When we left off last Sunday, we were contemplating what mattered most to Abraham, his heart's desire: to be a dad, to become a patriarch, to receive from God the child he couldn't have. Moving halfway across his known world, gaining wealth, fighting battles – what did it all mean if there were no son to be an heir? But when God assured him he'd have a son of his own, he believed (Genesis 15:1-6). As the years ticked by, he agreed to have a child by his wife's Egyptian maidservant Hagar, a boy he named Ishmael (Genesis 16). And for thirteen years, he was content. Until God came for an unexpected chat, that is.
He was ninety-nine, it says, when God changed their names and their lives. And what else did God tell him that day? That he'd bless Abraham's wife Sarah, “and moreover, I have given you a son by her” (Genesis 17:16). It had to be a mistake, right, or a reference back to Ishmael somehow? Because after years of infertility, Sarah is an eighty-nine-year-old woman who stopped ovulating long already, and they've put their reproductive systems on the shelf as souvenirs (Genesis 18:11).. So by any measure, “what Abraham hears from God sounds utterly absurd.”1 Given a promise like that, how is Abraham supposed to react? “Abraham fell on his face and he laughed, and he said in his heart, 'To a son of a hundred years shall one be born? Shall Sarah, the daughter of ninety years, bear?'” (Genesis 17:17). Abraham can't help it – this thought is comedy gold. Oh God, what a kidder! So “a disbelieving Abraham... laughs in disbelief and perhaps even in bitterness and derision.”2
In answer to Abraham's incredulity and his attempt to plead that Ishmael is good enough for him, God's reply “begins with a firm 'No.'”3 As in, “No, but your wife Sarah shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac” (Genesis 17:19). Seldom does God impose a name on someone, and rarer still before birth, but here he does. Isaac means 'he laughs.'4 God may not outright rebuke Abraham for his defensiveness and doubt,5 but the name of the child is an implicit scolding, an enduring “pun with the laughter of disbelief” Abraham let slip.6 In his treatment of God as a jester, Abraham had accidentally named a son who didn't yet exist but was promised.7 Laugh all you want, Abraham, but “I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his seed after him... I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year” (Genesis 17:19, 21). This son, and not any other, was the one God had “promised... from the very outset, and in him the fulfillment of the promise will be achieved.”8
A short time passes; Abraham is healing from his circumcision. In the day's dry heat, a trio of travelers pass his way, and Abraham leaps and bounds his way into action; he and Sarah both fully commit themselves to the mission of hospitality (Genesis 18:1-8), though Sarah does her labor unseen in the kitchen. The strange visitors ask after his wife Sarah, and he informs them that she's in the tent (Genesis 18:9). In fact, she's there at the tent flap, eavesdropping on everything. Which is just as the guests want it, it turns out. The chief of the visitors pronounces what sounds to mortal ears like a politely well-meant but ignorant blessing: “I will surely return to you according to the time of life, and behold, a son to Sarah your wife!” (Genesis 18:10).
What he announces is physically, biologically, naturally impossible, and Sarah knows it well. Understandably, “Sarah laughed in her innards, saying, 'After I am worn out, shall I have pleasure, and my lord is old?'” (Genesis 18:12). She thinks it's ridiculous for a time-withered woman to resume a dry intimacy with an elderly husband, and expect any fruitfulness, to expect Eden. So “she laughed internally,” not out loud, “and then to herself she thought about their advanced age” and how it barred any consideration of the fantasy being spun in her hearing.9 What she doesn't quite recognize yet is that the one who spoke it is, in fact, the LORD in disguise.
She's surprised, then, when she hears “the LORD [say] to Abraham, 'For what did this one, Sarah, laugh?'” (Genesis 18:13). Oops, caught! And caught for an internal reaction while out of sight, no less. Naturally, she'll take this question as a rebuke, that the stranger is zeroing in on her unbelief and holding her accountable for laughing him off. But notice that “the question is addressed to Abraham,” not to Sarah.10 God doesn't ask her to explain herself; God prods Abraham to explain. Why? Because Sarah's reaction is the surprise of hearing this idea for the first time. But it's been days or weeks since Abraham found out. Apparently, Abraham is still a bit resistant to God's plan, so he “continues to conceal the news from Sarah,” and maybe this entire sneaky business with God showing up in disguise was a trap to use Abraham's compassion for strangers to gently bypass him and get the good news to Sarah – like a radio broadcast into a censored country.11 God is chiding “Abraham for not informing Sarah that she will have a son,” because he should have embraced it as good news.12
When God tells Abraham what Sarah was inwardly thinking, he summarizes it but “tactfully alters it to omit any reference to Abraham's advanced age.”13 God puts her focus back on her: “Shall I indeed bear a child now that I am old?” (Genesis 18:13). To that, the LORD poses to Abraham the million-dollar question: “Is anything too wonderful for the LORD,” or “too difficult for the LORD?” (Genesis 18:14). If God's hand is at work, then “neither age nor sterility will prove a difficulty,” because the Lord's “word will be inescapable, and the birth will teach her,” and Abraham too, “the power of [God's] words.”14 Both of them should rest assured: “At the appointed time I will return to you, according to the time of life, and to Sarah shall be a son” (Genesis 18:14).
