Speaking of women of ancient history, the apostle wrote: “Now this Hagar [the maidservant who substituted for her mistress Sarah in bearing Ishmael to Abraham] means Sinai, a mountain in Arabia, and she [Hagar] corresponds with the Jerusalem today [when Paul was on earth], for she is in slavery [to the Mosaic Law covenant] with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.”​—Galatians 4:25, 26.

The Jerusalem in Slavery

10, 11. (a) What significant development involving the Israelites took place at Mount Sinai? (b) With regard to the Law covenant, what happened in 33 C.E.?

¹⁰ Hagar does not typify, or represent, the Mosaic Law covenant. Nor is that covenant with its Ten Commandments pictured by Mount Sinai, with which Hagar corresponds. Of course, God did not make any covenant with Mount Sinai. But it was there that he brought the Israelites, whom he had freed from Egyptian bondage, into a covenant relationship with himself, and he dealt with them as a free nation. This took place centuries after God made a unilateral covenant with Abraham, promising him a male seed.

¹¹ When Moses, the mediator of the Law covenant, came down from Mount Sinai, his face had a superhuman effulgence of such intensity that he had to veil it so that the Israelites could look at him. (2 Corinthians 3:12-16) But up on Mount Sinai, Moses was not in direct touch with Jehovah, for it was by means of an angel that God entered into the covenant with the Israelites. (Acts 7:37, 38; Hebrews 2:2) In that way the nation of Israel became subject to the Law covenant. Centuries later, however, that covenant was removed, being nailed to Jesus’ torture stake in 33 C.E.​—Colossians 2:13, 14.

12. (a) Of whom was earthly Jerusalem a “mother”? (b) Jerusalem on earth was under what servitude 19 centuries ago, and why did she never get free?

¹² Paul wrote that Mount Sinai corresponded with the Jerusalem below of his day. Of course, Jerusalem was not a covenant; it was a prized city occupied by Jewish residents. As the capital city, it stood for the nation and was the symbolic “mother” of “children,” that is, of all members of the Jewish, or Israelite, nation. (Matthew 23:37) In Jerusalem stood the temple of Jehovah, the God with whom the Israelites were in covenant relationship. But the Jewish people did not then have an independent kingdom of their own ruled by a descendant of King David. Hence, they were not free but were in servitude under Gentile political authorities. More importantly, they were in religious slavery. Only the promised Messiah, Jesus Christ, could free them from that, as well as from slavery to sin. But that Jerusalem did not accept Jesus as Messiah and King and never did get free. Instead, she perished at Roman hands in 70 C.E., with disaster for her “children.”

Jesus Christ was not the figurative son of the earthly Jerusalem of his days on earth, for that city then was in bondage, or slavery, with her “children,” and Jesus never was enslaved. (Galatians 4:25) Earthly Jerusalem was the “mother” of those natural Jews who rejected Jesus Christ as the promised “seed” not only of the patriarch Abraham but also of the Greater Abraham, Jehovah God.​—Matthew 23:37-39.