Paying a Lot to Buy a Plot

I had originally intended to skip over Gen 23 because Abraham’s negotiations to acquire a burial plot for Sarah didn’t seem terribly interesting. Yes, in the grand scheme of things the biblical author wanted to make the point that the death of Sarah resulted in Abraham purchasing land of his own, an incremental step in the fulfilment of God’s promise of the land to Abraham. But I didn’t think I could write 1000 words on it.

Then I read the transcript of a lecture on Gen 23 Meir Sternberg delivered in 2011 that changed my mind. Meir Sternberg is Professor of Poetics and Comparative Literature at Tel Aviv University. Along with Robert Alter (mentioned in my previous article), he is one of the most prominent proponents of a literary approach to understanding the Bible.

Sternberg points out that Sarah’s burial site, the cave of Machpelah, is only mentioned in Genesis and nowhere else. The Bible is not interested in establishing a cult of the dead as in Egypt. So why does the biblical author spend twenty verses discussing a real estate deal?

Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. A wall built by Herod the Great surrounds the courtyard built over the cave of Machpelah. It is one of the holiest sites for both Jews and Muslims. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, 2010)

They didn’t say “yes”, but they didn’t say “no”

The first couple of verses in Gen 23 inform us that Sarah died in Hebron at the age of 127. Abraham needs a place to bury his wife, so he approaches the town’s Hittite leaders. As negotiations begin (vv. 3-6), Abraham acknowledges that, as a resident alien (“stranger and sojourner among you”), he has no citizenship rights. Therefore, he petitions the Hittites to give him property for a burial place. The word “give” in Biblical Hebrew is ambiguous. It could mean “give” as a gift and it can also mean “give” me to purchase.

The Hittites answer him with flattery (“you are a great prince among us”) as a way of politely pointing out that Abraham is a wealthy man and not merely a poor sojourner. They also offer the use of any of their grave sites (“none of us will refuse you his grave”). Perhaps because they do not know if Abraham is asking for a gift or for a purchase, they do not say they will “give”, only that “no one will refuse”.

On the one hand, it sounds great. If Abraham needs a grave, they can provide a grave. But Abraham wants a burial site (“landed property”) and all they are offering is his choice of tombs.

“I give it to you”

A second round of negotiations (vv. 7-11) is in order. Abraham has his eye on a particular cave owned by a Hittite named Ephron. We learn later this double cave (“Machpelah” means “double”) faces Mamre, which was one of the first places where Abraham settled in Canaan (Gen 13:18). He was still residing there when he received a visit from three strangers announcing the future birth of Isaac (Gen 18:1). The spot certainly must have held a sentimental meaning for Abraham.

Abraham asks the leaders of the Hittites if they can approach Ephron on his behalf. The cave is at the end, on the boundary of his field. It’s not like the cave is in the center of Ephron’s field and he will have to work around it. Abraham is saying, “Sell me the cave and I will be out of your way. I will pay full price. I’m not asking for a gift.”

As it so happened, Ephron is sitting among the men at the city gates where business is done. “You want to buy the cave? I’ll give you the field as well.” He literally says “I give it to you” three times. Sounds generous, right?

Ephron does not want to sell just the cave. Selling the land to Abraham would grant him citizenship rights, it would set a precedence, it would break the status quo. Who knows? Maybe it will lower property values and he’d never be able to sell his field in the future. No, if Abraham wants the cave, he has to make it worth Ephron’s while. He needs to buy the entire field.

What’s a million dollars between friends?

We now enter the third and final round of negotiations (vv. 12-18). Abraham only wanted to purchase the cave, but if he can only get it by purchasing the field, then that is what he will do: “I will give you the price of the field.” If Ephron is making an offer in good faith, he will name his price. But if he has no intention of selling Abraham land at any price, then he will have to withdraw his offer in the eyes of the entire community.

Ephron shows his true colors and names his price: four hundred shekels of silver. “What is that between me and you?” To give you some idea of the price Ephron is asking, King David paid fifty shekels (2 Sam 24:24) for the site of the future Jerusalem Temple. That was hundreds of years later for prime real estate in the heart of Jerusalem and here Ephron is asking eight times that for a field on the outskirts of Hebron. What’s a million dollars between friends?

