Intertextuality Pair

Galatians 4:27 → Isaiah 54:1

Quotation

Later text

Galatians 4:27BSB

For it is written: "Rejoice, O barren woman, who bears no children; break forth and cry aloud, you who have never travailed; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband."

Earlier text

Isaiah 54:1BSB

“Shout for joy, O barren woman, who bears no children; break forth in song and cry aloud, you who have never travailed; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband,” says the LORD.
+ 3 more earlier texts

Earlier text

Isaiah 51:1-2BSB

"Listen to Me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the LORD: Look to the rock from which you were cut, and to the quarry from which you were hewn. Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah who gave you birth. When I called him, he was but one; then I blessed him and multiplied him.

Earlier text

Isaiah 53:12-54:1BSB

Therefore I will allot Him a portion with the great, and He will divide the spoils with the strong, because He has poured out His life unto death, and He was numbered with the transgressors. Yet He bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors. “Shout for joy, O barren woman, who bears no children; break forth in song and cry aloud, you who have never travailed; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband,” says the LORD.

Earlier text

Isaiah 49:14-21BSB

But Zion said, “The LORD has forsaken me; the Lord has forgotten me!” “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the son of her womb? Even if she could forget, I will not forget you! Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; your walls are ever before Me. Your builders hasten back; your destroyers and wreckers depart from you. Lift up your eyes and look around. They all gather together; they come to you. As surely as I live,” declares the LORD, “you will wear them all as jewelry and put them on like a bride. For your ruined and desolate places and your ravaged land will now indeed be too small for your people, and those who devoured you will be far away. Yet the children of your bereavement will say in your hearing, ‘This place is too small for us; make room for us to live here.’ Then you will say in your heart, ‘Who has begotten these for me? I was bereaved and barren; I was exiled and rejected. So who has reared them? Look, I was left all alone, so where did they come from?’”
Walk the Square · a single-voice walk of this pair around the Clowney square9:55

Significance

Sarah is mentioned outside Genesis only in Isaiah 51:1-2, where she bore those who "pursue righteousness" and "seek the LORD." In Isaiah, Sarah's barrenness theme transforms from a past story of a child to the future "story of a birth of a people," making it exegetically possible for Paul to dissociate the Isaiah proclamation from ethnic Israel exclusively—Sarah's children include those truly searching for God and his righteousness. Isaiah portrays Jerusalem as desolate (Isaiah 64:10—"Jerusalem a desolation," which the Greek renders εἰς κατάραν, for a curse!), producing female images of two Jerusalems: a barren, cursed Jerusalem and a rejoicing Jerusalem. Since Isaiah 54:1 follows immediately upon the Suffering Servant "song" (alluded to in Galatians 2:20-21; 3:1, 13), Paul expected the Galatians to see the connection between faith in the crucified Christ and incorporation into the numerous people having the new Jerusalem as their mother. The quotation stresses the link believers enjoy not with Sarah precisely, but with the new, redeemed Jerusalem. If that free and heavenly city is the Galatians' true mother, how absurd to regress and become enslaved to slavish Jerusalem abandoned by God!

Found via
Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type
Direct Quotation
Connection Method(s)
Promise-Fulfillment + Longitudinal Theme

▸ Sing O Barren One

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