Galatians 4:26
New International Version
But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother.

New Living Translation
But the other woman, Sarah, represents the heavenly Jerusalem. She is the free woman, and she is our mother.

English Standard Version
But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.

Berean Standard Bible
But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.

Berean Literal Bible
But the Jerusalem above is free, who is our mother.

King James Bible
But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.

New King James Version
but the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all.

New American Standard Bible
But the Jerusalem above is free; she is our mother.

NASB 1995
But the Jerusalem above is free; she is our mother.

NASB 1977
But the Jerusalem above is free; she is our mother.

Legacy Standard Bible
But the Jerusalem above is free; she is our mother.

Amplified Bible
But the Jerusalem above [that is, the way of faith, represented by Sarah] is free; she is our mother.

Christian Standard Bible
But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.

Holman Christian Standard Bible
But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.

American Standard Version
But the Jerusalem that is above is free, which is our mother.

Aramaic Bible in Plain English
But that Jerusalem above is free, which is our mother.

Contemporary English Version
But our mother is the city of Jerusalem in heaven above, and she isn't a slave.

Douay-Rheims Bible
But that Jerusalem, which is above, is free: which is our mother.

English Revised Version
But the Jerusalem that is above is free, which is our mother.

GOD'S WORD® Translation
But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother.

Good News Translation
But the heavenly Jerusalem is free, and she is our mother.

International Standard Version
But the heavenly Jerusalem is the free woman, and she is our spiritual mother.

Literal Standard Version
and the Jerusalem above is the free [woman], which is mother of us all,

Majority Standard Bible
But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is mother of us all.

New American Bible
But the Jerusalem above is freeborn, and she is our mother.

NET Bible
But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.

New Revised Standard Version
But the other woman corresponds to the Jerusalem above; she is free, and she is our mother.

New Heart English Bible
But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother.

Webster's Bible Translation
But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.

Weymouth New Testament
But the Jerusalem which is above is free, and *she* is *our* mother.

World English Bible
But the Jerusalem that is above is free, which is the mother of us all.

Young's Literal Translation
and the Jerusalem above is the free-woman, which is mother of us all,

Additional Translations ...
Audio Bible



Context
Hagar and Sarah
25Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present-day Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children. 26But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. 27For 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.”…

Cross References
Galatians 4:25
Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present-day Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children.

Hebrews 12:22
Instead, you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to myriads of angels

Revelation 3:12
The one who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of My God, and he will never again leave it. Upon him I will write the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God (the new Jerusalem that comes down out of heaven from My God), and My new name.

Revelation 12:1
And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed in the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.

Revelation 21:2
I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

Revelation 21:10
And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the holy city of Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God,


Treasury of Scripture

But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.

Jerusalem.

Psalm 87:3-6
Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God. Selah…

Isaiah 2:2,3
And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD'S house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it…

Isaiah 52:9
Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste places of Jerusalem: for the LORD hath comforted his people, he hath redeemed Jerusalem.

free.

Galatians 4:22
For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman.

Galatians 5:1
Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

John 8:36
If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.

mother.

Song of Solomon 8:1,2
O that thou wert as my brother, that sucked the breasts of my mother! when I should find thee without, I would kiss thee; yea, I should not be despised…

Isaiah 50:1
Thus saith the LORD, Where is the bill of your mother's divorcement, whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away.

Hosea 2:2,5
Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband: let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts; …

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Galatians 4
1. We were under the law till Christ came, as the heir is under the guardian till he be of age.
5. But Christ freed us from the law;
7. therefore we are servants no longer to it.
14. Paul remembers the Galatians' good will to him, and his to them;
22. and shows that we are the sons of Abraham by the freewoman.














(26) Jerusalem which is above.--The ideal or heavenly Jerusalem. (Comp. Hebrews 12:22, "Ye are come to . . . the heavenly Jerusalem;" Revelation 21:2, "the holy city, new Jerusalem." This "new" or "heavenly" Jerusalem is the seat or centre of the glorified Messianic kingdom, just as the old Jerusalem had been the centre of the earthly theocracy. The conception of the "heavenly Jerusalem" among the Jews, like the rest of their Messianic beliefs, took a materialistic form. It was to be a real but gorgeous city suspended in mid-air, "three parasangs" (11� miles) above the earthly city. Sometimes it is regarded as the exact copy of its earthly counterpart, and at other times as forming a perfect square. (Comp. Revelation 21:16.) No such materialistic notions attach to the idea as presented by St. Paul. "Jerusalem which is above" is to him a spiritual city, of which the Christian is a member here and now. It is part of the Messianic kingdom, to the whole of which the Apostle gave an ideal character. He could not but do so, seeing that the kingdom began with the coming of its King, though there was no earthly and visible realisation of it. The Christian "conversation" (or, rather, commonwealth, the constitution that he was under) was "in heaven," while he himself was upon earth. (See Philippians 3:20.)

Which is the mother of us all.--The true reading is, undoubtedly, which is our mother, omitting "all." The heavenly Jerusalem was the metropolis of Christianity, just as the earthly Jerusalem was the metropolis of Judaism.