Did Ephron name an outrageous price to call Abraham’s bluff, so he will fold and go home? Or is Ephron price gouging? We don’t know, but Abraham doesn’t try to bargain down to a fair price. He weighs out 400 shekels (about 4.5 kg or almost 10 pounds) of silver and gets the title deed to Ephron’s field. (Interestingly, the purchase price of 400 shekels is one shekel for each of the four hundred years God told him Abraham it would be before his descendants would finally inherit the land of Canaan).

The meaning of it all

Why does the Bible spend all this time telling us this story of a real estate deal?

A running theme throughout the entire Abraham cycle is the dual promise of the land of Canaan and descendants to inherit it. After a long time, God finally came through on his promise to provide Abraham with a son, Isaac. And then God tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice this long-promised son.

And while God has promised Abraham that the entire land of Canaan will one day belong to his descendants, when Sarah dies and he needs a place to bury her, a promise of land in the distant future doesn’t help at all. He needs a place to bury his wife now. And to get it, he has to go hat in hand and demean himself playing a game the Hittites have rigged against him.

The moral of the story is that God will deliver on his promises, but don’t expect Amazon next-day delivery. And there will be suffering involved.

The Ages of Man

Among the many unbelievable aspects of Genesis (creation in six days, talking snakes, global flood, etc.) are the incredible lifespans. Prior to the flood, the lifespans are just shy of 1000 years. In Gen 6:3, YHWH sets a limit of 120 years but that seems more of a goal than a limit because descendants of Noah continued to live for hundreds of years, although the lifespans decreased with every pasing generation (see Gen 11:10-32). The genealogies document a devolution from the golden age of God’s original creation.

In Genesis, the genealogies and chronologies come from the P source. The non-P sources rarely provide any sort of genealogy and never mention ages. But when you combine the two sources together, the combination raises some narrative oddities.

Putting the Sexy in Sexagenarian

I’ve already discussed the stories (Gen 12 and Gen 20) of Abraham passing off his wife Sarah as his sister. When these stories are given context by the P chronology, it casts them in a different light.

Gen 12 takes place some time after Abraham arrives in Canaan. According to the P source, this happened when he was 75 years old and Sarah is 10 years younger than Abraham. This means that when Abraham feared that pharaoh would kill him to take Sarah as his wife because of her great beauty, he was talking about a woman in her late 60s.

Gen 20 takes place in the year before Isaac’s birth. Isaac was born when Abraham was 100 years old (Gen 21:5). Abimelech of Gerar, therefore, is supposed to have taken a pregnant 90-year-old woman into his harem. She must really have been a beauty for Abimelech to ignore the obvious drawbacks.

The Expelled Handmaid

Hagar’s story in Gen 21:8-20 is a parallel narrative to her story in Gen 16, previously discussed. In both stories, the deity finds Hagar wandering in the wilderness and announces her son will become a great nation. Because the deity is referred to as YHWH in Gen 16 and Elohim in Gen 21, the Gen 16 version is attributed to the J source and the Gen 21 parallel is attributed to the E source.

Gen 21:8-20 takes place after Sarah has given birth to Isaac. At the feast to celebrate Isaac’s weaning, Sarah sees Ishmael playing with Isaac and grows jealous thinking that Ishmael will inherit alongside Isaac. She demands that Abraham get rid of the boy and his mother.

In Gen 16:16 we are told that Abram was 86 years old when Hagar gave birth to Ishmael. Since Abraham was 100 years old at the birth to Isaac, by simple arithmetic Ishmael is 14 years at the time of Isaac’s birth. He’s well into his teenage years by the time of Isaac’s weaning feast.

Abraham is reluctant to expel Ishmael because he is his son after all, but God tells him it will be okay. With the divine reassurance, Abraham gives Hagar some bread and water and sends her off into the desert with Ishmael. In no time, the water is gone and she and the boy prepare to die. God hears their cry, gives Hagar the encouragement that Ishmael will become a great nation, and she sees a life-saving well of water.

Reading this narrative in isolation, Ishmael does not appear to be a teenager of 16 or more years. At that age, he should be able to fend for himself yet he is completely passive, totally dependent on Hagar. In the isolated story, Ishmael is treated as a small child and that is how artists through the centuries have portrayed him. Only when you marry the story to P’s chronology do you get the cognitive dissonance of a teenager in the role of a small child.

Hagar in the Wilderness by Camille Corot (1796-1875). This represents about 1/12 of the entire painting which is more of a landscape study.

