Allegory

Within the surveyed witness, allegory names a mode of speech in which one storyline or set of images stands for another. Across these passages it surfaces in two registers: figured narrative and figured landscape. Jotham tells a story about trees to indict a coronation; Isaiah pictures a transfigured wilderness and a new animal order to speak of restoration; and Paul, reading the Hagar and Sarah narrative, names the technique outright — "Which things contain an allegory" — and unpacks it as two covenants. The Galatians passage is the only place in this group where the text itself signposts the topical label.

A Story Told About Trees

The earliest allegorical instance in this survey is Jotham's parable of the trees. Standing on Mount Gerizim after Abimelech's coup, Jotham tells how the trees once "went forth to anoint a king over them" and approached, in turn, the olive, the fig, and the vine — each of which refused, unwilling to leave its useful work "to wave to and fro over the trees" (Jud 9:8-13). The bramble alone accepts: "And the bramble said to the trees, If in truth you⁺ anoint me king over you⁺, then come and take refuge in my shade; and if not, let fire come out of the bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon" (Jud 9:15). The story is figured throughout — within the parable each tree carries a referent in the political situation Jotham is addressing — and the closing curse on "the cedars of Lebanon" is the figure cashed out as warning.

Figured Landscape and Figured Animals

Isaiah supplies two of the entries gathered under this umbrella, both of which work by transposing the expected order of nature. In the first, predator and prey share pasture: "And the wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat; and the calf and the young lion will grow fat together; and a little child will lead them" (Isa 11:6). The cow grazes with the bear, the lion eats straw, and a nursing child plays on a cobra's hole (Isa 11:7-8). The animals are not the point in their own right — they are figures for a pacified order under the shoot from Jesse's stump described earlier in that chapter.

The second Isaianic instance figures the land itself. "The wilderness and the dry land will be glad; and the desert will rejoice, and blossom as the rose" (Isa 35:1). Lebanon's glory and Carmel and Sharon's majesty are transferred onto the desert (Isa 35:2). The blind see, the deaf hear, the lame leap, and "in the wilderness will waters break out, and streams in the desert" (Isa 35:5-6). A highway runs through the transformed terrain — "it will be called The Way of Holiness; the unclean will not pass over it; but it will be for [the redeemed]" (Isa 35:8) — and the chapter closes with the ransomed of Yahweh returning to Zion with everlasting joy (Isa 35:10). The figured landscape carries the weight: it is a picture of what return and redemption look like, told in geography rather than argument.

The Two Covenants

The Galatians passage is the one place in this survey where the text names what it is doing. Paul, addressing those who "desire to be under the law" (Gal 4:21), retells the Genesis narrative of Abraham's two sons — "one by the slave woman, and one by the free woman" (Gal 4:22) — and then steps into commentary: "Which things contain an allegory: for these [women] are two covenants; one from mount Sinai, bearing children to slavery, which is Hagar" (Gal 4:24). He carries the figure out: Hagar maps to "mount Sinai in Arabia" and "answers to the Jerusalem that now is," while "the Jerusalem that is above is free, which is our mother" (Gal 4:25-26). The reading is then applied: "Now you⁺, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise" (Gal 4:28), and the covenantal stakes follow — "Cast out the slave woman and her son: for the son of the slave woman will not inherit with the son of the free woman" (Gal 4:30). The mechanism on display in Galatians is the same as the mechanism in Judges 9 and Isaiah 11 and 35; here it is named.

Where the Term Surfaces

In each instance gathered under this umbrella, allegory works by letting one story or image stand in for another while the surface-level vehicle stays coherent on its own terms — the trees can be heard as trees, the wilderness as wilderness, Hagar and Sarah as the Genesis figures — and the figured sense is what the reader is meant to carry away. See also Parables and Symbols and Similitudes for adjacent modes of figural speech.