If you’ve studied the principles of Bible interpretation, you know “allegory” is a bad word. Allegory is a way of reading a text that takes the details and makes them say something other than what they appear to mean. Because the Bible is God’s Word and because the Bible tells of people, places, and events from human history, we cannot read its historical narratives allegorically. Seen in that light, “allegory” is a bad word.
Or is it?
Throughout his letter to the Galatians, the apostle Paul reviews Genesis’s account of Abraham’s life. At one point, Paul looks at how Abraham came to have two children (Ishmael and Isaac) from two different women (Hagar and Sarah). In his exposition, the apostle says something startling:
Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. (Gal. 4:24–26)
It appears Paul has done what our teachers told us not to do. He seems to have taken a historical account from the Old Testament, made it say what it didn’t say, and labeled his reading “allegory.”
Let’s take a closer look at what Paul is doing.
Galatians 4 in Context
In Galatians 4:21–23, Paul summarizes the historical details of Genesis 16–21. But beginning in verse 24, he goes beyond the text of Genesis. He relates Hagar to the Mosaic (Sinaitic) covenant in verse 25, and he relates Sarah to the Abrahamic covenant in verse 26.
Paul has already argued in Galatians 3:6–4:7 that God intended from the beginning for the Abrahamic covenant to find its fulfillment in Jesus Christ. This prepares us for what Paul does next. In verse 27, Paul quotes Isaiah 54:1.
Why does Paul use this reference? A few chapters earlier in Isaiah (51:2), Sarah gets her only mention by name in the book. There she’s said to have given birth to Zion. In the next verse, God promises to make the “wilderness” of Zion “like Eden, her desert like the garden of the LORD” (v. 3). That work of God brings “joy” to Zion (v. 3), and it’s the command “rejoice” that begins Paul’s quotation of Isaiah 54:1 in Galatians 4:27 (“Rejoice . . .”).
How will this joy-producing work of God come about? Through his new exodus through the suffering Servant (see Isa. 52:1–53:12).
This reality explains what Paul says next. Believers, “like Isaac,” are “children of promise” and—also like Isaac—are “born according to the Spirit” (Gal. 4:28, 29). Paul’s opponents, who rely on the Mosaic law for justifying righteousness before God, are—like Ishmael—“born according to the flesh,” enslaved, and standing to inherit nothing (vv. 29, 30). As such, they have no proper place in God’s people (v. 30).
What has Paul done? He has followed a thread from Genesis through Isaiah to Christ. He has traced how God’s promises to Abraham were confirmed and expanded through the prophet Isaiah and were ultimately realized and fulfilled in Christ’s person and work. Paul has told the whole Bible’s story of redemption in just 11 verses.
God’s promises to Abraham were confirmed and expanded through the prophet Isaiah and were ultimately realized and fulfilled in Christ’s person and work.
The technical word used to describe what Paul has done is “typology.” Typology sees a prophetic correspondence between one person, place, or event and another. It does so in a way that fully respects the historical integrity of each. Critically, this correspondence involves heightening—the latter person, place, or event is the fulfillment and intended completion of the former person, place, or event. God had designed the Abrahamic covenant to find its fulfillment in Christ, and the rest of the Old Testament charts the path that God took to reach that goal—namely, Jesus Christ.
What ‘Allegory’ Really Means
What are we to make of the word translated “allegorically” in Galatians 4:24?
First, “allegorically” may not be the best translation. As Douglas Moo has argued, the word can be rendered—and here should be rendered—“interpreted figuratively.”
Typology sees a prophetic correspondence between one person, place, or event and another. It does so in a way that fully respects the historical integrity of each.
Second, Paul is signaling by this word that he’s doing something different from what he’d done earlier in Galatians 3:15–4:7. There, he made arguments from particular texts about the specific covenants that God had made across redemptive history. Here, Paul summarizes those arguments in brief and panoramic form. He uses the word translated “interpret figuratively” to describe his typological interpretation of Hagar and Sarah in Galatians 4.
Paul’s reading of Sarah and Hagar isn’t an outlier in the New Testament. Nor is it a cause of embarrassment, something we should try to explain away. It’s the capstone of all Paul has been doing in this letter. It shows us what Paul always shows us—that the Old Testament, in part and in whole, is a book that God authored for one purpose: to point sinners to the person and work of Jesus Christ, the Savior. And that’s a good word indeed.
The Gospel Coalition