Repeats and Reboots

In case you haven’t noticed, at this point Genesis is well into the rerun season. The wife/sister story of Gen 20 is another version of the one in Gen 12 and Hagar’s encounter with God in Gen 21 is an alternate version of Gen 16. The only portion of these two chapters that isn’t recycled is Gen 21:22-34 which provides an origin story for the site of Beersheba. The Hebrew word sheba’ sounds similar to shwebaa’ (= “seven”) and shebu’ah (= “swear”), so the story describes an oath between Abraham and Abimelech involving seven ewe lambs.

An alternative origin story for Beersheba will be told in Gen 26:17-33.  This narrative involves digging multiple wells and ends with an oath between Isaac and Abimelech of Gerar. If Gen 20 and 21 are reruns of the wife/sister and Hagar stories associated with Abraham, then Gen 26 (wife/sister and Beersheba origin) is more like a reboot featuring Isaac as the protagonist in the same situations that Abraham faced.

Isaac’s version of the wife/sister narrative in Gen 26:1-11 supposedly takes place after death of Abraham at age 175 (recounted in Gen 25:7-11) and the birth of Esau and Jacob when Isaac was 60 (Gen 25:19-26). Which would mean that when Isaac passes off Rebekah as his sister, he must have also passed off Esau and Jacob as his nephews.

Live Long and Prosper

Now, according to the P chronology, Isaac was born when Abraham was 100 and Isaac was 60 when his twins were born. This would mean that Abraham died when his grandsons Esau and Jacob were teenagers.

But in Gen 24, the aged Abraham sends off his servant to find a bride for Isaac. You are led to think that Abraham is at death’s door and wants to see Isaac married to someone from the “old country” before he dies. But according to the P chronology, Abraham is “only” 140 years old and has another 35 years ahead of him. Thirty-five years in which he will take another wife named Keturah and have six more sons (Gen 25:1-6). Seems like Abraham is still pretty spry for an old guy.

Something similar happens with Isaac. Old and blind, he wishes to impart his blessing to his Esau before he dies (Gen 27:1-4). When Jacob cheats Esau out of the birthright, Esau plans to kill Jacob once Isaac has died and the period of mourning is over (Gen 27:41). He’s going to have a long wait, because P’s chronology has Isaac living another 80 years (Gen 35:27-29). Using this chronology, Isaac would still have been alive at the time Jacob’s son Joseph was sold into Egypt. That’s wild!

The phenomenal ages given in the P source play havoc with the narrative arc. Much like a monarch, the patriarch is the tribal leader for life. Abraham has to die before Isaac can become the patriarch and Isaac must die before Jacob can take over. And this is exactly how the J narrative plays out. It’s only when you combine the J narratives with the P chronology that you end up with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as contemporaries.

Stop Me If You've Heard This Before

The Bible is repetitious at times, replaying themes, scenes, and sometimes entire sentences. For example, chapter 17 of Genesis repeats themes found elsewhere in Genesis, both in previous chapters and in chapters yet to come:

• Promises of land and numerous descendants are also made in chapters 13 and 15.
• A covenant between God and Abraham is also established in Gen 15.
• Isaac’s birth is also announced in Gen 18.
• References to laughter also appear in Gen 18 and 20.
• The renaming of Abram and Sarai is similar to renaming Jacob to Israel (Gen 32:29 and 35:10).
• El Shaddai is another name for God to go along with El Elyon (14:18-20) and El Roi (16:13).

The only originality is the establishment of circumcision as a sign of the covenant.

P Source and Exilic Themes

Gen 17 is clearly from the P source and combines the annunciation of Isaac’s birth with the establishment of circumcision as a sign of the covenant between God and Abraham’s descendants.

Scholars date the compilation of the P source to the time of the Babylonian exile, after the fall of Jerusalem. This is a time when the former inhabitants of Judah have lost their land and their temple. They face the possibility that they will also lose their identity as a people. A reminder that the land was given to Abraham and his descendants as part of an everlasting covenant would be assurance they would once again return to their home. That God had also promised Abraham his descendants would be made into a great nation would comfort those who feared that God had abandoned them.

