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Questions From Readers

▪ How was Jerusalem “in slavery with her children,” as the apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 4:25?

Primarily, Jerusalem and its people in Paul’s day were in slavery to the Mosaic Law.

In Galatians chapter 4 the apostle showed that Christians in the new covenant had been purchased by Christ and thus were free. This contrasted with the situation of Jews under the Law covenant. Paul illustrated this with Abraham’s wife (Sarah) and his concubine (Hagar), saying: “These women mean two covenants, the one from Mount Sinai, which brings forth children for slavery, and which is Hagar. Now this Hagar means Sinai, a mountain in Arabia [where Jehovah gave the Law to Israel through Moses], and she corresponds with the Jerusalem today, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.”​—Galatians 4:24-26.

When Paul said that the “women mean two covenants,” he was simply speaking in an abbreviated style. Jehovah is not illustratively married to an impersonal covenant but to an organized people in the covenant. He had earlier considered Israel under the Law covenant to be like his wife. (Compare Isaiah 54:1, 6.) However, the free woman (Sarah) stood for the Jerusalem above, Jehovah’s universal organization, which is as a wife to him.

But how could the Jews be considered to be in slavery to the Law, since it was perfect and was provided by God himself?

It is true that of itself ‘the Law was holy, and the commandment was holy and righteous and good.’ (Romans 7:12) But the imperfect Israelites under the Law could not keep it perfectly, much as they might try. (Romans 7:14-16) The apostle Peter referred to that fact when he asked the following question before the Christian governing body: “Why are you making a test of God by imposing upon the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our forefathers nor we were capable of bearing?” (Acts 15:10) Similarly, in Galatians 4:4, 5 Paul said that Christ came “that he might release by purchase those under law.” Whoever would insist that Christians were obliged to ‘observe days and months and seasons and years,’ as prescribed by the Law, would cause slavery all over again.​—Galatians 4:9, 10.

Of course, as pointed out on page 13 of The Watchtower of March 15, 1985, first-century Jews were slaves in a number of ways. They were politically in bondage to the Romans. They were slaves to sin. (John 8:34) And there were erroneous religious views to which they were bound. But the principal slavery to which Paul referred in Galatians 4:25 was the Jews’ slavery to the Mosaic Law covenant, given at Sinai and represented by Abraham’s slave concubine Hagar.