This text is an excerpt from the commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians by Willem Hessels van Est (Estius) (1542–1613), a renowned Dutch Catholic theologian. His commentary is known for its textual criticism, engagement with Greek manuscripts, and clear scholastic reasoning.This was translated by Qwen.
Translation
Gal 4:22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the bondwoman and one by the free woman.
This is written in Genesis 16 & 21. It is not, he says, without a mystery that Scripture narrates that Abraham received two sons, Ishmael and Isaac; the former from Hagar the bondwoman, that is, a servant; the latter truly from Sarah the free woman. Abraham had also other sons whom he begot after the death of Sarah, as is read in Genesis 25, but those do not pertain to the mystery of the present matter, whence neither does Scripture pursue the narration of them further, content to have disclosed their generation.
Gal 4:23 But he who was by the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, but he who was by the free woman was through the promise.
Ishmael, born from the bondwoman, is said to be born according to the flesh because he was born by the customary law of nature, according to the power of generating implanted in the flesh. For the order of nature has it that from a young woman one not too old can procreate sons. Isaac truly, born from the free woman, is said to be born through the promise because his generation was above the capacity of nature, namely from a power divinely promised and supplied, since both the body of Abraham was as good as dead and the womb of Sarah dead, just as it is said in Romans 4.
Gal 4:24 These things are said through allegory.
In Greek the present participle is allegoroumena. Allegory is when from that which is said something else is signified. Whence Augustine (Book 15 On the Trinity, chapter 9) says that certain Latin translators so rendered it: These things signify one thing from another. Moreover, there are two kinds of allegories: one in words, the other in things. Of these, the former is common to Sacred Scripture with non-sacred writers; for that allegory is a certain continuous metaphor in words, such as in that which the Apostle said a little before: My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you, etc. But the latter kind is peculiar to it [Sacred Scripture], as often as a history indeed according to the literal sense of the words is truly narrated, or something else is said, but in that thing which is narrated or said a certain secret signification of a higher thing lies hidden. Thus truly this history concerning the two sons of Abraham happened just as it is narrated, but that deed done has a higher signification of some other thing. Which he teaches consequently:
For these are the two Testaments.
That is, in those things which Scripture narrates concerning the two sons of Abraham and their mothers, there is a signification of the two Testaments, Old and New. The Greek can be understood in this way: These, that is, these two women, Hagar and Sarah, are the two Testaments by signification, that is, they are signs and figures of the two Testaments. Which sense the subsequent declaration makes probable.
One indeed from Mount Sinai, generating unto bondage.
Some codices read in Monte [on the mountain] erroneously, with not only the Greeks protesting, but also all Latin manuscripts and the text which both Jerome and the Ambrosian [text] used. The sense is: One indeed of the two Testaments took its origin or departure from Mount Sinai, in which the law was given, generating sons unto bondage, that is, by that very generation obnoxious to servitude. For he who is born from a servant mother, unless something else hinders, is born a servant. Therefore the Old Testament is said to have proceeded from Mount Sinai because on that mountain the law was enacted, the observance of which was the condition of the Old Testament, that is, of the covenant initiated between God and the ancient people, but by no means kept by the people. Moreover, the bondage unto which the Old Testament generated its sons was placed partly in the intolerable yoke of ceremonial precepts imposed on the necks of its sons, partly in the affect and servile fear by which the same were governed, which the Apostle in Romans 8 calls the Spirit of bondage in fear. Which latter reason indeed is more proper to the sons of the Old Testament, as being a certain essential property of that Testament. For the Old and New Testament are distinguished essentially by fear and love.
Which is Hagar.
The relative which is not to be referred to bondage but to Testament, which in Greek is feminine, so that it ought rather to have been translated which is Hagar, although the interpreter is easily excused by the custom of speaking by which the relative often takes its gender from the following substantive. Therefore the sense is: Which Testament is typically signified by Hagar the bondwoman.
