1. Martyn's Thesis

Though not dealing directly with the Hagar–Sarah allegory, Martyn cleared the way for his subsequent interpretation of this passage in an important article in which he – convincingly to my mind – established the existence of a Law-observant Christian mission to Gentiles alongside and very much in rivalry with the Law-free mission to Gentiles pursued by Paul and his immediate co-workers.Footnote ¹² In a further article published in the same year,Footnote ¹³ Martyn, initiating an approach that was to become characteristic of his interpretation of Paul, argued that Galatians was no exception to the thoroughly apocalyptic cast of Pauline thought. Central to the case was the existence in the letter of sets of radical antinomies characteristic of apocalyptic – a crucial instance being provided by the pairs of opposites set out in Paul's allegorical interpretation of Abraham's two sons in 4.21–5.1.Footnote ¹⁴ In this article, without entering further into the matter, Martyn noted in regard to the polemic contained in the set of antinomies: ‘It is crucial to see that the polemic is not focused on Judaism, but rather on pairs of opposites.’Footnote ¹⁵

In his 1990 contribution to the Paul Meyer Festschrift Martyn expounded in detail the case for an intra-Christian interpretation of Gal 4.21–5.1. He concedes that ‘the dominant interpretation’, while accentuating the antinomies involved in the passage – in particular identifying the slavery in question with Judaism and the freedom with Christianity – nonetheless ‘stands on solid ground’. On one side of the sharp polarity some of Judaism's major symbols (Sinai, the covenant of Sinai, Jerusalem) are present; the mention of persecution in v. 29 recalls the allusion to Jewish persecution of the churches in Judea in 1 Thess 2.14–16; the issue of ‘inheritance’ (cf. v. 30c) was a major area of contention between mainstream Judaism and nascent Christianity (cf. Mark 12.1–12).Footnote ¹⁶

Introducing his alternative view of the Hagar–Sarah allegory, Martyn draws attention to the need to explain the passage within its wider context.Footnote ¹⁷ Why does Paul, following a sustained personal appeal in 4.12–20, revert to this scriptural argument, which in many ways would seem to be better placed in immediate association with the similar scriptural considerations in chapter 3? In this connection we should note, first, that Martyn wholeheartedly embraces the thesis of C. K. Barrett that Paul concerns himself with the Abraham texts in Galatians because the Teachers had invoked them as powerful arguments for the demands they were making.Footnote ¹⁸ It is not surprising, then, that he feels obliged to counter every aspect of the use the Teachers have made of these texts, including those dealing with the rivalry of Hagar and Sarah in Genesis 16 and 21. Secondly, Martyn maintains that the allegory in 4.21–5.1 flows naturally out of the passage immediately preceding, 4.11–20. There Paul highlights his disappointment with the Galatians in the light of the personal relationship forged with them through the circumstances of his initial coming among them. In particular, for Martyn, the exclamation, ‘My little children, for whom I am again in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed in you’ (v. 19), leads very naturally into the ‘giving birth/begetting’ (γεννᾶν) language used with reference to the founding of communities in the Hagar–Sarah allegory.Footnote ¹⁹

