Most people look at Sarah’s laughter in Genesis 18 and think nothing of it. We think of what it looks like in the movies or in our picture books but what does the Bible tell us about Sarah laughing when she heard she was going to finally be a mom? Why are we so confused about what the Bible does and doesn’t say and what does it tell us about the story Moses was telling the children of Israel?
(**The thumbnail of the Dowager Countess of Rugen was provided by the Count Rugen Estate, which is committed to end-of-life studies and generously supported by the Royal Family of Florin.**)
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Hi! I’m Miss Tyler! Welcome to this week’s episode of Context for Kids, where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. If this is your first time hearing or if you have missed anything, you can find all the episodes archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has them downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel, where I usually post slightly longer versions. All Scripture this week comes from the MTV, the Miss Tyler Version, which is the CSB (Christian Standard Bible) tweaked a little or a lot to make the context and the content more understandable for kids.
I love Bible movies, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes I forget that they are just interpretations of what the Bible says. What’s an interpretation? Every time you or I or anyone read something and decide what it says, we are interpreting it. We are deciding what it means. Sometimes, interpreting something means that we are taking one language and translating it to another. But some things we say in one language don’t mean the same thing in the new language. Remember back in episode #1 when we played the idiom game and I told you all the funny things that people say in different languages that sound like total nonsense in English? Like when someone in Japan says, “Stinky like fish” it means that they want you to come and visit them again soon. In English, it sounds like they are saying you smell bad and need to take a bath! And we have things we say in English that are absolutely ridiculous when we don’t know what they mean. Like, “Don’t let the cat out of the bag” and how it means we have to be sure to keep a secret and not tell anyone—like if you know about a surprise party, and if you tell everybody then you will spoil the surprise. But if someone doesn’t know that, they might think you have a cat inside a bag and that’s just mean. Except with my cat Bubba. If you put a garbage bag on the floor, he will crawl inside because he loves being taken from one room to another in it. I have never had another cat who did that. They would be scared, but not Bubba. He’s weird. Don’t put your cat in a bag, okay? God created us to care for animals.
But there are other ways to interpret things. Today we’re going to talk about Sarah laughing in Genesis 18, and if you have watched Bible movies, you might assume that however they made her laugh look, was what the Bible means but the truth is that we don’t know what her laugh sounded like. Was she rolling her eyes and shaking her head because it sounded stupid to her, or because too many people had made her the same promise too many times, or was she actually happy and hopeful but not certain it was true. We don’t know. The Bible doesn’t say. But that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about it and learn a lot and play the “what if” game. We haven’t done that in a long time so this week is the perfect time to do it again.
As a quick review, three mysterious visitors came to the camp of Abraham and Sarah. Abraham went out to meet them and invited them to rest and eat. This is called hospitality, which was very important in the ancient world—it was a way to make friends out of enemies and gain honor by being generous. The guests weren’t allowed to ask for anything and the host wasn’t allowed to ask their guests any questions. So, up to now, they have just been eating the bread, milk, curds, and meat that Abraham had brought them. They had washed their feet with the water Abraham brought. And Abraham is taking care of them personally—unable to ask them anything about who they are and why they were there and where they were going. We know from verse one that God is there and from Genesis 19, next chapter, we know that the other two are angels. This is a theophany, an appearance of God—we talked about that last week. This man isn’t what God looks like because we know from other places in the Bible that no one has ever seen what He really looks like. But God can appear in a burning bush as the angel of the Lord and so He can certainly make Himself look like a man or anything else if He wants to. We still don’t know why God is here but we are about to find out. Let’s look at today’s verses, starting in Genesis 18 vs 9:
“Where is your wife, Sarah?” the three visitors asked him. “There, inside the tent,” Abraham answered. The Lord said, “I will come back to you in about a year from now, and your wife Sarah will have a son, I guarantee it!” Now Sarah was listening at the entrance of the tent behind the Lord. Abraham and Sarah were already old and getting even older. Sarah was way too old to have babies. So, she laughed to herself: “Now that I am old and worn out, and my husband is even older than I am, will I be a mom?” But the Lord asked Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘Can I really have a baby when I’m old?’ Is anything impossible for the Lord? I will come back to you exactly when I said I would, and in about a year Sarah will have a son.” Sarah was too scared now to admit that she had been laughing, so she lied to Him. “I didn’t laugh.” But he replied, “Oh yes you did laugh.”
Uh oh. Do you remember what happened in the last chapter? The exact same thing—Abraham heard God’s promise to give him a son with Sarah and he fell down and laughed too: Abraham fell on his face. Then he laughed and said to himself, “Can I have another son when I am a hundred years old? Can Sarah have a baby? She’s almost ninety years old!” So, I have questions because obviously Abraham knew that it was God Himself who had made that promise in the last chapter. So, this promise from the visitors is exactly the same so Abraham must know exactly who he is talking to now. But Sarah seems like she hasn’t ever heard any of this before. She is reacting like it is news to her—at least the way I am reading this. Didn’t Abraham tell her? Why wouldn’t he tell her? And why wouldn’t Sarah be dazzled and know right away that this was the Lord talking about her having a baby? So many questions. Let’s start at the beginning so we can try to unravel what is going on.