In Gen 15, the covenant was established in a ceremony similar to one known in the last days of Judah, before the fall of Jerusalem. In Gen 17, circumcision was established as the sign of the covenant between God and Abraham’s descendants. Circumcision wasn’t unique to Israel; it was a common practice in the ANE (for example, Egyptians were circumcised). Only during the Babylonian captivity when the exiles came in contact with those who did not practice circumcision did it separate Israel from the other nations. The goal of the Priestly author in this chapter is to ground circumcision in the covenant made with Abraham, turning it into a sign that one belonged to YHWH.

Not an actual photograph of Abraham laughing when he hears that he will father a son at age 100. 

Who’s Laughing Now?

In both Gen 17 and 18, Abraham is told that Sarah will give birth to a son within a year’s time. Sarah is surprised to hear that she will give birth in Gen 18. Since Abraham was told the exact same thing in Gen 17, the only way she could be surprised is if Abraham never shared with her the revelation he was given. This is a good clue that these annunciations come from separate sources. Gen 18 is usually attributed to the J source.

The announcement that an elderly Sarah will bear a child in a year’s time causes a humorous reaction in both sources. In Gen 17:17, it is Abraham who fell on his face and laughed. In Gen 18:12, it is Sarah who laughed to herself. After the birth of Isaac in Gen 21, Sarah says that everyone will now laugh with her.

The Hebrew Bible loves puns and wordplay. Unfortunately, that is mostly lost in translation. In English translations, the name of Abraham’s son appears as Isaac, but the Hebrew is Yitzchak. The name derives from the verb tzachak meaning “to laugh”. The name Yitzchak, therefore, means “he laughs”.

English readers could get a better sense of the wordplay if we translate it as “chuckles”:

Then Abraham fell on his face and chuckled, and said to himself, “Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” … God said, “No, but your wife Sarah shall bear you a son, and you shall name him Chuckles. (Gen 17:17-19*) 

Abraham gave the name Chuckles to his son whom Sarah bore him … Now Sarah said, “God has brought chuckles for me; everyone who hears will chuckle with me.” (Gen 21:3-6*)

But we also see a pun on Isaac’s name. Yitzchak sounds very much like metzchak (= playing). It could be “playing” as in the activities of children or “playing” as in the sexual foreplay of adults. We see both examples of that.

In Gen 21:9 Sarah is angry when she sees the older Ishmael playing with her son Isaac. In Gen 26:8, King Abimelech of the Philistines knows that Isaac lied to him when he looks out his window and sees Isaac playing with Rebekah.

The Death of Innocents

There is also a parallelism between the visit of Abraham’s three guests in Gen 18:1-15 and Lot’s two guests in Gen 19:1-3, 12-13. After being served refreshments, Abraham’s three guests give him the good news that he and Sarah will have a child together while Lot’s two visitors bring him the bad news that his city of Sodom is about to be destroyed.

One of Abraham’s visitors – revealed to be YHWH – also informs Abraham of the fate of Sodom. The passage that follows (Gen 18:17-33) is usually summarized as “Abraham intervenes on behalf of Sodom” or “Abraham bargains for Sodom”. But that’s not quite right. Abraham doesn’t try to talk YHWH out of destroying Sodom, nor does he try to haggle down the number of people to be exterminated.

Instead, what Abraham does is clarify what YHWY’s justice means. YHWH confirms that if there are only ten just people in Sodom he will not destroy the city for the sake of those ten. YHWH’s justice demands that he not wipe out the good with the wicked.

YHWH’s justice here seems out of place with the rest of the OT. Certainly there were some innocent Egyptians who didn’t deserve to have their firstborn killed. And it is hard to believe that all Canaanites were wicked and thus deserving of extermination by Joshua’s armies. For much of the OT, YHWH seems unconcerned about collateral damage.

Many biblical commentators think this passage shows theological development more suited to the exilic period. Ezek 14:12-20 (dating to the Babylonian captivity) is very similar to this passage. If YHWH decides to destroy a land due to its wickedness and Noah, Daniel, and Job lived there, the destruction would still be carried out, but the three righteous men would be saved. Perhaps the experience of living through a catastrophe brought about some reflection on the question of whether it is truly just for the good to suffer alongside the bad.

In closing, I’m reminded of a Facebook conversation one of my friends had with his right-wing brother-in-law this past week. In the brother-in-law’s opinion, the United States would be entirely justified in leveling Tehran to end terrorism. My friend pointed out Tehran’s population is close to nine million and there must surely be innocents among them. The brother-in-law’s response was, “The first rule of war is innocents die.”