Paul's sustained use of the verb γεννᾶν in the allegory itself (v. 23; v. 24; v. 29) is in fact a major plank, possibly the major plank, upon which the overall thesis stands. Martyn points out that in dealing with the Genesis traditions Paul is necessarily selective and indeed creative, suppressing several motifs and introducing others.Footnote ²⁰ In the Abraham stories of Genesis the births of Ishmael and Isaac are consistently referred to in the LXX translation by the verb τίκτειν, the verb γεννᾶν being conspicuously absent.Footnote ²¹ Yet Paul uses or implies γεννᾶν throughout Gal 4.21–5.1 – three times explicitly, five times if implicit usage in v. 23 and v. 29 is included. For Martyn this represents a deliberate choice on Paul's part against the LXX usage, which normally reserves γεννᾶν for male begetting and τίκτειν for female giving birth. Paul does in fact preserve τίκτειν when he quotes Isa 54.1 in Gal 4.27. Martyn notes that, had he employed τίκτειν as the birthing verb in his references to the narratives of Genesis 16 and 21, it would have provided him with a useful argument for connecting the two texts on a gezerah shawah basis.Footnote ²² The fact that he resiles from this possibility of connection further shows the intentionality of his choice of γεννᾶν – a choice which Martyn sees to be motivated by Paul's association of this verb with mission and the founding of churches. Paul employs γεννᾶν when speaking of the Christian birth of Onesimus through his ministry (Phlm 10) and also in regard to his founding of the church in Corinth (1 Cor 4.15). For Martyn, then, the appearance of this verb in Gal 4.21–5.1 has a similar reference to the current ‘birthing’ of communities of believers, whether this be ‘into slavery’ on the part of the rival, Law-observant mission (v. 24c) or, by implication, into freedom on the part of his own missionary labours (cf. v. 23b; v. 26; v. 31). The movement from the historical paraphrase of the Genesis narrative in vv. 22–3 to the present tense (γεννῶσα) of the allegorical interpretation in vv. 24–8 shows that two concurrent and rival missions are in view, rather than the kind of sequential presentation – from the Sinai dispensation to that of faith (cf. Gal 3.23–25) – as presupposed in the traditional interpretation.Footnote ²³

In that traditional interpretation the contrasting phrases modifying γεννᾶν in Paul's allegory – ‘begotten according to the flesh’ // ‘begotten via the promise’ (v. 23); ‘bearing children into slavery’ (v. 24); ‘a child begotten according to the flesh’ // ‘the child begotten according to the Spirit’ (v. 29) – are understood adjectivally, that is, as referring to two classes of persons: those born into slavery and those born into freedom. Martyn on the contrary insists that the prepositional phrases attached to γεννᾶν are to be understood adverbially, that is, as referring to two different processes or modes of giving birth.Footnote ²⁴ Paul is speaking of two different ways in which churches are being born at the present time and thus of two different missions.Footnote ²⁵ The reference to ‘persecution’ in v. 29 derived from the tradition about Ishmael's ‘playing’ with Isaac in Gen 21.8–14 refers, then, not to Jewish persecution of nascent Christian churches but to the ‘odious missioning work of the Teachers’.Footnote ²⁶ Finally, Paul's reference to the Hagar covenant as corresponding to ‘the present Jerusalem who is in slavery together with her children’ (v. 25b) is not a simple geographical reference to the city. It is more likely to be Paul's way of referring to the Jerusalem church in so far as it is sponsoring the Law-observant mission.Footnote ²⁷

In view of the fact that Genesis speaks of only one covenant in the Abraham stories, the one defined precisely in terms of commitment to circumcision (Genesis 17), Martyn addresses Paul's anomalous allegorical interpretation of the two women as ‘two covenants’ (v. 24b).Footnote ²⁸ Earlier in Galatians (3.15, 17) there was mention of a single διαθήκη and that in connection with Abraham, not Sinai. Here Paul speaks of two ‘covenants’ (διαθῆκαι), associating the Hagar covenant with Sinai and slavery (v. 24c–d). For Martyn the two covenants do not represent Judaism and Christianity respectively but refer to the two rival missions to the Gentiles: the Law-observant and the Law-free. Paul is driven to ‘the holy madness’ of affirming two covenants ‘in order to establish the integrity of God's one church’.Footnote ²⁹ Those who carry out the Law-observant mission to Gentiles are furthering the enslaving covenant of Hagar and persecuting the Spirit-born churches of God. The Galatians, heeding Scripture's command (Gen 21.10, cited in 4.30), are to cleanse their congregations by driving out the intrusive Teachers and remaining firm in their true identity as children of the Law-free mission. In conclusion, Martyn concedes that ‘Judaism stands somewhere in the background’. However, in this paragraph, Paul is ‘far from launching a comprehensive attack against Judaism’.Footnote ³⁰