Now that she's been caught, and thinking she's the one being rebuked, “Sarah acted falsely, saying, 'I did not laugh!', for she was afraid.” She was sure she was in trouble, backed into a corner, so she denied it – after all, it was all in her head! But “he said, 'No, but you did laugh'” (Genesis 18:15). It's usually assumed that this is God replying to her claim. Probably. It could also be Abraham contradicting her on God's say-so, admitting the charges as true because he's submitting to his responsibility and embracing God's promise for them.15
The next days and months are plenty eventful. We've heard before how Abraham escorts his guests down the road, where he – and not Sarah, who needs to dwell on good news only – finds out the impending doom of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18:20-21). Abraham haggles over their fate, and when he sees the aftermath of annihilation come morning, he's sure he's failed (Genesis 18:22–19:28). “Will the LORD... never again be favorable?... Are his promises at an end?” (Psalm 77:7-8). So, while Lot and his daughters cozy up in a cave to the east (Genesis 19:30-38), Abraham yanks his household south and west to the land of future Philistines, where his doubts and discouragements spin out, putting a whole kingdom in peril when its king unknowingly takes Sarah into his harem – separated from Abraham in just the time she ought to be conceiving new life in her womb (Genesis 20:1-2). The danger for Gerar is that “the LORD had closed all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, the wife of Abraham” (Genesis 20:18), with God informing the king that “if you do not return her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours” (Genesis 20:7). And the danger for Abraham himself is, “the LORD may bring to Abraham what he has promised him” when Abraham “keeps the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice” (Genesis 18:19), which this sure isn't.
Thankfully, Abimelech returns Sarah to Abraham, “and Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech and also healed his wife and female slaves so that they bore children” (Genesis 20:17). Abraham's prophetic prayer unstopped the sealed wombs, breaking the curse and allowing life to burst forth. It's no coincidence that, only two verses later, we hear that the God who healed the wife of Abimelech has also come through for the wife of Abraham in the same way – because of his promise, because of his word, and because the fulfillment of these can now embrace Abraham's prayer for the healing of others. Now that Abraham has prayed for those outside his house to be blessed with fertility, that very blessing aimed outward can redound inward as well.16
So now we get the honor of reading that “the LORD visited Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did to Sarah as he had spoken” (Genesis 21:1). There have been so many enthralling stories in between that we might've nearly forgotten the whole thing – but God sure hasn't.17 What God now does is exactly what God had said and spoken beforehand. God is absolutely, incontrovertibly faithful to his word – and to Sarah, which is an example Abraham rather needs. God said he'd act for her, so now he acts accordingly. This is the first time in the Bible we get the verb 'visit' or 'oversee,' though it sure won't be the last (e.g., Exodus 3:16). It's often to do with “God intervening in human affairs either to bless or to punish.”18 And this one is for blessing (Genesis 17:16).
So how does God make good on his word? Like this: “Sarah conceived and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him” (Genesis 21:2). Sarah made much of Abraham's old age in her prior scoffing, but that very elderhood is part and parcel of the wonder. What's more, it happens at the exact time God chiseled onto the calendar, the appointed time set apart like a holiday, the crucial time that changes lives, divides the before from the after – the time of their visitation. A miracle transpires perfectly on schedule.
Why? In answer to Abraham's faith, for a start: “In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations.... He didn't weaken in hope when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, or when he considered the deadness of Sarah's womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised,” says St. Paul (Romans 4:18-21). Our man Abraham didn't deny the natural impossibility of the birth – it was as radical as expecting a corpse to yawn and wake up alive. But after his misadventures, after he'd been renewed in faith, he didn't waver; he believed, because he'd seen, that “God gives life where only death seems to reign.”19 Glorifying a God of Life made his faith strong. He didn't dally any longer with doubt, but invested himself totally in the God of the promise.