When my friend showed me this, my comment was that while it is an unfortunate fact that in war innocents do die, it should not be a goal. The same applies to God. “Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?” (Gen 18:25)

Take My Wife -- Please

Abraham is renowned in the Bible for being a man of faith. Maybe that’s how he ended up, but he certainly didn’t start off that way.

Abram Goes Down to Egypt

The first time we see Abraham – then named Abram – in action is Gen 12:10-20 and it’s not exactly edifying Prefiguring what will happen later in Genesis and Exodus, a famine hits the land of Canaan and Abram goes down to Egypt. Because his wife Sarai is so beautiful, Abram fears he will be killed for her. But if he announces she is his sister; instead of being killed, Abram will get the bride price for her. The plan works. Pharaoh brings Sarai into his harem and rewards Abram with much livestock (including camels) and slaves. YHWH afflicts Pharaoh and his household with plagues on behalf of Sarai. Learning of the ruse, Pharaoh expels Abram and Sarai.

The story is rather unsettling on many levels. Many modern interpreters view the passage as illustrating Abram’s lack of trust in YHWH. Despite having been promised earlier in 12:1-9 that YHWH would make him into a great nation, Abram thought he needed to take matters into his own hands to protect YHWH’s promise. But by endangering Sarai he put the promise in jeopardy and YHWH had to bail him out by punishing the Egyptians.  

An older view is that Abram did nothing wrong. He knew Egypt was a land of evil-doers and there’s nothing wrong with deceiving people who would try to do you harm. In fact, Abram turned the situation to his advantage. Instead of being killed, he walked away much wealthier. Abram is not condemned for what he did but the Egyptians are certainly punished for abducting Sarai.

Sarai is Taken to Pharoah’s Palace by James Tissot (1836-1902) [courtesy: Wikimedia Commons]

Because It Worked So Well the First Time…

You would have thought he had learned his lesson the first time, but amazingly Abram pulls the same stunt again in Gen 20.

In that passage, Abram – now called Abraham – finds himself in Gerar, in Canaan. Again, he passes off his wife – now called Sarah – as his wife and Abimelech, the king of Gerar, takes her. Unlike the previous version of the story, we are told that God prevents Abimelech from touching her. Later we learn there is a plague of infertility throughout the land (a plague of impotence, perhaps?). God (not YHWH) appears to Abimelech in a dream, sentences him to die, and Abimelech defends his innocence. God agrees. Abimelech demands an explanation from Abraham, returns Sarah to him, and gives him money to restore her honor. Abraham prays on behalf of Abimelech and God lifts the plague.

In this story, it is clear that Abimelech is a god-fearing man. He is horrified to learn that he had unwittingly taken another man’s wife (“I did this in the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands”). He’s also outraged at Abraham’s deception (“What were you thinking?”). Abraham’s pathetic defense is that Sarah is his half-sister, so he wasn’t telling a complete falsehood, just leaving out an important bit of information (in Catholic theology, this would be referred to as a “mental reservation”).

In the lengthy dialogues between God and Abimelech and Abimelech and Abraham, the biblical author of this passage is making it clear that Abraham is the guilty party, even if the outcome was to his benefit.

And, just to prove the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, in Gen 26:1-11 Abraham’s son Isaac pulls the exact same ruse when he tries to pass off his wife Rebekah as his sister with King Abimelech of the Philistines in Gerar. Seriously.

Multiple Versions, Multiple Sources

One possible explanation for multiple versions of essentially the same story is that we are dealing with multiple sources. Gen 26 explicitly references Gen 12 (this famine is different from that of Abraham, “do not go down to Egypt”), but is completely unaware of Gen 20 (does not try to explain why Abimelech fell for the trick again). Gen 12 and 26 mostly use the name YHWH in reference to the deity whereas Gen 20 uses Elohim (God). Gen 20 also has the motifs of God appearing in a dream, “fearing God”, and Abraham as a prophet. The character of Abimelech is tied to parallel narratives (in Gen 21 with Abraham and 26 with Isaac) describing how Beer-sheba got its name.

Based on these indicators, Gen 12 and 26 are usually attributed to the same source (J) while Gen 20 is attributed to a second source. This particular source is called the Elohist (E) because it refers to God as Elohim prior to Exodus. Other hallmarks of the Elohist source are God appearing in dreams, the need to “fear God”, and the establishment of prophetic authority.