2. Critique of Martyn's Interpretation

It is in fact in connection with ‘covenant’ that a critical review of Martyn's interpretation should begin. As is regularly pointed out, ‘covenant’ (διαθήκη) is a word of relatively infrequent occurrence in Paul. This does not mean, however, that it plays an insignificant role in his theology. As W. S. Campbell has pointed out, ‘what is generally presumed need not always be explicitly noted’.Footnote ³¹ When in Gal 3.15, 17 Paul presents the promises God made to Abraham (Gen 13.15; 17.8; cf. 24.7) as a testamentary διαθήκη that cannot be set aside or have further conditions or clauses written in to it, he explicitly states that he is appealing here to the image of a human will (3.15). But the image, while it illustrates an aspect of the divine promise, does not engulf it completely: the meaning of a divine disposition in the covenantal sense remains.Footnote ³² Paul does not at this point go on to describe the intrusive Sinai dispensation as a διαθήκη. That would confuse the image.Footnote ³³ He simply speaks of ‘the Law’ (vv. 17–24). The reference of αἱ διαθῆκαι included in the listing of the privileges of Israel in Rom 9.4 is very open: in mind could be the reiterated patriarchal promises; the Sinai covenant and its several renewals; or the entire range of covenants mentioned in the Scriptures of Israel.Footnote ³⁴ Likewise, the instance of διαθήκη in a phrase derived from Isa 59.21 in the composite quotation in Rom 11.26–7 simply specifies that the operation of God's abiding fidelity to Israel will consist in the removal of human sin exactly as in the case of those who have already come to faith (Rom 3.21–6).Footnote ³⁵

Setting aside the ‘covenant’ reference in Gal 4.24, this leaves the reference to ‘new covenant’ in a eucharistic context in 1 Cor 11.25 (‘new’ implying the existence of and distinction from an ‘old covenant’), together with the explicit references to a ‘new covenant’ in 2 Cor 3.6 and to the ‘reading’ of the ‘old covenant’ a few lines later in 3.14. Those who, following the lead of Martyn, adopt the new consensus reading of the covenants in Gal 4.24 usually contest the relevance to the Galatians issue of these references in 2 Corinthians.Footnote ³⁶ The sequential (‘new’/‘old’) sense of the ‘covenant’ references in 1 Cor 11.25 and especially those in 2 Cor 3.6–18 is at odds with the present tense of the assertion in v. 24 (‘These are two covenants’). In contrast with that assertion of the contemporaneous existence of the covenants, what is being argued, especially in the 2 Corinthians midrash, is a sequence of ‘old’ and ‘new’ – as is also the case in Galatians 3.Footnote ³⁷

In fact, however, though the reference to Moses' behaviour in 2 Cor 3.13 is historical and couched in the past (ἐτίθει),Footnote ³⁸ Paul understands his behaviour with the veil to be continued (cf. ‘until this day’ (vv. 14, 15)) in the reading out of the ‘old covenant’ (by his representatives) in the present. In other words, while in Paul's view ‘the old covenant’ (v. 14), with its verdict of condemnation (v. 9), should have yielded to the proclamation of the new, this has not in fact happened universally; it only occurs when in faith one ‘turns to the Lord’ and contemplates his glory with unveiled face (3.17–18). Because of the continuing unbelief of the bulk of Israel ‘the same veil lies over their hearts’ (v. 15). Wrongly, in Paul's view, the old covenant continues to be proclaimed – not only by Jews who have not come to faith in Christ but also by Christian Jews who think that it can and should co-exist with faith and, in the shape of the Mosaic Law, regulate the lives of believers, Jewish and Gentile.Footnote ³⁹

It is missionaries of the latter group who are disturbing the freedom of Paul's Gentile converts in Galatia, just as the activities of rival Christian missionaries of a similar persuasion constitute the threat concerning which he warns the Philippian church in sharp tones in Phil 3.2–19. It is not easy to discern in 2 Corinthians the identity of those threatening the allegiance to Paul of his converts in Corinth. However, they are certainly Jewish Christians, who appear to derive authority from Jerusalem.Footnote ⁴⁰ Paul's claim that they are proclaiming ‘another Gospel’ (2 Cor 11.4) recalls Gal 1.6–9. The issue behind the extended midrash on Moses that Paul deploys in 2 Cor 3.7–4.6 is not the imposition of circumcision or ‘works of the Law’ but rather the legitimacy of his claim to independent apostolic authority. Paul sets out the midrash to asssert that he and his co-workers enjoy a self-legitimating authority (‘glory’) stemming from the very covenant that they are proclaiming, a covenant possessing a glory far surpassing and indeed overtaking the (fading) glory that attended the covenant promulgated by Moses. The issue is different but the argument involves the same relegation of the Mosaic covenant to inferior and temporary status as in the allegory elaborated in Gal 4.21–5.1.Footnote ⁴¹

