Galatians 4:21 Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says?

◄ Galatians 4:21 ►

Parallel Verses

New International Version
Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says?

English Standard Version
Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law?

New American Standard Bible
Tell me, you who want to be under law, do you not listen to the law?

King James Bible
Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?

Holman Christian Standard Bible
Tell me, those of you who want to be under the law, don't you hear the law?

International Standard Version
Tell me, those of you who want to live under the Law: Are you really listening to what the Law says?

American Standard Version
Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?

Douay-Rheims Bible
Tell me, you that desire to be under the law, have you not read the law?

Darby Bible Translation
Tell me, ye who are desirous of being under law, do ye not listen to the law?

Young's Literal Translation
Tell me, ye who are willing to be under law, the law do ye not hear?

Commentaries

Matthew Henry's Commentary

4:21-27 The difference between believers who rested in Christ only, and those who trusted in the law, is explained by the histories of Isaac and Ishmael. These things are an allegory, wherein, beside the literal and historical sense of the words, the Spirit of God points out something further. Hagar and Sarah were apt emblems of the two different dispensations of the covenant. The heavenly Jerusalem, the true church from above, represented by Sarah, is in a state of freedom, and is the mother of all believers, who are born of the Holy Spirit. They were by regeneration and true faith, made a part of the true seed of Abraham, according to the promise made to him.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown

21. desire—of your own accord madly courting that which must condemn and ruin you.

do ye not hear—do ye not consider the mystic sense of Moses' words? [Grotius]. The law itself sends you away from itself to Christ [Estius]. After having sufficiently maintained his point by argument, the apostle confirms and illustrates it by an inspired allegorical exposition of historical facts, containing in them general laws and types. Perhaps his reason for using allegory was to confute the Judaizers with their own weapons: subtle, mystical, allegorical interpretations, unauthorized by the Spirit, were their favorite arguments, as of the Rabbins in the synagogues. Compare the Jerusalem Talmud [Tractatu Succa, cap. Hechalil]. Paul meets them with an allegorical exposition, not the work of fancy, but sanctioned by the Holy Spirit. History, if properly understood contains in its complicated phenomena, simple and continually recurring divine laws. The history of the elect people, like their legal ordinances, had, besides the literal, a typical meaning (compare 1Co 10:1-4; 15:45, 47; Re 11:8). Just as the extra-ordinarily-born Isaac, the gift of grace according to promise, supplanted, beyond all human calculations, the naturally-born Ishmael, so the new theocratic race, the spiritual seed of Abraham by promise, the Gentile, as well as Jewish believers, were about to take the place of the natural seed, who had imagined that to them exclusively belonged the kingdom of God.