If two sources are involved, it is not surprising that we have two versions (doublets) of essentially the same story. There are many examples of this in Genesis. What is surprising, however, is that we have doublets (Gen 12 and 26) within the same source.

Although Gen 12 and 26 apparently come from the same source, they do not appear to come from the same time. Of the two, Gen 12 is the more archaic. As we saw earlier, through his quick-thinking, Abram turns a bad situation into a money-making opportunity. The patriarchal narratives are rife with characters who use deception to advance in the world.

But the version that appears in Gen 26 seems from a later time. In this version, Abimelech is very much the innocent party; he does not take Rebekah into his house. Had he not spied Isaac and Rebekah making a very public display of affection, Abimelech would not even have been aware of their deception. Unlike the other versions of this narrative, God is not involved, neither to plague the kings nor to inform them of the deception.

What About Sarah?

Lost in all of the focus on Abraham is Sarah. A 2015 article from Christianity Today titled “David Was a Rapist, Abraham Was a Sex Trafficker” gets to the heart of the matter: Abraham profited by pimping out his wife. The utilitarian argument could be made that Sarah would have been abducted whether or not Abraham told the truth, so his lie saved his life and made him richer. But what exactly was the rest of the plan? Had God not intervened, what would have happened to Sarah? Would Abraham ever have been able to reclaim her?

Typically, when a king wants to make an alliance with another king, he will give one of his daughters in marriage to seal the deal. The author of Genesis wants to portray Abraham or Isaac as the equivalent of a king, even though they were more akin to tribal chief or sheik. But neither Abraham nor Isaac had daughters that could be married off, therefore the need to pass off their wife as their sister. The sources seem bound to the story-telling convention of a kingly alliance but had to contort it to take account of the daughterless patriarchs, no matter how nonsensical the resulting tale became. (For comparison, Jacob did have a daughter to bargain with the king of Shechem in Gen 34 but that didn’t turn out so well.)

One could say that I’m inappropriately applying 21^st century concepts of women’s personhood and agency to a culture that saw women as the property of men. But if my reading of the variations in the stories are correct, the idea that Abraham would sell Sarah to some foreign potentate bothered the authors three millennia ago. This uneasiness with the patriarchs’ deception may have been due to the development of law codes around adultery and perjury in a legal system that simply did not exist when the original narrative first circulated in an oral tradition.

Opening Up the Bible

The varying nuances and interpretations for odd stories like the wife-sister triplets are one of the reasons why I love a critical approach to studying the Bible. If you believe that the wife-sister stories happened exactly as reported, then you are limited to thinking Abraham was either devious or lacking in faith. He was also very reckless to try his ruse a second time and Abimelech was foolish not to suspect Isaac was pulling the same scam.

However, if you accept a critical approach to understanding the Bible, new avenues of interpretation open up to you. You can explore the possibility of multiple sources or a literary variation on the standard alliance-through-marriage narrative. Why is the author repeating essentially the same story multiple times? What is he trying to say by slightly varying the narrative each time? Can the story be better understood by looking at what happened immediately prior to it or does it shed light on what is to come?

Once you open up the world of the Bible, the Bible opens up for you.

Foolish Galatians

Here in the United States we’re in the middle of a presidential election year, with candidates doing their best to win over as many voters as possible. In a sense, a political campaign is not that different from how 1st century Christian missionaries tried to win over Jew and Gentile converts to their particular interpretations of Christianity.

In a contemporary political campaign, when one candidate critiques the positions of their opponent, the audience is familiar with what the opponent has said or done. But when it comes to Paul defending his ministry against his opponents, such as the Judaizers in Galatians, we only hear one side of the story. We have to reconstruct the opposing viewpoint from how Paul argues against it in his letters. And, just as a modern politician tends to twist their opponent’s position, you can be sure that Paul is giving his audience neither a complete nor a generous interpretation of the Judaizers’ position.

Arguments Against the Judaizers

The core of Paul’s refutation of the Judaizers in Galatians lies in chapters 3 and 4. A key argument is an experiential one: the Galatians received the Spirit without doing works of the Law, so how can doing works of the Law be necessary for justification (3:1-5):? Prior to receiving the gospel, the Galatians were enslaved to the “elemental spirits of the world.” Faith in God’s son redeemed them from their slavery and made them adopted children of God. How can the Galatians return to slavery (4:1-9)?