And it wasn't just him. “By faith barren Sarah herself received power for the founding of seed, even beyond the seasonable phase of life, since she considered him faithful who had promised” (Hebrews 11:11). She shared her husband's strengthening faith, her husband's unweakening hope. She, too, looked past the natural impossibility, which once had made her laugh in disbelief, and instead clung to the faithfulness of the God who had pledged to act for her, to give her a son. And because she believed as her husband believed, the faithful God intervened for her, acted in her, revitalized her body to transcend the limits imposed by the laws of decay.20 “What was beyond hope by natural processes, they saw come to be, not by human processes, but by divine grace.”21 She heard from God “a voice that raises from death,”22 which empowered her womb to conceive. Like Abraham, Sarah's “heart had been chosen for the faith that was rewarded with [the promised son's] birth.”23
And therefore “Sarah conceived and bore to Abraham a son” (Genesis 21:2), even though “Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him” (Genesis 21:5), “the son born of grace and of the very gift of God,”24 “the triumph of the power of God over the limitations of nature,”25 “conceived [and born] through faith in what seemed a hopeless situation.”26 And it happened, we're told, at just the designated time, a year after – and maybe precisely a year to the day after – the promise and covenant had been given. Some later Jewish readers got quite specific, maintaining that “Isaac was born on the feast of the firstfruits of the harvest” which the seed of Abraham would later come to celebrate – in other words, on Pentecost.27
At last, by grace through faith, “Sarah became the covenantal mother.”28 In the wake of the miracle birth of this son whose existence was faith's reception of the promise, whose entire being is life proving God true, what is the covenant mother to say? We've already heard that the son's name is Isaac, and we know why. Both man and woman had initially reacted “to the divine promise of Isaac with incredulous laughter,”29 as if to “laugh it off as nonsense.”30 So this name could easily have been “a permanently embarrassing reminder” of their earlier “lack of trust, and also of the fact that God has had the last laugh” at their expense.31
But now that Isaac's here, Sarah is filled with amazement, “doubt turned to prophecy,”32 and she speaks “words of spiritual and physical joy,”33 with which “Sarah chooses to repair his name.”34 She virtually sings: “Who would have uttered to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children?” (Genesis 21:7). The oracle seems too incredible, that she should “release a flow of milk” as biological proof to all that the child was her own – a wonder no less profound than Moses tapping water from a desert rock (Exodus 17:6).35 Sarah sees something else, beyond the rebuke: “God has made laughter for me!” (Genesis 21:6). She's laughing again, laughing as she holds her newborn boy, but this time “her laughter expressed no mocking derision but rather exulting joy,”36 “rejoicing and celebration at the birth of Isaac.”37 If God got the last laugh, he's invited the seeming butts of the joke to join in. So, with her God, Sarah “laughs happily,”38 she “laughs with joy at the supernatural work of grace.”39 Because “Isaac means laughter and joy.”40 His life is created to be “a miraculous seed of renewal..., a divinely inspired eruption of joy into the sad human world.”41
And for that reason, Sarah has a prediction: “Everyone who hears will laugh with me” (Genesis 21:6), “will rejoice with me.”42 This was never meant to be just an inside joke for the very few, for one man and his one wife and their little household. This miracle is a riot of astonishment for the masses! The birth of Isaac is the birth of the promised child, the one through whom the everlasting covenant is to continue, the covenant that will mean life for the world. This miracle should matter to everyone because of what God plans to do through him.43 So this birth is a message worth spreading around to every ear, for it should bring an awesome merriment to every heart and a gape and grin to every face. God has visited, the son is here – that's good news, that's gospel!
That's Sarah's reaction. How about Abraham's? No sooner had the child been born than “Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore to him, Isaac” (Genesis 21:3). Why pick that name? Because, as we've heard, God had picked it out in advance for his own reasons. Abram has to become Abraham and Jacob will have to become Israel, but Isaac only has to be Isaac; he was born into the name God chooses.44 One ancient reader remarked that he was named this “just as his name was ordained and written in the heavenly tablets.”45 And Abraham made sure of it. Abraham complied with the prior word of God, accepting fully that, just as God had given the son, so God had rightfully named the son – even if the name at first stung him.
At the same time, “Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was a son of eight days, as God commanded him” (Genesis 21:4). Commanded when? In the very same covenant wherein Isaac's birth was foretold. “This is my covenant which you shall keep, between me and your seed after you: … He who is a son of eight days among you shall be circumcised” (Genesis 17:10-12). Up to now, all Abraham had were adults. This is the first time a son of eight days has been circumcised, fitting perfectly the terms of the covenant – he was, as some Jews said, “the first one circumcised according to the covenant which was ordained forever.”46 Abraham was faithful to that covenant, because his faith in the God of promise became the beautiful sight of a beloved son.