Gal 4:25 For Sinai is a mountain in Arabia, which is joined to her who now is Jerusalem and serves with her sons.
In all codices of the Greeks it is read thus: Nam Agar Sina mons est in Arabia [For Sinai is a mountain in Arabia (called) Agar]. Moreover, the article to (neuter gender) is prefixed to Agar itself, which Greek interpreters refer to the word mountain of the same gender; for they think that Mount Sinai, in which the law was given, was called Agar in the language of the Arabs, and that the Apostle signifies this by these words, so that the sense is: Rightly is the Old Testament figured by Hagar the bondwoman, because Mount Sinai is also called Agar by the Arabs. The version of Hentenius expressed this sense, which has thus: For Mount Sinai is called Agar among the Arabs. But a interpretation of this kind is not very probable; for nowhere is it read that that Mount Sinai was called by another name, Agar, nor do I believe that the sons of Israel, passing through the deserts of Arabia, called that mountain by another name than that by which it was called by the natives or neighboring Arabs. Therefore, a more convenient sense of the Greek reading seems here to be able to be rendered: That which is typically signified by Hagar the bondwoman is the same as that which Mount Sinai of Arabia signifies by type, as if he said: Hagar and Sinai bear the signification of the same thing, namely the Old Testament. This sense serves best for illustrating the allegory which the Apostle adduces.
Moreover, our reading, which is with all Latin interpreters, is variously expounded by them. By some in this way: Well does that Old Testament generating unto bondage take its origin from Mount Sinai, because that mountain is situated in Arabia, which region is outside the land of promise, so that it may be understood that the sons of the Old Testament do not pertain to the promise made to Abraham. Others place the force of the proof in that which follows afterwards: And serves with her sons, as if the Apostle argued from the quality or condition of the mountain and its sons or inhabitants, who since they are for the most part servants, rightly the mountain itself which they inhabit has the type of a Testament generating unto bondage. But since this latter exposition, just as that which receives proof from the etymology of the word Arabia, by which humility and depression proper to servitude are signified, seem too far-fetched, and accordingly it is uncertain whether the inhabitants of Mount Sinai were of servile condition at the time when Paul wrote these things, therefore according to the former exposition we judge rather that the Apostle wishes to urge the situation and quality of the place without consideration of the persons, as if to say: Conveniently did the Old Testament flow forth from Mount Sinai, for Mount Sinai is horrid, situated in Arabia far outside the borders of the promised land, therefore most apt for signifying the quality of the Old Testament, which is to incite fear and horror and to make servants, [making them] devoid of promise and aliens from the inheritance.
Which is joined to her who now is Jerusalem.
In Greek it is conjoined. Jerome reads: Which is conterminous to her. It is sought how Mount Sinai is joined or conterminous to the city of Jerusalem, since according to true geography it is distant from it by a journey of almost twenty days, as Thomas [Aquinas] also testifies. Some respond that it is joined not by vicinity of place but by roots extended thither. Genebrard, expounding Psalm 132, affirms that Mount Sinai extends with a perpetual ridge as far as the mountains of Sion. But these things hardly admit belief on account of the too great distance of the places, as has been said, nor are they supported by any trustworthy testimony. There are those who interpret joined as situated in the same region, even if distant. Thomas understands joined by the continuation of the journey of the Israelites setting out from that mountain into the land of promise and into Jerusalem itself. Others adduce other expositions which Adam Sasbout diligently recounts.
