Too Hard for God, or Too Wonderful? What Sarah Heard in Genesis 18

Nothing too difficult for the LORD

The verb is pala (H6381): to be extraordinary, out of reach, beyond what a person can do or grasp. Its noun is pele (H6382), a wonder. Israel sang that noun on the far shore of the sea, praising the LORD for "performing wonders" (Exodus 15:11).

So the question put to Abraham in the hearing of Sarah was asked in the language Scripture uses for God's own acts. Is anything too much of a wonder for the LORD? The thing Sarah laughed at, a son for a woman long past bearing, belonged to the very class of thing His people would later praise Him for doing.

Follow the word further and it keeps appearing in stories of promised sons. In Judges, an angel of the LORD told another childless wife she would bear a son. Her husband asked the messenger's name, and the angel answered with a question: why ask, "since it is beyond comprehension?" (Judges 13:18). The Hebrew there is peli (H6383), wonderful. Then Isaiah announced a child who would carry the word as a name: "And He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:6). Wonderful is pele. The word God used to ask whether Sarah's son was beyond Him is the first of the names Isaiah gave the Son who would be born to save us.

Centuries after Abraham the LORD asked His question again, almost word for word, while Babylon's army besieged Jerusalem and He told Jeremiah to buy a field in a land about to fall: "Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh. Is anything too difficult for Me?" (Jeremiah 32:27). Same verb. Both times the promise looked absurd to the person holding it, and both times God answered by naming Himself.

Feeding the gods of Ur

The God who asked whether anything was too wonderful for Him had just eaten at Abraham's table, and in Abraham's world that meant something. Abraham came from Ur of the Chaldeans (Genesis 11:31), and in Mesopotamia the gods had to be fed. Temple staff set meals before the divine statues every day, because the gods were believed to depend on them. In the Babylonian flood story preserved in the Gilgamesh epic, when the survivor finally offers a sacrifice, the gods smell it and gather over it like flies, famished after the flood cut off their supply.

Genesis 18 records the opposite. The LORD came to Abraham's tent as a guest at a meal given freely, and He needed nothing from it. Abraham's "bit of bread" (Genesis 18:5) became three seahs of solet (H5560), the same fine flour Israel's law later required for the grain offering (Leviticus 2:1). And the guest was the one who gave. The meal ended with God promising Sarah a son. In the stories of the nations, people fed the gods to keep them alive; in Genesis God ate at a man's table and gave him life in return.

At the appointed time

Israel heard this promise in their own worship word: the word for God's appointed time here also named their feasts and the Tent of Meeting where He spoke with Moses. That day the guest who needed nothing did what the hungry gods of Ur never did, and set a date He bound Himself to. In verse 10 He said, literally, when the time lives again, the season coming back round. In verse 14 He said "At the appointed time I will return to you" (Genesis 18:14), using mo'ed (H4150).

The people who first heard Genesis read knew mo'ed as their own worship word. It named their calendar: "These are My appointed feasts" (Leviticus 23:2). And it named the place God met them, the ohel mo'ed, the Tent of Meeting. They remembered how it went in the wilderness. When Moses went out to that tent, "all the people would stand at the entrances to their own tents and watch Moses until he entered the tent" (Exodus 33:8). Then "the LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend" (Exodus 33:11).

So when Israel heard that Sarah was "listening at the entrance to the tent" (Genesis 18:10), the word petach (H6607), entrance, put their mother exactly where they had stood. At the door of a tent, a little behind, overhearing the LORD speak to someone else, and hearing a promise with a mo'ed on it. Every feast they kept was an appointed time, and here was the appointed time God set with their family, said twice: the day He would return and a son would be born. Genesis records that He kept it: "Sarah conceived and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised" (Genesis 21:2).

Weighing the promise against God

Sarah weighed the promise against her own body and found it impossible. God asked her to weigh it against Him, in a word that means wonder, and then showed her what kind of God was asking: a guest who needed nothing from His hosts, gave them a son, and fixed the day He would do it. Scripture uses that word for wonder again and again for what He does and, finally, for His Son.

Knowing Him means learning to ask His question the way He asked it. Write down what He has said, and the time He set if He set one; the Doxa app will hold both until the day comes. When it looks out of reach, weigh it against the God Isaiah called Wonderful.