Paul also relied on Scripture to refute the Judaizers: God promised Abraham, a man whose faith was reckoned as righteousness (Gen 15:5-6), that through his offspring all the nations would be blessed (Gen 22:18). They will be blessed not because they are circumcised, but because they believed, like Abraham did. And this promise to Abraham was made 430 years prior to the Law being given to Moses, so how can it be contingent on observing the law (Gal 3:6-18)?

The Allegory of Sarah and Hagar

Paul cites the story from Genesis of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, but says the Judaizers have misinterpreted it. This requires a little explanation. In Genesis 16 Sarah, seeing that she was childless, gave her Egyptian slave-girl Hagar to Abraham as a concubine. Hagar conceived but became contemptuous of Sarah, who then mistreated her to the point that Hagar ran away. But YHWH found Hagar by a spring of water in the wilderness and told her to return, later giving birth to Ishmael. In Genesis 21:8-21, Hagar is again driven off into the wilderness where God intervenes once more to save the life of mother and child.

Hagar and Ishmael Banished by Abraham (1781) by Flemish painter Pieter-Jozef Verhaghen

As well as we can reconstruct it, the Judaizers’ argument was that Abraham had two children, one (Isaac) the son of the free woman Sarah, the other (Ishmael) the son of the slave-girl Hagar. Jews are the descendants of Isaac and Gentiles are the descendants of Ishmael, so both Jew and Gentile are children of Abraham. But the Jews are the true children of Abraham because, like him, they practice circumcision and observe the Sabbath and other feasts. As the Messiah, Jesus offers Gentiles the opportunity to share in God’s promise of blessings to Abraham’s descendants. All they have to do is accept circumcision and observe the Mosaic Law.

Paul interprets the story of Sarah and Hagar as an allegory (Gal 4:21-31). The child of the slave woman (Hagar) is born according to the flesh and the child of the free woman (Sarah) is born according to the promise. The descendants of Hagar are not the Gentiles but the Jews, for they are enslaved to the Law. The descendants of Sarah are those born according to the Spirit, in freedom. Sarah had Abraham drive out Hagar because she did not want the child of the slave to share Abraham's inheritance. Thus Paul makes a subtle suggestion that the Galatians are to drive out the Judaizers.

Such an allegorical interpretation of Scripture was once popular, but has been out of favor since the Middle Ages. It’s not hard to see why. There are simply no controls to the interpreter’s imagination. Are Jews the children of the free woman or the slave woman? As you can see, this approach allows for diametrically opposed interpretations of the same biblical passage. How can someone possibly judge which of these allegorical interpretations is correct?

It’s not entirely an academic question. Paul is trying to refute those who would impose the Mosaic Law on Gentiles. From his perspective, the Judaizers are trying to enslave his Christian converts. But to say Paul is denigrating Judaism as a religion that enslaves people is to completely misinterpret Paul. That’s exactly what the 2nd c. theologian Marcion did, concluding that the God of the OT was incompatible with the teachings of Jesus. Anti-semites down through the centuries have also used Paul to justify their prejudice.

Abraham vs. Jesus

The Judaizers’ elevated focus on Abraham and Law caused Paul to reflect on the role of Jesus and “the Law of Christ” which he defines as “faith working through love” (Gal 5:6). It is the love of Christ “who loved me and gave himself for me” that now lives in Paul (2:20). The magnitude of Christ’s love is his self-sacrifice on the cross (a death, by the way, that is condemned by the Law [3:13]).

The Christian is freed from obedience to the Law but that does not mean – contrary to what the Judaizers might say – that Christians are free to indulge the desires of the flesh (5:16-21). The works of the flesh lead to destruction of the individual and the community, but the fruit of the Spirit lead to building up the individual and the community (5:22-26). Use your freedom to become slaves to one another (5:13) because it is only by bearing one another’s burdens that one fulfills the Law of Christ (6:2). Christ himself said that the whole Law could be summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Did Paul’s letter bring the Galatians round to his side again? His letter was preserved, so at least some in Galatia thought his writing was worth keeping and sharing with other churches. Galatians served as a rough draft for Paul’s letter introducing himself to the churches in Rome, where he was able to expound on his theological ideas of justification by faith. Both Galatians and Romans would inspire Luther to develop his doctrine of sola fide (justification by faith alone).

Maybe Paul was misunderstood in his own time, but his writings have continued to inspire Christians throughout the centuries.