Sarah Laughed Behind the Tent: Is Anything Too Hard for God? (Genesis 18)

It is the middle of the afternoon at the Oaks of Mamre, the hour when nothing in a desert camp moves, and Abraham is sitting in the shade of his tent door.

He looks up and three men are standing nearby. So a ninety-nine-year-old man runs in the heat, bows to the ground and offers them "a bit of bread" (Genesis 18:5). Then he orders a feast: three seahs of fine flour, about twenty litres, for Sarah to bake, and a tender calf. He sets curds and milk and meat before his guests "and stood by them under the tree as they ate" (Genesis 18:8).

Then one of the strangers asks, "Where is your wife Sarah?" (Genesis 18:9). He knows her name, and He uses the new one, the name God gave her only a chapter ago.

The narrator has told us from the first line that "the LORD appeared to Abraham" (Genesis 18:1), and now the LORD repeats a promise Abraham has already heard, this time with Sarah in range. "I will surely return to you at this time next year, and your wife Sarah will have a son!" (Genesis 18:10). She is behind the tent flap, listening.

She is eighty-nine and "had passed the age of childbearing" (Genesis 18:11). So she laughs, without a sound, to herself: "After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?" (Genesis 18:12). The Hebrew word behind worn out is the verb Moses used when he told Israel that their clothing did not wear out on forty years of road (Deuteronomy 8:4). Sarah is describing herself as a garment past mending.

The LORD hears a laugh that made no noise, from the other side of a goat-hair wall. "Why did Sarah laugh?" (Genesis 18:13). She had called her husband old. When the LORD repeats her to Abraham, He leaves that part out: "Can I really bear a child when I am old?" (Genesis 18:13). He knows exactly what she thought, and He passes on only the part that concerns her.

Then He asks the question the whole chapter turns on: "Is anything too difficult for the LORD?" (Genesis 18:14). He sets the date a second time, and it stays where it was.

Sarah is frightened and says she did not laugh. He answers her directly, "but you did laugh" (Genesis 18:15), and that is the last word of the scene. He names what is true. The promise goes on standing beside it.

This is what it is to be known by God. He knows her new name, the laugh she kept inside, the thing she said about her husband and the fear that made her deny it, and none of it moves the date. Knowing Him starts there, with the discovery that He has already heard what we kept to ourselves and is still speaking to us. Hebrews remembers her for the year after the laugh, when "she considered Him faithful who had promised" (Hebrews 11:11).

The LORD who ate curds and calf under Abraham's tree would one day come to stay. "The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us" (John 1:14). On the evening of the resurrection His friends could not believe it "because of their joy and amazement" (Luke 24:41), so Jesus asked for broiled fish "and ate it in front of them" (Luke 24:43). Both times God shared a meal with the people He had come to, while His news was still too good for them to believe.

So when God has said something that you laughed at on the inside, write it down with the date beside it, and read it back when the year is half gone. He heard the laugh already.

What has God said to you that you laughed at quietly, and what would it look like to hold it until the time He set?

Deeper study today in the Doxa Deeper Dive: why the Hebrew asks whether anything is too wonderful for the LORD. Read it here.