As Sarah had mentioned, she received power not just to conceive a child and bring a son to birth, but also to nurse him at her own breast, not needing to hand him off to a wet nurse as she likely expected. But in time, “the child grew and was weaned” (Genesis 21:8). Now, moms of the congregation, I'm not sure when you moved your babies off milk. A fairly typical practice in modern America is non-exclusive breastfeeding up to about one year of age. The World Health Organization and American Academy of Pediatrics both recommend exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months and, ideally, continuing breastfeeding until two years of age or more.47 In the ancient world, it was most common at three years, but could be as early as two or late as seven.48
In modern America, infant mortality is fairly low, about 5.4 deaths for every thousand live births. But even just a century ago, we had over thirteen times the rate of infant mortality. And in the ancient world, maybe over a quarter of infants didn't make it to the weaning age. So you can imagine that, given that geriatric pregnancies also come with added genetic risks and lower birth weights, Isaac's first years were – humanly speaking – a gamble. So no wonder that Abraham, giving thanks to God for preserving this boy alive, makes a big deal out of Isaac's weaning at age three (or two or four or five). As Sarah celebrated while nursing began, Abraham has joy as it ends, so “Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned” (Genesis 21:8), an “implicit celebration” of survival, of hope and a future.49 It was a festive holiday occasion, with plenty of food (as a weaned Isaac can now enjoy it) and also enough to drink.
All ought to be well. But “even in laughter, the heart may ache” (Proverbs 14:13). Earlier, I quoted Sarah as saying that “everyone who hears it will laugh with me.” But her words could just as well be translated so that “everyone who hears it will laugh at me” (Genesis 21:6), at what she acknowledges could be, in some eyes, “the absurdity of her aged maternity.”50 Even as her faith becomes sight, there will be those whose bitterness begrudges God's work in Sarah's life, who seek to dismiss it and mock it as absurd and clownish, and who may perceive it as a threat and strive to steal what it represents – what Isaac is and has.
In the midst of or wake of the great feast, “Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, laughing” (Genesis 21:9). We remember that, when Hagar was pregnant years before Sarah, Sarah “was lessened in [Hagar's] eyes” (Genesis 16:4). For the next thirteen years, as Hagar raised her son Ishmael while Sarah stewed, Hagar could fairly assume that, despite their enslavement, Ishmael would one day be heir to everything and set her free as a queen. But then came the birth of Isaac, born to Abraham's true wife Sarah as a result of the promises of God apprehended by faith. This birth is a miracle, meant to draw people together in celebration of the delightsome goodness of a faithful God. But will everyone really receive it as good news?
Sarah saw Ishmael “laughing” – that's all the Hebrew text we have says, though the ancient Greek version clarifies that she saw him laughing or “playing with Isaac her own son.”51 Guesses as to what exactly Ishmael was doing have varied from the innocuous, just “Ishmael playing and dancing” and having a good time at the party,52 to engaging in sexual misconduct (since all the other stories since chapter 17 have been about that, and since that's what this verb means on many other occasions),53 to being physically aggressive toward little Isaac and putting him in danger.54 Many commentators quip that Ishmael was 'Isaac-ing,' mimicking his little brother and asserting himself in Isaac's role as the valuable son,55 so that Ishmael “was laying claim to the rights of the firstborn for himself.”56 And as he did so, likely he was joking around and mocking Isaac. Perhaps “Sarah noticed Ishmael snickering [and] saw how much Ishmael shared the characteristics of his mother, for just as Sarah was despised in the eyes of Hagar, so too did Ishmael snicker at her son.”57 Ishmael's “disdain for Isaac imitates his mother's for Sarah,”58 and “he despised Isaac in comparison with himself,”59 begrudging him as another son did to his prodigal little brother (Luke 15:25-27).60 But ultimately, in mocking the fruit of God's visitation to Sarah, “he is mocking God,” almost blaspheming the work of the Holy Spirit.61
Now, Sarah has a legitimate fear in this situation. She and Abraham came from south of Babylon, as did some of their house. Around this time, the law there was that, if a man had children born to him from his primary wife and also from a slave woman, then if the father had ever acknowledged the slave woman's son as his own, then on the father's death, the sons of both women must “equally divide the property of the paternal estate,” even though the wife's son, as “preferred heir,” could “select and take a share first.”62 This is a textbook example of where that law applies, meaning that legally, when Abraham dies, Ishmael gets half of everything!