But that we may attain the genuine sense, it must be known that the Greek word systoichei, which our interpreter renders is joined, Erasmus and Hentenius is confinem, the interpreter of Theophylact is contiguous, does not signify just any conjunction, but that which is in nature and property of genius, or in any similar thing, which conjunction Latins are accustomed to call consensus, cognationem, affinitatem [agreement, kinship, affinity], so that those things which are thus joined are affinia or cognata [related or akin] among themselves, just as Budaeus learnedly explains in his commentaries on the Greek language. Therefore we think this to be the sense: Which Mount Sinai has a kinship with this earthly Jerusalem and agrees with it regarding mystical signification. For Sinai signifies the Old Testament; earthly Jerusalem is the seat of the Jewish people, that is, of the sons of the Old Testament. On Mount Sinai the old law was given; in earthly Jerusalem is the principality of the old law on account of the temple and ceremonies and the zeal of retaining the law; finally, it is the same people by continuity of succession which received the law on Mount Sinai and which now dwelling in Jerusalem contends stubbornly for the same law. Theophylact adduces this sense in the second place, and indeed so that he seems to approve it.
Therefore what the Apostle says, Which now is Jerusalem, is not to be so expounded: Which is now said or called Jerusalem, as if the sense were: Which indeed was formerly called by other names, as Jebus and Salem, but now is called Jerusalem, as Erasmus and Hentenius translated too freely. For it does not make for the present matter that that city has not always had the same name, since surely even at that time in which the law was given it was called Jerusalem, sufficiently clear from the book of Joshua. But which now is, that is, of this time and age; this, I say, earthly Jerusalem. For soon he opposes to it that which is above, that is, the heavenly Jerusalem, whose hope all extends to the future age, according to that [passage] in Hebrews [13:14]: For here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come. A similar antithesis elsewhere when he says: Seek those things which are above, not those that are upon the earth (Colossians 3). But this interpretation is of the ancients, as well of the Latins as of the Greeks.
Finally, it is to be noted that part, But it is conjoined to her who now is Jerusalem, for thus it is read in the Greek, can be referred according to the Greek reading to Agar, concerning whom he had spoken before. Namely, Agar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, although the Greek interpreters, as was said above, do not distinguish Agar from Sinai in this part.
And serves with her sons.
Some refer this to her who now is Jerusalem, and interpret her as serving with her sons either because that city with its people was serving the Romans, or because it was pressed by the bondage of the Mosaic Law. Which exposition the following part makes probable, in which on the contrary it is said that Jerusalem which is above is free. But that it be referred thus the Greek words hardly admit. Others therefore couple it with that part Which is Hagar, for the remaining things enclose a parenthesis, just as in many printed codices it is able to be seen. According to these, therefore, the sense is: The Old Testament signified by Hagar serves with her sons, that is, in the sons, insofar as namely it generates its sons in bondage. Moreover, he says with her sons because Agar herself, in whom was the type of the Old Testament, was a servant, and by this prefigured the bondage of the sons of the Old Testament. Moreover, others refer it to Mount Sinai and understand the inhabitants of that mountain as its sons. Which sense we already said before pleases us less. Wherefore, whether this part be referred to earthly Jerusalem, or rather to the Old Testament which is Hagar, or even to Mount Sinai, it is to be understood that any of these serves with her sons, which comprehends or generates or signifies men obnoxious to that bondage of which he had already said: One indeed from Mount Sinai, generating unto bondage.
Gal 4:26 But that which is above is Jerusalem, which is free, which is our mother.
The Apostle said what is signified allegorically by Hagar the bondwoman; now he shows what was signified by Sarah the free woman, namely the New Testament, which generates its sons in liberty. For the words of the Apostle mean this, by which he says that Jerusalem which is above (understand which is Sarah by signification) is free and our mother. Nor does it matter to the proposed matter whether by Sarah the New Testament is said to be understood, or the Church of the New Testament; for these two are so joined that one is understood from the other, whence the Apostle says both: the former indeed when he says For these are the two Testaments; the latter truly in the present place, expounding Sarah as Jerusalem which is above. For similarly it could be said that by Hagar the Old Testament is signified, and the Church of the Old Testament, that is, the Synagogue, which generated its sons in bondage.