In the light, then, of these references to ‘covenant’ in other Pauline contexts, it seems highly contrived to interpret the ‘two covenants’ of Gal 4.24 as pointing to two Christian missions, rather than as designating the covenants (‘old’ and ‘new’, to use the language of 2 Corinthians 3 and 1 Cor 11.25) that each of those missions, respectively, rests upon and proclaims.Footnote ⁴² Moreover, early Christian usage of διαθήκη more generally would appear to render the restriction of the διαθήκη ‘from Mount Sinai’ (Gal 4.24c) to a particular faction within Jewish Christianity (the Law-observant Gentile mission) very singular.Footnote ⁴³ Far more likely is a reference simply to the Sinai covenant, the applicability of which to Gentile converts that faction was proclaiming.

Indeed, if the reference in 4.24–6 is primarily to the two contrasting missions, one wonders why Paul would have introduced the term διαθήκη at all – especially as it had dangerous overtones for his case in view of its explicit and reiterated association with the circumcision command in God's dealings with Abraham (Gen 17.10–14, 23–6). Avoiding the necessity to make the tortuous association of Hagar with Sinai and then with Jerusalem, Paul could simply have associated the Law-observant mission with Hagar, on the basis that both involved slavery (as already established for those under the Law earlier in the letter (4.1–3, 7, 8–11)), and the Law-free mission with the free-woman Sarah. He could then have proceeded to make his point about who was and who was not destined to inherit the promised salvation on the scriptural basis provided by Gen 21.10, cited in in vv. 30–1.

3. A Survey of Gal 4.21–5.1

Let us then review the text as a whole, understanding the διαθῆκαι in v. 24 to refer to ‘covenants’, rather than to missions, in the sense explained. Paul begins by insisting that the Galatians who ‘want’ to be ‘under the Law’ are not really ‘listening [= “obeying”] the Law’. He is here exploiting an ambiguous understanding of νόμος to which he has not infrequent recourse in his letters.Footnote ⁴⁴ νόμος can refer to Scripture in a holistic sense, or more particularly to the Pentateuch (in distinction from ‘the prophets’ (cf. Rom 3.23; Romans 4)); alternatively, νόμος can refer to the legal code, with its multiple requirements and prohibitions promulgated by Moses on Sinai. In this latter sense νόμος is a ‘law of works’ (Rom 3.23); to observe it in this sense is to adopt a way of life ἐξ ἔργων νόμου (Gal 2.16 (three times); 3.2, 5, 10; Rom 3.20, 28; or, in shorthand, ἐξ ἔργων (Rom 4.2, 6; 9.10, 32; 11.6)). When one ‘listens’ (Gal 4.21) to the νόμος as Scripture, however, there is a double message: on the one hand, one hears a divine verdict of total failure in regard to human attempts to observe the law as a ‘law of works’ (Gal 3.22a [cf. Rom 11.32a]; Rom 3.9-19); on the other hand and precisely in the face of that failure, one hears the expression of a divine intent to justify and save human beings on a wholly other principle: that of grace and faith (Gal 3.22b (cf. Rom 11.32b); Rom 3.21–6; 4.1–25; 9.30–3; 10.5–13).Footnote ⁴⁵

