of the roles is the most provocative thing in the letter.
What happens
"It is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the freeborn woman. The son of the slave woman was born naturally, the son of the freeborn through a promise. Now this is an allegory. These women represent two covenants. One was from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; this is Hagar… But the Jerusalem above is freeborn, and she is our mother. For it is written: 'Rejoice, you barren one who bore no children; break forth and shout, you who were not in labor; for more numerous are the children of the deserted one than of her who has a husband.' Therefore, brothers and sisters, we are children not of the slave woman but of the freeborn woman. For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery."
What to notice
Hatina estin allēgoroumena — "which things are being allegorized." Paul rarely names his own method, and here he does. He is not claiming Hagar was secretly Sinai; he is announcing that he will read the story figurally, a recognized technique — Philo of Alexandria did it constantly with the same characters, making Hagar stand for elementary education and Sarah for wisdom. And then the assignment, which is genuinely shocking and which familiarity has dulled: Hagar, the Egyptian slave, is Mount Sinai — and systoichei de tē nyn Ierousalēm, "she corresponds to the present Jerusalem."Paul has put the Torah-observant Jerusalem church on the slave side of the ledger and the Gentile congregations on Sarah's. The scripture he quotes is Isaiah 54:1, chosen with care: in Isaiah it is addressed to Zion in exile, a city stripped of its people and told it will have more children than before. Paul takes the promise made to a devastated Jerusalem and hands it to Gentile congregations in Asia Minor. Then Galatians 5:1, the hinge of the letter and one of the most compressed sentences Paul wrote: tē eleutheria hēmas Christos ēleutherōsen, "for freedom Christ freed us" — noun and verb the same root, and the dative readable as purpose, instrument, or result. English cannot get all three, and Paul was probably not choosing. And the last image is a deliberate inversion: mē palin zygō douleias enechesthe, "do not be held again in a yoke of slavery." The yoke was a positive figure in Jewish teaching — one spoke of taking on the yoke of the reign of heaven — and Paul attaches the honorable image to slavery.
Psalm 113 is the first of the six Hallel psalms sung at Passover. And it was chosen for today because of a verse the selection stops just before.
The selected verses
Psalm 113:1–2."Praise, you servants of Yahweh, praise the name of Yahweh. Blessed be the name of Yahweh both now and forever." Psalm 113:3–4."From the rising to the setting of the sun is the name of Yahweh to be praised. High above all nations is Yahweh; above the heavens is his glory." Psalm 113:5, 6–7."Who is like Yahweh, our Theos, who looks upon the heavens and the earth below? He raises up the lowly from the dust; from the dunghill he lifts up the poor."
What to notice
The psalm's structure is a single long fall. Psalm 113:4–5 puts Yahweh above the nations and above the heavens, and asks mi ka-Yahweh Eloheinu ha-magbihi la-shavet, "who is like Yahweh our Theos, the one enthroned on high" — and then the sentence keeps going downward: ha-mashpili lir'ot, "who stoops to look."The height is established only in order to describe the stooping.Psalm 113:7 is a quotation of Hannah: meqimi me-afar dal, me-ashpot yarim evyon, "raising the poor from the dust, lifting the needy from the ash-heap" — almost word for word 1 Samuel 2:8, from the song of a woman who had been barren. And ashpot is the rubbish tip outside the city where refuse was burned, the same word for the place Job sat down in Job 2:8. And then the verse the lectionary did not include but unmistakably chose the psalm for: Psalm 113:9 — moshivi aqeret ha-bayit em ha-banim semechah, "he seats the barren woman of the house as the joyful mother of children."That is Isaiah 54:1 in a single line, and Isaiah 54:1 is what Paul quotes this morning. The psalm ends where the epistle's proof-text begins.
Some in the crowd asked for a sign from heaven back at Luke 11:16, and Jesus dealt with the Beelzebul charge first. Now he comes back to the request, and the answer is a refusal with two witnesses attached.
What happens
"This generation is an evil generation; it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it, except the sign of Jonah. Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. At the judgment the queen of the south will rise with the men of this generation and she will condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and there is something greater than Solomon here. At the judgment the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation and condemn it, because at the preaching of Jonah they repented, and there is something greater than Jonah here."
