Tell me, you that desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law?
Read Chapter 4
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
Because in the Old Testament the New is prefigured, those men of God who then understood this in the manner appropriate to their times are shown to have been ministers and performers of the old covenant but heirs of the new.
People might suppose that in the case of Hagar Abraham acted [merely from human desire for procreation]. But the apostle makes the reverse clear, viewing this in relation to prophecy.
Do ye not hear the law? A vigorous question. If you will not listen to me, will you not listen to the law, that you think so much of, for it will point you from itself to Christ?
Like and equal light over all, how much more does Christ, who is the true sun and the true day, bestow in His Church the light of eternal life with the like equality! Of which equality we see the sacrament celebrated in Exodus, when the manna flowed down from heaven, and, prefiguring the things to come, showed forth the nourishment of the heavenly bread and the food of the coming Christ. For there, without distinction either of sex or of age, an omer was collected equally by each one.
One should note that the whole narrative in Genesis is here called Law, not, according to the popular assumption, simply statements of what is to be done or avoided but everything that is rehearsed concerning Abraham and his wives and sons. .
He says rightly, you that desire, for the matter was not one of a proper and orderly succession of things but of their own unseasonable contentiousness. It is the Book of Creation which he here calls the Law, which name he often gives to the whole Old Testament.
Ai "in relation to the synagogue of the Jews, according to the law, "which gendereth to bondage"-"the other gendereth "(to liberty, being raised) above all principality, and power, and dominion, and every name that is l named, not only in this world, but in that which is to come, "which is the mother of us all "in which we have the promise of (Christ's) holy church; by reason of which he adds in conclusion: "So then, brethren, we are not children of the bond woman, but of the free.".
Images prophesy: statutes govern. What that digamy of Abraham portends, the same apostle fully teaches,