Moreover, the Apostle calls the Church of the New Testament Jerusalem which is above, that is, supernal Jerusalem, and as Hebrews 12 speaks, heavenly; not that he wishes here to understand only the Church Triumphant in heaven, for he comprehends the whole Church of Christ by this designation, but because even in that part in which she fights and wanders on earth, nevertheless through faith and hope she is above, while she seeks and savors those things which are above, not those that are upon the earth (Colossians 3), whose conversation also is in heaven (Philippians 3). Whence also John in Apocalypse 21 sees this same holy city, New Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God.
On the contrary, those who pertain to the Old Testament and earthly Jerusalem, just as they are of the earth, so they seek and savor earthly things, and are led by earthly promises, such as namely the Old Testament proposed. Moreover, supernal Jerusalem is free and generates its sons in liberty, which is opposed to that bondage of the sons of Hagar explained by us long ago. Which liberty therefore is placed chiefly in the spirit of love, which the Apostle in Romans 8 calls the spirit of adoption of sons, in which they cry: Abba, Father. But in a secondary reason it consists in this, that the sons of the New Testament through Christ are exempted from the servile yoke of the Mosaic Law.
Now, that the Apostle adds, Which is our mother, signifies that we, whom the Church generates through faith and baptism, are free, as being born from a free mother. Where it is to be noted that in Greek and Syriac it is read: Which is the mother of us all, and the same reading is had with Jerome and Primasius. For the Apostle seems by this universal note to have wished to signify the great multitude of the faithful of the New Testament, gathered and to be gathered from the Gentiles, and that thus also the Galatians are sons of the heavenly Jerusalem and accordingly free. For to that pertains the subsequent proof concerning many sons.
Gal 4:27 For it is written: Rejoice, barren one who does not bear; break forth and cry, you who do not travail; because many are the sons of the desolate one, more than of her who has a husband.
For it is written: At Isaiah chapter 54. The Apostle cites this testimony of the Prophet not as it is in the Hebrew, but according to the version of the Seventy [LXX], whose sense nevertheless agrees in all things with the Hebrew truth, just as is easily clear to one comparing them.
Rejoice, barren one who does not bear; break forth and cry, you who do not travail. These are words of the Prophet to the Church of the New Testament. You, he says, O Church, who until the coming of Christ were barren, and indeed from the Gentiles bore almost no sons to Christ, and from the Jews very few, and the same hiding under the veil of servitude as if they themselves were servants, for to bear and to travail are put here for the same thing. Rejoice, break forth, and cry, that is, with joy praise God and break forth into a clamor and songs of praise. For thus we complete the sense from the Hebrew, where for rejoice we read praise, and for break forth and cry we read sing praise and neigh. The reason for praise and joy follows:
Because many are the sons of the desolate one, more than of her who has a husband. Desolate, that is, solitary; for in Greek it is a noun, not a participle. Moreover, he calls her desolate as if repulsed or separated from the whole on account of sterility. But her who has a husband he understands her with whom the husband has intercourse on account of fecundity. For by this phrase by which a husband is said to have a woman, and a woman a husband, the commingling of the husband with the woman is signified, as we showed in the exposition of chapters 5 and 7 of the first Epistle to the Corinthians. Therefore the sense is: You ought to rejoice greatly because you, who hitherto were solitary and not joined to a husband for generating sons (for you were barren), now having been made fertile by Christ your husband, will bear sons much more numerous than the Synagogue, joined to her husband, that is, having zealously embraced the Mosaic Law, bore sons during the whole time of the Old Testament. For the Apostle teaches in Romans 7 that the Mosaic Law was the husband of the Synagogue.
Moreover, this can also be understood by this reason: desolate or solitary because she was alone, not having sons from whom a family might be multiplied. Whence that which according to Symmachus's interpretation is read in Psalm 67: God makes the solitary to dwell in a house, in Psalm 112 is so expressed: Who makes a barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children. And this exposition seems more genuine to one considering these and similar Scriptures, such as that Lamentations 1: How doth the city sit solitary, that is, without sons, that was full of people; and Isaiah 49: I am destitute, and where it had preceded: I am barren and bear not; likewise Baruch 4: I am left desolate and alone.