What to notice
Luke's "sign of Jonah" is not Matthew's.Matthew 12:40 spells it out — as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth — a resurrection sign. Luke has no fish. He says kathōs egeneto Iōnas tois Nineuitais sēmeion, "as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites." And what Jonah was to Nineveh was a foreign preacher who walked into the city and said forty days. On Luke's reading the sign is the preacher himself, which is why no further sign will be given: they are looking at it. The two witnesses are both Gentiles and the pairing is exact — a woman and a city, a queen and a mob, wisdom and repentance. The queen of the south is Sheba, who in 1 Kings 10 travels an immense distance with camels and spices because she has heard about Solomon: ek tōn peratōn tēs gēs, from the ends of the earth. The Ninevites are the population of the Assyrian capital, the empire that destroyed the northern kingdom, and in the book of Jonah they turn around after a five-word sermon delivered by a prophet who did not want to be there and was hoping it would fail. The verb for what the witnesses do is legal: anastēsetai… kai katakrinei autous, "she will rise up and condemn them" — in a court of the period, witnesses stood to testify. And then the phrase said twice, which is grammatically odd: pleion Solomōnos hōde, pleion Iōna hōde — "something more than Solomon is here."Pleion is neuter. Not someone greater but something greater; Greek could easily have said meizōn, a greater man. The neuter makes the claim about the situation rather than about the speaker.
How They Fit Together
The wrong person in the decisive position — three times
A foreign queen and a foreign city, called to testify against the insiders
Every reading today puts the wrong person in the decisive position, and does it on purpose.
Paul's allegory is the most aggressive move in the letter, and it is worth feeling how aggressive before admiring it. Hagar is the Egyptian slave — the woman Sarah gave to Abraham and then drove out, twice, with a child. Ishmael is the son produced kata sarka, according to the flesh, meaning by the ordinary and entirely sensible expedient of using a slave when the wife is barren. That is the arrangement Paul assigns to Sinai, and to the Jerusalem of his own day, and the congregations he assigns to Sarah are Gentilechurches in central Anatolia who have never kept a Sabbath. Paul has inverted the obvious allegory, and he knows it, which is why he flags the method out loud.
But notice what the inversion actually turns on, because it is not ethnicity. It is how the child came. Ishmael was born by a mechanism that worked; Isaac was born by a promise to two people who had aged out of the possibility. The dividing line is between what human arrangement can produce and what only a promise can — which is the whole letter in one family quarrel.
Then Isaiah 54:1, and the choice of text is a small masterpiece. In Isaiah it is spoken to a ruined Jerusalem — a city emptied by deportation, addressed as a woman with no children and no husband, and told to start shouting because her tents will not be big enough. The promise was always to the one who had nothing to show. So when Paul hands it to the Galatians, he is not stealing it; he is reading it in the direction it already ran.
The psalm sits underneath all of this with its own long descent. Yahweh is placed above the nations and above the heavens for exactly one purpose: so that the stooping has somewhere to come from.Who is like Yahweh, enthroned on high — who bends down to look? And where he looks is the ashpot, the burning rubbish heap outside the town, which is where Job sat and where Hannah's song had already located the people about to be lifted. And the psalm ends on the barren woman made a mother, which is why it is here at all.
And then Luke, where the same reversal is put in a courtroom. A sign is demanded and refused, and instead two witnesses are named — neither of them from the covenant people. The queen of the south travelled the length of the known world on a rumour about a king's wisdom. The men of Nineveh, capital of the empire that had destroyed Israel, turned around at a five-word sermon from a prophet who had run in the opposite direction and then sulked when it worked. Neither had scripture, neither had a temple, neither had a claim. Both responded, and both are called to stand and testify.
Pleion hōde — something greater is here. It is said twice, neuter both times, and the neuter is the sting: the claim is not that the speaker outranks Solomon but that the situation exceeds anything Sheba crossed a desert for. She came from the ends of the earth for less. Nineveh turned around for less. And the people standing in front of it are asking for a sign.
Which is, exactly, the Galatian problem in another key. Something greater is here, and they would like a yoke.Stēkete oun — stand, then — and the verb is a military one for holding a position.
A Question to Sit With
The queen of the south crossed the known world because she had heard a rumour about somebody's wisdom, and the men of Nineveh turned their whole city around at one sentence from a prophet who did not even want them saved. Neither had any of the advantages. I have the texts, the tradition, the language, and a great deal of information — and I notice how often I want one more piece of evidence before I move. If they are going to stand up as witnesses, what would they say about how much I was given and what I did about it?