It is in the light of this latter understanding that Paul requires his Galatian audience to ‘hear’ what the νόμος has to say (v. 21). Rather than citing any particular text, he summarises (vv. 22–3) the differing circumstances whereby Abraham acquired two sons (Ishmael and Isaac) as told in Genesis 16–21. He avoids direct quotation doubtless because of the reiterated mention of circumcision with reference to ‘covenant’ commitment in Genesis 17. From the start he sets up the antithetic parallelism that will run throughout the passage: one son is born from the slave-girl (Hagar) ‘according to the flesh’ (κατὰ σάρκα), and one from the free-woman (Sarah) ‘through a promise’ (δι᾽ ἐπαγγελίας) (v. 23).Footnote ⁴⁶ Of course, in the actual story Sarah's son Isaac is born, though belatedly and in her old age, ‘according to the flesh’ in a literal sense: that is, by the natural process of birth, as is also the case with Hagar's son Ishmael. Paul sidesteps this difficulty by focusing upon the fact that, in fulfilment of a divine promise (Gen 18.10–14), Isaac was born in the face of ‘impossibility’ on the human side (the advanced age of Abraham; the barrenness of Sarah: cf. Rom 4.17b–21) by means of the power of God operative through the Spirit (cf. κατὰ πνεῦμα in v. 29).

When Paul goes on (v. 24a) to say that ‘these things are spoken allegorically’,Footnote ⁴⁷ he is indicating that a deeper meaning is expressed in the differing processes of giving birth and in the differing results (slavery or freedom) in each case. In the light of the new creation that has already dawned through God's action in Christ, the deeper meaning expressed in these processes of giving birth is their reference to ‘two covenants’ (v. 24b). The first covenant Paul locates (v. 24c) as proceeding from Mount Sinai and giving birth to slavery. Through an ingenious – and to us quite arbitrary – wordplay linking ‘Hagar’ with Arabia and so with Sinai, a mountain in Arabia (v. 25a), he identifies this covenant with Hagar (v. 24d),Footnote ⁴⁸ and so with Hagar's giving birth which, as in the Genesis story, is a giving birth that results in progeny born into slavery.

This covenant, identified with Hagar, ‘corresponds’ (συστοιχεῖ) to ‘the present Jerusalem’ (v. 25b). Paul justifies (cf. γάρ) this ‘correspondence’ with the added remark (v. 25c) that ‘she’ (= Jerusalem) is in slavery along with her children. The basis for this latter observation is presumably that Jerusalem is the centre from which is promoted observance of the Law, an observance already identified with slavery (4.1–6, 9). In strict logic Paul's reasoning would incur the charge of resting upon an ‘undistributed’ middle term: Hagar is a woman giving birth unto slavery; the present Jerusalem is in slavery with her children; therefore Hagar can represent Jerusalem.Footnote ⁴⁹ Paul's swiftly moving argument glides over such difficulties. He has identified the slave-mother Hagar with the Sinai covenant, the centre of whose propagation is and remains the city of Jerusalem.

Martyn, of course, has maintained that ‘the present Jerusalem’ here means Jerusalem in the sense of the centre or community sponsoring the Law-observant Gentile mission from which have come the Teachers disturbing Paul's Galatian churches.Footnote ⁵⁰ In fact, as we have seen, Martyn interprets all mentions of Jerusalem in Galatians as referring to the community of believers there rather than to the city in a purely geographical sense. There is, however, no compelling reason – aside from the case he is making – for regarding the three references to Jerusalem in Galatians prior to the present passage (1.17, 18; 2.1) in anything other than a geographical sense, even if in each case Paul was visiting the community of believers in the city. Rather than limiting the reference to the group sponsoring the Law-observant Gentile mission, we can far more naturally refer ‘the present Jerusalem’ in 3.25 to the city as such. As the centre of the Jewish people, the vast majority of whom, despite the proclamation of the ‘new covenant’ (2 Cor 3.6), remain firmly attached to the Sinai covenant, Jerusalem can readily be portrayed as a woman giving birth to progeny enslaved under the Mosaic Law (4.25c). In so far as the propagators of the Law-observant Gentile mission are promulgating adherence to that Law they are of course bound up with the wider Jewish ambience and so part of ‘the present Jerusalem’ and her (for Paul) enslaving mothering. But they do not exhaust the range of the reference of that phrase.Footnote ⁵¹