Despite that law, Sarah now “fiercely fights for [Isaac's] preeminence.”63 In her view, even though begotten by Abraham, Ishmael “was not born to an inheritance,” no matter what the laws of man may say, since the promises of God are otherwise.64 And so “she said to Abraham, 'Cast out this slave woman with her son, for the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac!'” (Genesis 21:10). Sarah's turning to an even older Sumerian law, where if a man's wife bears him a son and a slave woman has also borne him a son, then once the wife's son has survived infancy, the dad has the option to “free the slave woman and her children,” sending them away from the household, in which case “the children of the slave woman will not divide the estate with the children of the master.”65 That's what Sarah's asking Abraham to invoke, so that the inheritance to which Ishmael might otherwise seem entitled would be replaced by early manumission for himself and Hagar, and thus Abraham's goods and covenant will remain in waiting for Isaac when Abraham passes on.66
In the end, despite Abraham's grave misgivings (Genesis 21:11), God directs him that, although earlier he was being fleshly like Adam when he hearkened to the voice of his wife Sarai, now “whatever Sarah says to you, hearken to her voice” in this, “for through Isaac shall seed be named for you” (Genesis 21:12). Isaac, and not Ishmael, really is the one who must inherit it all, because it's through Isaac (and not Ishmael) that the everlasting covenant will continue, and it's through Isaac (not Ishmael) that future sons will be named as Abraham's seed. We know that among the descendants of Isaac was the nation of Israel, born and named as the seed of Abraham – as some said, “a holy seed..., the portion of the Most High..., a kingdom of priests and a holy people.”67 They lived, not only as a seed existing out of a promise, but as people for whom there remained many promises, “for the LORD has promised good to Israel” (Numbers 10:29), and “not one word of all the good... had failed” (Joshua 21:45). It's a beautiful pattern leading up to Mary, who, like Sarah, miraculously gives birth after divine intervention for the sake of God's saving plan.68 Through this New Sarah arrives the ultimate Seed of Promise, “who is Christ” (Galatians 3:16), the One this was about all along.69
It was this True Seed of Abraham, “appointed the heir of all things” (Hebrews 1:2), whom his apostles praised and preached, as St. Paul did in places like Galatia (Acts 16:6; 18:23). But then entered other teachers with practically “a different gospel” than his (Galatians 1:6), who, making much of Isaac's birth being perfected by the covenant of circumcision, insisted to the Galatians that, if they wanted to be genuine children of Abraham and 'holy seed,' they needed to live the Law of Moses after the flesh in order to perfect their faith and be fully justified.
St. Paul had... some other thoughts. “Tell me, you who desire to be under the Law: don't you listen to the Law? For it's written that Abraham had two sons: one by a slave woman, and one by a free woman” (Galatians 4:21-22). There's more than one way to be a son of Abraham. The first difference is this: the status of their mother. Hagar had a lowly status when Ishmael was born, as a slave under oppression; Sarah had a higher status, as the freeborn wife of a chieftain.70 Paul goes on to highlight a second difference: “The son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise” (Galatians 4:23), “born according to the Spirit” (Galatians 4:29). Any assurance of an angel about Ishmael was spoken after Ishmael existed in Hagar's womb, whereas Isaac didn't yet exist when God first called him by name in a promise.71 The son of Hagar was thereafter conceived through the customary workings of providence as a result of a human scheme to achieve it, “begotten in the ordinary way..., the regular course of nature,” but Isaac was conceived in a miracle, “was given by the promise, signifying divine grace.”72 From Isaac's very origins, he's the work of the Holy Spirit – which is especially fitting, if he was born on Pentecost as some Jews believed!
Paul wants to apply this story as a framework for the situation he sees. “These things are allegorized: these women are two covenants” (Galatians 4:24). Hagar and Sarah stand in for covenants God made with humanity, but Paul soon slides from two covenants to two mountains and two cities, which point to the two conditions. “One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children” (Galatians 4:24-25). Hagar stands for a mountain, Sinai, which in Roman times was deemed part of the province of Arabia; she stands for a covenant made there, embodied in the Law of Moses; and she stands for a city, the Jerusalem which in Paul's day was under Roman domination which made its residents effectively slaves of the empire.
So what about the other woman? What does Sarah stand for? Paul doesn't tell us outright which mountain she'd be, though the answer is surely Zion. He doesn't specifically outline what covenant she represents, but it's the original covenant with Abraham as seen in the New Covenant established in Christ. But Paul does weigh in on what city Sarah stands for: “The Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother” (Galatians 4:26).
Paul backs all this up by quoting from the prophecies of Isaiah (Galatians 4:27).73 In chapter 51, the prophet urged Israel to “look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you” as a basis for believing that “the LORD comforts Zion... and makes her wilderness like Eden” so that “joy and gladness will be found in her” one day (Isaiah 51:2-3) – as was foreshadowed in the life of Sarah. But to bring that about, “the arm of the LORD” would need to awaken and put on strength to achieve salvation (Isaiah 51:9). The prophet then laments how Jerusalem is a captive in the dust (Isaiah 52:2) and longs to hear a messenger bringing good news on the mountain (Isaiah 52:7). That good news arrives: “the LORD has bared his holy arm” so that “all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God” (Isaiah 52:10)!