But that which some speculate here, that the Church was desolate because she was deserted in the worship of idols and other sins, is not easily to be accepted, since it is alien from the mind of the Apostle and the Prophet, nor was it ever true that the Church served idols or was deserted by God, although Gentility was thus deserted, from which afterwards the Church was gathered and multiplied, which Church had been before in a few men.
Moreover, very appropriately Paul, when treating of the mystery of Sarah the barren, adduced this testimony of the Prophet, in which the Church of Christ prefigured by Sarah is called barren, so that just as Sarah after long sterility was finally made fertile by divine promise and power and bore a son in whom the seed of Abraham might be multiplied, so it be signified that the Church, after the sterility of so many ages, Christ finally arriving, was about to bear very many sons of promise, with the peoples of the Gentiles flowing to her from all sides.
Gal 4:28 But we, brethren, according to Isaac, are sons of the promise.
He applies the allegory hitherto expounded more closely to the institute. Moreover, he speaks in the person of the faithful of Christ. We, he says, who believe in Christ, are not sons according to Ishmael of the flesh, but according to Isaac sons of the promise, that is, according to the type and likeness of Isaac, whom a barren mother conceived from the promise of God above the order of nature. We are sons of the mother Church, not from the powers of nature but above nature from the virtue of God, who promised to Abraham, and as John the Evangelist says: Not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. From this the Apostle leaves it to be gathered that those who believe in Christ ought not to be under the law. For those who are under the law are not sons of the promise from the free woman according to Isaac, but sons of the flesh from the bondwoman according to Ishmael.
Gal 4:29 But as then he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was according to the spirit, so also now.
Behold another congruence of the figure with the thing figured. For just as once Ishmael, who was born according to the flesh, persecuted Isaac who was born according to the spirit, so also now, he says, those who are born according to the flesh, that is, emulators of the law who promise themselves justice from the sole knowledge of the law, persecute those who are born according to the spirit, that is, through the virtue of the Holy Spirit adopted into sons.
Ishmael is said to be born according to the flesh because he was generated according to the natural virtue of the flesh, namely from a fertile mother, just as was explained above. But Isaac according to the spirit because he was born by miracle from a barren and old mother; for those things which happen above nature are peculiarly ascribed to the operation of the Holy Spirit. But it is not consequent from this that Isaac was conceived of the Holy Spirit, which we profess in the Creed concerning Christ; for by this locution it is signified that the operation of the Holy Spirit supplied every virile work in the generation of Christ, which was not so in the conception of Isaac, who was born from paternal seed.
But it is sought what that persecution of Ishmael against Isaac was. For in Genesis 21, to which Paul is known to have looked back, we read not persecution but play. When, it says, Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian playing with her son Isaac, she said, etc. I respond that play is not taken in one way in the Scriptures. For sometimes play signifies serious [action], that is, fight, as in 2 Kings 2, Abner saying to Joab: Let the young men now arise, and play before us, that is, let them fight. Thus therefore some think that Ishmael played with Isaac, that is, playing he attempted to destroy him, so that the inheritance might remain to him alone.
Sometimes moreover it is said concerning the play and gestures of those worshipping idols, as Exodus 32: The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play. Moreover, some translate the Hebrew voice in Genesis as mocking or scoffing or insulting. To which pertains that which Augustine in the sermon on Hagar and Ishmael, cited by Bede upon this place, thus says: That play Paul calls persecution, because that playing was mocking. Jerome also teaches that this play was not simple, but a quarrel and contention by which Ishmael claimed for himself the prerogative of circumcision and the birthright against the little Isaac. Others finally translate lascivious, to which the commentary of Primasius agrees. It is named persecution, he says, because he wished to make him [Isaac] buffoonish and light, such as he himself was, lest he be preferred to him in the inheritance.
