Originally published on the Doxa blog.
"Now the LORD attended to Sarah as He had said, and the LORD did for Sarah what He had promised" (Genesis 21:1). The verse says the same thing twice, and the next verse says it a third time: Sarah bore a son "at the very time God had promised" (Genesis 21:2).
Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran (Genesis 12:4). He is a hundred now (Genesis 21:5). Twenty-five years sit between the first promise and the baby in Sarah's arms, and the writer of Genesis wants you to see that what arrived is exactly what God had said.
What happens in Genesis 21:1–7?
The scene is short. Sarah conceives, the boy is born, and Abraham does two things straight away. He names the child Isaac, because a year earlier God had told him, "you are to name him Isaac" (Genesis 17:19). On the eighth day he circumcises him, "as God had commanded him" (Genesis 21:4).
For a year Abraham carried those instructions with no child to apply them to. He still had them on the morning they applied, so the boy's first days were shaped by what God had said before he was born.
Why did Sarah laugh?
The last time Sarah laughed, she was behind a tent flap listening to a visitor say she would have a son, and "she laughed to herself" (Genesis 18:12). When the LORD asked about it she was afraid and said she had not laughed. He answered, "but you did laugh" (Genesis 18:15). Abraham had laughed at the same promise a chapter before (Genesis 17:17).
Now she laughs again, out loud, and wants the whole camp to join in: "God has made me laugh, and everyone who hears of this will laugh with me" (Genesis 21:6). The name Isaac means he laughs. Both parents had laughed when they could not see how God would do it, and God gave the laugh back to them as their son's name. They said it every time they called him in to eat.
Then Sarah adds a line that sounds like a woman telling her story to the neighbours: "Who would have told Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age" (Genesis 21:7). She tells it so that it will be told again.
How does the birth of Isaac connect to Jesus?
Isaac was born because God said he would be. Centuries later an angel came to Mary with a birth nobody could explain and told her, "For no word from God will ever fail" (Luke 1:37). Jesus is the Son the whole promise to Abraham was heading toward, and through Him the people who trust God are counted in Isaac's family. Paul writes, "Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise" (Galatians 4:28).
Sarah knew the LORD differently after that morning. Behind the tent flap she knew what He had said. With Isaac in her arms she knew Him, the God who speaks and then keeps the day He set. We hold on to what He says because that is how we come to know Him, by watching Him do what He said.
If God has said something to you that has not happened yet, record it with today's date beside it; this is what the Doxa app is for. Read it back when the waiting gets long. When it comes, you will have the date in front of you, and you will be able to say what Sarah said: who would have told me?
What has God said to you that you are still holding, and where have you written it down?
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Also please feel free to read the Doxa Deeper Dive below where we delve into the original language and historical context.
The Doxa Deeper Dive
Why Israel Heard Its Own Exodus in Isaac's Birth
Originally published on the Doxa blog.
The first verb in Genesis 21 is paqad (H6485): "Now the LORD attended to Sarah as He had said" (Genesis 21:1). English Bibles give it as visited, took note of, was gracious to or attended to, and each choice is fair. Each one also hides how far the same verb travels through Scripture.
What does it mean that the LORD attended to Sarah?
Paqad is what a superior does when he comes in person to look into a matter and then acts on what he finds. Hebrew uses it for a commander mustering troops and for an official coming to inspect. With God as subject it means He has come to see for Himself, and He acts, in blessing or in judgment.
Follow it out of Sarah's tent to the last chapter of Genesis. Joseph is dying in Egypt, and he uses the verb twice, doubled for force in Hebrew, paqod yifqod: "God will surely visit you" (Genesis 50:24), and "God will surely attend to you, and then you must carry my bones up from this place" (Genesis 50:25).
So Genesis uses the verb at both ends of the family's story. It opens with God attending to one old woman's womb and closes with a dying man staking his burial on God attending to a whole people. An English reader meets two different verbs, attended and visit, and misses that Joseph's last words reach back to his great-grandmother.