But where we expect to see a military uprising, we instead hear of a faithful Servant disfigured beyond belief (Isaiah 52:14). Here's how “the arm of the LORD” is “revealed”: in a Promised One “despised and rejected by men” (Isaiah 53:1-3). Yet “upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,” since “the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all,” so that “he was cut off from the land of the living... and they made his grave with the wicked” (Isaiah 53:5-9). But somehow, “when you make his soul an offering for guilt, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand” (Isaiah 53:10). Obviously, we understand that the Promised Servant here is Jesus Christ, that the prophet's singing in advance of his crucifixion and resurrection. And immediately after that is when we hear a call for a new song: “Sing, O barren one who did not bear; break forth into singing and cry aloud, you who haven't been in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of her who is married, says the LORD” (Isaiah 54:1). That's the very line St. Paul quotes (Galatians 4:27). The direct outcome of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ is that the desolate Zion of old is transformed, as Sarah, into a fertile mother of the promised ones; and all who accept her, and not Hagar, as their mother have entered into the promised comfort of God, the journey back to Eden!
Now Paul drives the lesson home to Galatia. The false teachers came to them in Ishmael's sandals. They claim they just want to make the Galatians true sons of Abraham. 'Yeah,' Paul says, 'but by Hagar – which will only make new Ishmaels estranged from the covenant of Abraham.' The Galatians in question already shared the faith of Abraham and Sarah that bodily deadness, even Christ's on the cross, is no obstacle to the life-bringing power of God (say, in Christ's resurrection!). “So if you are Christ's,” he says, “then you are Abraham's seed.” What kind? “Heirs according to promise” (Galatians 3:29). Already they were covenanted sons of Sarah, of Jerusalem Above. “Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise” (Galatians 4:28), “sons of God through faith, for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:26-27). Those who claim membership by fleshly criteria like blood or body modification don't count as seed and sons, but those who lay claim by a trusting embrace of the God of Resurrection Promise belong already (Romans 9:8).74
So then what are the false teachers really up to? Paul says that “just as at that time, he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so is it now! But what does the Scripture says? 'Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.' So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman. For freedom Christ has set us free! Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Look: I, Paul, testify to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you” (Galatians 4:29–5:2). The Galatian churches, even if they don't know it, are under attack. Their mother's sufficiency is mocked by the Judaizers. Their status of freedom is imperiled by the depredations of these new Ishmaels among them, trying to make them 'born again' as Hagar's children “so that they might bring us into slavery” (Galatians 2:4). To submit to this is to become Ishmael and be estranged from the covenant, and so from Christ. The only biblical solution is to “cast out the slave woman and her son” – to expel the false teachers from the churches.75 The inheritance is at stake!
That's how St. Paul applied the story of Isaac to the needs of his day, but what does the Scripture say to us? You and I have been baptized with the very same baptism, and “as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ..., and if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, heirs according to promise” (Galatians 3:27-29), “saved not by the right of [our] own free status but by the election of grace, not by the effort of [our] own labor but by the Lord visiting [our] heart and fulfilling the gift of grace which he promised.”76 No less than those who got the gospel from Paul's lips, you and are today, “like Isaac, are children of promise” (Galatians 4:28). Isaac “is rightly taken to signify the children of grace..., gathered together in Christ at grace's call..., who are citizens of the free city and who share in eternal peace.”77 So we, as little Isaacs, claim the Jerusalem above, the Church Triumphant in glory, as the mother in whose baptismal womb we were conceived anew by the word of God (1 Peter 1:3, 23; Galatians 4:26), “born of water and the Spirit” unto God in Christ (John 3:5).
Having already been born out of God's fulfilled promise by believing his promise to raise life out of death, how can we not believe in the promise that remains? For “when he manifests his will, everything yields place and gives way, difficult things become easy, and what is impossible proves possible, provided we only give evidence of deep faith in him and prove superior to all human considerations by keeping our gaze fixed on his greatness,” as Father Abraham and Mother Sarah finally did.78 Like the newborn Isaac, we “long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good” (1 Peter 2:2-3). But then, as we do grow up into our salvation, we embrace “by progressive increases of faith” the many meaty dishes of the gospel feast.79 For “solid food is for the mature” (Hebrews 5:14). We trust that, since our Mother lives in the freedom of God above all earthly powers, we have been born for spiritual freedom, to attain “mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13).