On the opposite side of the antithetic allegory Paul does not mention the free-woman Sarah by name but goes immediately (v. 26) to what she implicitly represents: in contrast to ‘the present Jerusalem who is giving birth for slavery’, ‘the above Jerusalem’ is ‘free’ and it is she ‘who is our mother’. In parallel with the earlier identification of Hagar and the διαθήκη represented by her with the Law-observant Gentile mission, Martyn sees ‘the above Jerusalem’ as designating the Law-free mission promulgated by Paul and his associates. Once again, this identification seems to be too narrow. The epithet ‘above’ more plausibly points to the transcendent origin of the community of the new creation which is being realised in the world through mission of the Son (Gal 4.4–7). The ‘above Jerusalem’ in this sense is not simply equivalent to the church.Footnote ⁵² The ἡμῶν, for instance, in v. 26b indicates believers who are on earth, while the Jerusalem that is their ‘mother’ is a heavenly reality.Footnote ⁵³ The ‘above Jerusalem’, then, is the new covenant that is being promulgated from heaven, the current abode of the risen Lord and the source from which he sends the Spirit.Footnote ⁵⁴ It is the working out of the covenant (διαθήκη) God promised to Abraham (Gal 3.15–18), and is thus continuous and ultimately identical with that covenant.

Though he still has not mentioned Sarah by name, Paul links the covenant she represents with this ‘above Jerusalem’ by adducing a quotation from Isa 54.1 in v. 27. In its original setting the Isaiah passage referred to the post-exilic restoration of the actual city of Jerusalem, presently reduced to barrenness in her state of desolation. The linkage of the Isaianic text with Sarah is forged through this motif of barrenness – more specifically through a state of erstwhile barrenness followed by abundant fertility, a transition notably realised in Sarah's case in fulfilment of the promise of God (Gen 17.15–16, 19; 18.10-14; 21.1–7).Footnote ⁵⁵ With the growth of communities of believers in Christ the heavenly Jerusalem that had been ‘waiting’, bereft of progeny, until the promise should have been fulfilled was now at the ‘fullness of the time’ (Gal 4.4) giving birth to a multitude of ‘children’.

Moving to the final stage of his argument (4.28–5.1),Footnote ⁵⁶ Paul can assure the Galatians that, as sons and daughters of such a mother (Sarah = ‘the above Jerusalem’), they are ‘in the line of Isaac, children of (the) promise’ (v. 28; cf. Rom 9.8). That is, they have been brought into being through the exercise of God's Spirit in fulfilment of a promise (cf. Gal 3.14). As such, they are heirs destined to inherit the blessings promised to Abraham ‘and to his offspring’ (Gal 3.15–16, 25–9).

But, Paul continues (v. 29), an episode recounted in the biblical story points to something occurring in the present (eschatological) time: the son born ‘according to the flesh’ (Ishmael) persecuted (the son born) according to the Spirit (Isaac). In line with later rabbinic traditions, Paul interprets Ishmael's ‘playing’ with the infant Isaac – an activity that incurred Sarah's displeasure (Gen 21.9–10) – as actually involving injury or abuse. He then finds in this a foreshadowing of the ‘persecution’ (διώκειν) that proponents of the Mosaic Law are currently inflicting upon descendants in the line of Isaac, those born, that is, according to the Spirit.

The traditional interpretation of the passage has generally taken this statement to refer to early Jewish persecution of the communities of believers (cf. 1 Thess 2.14–16b). The new consensus has to interpret such persecution as referring to the harassment and pressure to adopt the Law currently being inflicted upon the Galatian Gentile believers by the intruding Teachers.Footnote ⁵⁷ It is not at all certain, however, that the activity indicated by the strong term διώκειν (regularly used by Paul of his own pre-conversion career as persecutor (1 Cor 15.9; Gal 1.13, 23; Phil 3.6)) could really amount to nothing more harmful than such pressure.Footnote ⁵⁸

In the light of this persecuting behaviour foreshadowed in the Ishmael–Isaac story, Paul indicates that Scripture has a further instruction (v. 30; cf. v. 21). He quotes (LXX) Gen 21.10 in such a way that the demand originally voiced by Sarah is taken over by the divine voice spoken in ‘Scripture’ (γραφή): ‘Drive out the slave and her child; for the child of the slave will not share the inheritance with the child of the free-woman’ (v. 30). The new consensus places the emphasis here upon the ‘drive out’ command, in the specific sense of the Galatians being instructed to expel the intrusive Teachers from their congregations.Footnote ⁵⁹ Paul's intensification of the negative before ‘inherit’ (adding μή to the original οὐ) suggests, however, that the emphasis falls upon the motif of (non-)inheritance.Footnote ⁶⁰ The slave son (Ishmael) and the adherents of the Sinai covenant that he represents are not to have a share in the inheritance (of the blessings promised to Abraham (Gal 3.8–9, 16–18, 22, 27–9; 4.7). Only the free son (Isaac) and those born as children in his line of freedom (Gal 4.28) are to inherit; the slave will not.