There are those who understand that Ishmael through play wished to lead Isaac to the worship of idols, or, as Thomas reports, to adore clay images which he made. Whichever play you understand from all the things now said, it is rightly called persecution by the Apostle, because in all those things there is a certain persecution: bodily indeed in the plotting of death and in the derision and claiming of the birthright; spiritual truly, which is graver than bodily, in that he wished to lead the boy to idolatry or to lasciviousness.
Surely in both ways carnal Jews persecuted the sons of the Church: bodily indeed, for as the Apostle says in 1 Thessalonians 2: Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us, and please not God, and are contrary to all men; so that Jerome testifies that much greater persecutions were stirred up by Jews against Christians than by Gentiles. Spiritually moreover, inasmuch as they strove with the greatest zeal to recall the faithful from Christ and translate them to their law. Of the former kind of persecution Paul himself had been experienced before others; the latter the Galatians to whom he writes were experiencing.
Although not only Jews, but universally whoever, as well within the Church as outside, live according to the flesh, are mystically signified by Ishmael, and agitate the spiritual Isaac, that is, the sons of promise who live according to the spirit, by either kind of persecution. For all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution, to wit from evil and carnal men (2 Timothy 3:12).
Gal 4:30 But what does Scripture say? Cast out the bondwoman and her son. For the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman.
But what does Scripture say: That is, what does Scripture commemorate Sarah to have said to her husband Abraham when she saw the son of the bondwoman playing with her son? Namely this which follows:
Cast out the bondwoman and her son.
Here now a third congruence of the figure with the thing figured is indicated. For just as at the postulation of Sarah and God approving her postulation, Hagar the bondwoman was cast out from the house of Abraham with her son, so the Church, the Spirit of God urging and pressing, the Law with its quasi necessary observers ought to be cast out from the family and people of God. By which plainly is demonstrated the cessation of the Law and of the prior Testament. And this is the chief thing which the Apostle wished to teach from the history of Genesis expounded through allegory.
For the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman.
In Greek: For he shall not inherit, that is, he shall not receive the inheritance. For anyone is said to be an heir from the right of succeeding to the goods of another, whether he sometimes succeeds or not. Whence is that in the Gospel: This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours. That part, with the son of the free woman, is read in the Ambrosian and Jerome [texts], how in Genesis: with my son Isaac. But the Greeks agree with us, although there is no diversity in sense, except that in our reading the antithesis shines forth more. Moreover, a fourth congruence is indicated, that just as the son of the bondwoman is not admitted into the part of the inheritance together with the son of the free woman, so those who are under the law shall not receive the promised inheritance together with Christians, and therefore merit to be sent forth with their law. By this sentence he terrifies the Galatians, that they may understand themselves to be excluded from the inheritance if they receive the law.
Gal 4:31 Therefore, brethren, we are not the sons of the bondwoman, but of the free woman.
Although this rightly follows from that which he said: Jerusalem which is above is free, which is our mother, nevertheless the diction Therefore in this place seems not so much to be concluding as preparing himself for the subsequent exhortation. Of which also the indication is that he calls them brethren. Therefore, he says, brethren, whoever we are who believe in Christ, we are not sons of the bondwoman, that is, we do not pertain to the law signified by Hagar, but we are sons of the free, pertaining to Jerusalem which is above, signified by Sarah. Whence we ought to know and remember that we are free from the servitude of the law, as being called into the liberty of the spirit, and freed from the yoke of legal ceremonies prefiguring Christ, the truth now having been exhibited.
With what liberty Christ has liberated us.
That is, into which liberty Christ has asserted us through his death; he namely who speaks concerning himself: If the Son therefore shall make you free, you shall be free indeed (John 8). The Greeks connect this part with the sequels, as we shall see at the beginning of the next chapter.
CONTINUE
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