In the story, Sarah might well have wondered whether the fleshly would scoff at her bearing and nursing Isaac, or if he, born to impossibly elderly parents, was destined to be “a living example of the absurd.”80 It sure seems his half-brother Ishmael laughed at, mocked, even threatened absurd little Isaac. So, at least, St. Paul reads it, and draws the principle that “he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit” (Galatians 4:29). To the earthly eyes of the flesh, those who strive to step with the Spirit of God are living examples of absurdity, suitably scoffed at and mocked and persecuted. “All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12), for “the word of the cross is foolishness to those who were perishing” (1 Corinthians 1:18). We know it to be true! In this, what is there to do but to cry out, “Visit me with your salvation” (Psalm 106:4)? So “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise..., chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing those that are, so that no flesh might boast in the presence of God” (1 Corinthians 1:27-29). God will have the last laugh.
Isaac represents the transformation of the scoffing laughter of disbelief and disdain into the delighted laughter of awe and jubilation, of festive joy. Sarah's latter laugh, Abraham's great feast, “appropriately signifies the joy of the New Covenant, in which the children of promise will rejoice forever with the Lord dwelling in them.”81 For didn't Jesus assure us, “I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you” (John 16:22)? God “will yet fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouts of joy” (Job 8:21), and through you, everyone who hears and hardens not his or her heart will rejoice with the Church in God. You are a sign in the world for joy, to spread the laughter of the Lord far and wide as a window into the good news of the faithfulness of the God of Life! That joy is for you, and for those who see God's hand in Christ in you.
And, finally, St. Paul would remind us that the whole issue of the story was whether Isaac, the son born from a promise, would indeed inherit all that was to be Abraham's; and Sarah's prayer to expel the fleshly and slavish from their house was for the sake of preserving Isaac's inheritance fully intact and undiminished. Well, if in this allegory Isaac stands for the believer, and Abraham stands for God, and Sarah stands for the Church (especially the Church Triumphant), then what is this? The Church prays to her Lord on behalf of her Isaacs still here in this world; she prays that the Lord would quash persecutions, would stifle fleshly sins, would shame skepticism and trash temptations. Why? So that Isaac might be unrivaled, so that Isaac has full security in the promise, that Isaac might await his inheritance untroubled, so that Isaac shall be sure to receive in full.
We, as Isaacs, are “heirs according to promise” (Galatians 3:29), “heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:7). In Christ's name, “we have obtained an inheritance” (Ephesians 1:11), “the promised eternal inheritance” (Hebrews 9:15), “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you” (1 Peter 1:4), “the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints” (Ephesians 1:18). “From the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward” (Colossians 3:24), “giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share the inheritance of the saints in light” (Colossians 1:12). And no scoffer in Ishmael's sandals can mock and accuse and steal and destroy you whom Sarah's prayer is upon, if you abide by faith in the promise. Remain fully in Christ, and the inheritance is richer than you can dream. There, in the light, is the last laugh – of God and of his saints in celestial freedom. Thanks be to God, and may he bring us safe into our inheritance!
1 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 190.
2 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 281.
3 Bill T. Arnold, Genesis (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 173.
4 Brian Neil Peterson, Genesis: A Pentecostal Commentary (Brill, 2022), 159.
5 Alex Varughese and Christina Bohn, Genesis 12-50: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2019), 98.
6 Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 293.
7 John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 282.
8 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 40.6, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:392.
9 Tremper Longman III, Genesis (Zondervan Academic, 2016), 235.
10 Alex Varughese and Christina Bohn, Genesis 12-50: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2019), 105.
11 Eitan Mayer, “No News is Bad News: Beneath the Surface of Genesis 18,” Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought 53/4 (Fall 2021): 109-110.
12 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 197.
13 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 282.
14 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 41.24, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:415.
15 Eitan Mayer, “No News is Bad News: Beneath the Surface of Genesis 18,” Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought 53/4 (Fall 2021): 110-111.
16 Jonathan Grossman, Abraham: The Story of a Journey (Maggid Books, 2023), 266-267; John C. Lennox, Friend of God: The Inspiration of Abraham in an Age of Doubt (SPCK, 2024), 210.
17 Bill T. Arnold, Genesis (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 194.
18 James McKeown, Genesis (Eerdmans, 2008), 112.
19 R. R. Reno, Genesis (Brazos Press, 2010), 190.
20 James Chukwuma Okoye, Genesis 12-50: A Narrative-Theological Commentary (Cascade Books, 2020), 134.
21 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 45.24, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:482.
22 Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 18:13-14, in Luther's Works 3:211.
23 Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 2.1, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century III/1:175.
24 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 46.2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 87:4.
25 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 127.
26 Augustine of Hippo, Expositions of the Psalms 119.7, in The Works of Saint Augustine III/19:506.
27 Jubilees 16:3, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:88.
28 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 221.