Hence, Paul's conclusion (4.31–5.1).Footnote ⁶¹ As children, not of the slave-woman but of the free-woman (v. 31), the Galatians should remain (‘stand’) in the freedom with which Christ has set us free. They should not submit again to the yoke of slavery (5.1), forfeiting thereby not only the freedom won for them by Christ but also the inheritance that, as divinely indicated (v. 30), will accrue only to the free.

4. The Significance of γεννᾶν

Now to address the strongest point in Martyn's case: Paul's choice of the term γεννᾶν to refer to the process of giving birth rather than the verb τίκτειν, which features in the LXX translation of the Genesis chapters in question. For Martyn this choice is an argument that the διαθῆκαι indicate the rival missions because on two other occasions, Philemon 10 and 1 Cor 4.15, Paul uses this term with reference to his own ‘begetting’ of converts into the community of believers. The question is whether this use of γεννᾶν is of sufficient logical weight to tell against the arguments for the traditional interpretation as set forth above.

As Martyn notes,Footnote ⁶² the Septuagint distinguishes carefully between γεννᾶν and τίκτειν, employing the former to designate male begetting, the latter to designate a woman's giving birth. Martyn, with characteristic honesty, also concedes that it is not altogether surprising in the light of this LXX usage that Paul, having begun (v. 22) by speaking of Abraham's having two sons, should go on to employ γεννᾶν (in the perfect passive, γεγέννηται) to speak of their births (v. 23; cf. also the use of γεννηθέντων with respect to Jacob and Esau in Rom 9.11).Footnote ⁶³ Nor is it surprising that he retains the same verb in the passive construction in v. 29, when he describes ‘the one born (γεννηθείς) according to the flesh’ persecuting the one (born) according to the Spirit. This leaves only the one explicit use of γεννῶσα to designate a woman (Hagar = Sinai covenant) giving birth in v. 24c. Since, aside from the LXX usage, γεννᾶν can be used of both male and female procreation, it is not all that remarkable that Paul, having begun with this term, has chosen to remain with it – especially as γεννᾶν occurs six times in his authentic letters, whereas τίκτειν appears only in the scriptural text, Isa 54.1, from which he quotes exactly in Gal 4.27.Footnote ⁶⁴

In regard to this quotation from Isaiah, Martyn, as we have seen, notes that Paul could have been tempted to use τίκτειν in order to forge an exegetical link with the prophetic text on a gezerah shawah basis. He refrained from doing so, in Martyn's view, because of the higher significance of γεννᾶν. This consideration, however, falls away, when one sees, as I have explained above, that the basis of association is through the common motif of ‘barrenness’ rather than verbal linkage as such.

In fact the argument that γεννῶσα refers to missionary activity in the sense of Paul's giving birth to new converts into freedom – and the Teachers, correspondingly, into slavery – runs into the difficulty that it is the ‘covenants’ (v. 24a), represented by Sarah and Hagar respectively, that are the subject of this procreation. This is made clear in v. 26, when Paul, implicitly linking the unnamed Sarah with ‘the above Jerusalem’, states that ‘she is our mother’ (v. 26b). Here Paul identifies himself with the community he has founded and indicates the ‘above Jerusalem-Sarah-covenant’ as their common ‘mother’. His argument cannot then at this point (in contrast to Gal 4.19) be operating with his own sense of ‘mothering’ the community as Martyn's interpretation of γεννῶσα requires.Footnote ⁶⁵ Thus the case that Martyn builds up upon Paul's usage of γεννῶσα can rest only upon the instance in v. 24c. This does not bear the weight required for the argument to be cogent overall.