Verse 26. - But Jerusalem which is above is free (ἡ δὲ ἄνω Ἱερουσαλήμ ἐλευθέρα ἐστίν); but the Jerusalem that is above is free. The mystic Jerusalem in which Christ reigns, the Son of David, who is at the right hand of God. For the word "above," ἄνω, comp. Colossians 3:1, 2, "Seek the things that are above (τὰ ἄνω) where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God: set your mind on the things that are above; your life is hid with Christ in God;" and Philippians 3:20, "Our citizenship (πολίτευμα) is in heaven." This is identical with the "heavenly Jerusalem" of Hebrews 12:22, which, standing in contrast with the "mount that might be touched and that burned with fire," Sinai with its soul-crushing terrors, appears associated with the pacifying blood of Jesus, and with communion with all that is holiest and most glorious. The essential identity of the contrast in the two passages, which are mutually illustrative, bespeaks a common origin in one and the same mind. The supernal Jerusalem is not chiefly contrasted with the Jerusalem "that now is," in point of time: she is not the future only, though in the future to be manifested - the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down (as St. John writes) from God out of heaven (Revelation 21:2); but she is there now, with God. It would be in harmony with St. Paul's representation to suppose that he conceives of her having been there with God in heaven of old, her citizens upon earth being the true servants of God in all ages. In former ages, however, she was comparatively barren; it needed that the enthronization of the God-Man, "the Mediator of the new covenant" (Hebrews 12:24), on "God's holy hill of Zion," should take place before she could become the prolific mother here shown to us. Commentators refer to rabbinical speculations relative to a Jerusalem which was conceived of as existing in heaven, as illustrated by Schottgen's 'Dissertatio de Hierosol. Caelesti' ('Hor. Hebr.,' vol. 1. diss. 5.), and also by Wetstein both here and on Revelation 21. It would be interesting if we could determine when those rabbinical speculations first arose, and how far it may be judged probable that they or some earlier form of them out of which these sprang suggested anything to St. Paul for the form in which he clothed his own conception of this idea; there may have been such. Meanwhile, we cannot but be struck by the purely ideal and spiritual character in which the apostle here exhibits his conception of it; though something like a terrene manifestation in the future seems indicated in Romans 8:21. "Is free;" the counterpart of Sarah, as mentioned in vers. 22, 23. That this Jerusalem is free, the apostle feels it needless to state; she to his very consciousness is the very home and bosom of God's love, having her very existence, as well as her outward-acting power, in his pervading, actuating Spirit. Bondage, constraint, there cannot be; for all volitions are there harmonized, absorbed, by the Spirit of love uniting her component elements both with each other and with God. Which is the mother of us all (ἥτις ἐστὶ μήτηρ ἡμῶν [Receptus, πάντων ἡμῶν]) which is our mother. Here again, as in ver. 24, ἥτις means "which, being such as she is, is our mother." We look at the Jerusalem that is above, and in her princely freedom we recognize what we her children are. The πάντων, which the Textus Receptus has before ἡμῶν, and which is by the general consent of critics rejected, is with much probability supposed to have come into the text by the copyist's recollection of the similar sentence in Romans 4:16, 17, Ἀβραάμ, ὅς ἐστι πατὴρ πάντων ἡμῶν. But πάντων, which there belongs to the essential thought of the context that God had made Abraham "the father of many nations," is unnecessary here, where the apostle is chiefly concerned with the freedom which characterizes the family of promise. If documentary evidence proved it to be genuine, it would find its justification in the notion of the fruitfulness which now at length, as the apostle presently shows, is given to the supernal Jerusalem.

Parallel Commentaries ...


Greek
But
δὲ (de)
Conjunction
Strong's 1161: A primary particle; but, and, etc.

the
(hē)
Article - Nominative Feminine Singular
Strong's 3588: The, the definite article. Including the feminine he, and the neuter to in all their inflections; the definite article; the.

Jerusalem
Ἰερουσαλὴμ (Ierousalēm)
Noun - Nominative Feminine Singular
Strong's 2419: Of Hebrew origin; Hierusalem, the capitol of Palestine.

above
ἄνω (anō)
Adverb
Strong's 507: Up, above, up to the top, up to the brim, things above, heaven, the heavenly region. Adverb from anti; upward or on the top.

is
ἐστίν (estin)
Verb - Present Indicative Active - 3rd Person Singular
Strong's 1510: I am, exist. The first person singular present indicative; a prolonged form of a primary and defective verb; I exist.

free,
ἐλευθέρα (eleuthera)
Adjective - Nominative Feminine Singular
Strong's 1658: Free, delivered from obligation. Probably from the alternate of erchomai; unrestrained, i.e. not a slave, or exempt.

[and she]
ἥτις (hētis)
Personal / Relative Pronoun - Nominative Feminine Singular
Strong's 3748: Whosoever, whichsoever, whatsoever.

is
ἐστὶν (estin)
Verb - Present Indicative Active - 3rd Person Singular
Strong's 1510: I am, exist. The first person singular present indicative; a prolonged form of a primary and defective verb; I exist.

our
ἡμῶν (hēmōn)
Personal / Possessive Pronoun - Genitive 1st Person Plural
Strong's 1473: I, the first-person pronoun. A primary pronoun of the first person I.

mother.
μήτηρ (mētēr)
Noun - Nominative Feminine Singular
Strong's 3384: A mother. Apparently a primary word; a 'mother'.


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NT Letters: Galatians 4:26 But the Jerusalem that is above (Gal. Ga)
Galatians 4:25
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