29 Terence E. Fretheim, Abraham: Trials of Family and Faith (University of South Carolina Press, 2007), 18.
30 Alex Varughese and Christina Bohn, Genesis 12-50: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2019), 137.
31 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 289.
32 R. R. Reno, Genesis (Brazos Press, 2010), 184.
33 Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 21:6-7, in Luther's Works 4:12.
34 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 224; cf. Jonathan Grossman, Abraham: The Story of a Journey (Maggid Books, 2023), 272-273.
35 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 45.25-26; 46.1, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:482; 87:3.
36 Augustine of Hippo, The City of God 16.31, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century I/7:222.
37 Bill T. Arnold, Genesis (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 195.
38 Tremper Longman III, Genesis (Zondervan Academic, 2016), 272.
39 Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 262.
40 Origen of Alexandria, Homilies on Genesis 7.1, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 71:127.
41 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 355-356.
42 Genesis 21:6 LXX, in Susan Brayford, Genesis (Brill, 2007), 89.
43 John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 331.
44 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 145; Stephen K. Ray, Genesis: A Bible Study Guide and Commentary (Ignatius Press, 2023), 199.
45 Jubilees 16:3, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:88.
46 Jubilees 16:4, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:88; see also Shaul Bar, Daily Life of the Patriarchs: The Way It Was (Peter Lang, 2015), 118.
47 Joan Younger Meek and Lawrence Noble, “Policy Statement: Breastfeeding and the Use of Human Milk,” Pediatrics 150/1 (July 2022): e202257988. <https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2022-057988>; World Health Organization, “Infant and Young Child Feeding,” 20 December 2023. <https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/infant-and-young-child-feeding>.
48 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 146; Alex Varughese and Christina Bohn, Genesis 12-50: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2019), 137; Brian Neil Peterson, Genesis: A Pentecostal Commentary (Brill, 2022), 190. For examples of three years, see 2 Maccabees 7:27 and Instruction of Any 7.19.
49 John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 331.
50 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 356.
51 Genesis 21:9 LXX, in Susan Brayford, Genesis (Brill, 2007), 89.
52 Jubilees 17:4, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:90.
53 Brian Neil Peterson, Genesis: A Pentecostal Commentary (Brill, 2022), 190; Jonathan Grossman, Abraham: The Story of a Journey (Maggid Books, 2023), 276-277.
54 James Chukwuma Okoye, Genesis 12-50: A Narrative-Theological Commentary (Cascade Books, 2020), 145.
55 David W. Cotter, Genesis (Liturgical Press, 2003), 141; Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 224-225.
56 Jerome of Stridon, Commentary on Galatians 4:29-31, in Thomas P. Scheck, St. Jerome's Commentaries on Galatians, Titus, and Philemon (University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), 192.
57 Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 18.1.1, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 91:166.
58 Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 294.
59 Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 21:9, in Luther's Works 4:17.
60 James McKeown, Genesis (Eerdmans, 2008), 114.
61 Tremper Longman III, Genesis (Zondervan Academic, 2016), 276.
62 Code of Hammurabi §170, in Writings from the Ancient World 6:113-114.
63 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 357.
64 Augustine of Hippo, Expositions of the Psalms 119.7, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century III/19:506.
65 Laws of Lipit-Ishtar §25, in Writings from the Ancient World 6:31.
66 Stephen K. Ray, Genesis: A Bible Study Guide and Commentary (Ignatius Press, 2023), 201.
67 Jubilees 16:17-18, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:88.
68 R. R. Reno, Genesis (Brazos Press, 2010), 181.
69 Stephen K. Ray, Genesis: A Bible Study Guide and Commentary (Ignatius Press, 2023), 198.
70 Craig S. Keener, Galatians: A Commentary (Baker Academic, 2019), 412.
71 Jerome of Stridon, Commentary on Galatians 4:22-23, in Thomas P. Scheck, St. Jerome's Commentaries on Galatians, Titus, and Philemon (University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), 185.
72 Augustine of Hippo, The City of God 15.2-3, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century I/7:141.
73 Craig S. Keener, Galatians: A Commentary (Baker Academic, 2019), 427-428.
74 Craig S. Keener, Galatians: A Commentary (Baker Academic, 2019), 430.
75 Craig S. Keener, Galatians: A Commentary (Baker Academic, 2019), 437-438.
76 Bede, On Genesis 21:1-2, in Translated Texts for Historians 48:315.
77 Augustine of Hippo, The City of God 15.3, 16.32, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century I/7:142, 222.
78 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 45.27, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:483.
79 Bede, On Genesis 21:8, in Translated Texts for Historians 48:317.
80 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 224.
81 Bede, On Genesis 17:19, in Translated Texts for Historians 48:286.
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