24 These two women are like pictures of two agreements that God made with his people. Hagar is like the agreement that God made on Sinai mountain. That agreement causes people to become slaves. 25 Hagar is like a picture of Sinai mountain in Arabia. Also, she is like the city of Jerusalem here on earth now, because that city and its people are slaves under the authority of God's Law.
4:24Sinai mountain was the place where God gave his Law to Israel's people. God's agreement with his people at that time was that they must obey all the rules in his Law. So Israel's people were like slaves under the authority of God's Law.
4:25Arabia was south and east from Israel.
26 But Abraham's wife, Sarah, is a picture of the new Jerusalem that is above. Sarah was a free person, not a slave, and she is like our mother. 27 It says in the Bible:
‘Be happy, you woman who could not have any children!
You have never known the pain of a child's birth.
But now shout loudly because you are so happy!
Yes, be happy, because the lonely woman now has more children
than the woman who has a husband.’
