¹Now I say, for as long a time as the heir is a child, in nothing does he differ from a slave, though he is owner of everything;

²instead he is under guardians and trustees until the time appointed by his father.

³So also we ourselves, when we were children, were held in bondage under the basic principles of the world.

⁴When, however, the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth his Son, having been born of a woman, having been born under the Law,

⁵that He may redeem those under the Law, so that we may receive the divine adoption as sons.

⁶Because now you are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying out, "Abba, O Father!"

⁷So you are no longer a slave but a son; now if a son, also an heir through God, the Anointed One.

⁸But at that time indeed, not knowing God, you were enslaved to those by nature not being gods.

⁹However now, when you had known God, however rather had been known by God, how do you turn again to the weak and destitute principles to which again, anew, you desire to be enslaved?

¹⁰Days you observe, and months, and seasons, and years.

¹¹I fear for you, lest perhaps in vain I have toiled for you.

¹²Become as I myself am, because I myself also have become as you yourselves. Brothers, I implore you; in no thing did you wrong me.

¹³Now you know that in weakness of the flesh I brought good news to you at the first,

¹⁴and your test in my flesh you did not despise, nor reject me with contempt, but as a messenger of God you received me, even as the Anointed One Jesus.

¹⁵Then where was your blessedness? For I bear witness to you that, if possible, your eyes, when you had gouged out, then you would have given them to me.

¹⁶So have I become your enemy, speaking truth to you?

¹⁷They are zealous after you, not rightly, but they desire to exclude you from us, so that you may be zealous after them.

¹⁸Now good it is to be zealous in a right thing at all times, and not only in my being present with you,

¹⁹my children, of whom again I travail until the Anointed One may have been formed in you.

²⁰Indeed I was wishing to be present with you presently and to change my tone, because I am perplexed as to you.

²¹Tell me, you who are wishing to be under the Law, do you not listen to the Law?

²²For it has been written that Abraham had two sons, one of the slave woman and one of the free.

²³But the one of the slave woman indeed has been born according to flesh, however the one of the free through the promise.

²⁴Which things are allegorized; for these are the two covenants, one indeed from Mount Sinai, begetting unto slavery, which is Hagar.

²⁵Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, now she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children.

²⁶But the above Jerusalem is free, who is mother of us all;

²⁷for it has been written: "Rejoice, O barren woman, you who are not bearing; break forth and call aloud, you who are not travailing, because many are the children of the desolate woman, more than her who has the husband."

²⁸Now you yourselves, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise.

²⁹But just as at that time the one according to flesh, when he had been born, was persecuting the one born according to Spirit, so also it is now;

³⁰but what says the Scripture? Cast out the slave woman and her son, for certainly the son of the slave woman will not inherit along with the son of the free.

³¹So then, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman but of the free;