What does "at the very time" mean in Genesis 21:2?
Verse 2 says Sarah bore her son "at the very time God had promised" (Genesis 21:2). Time there is mo'ed (H4150), an appointed time, a set meeting. God had used the same noun in Genesis 18: "At the appointed time I will return to you" (Genesis 18:14).
Later the word fills Israel's calendar. "These are My appointed feasts" (Leviticus 23:2) is mo'adim, and the tent where God spoke with Moses is the ohel mo'ed, the tent of meeting. Isaac's birth is described with the word Israel used for the days God fixed in advance and kept, and for the place where He met them. God named the meeting a year ahead and kept it.
Why does Isaac's name matter?
Isaac is Yitschaq (H3327), he laughs, from tsachaq (H6711), the verb behind both parents' laughter in chapters 17 and 18.
In verse 6 Sarah says, "God has made me laugh" (Genesis 21:6), and the noun is tsechoq (H6712), laughter: God has made laughter for me. Then she goes on, "everyone who hears of this will laugh with me" (Genesis 21:6), and the verb there is spelled exactly like her son's name. Read aloud in Hebrew, everyone who hears will Isaac with her. The phrase can also be read laugh at me, and Sarah, past ninety with a newborn, leaves both meanings open.
Verse 7 has one more rare word. "Who would have told Abraham" (Genesis 21:7) uses malal (H4448), a verb found almost only in poetry, and Sarah's line is set as a short two-part poem. A psalm uses the same verb in the same question: "Who can describe the mighty acts of the LORD" (Psalms 106:2). Sarah's question uses the word Israel later sang for telling what God has done, and she asks it while telling her own story of what He did for her.
Why circumcise on the eighth day?
Abraham circumcised Isaac "when his son Isaac was eight days old" (Genesis 21:4), on the day God had fixed in Genesis 17, a year before the boy was born. In Egypt circumcision was usually done to boys nearing manhood, a rite for what a youth had become. Israel, newly out of Egypt, would have heard the difference. God put His covenant sign on a child of eight days who had done nothing yet and whose name God had chosen before he was born. Isaac was known by God before he could know anything.
How did Israel first hear Genesis 21:1–7?
Genesis reached Israel as a people who had walked out of Egypt carrying a coffin. "Moses took the bones of Joseph with him because Joseph had made the sons of Israel swear a solemn oath" (Exodus 13:19), and the oath was Joseph's sentence with paqad in it. They had held that sentence through generations of slavery.
When God spoke from the bush, the message Moses had to carry used the same verb: "I have surely attended to you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt" (Exodus 3:16). And when the elders heard it, "when they heard that the LORD had attended to the Israelites and had seen their affliction, they bowed down and worshiped" (Exodus 4:31).
So when Israel heard "the LORD attended to Sarah" (Genesis 21:1), they heard the verb of their own rescue. Their nation began because God came to see one barren woman and did what He had said. Their freedom began because God came to see a nation of slaves and did what He had said to Joseph. In both, someone held a spoken promise for years before it was kept, and in both God arrived on the day He had set.
Where does God's visiting lead?
The Greek translation of Genesis that the first Christians read renders paqad in 21:1 with episkeptomai (G1980). It is the verb Zechariah sings over the coming of Jesus: "Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, because He has visited and redeemed His people" (Luke 1:68). He is singing about the God who came to see Sarah, and this time He came in person, in a Son born by promise.
To be attended to by God is to be known by Him. He came to look into Sarah's life, and He looked into Israel's affliction, and both times He acted on a word He had already spoken. That is the reason Joseph's family kept his sentence and his bones for generations, and the reason we keep what God has said to us. Write it down with the date, and read it back to Him while you wait for the day He has set. That is what the Doxa app is for.
Keep exploring. If this raised a question, or brought back something God has said to you, take it further. Ask Doxa. It answers from Scripture, real stories, and your own journey, free in your browser. No signup to start.
Questions and comments are welcome below.
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