The first really strange thing here is that these strangers somehow know Sarah’s name. Not Sarai even, which she was still being called before God changed it just a few days before. No, they called her Sarah and that was news even to Abraham. Had he even told anyone about that? Had he started to call her Sarah like the Lord commanded him to do? I think that when Abraham heard them call her Sarah, that he knew it was the Lord but we don’t know if Sarah had caught how strange it was that they called her by that name. Sarah was in the tent right behind them listening, which makes perfect sense since it wasn’t right for her to be out with the men in that culture and remember that Abraham liked to keep her away from other men because she was so beautiful.
“Where is your wife Sarah” is a rather strange question from strangers in those days. You didn’t just go asking your host personal questions about the women in their household. It was a pretty sketchy thing to do. I think the only reason why Abraham even answered them is because he finally realized that these weren’t just normal guys out on a journey. Probably no one else knew about her new name at this point, apart from Abraham and maybe Sarah. God did command him to call her by that name but we don’t know if Abraham shared the reason why. After all, not being able to have a baby was something that had probably hurt Sarah for the last seventy years once they figured out there was a problem. How many times had people told her over the years that it would happen if she would just stop worrying about it? I know a lot of people told me that and after the first few years, it just made me hurt worse and worse. How many people had told her that she couldn’t have a baby because the gods were angry at her or she was cursed and if she would just do this or that, everything would be okay. And I am sure she did all those things and it just never helped. So, their suggestions would hurt her too. Everyone was telling her that it was all her fault. Today we know better but then they figured that having babies was the simplest thing on earth. Today we know it is one of the most complicated and it really is a miracle. So, it could be that Abraham just couldn’t get her hopes up again because Sarah didn’t ever really have any sort of a relationship with God. Only Abraham did at this point and not anyone else. It wasn’t like it is today when millions and millions of people do—men and women and girls and boys and old and young and speaking thousands of different languages. I don’t think Abraham told her anything about God’s promise and I don’t blame him for that.
And so when the strangers said Sarah would be a mom in another year, she probably believed that they were just responding to the hospitality. Do you remember the rules for people who became guests in someone else’s home? They were allowed to ask for anything they hadn’t been given, they couldn’t act like enemies and hurt their host or his city, and they had to give the host a blessing of life at the end. Sarah had probably spent all of her life hearing things like, “May the gods reward you with a hundred sons and may your wife be like a fruitful vine.” Because that was considered to be polite and the right thing to do. It was just normal. And so when these men said that to Abraham, I don’t think she got excited and heard it as a promise from God. I think she just rolled her eyes and thought to herself, “Same old, same old. If I had a piece of silver for every time I’ve heard that blessing!”
I have had so many people tell me that their prayers for me would guarantee me a baby but no matter how hard I believed, it never happened. Sarah understood that too. It wasn’t her fault and it wasn’t my fault. If Abraham told her, would she believe it? Even if he did tell her, why would a group of strangers saying it impress her? The Bible said that Sarah laughed to herself—I don’t know if that means so quietly that she didn’t think anyone would hear or if she just laughed on the inside. You know how sometimes we just laugh on the inside when we would get into trouble for laughing in a way that people can hear it? If you can’t do that yet, you will. It’s one of the way we learn to control ourselves as we get older. Sometimes, it’s a big part of kindness. It wouldn’t have been kind for Sarah to respond to what sounded like a blessing by laughing and making fun of the visitors for saying it. Sometimes when we have been angry and sad for a long time about something, like Sarah with not being able to have babies, we can say and think things that aren’t very nice.
Sarah’s response on the inside, what she said to herself is, “What? I am so old and my body is all worn out! My husband is even older and more worn out than I am! Am I supposed to finally be able to have a baby now?” That would be a sarcastic response—which isn’t serious but angry and mean. But what if Abraham did tell her and she is surprised to hear it again? Maybe then we could read it more like this, “Can this be true? But don’t they know how old I am and how worn out my body is? Too old for having babies! And my husband is even older than I am! Is it possible that I could finally have what I have wanted all my life?” How do we know which one is right? Well, we can’t entirely. When Moses first told the story to the children of Israel in the Wilderness, he knew the right way to say everything so that people would know for sure just through the sound of his voice. I mean, we can listen to people talking and hear if they are happy or angry or confused or whatever. But what did Sarah’s laugh sound like? Did it sound sarcastic like, “Oh sure, whatever…” or how about hilarious, “Oh my gosh, are they serious? Look at me and look at him—we’re supposed to have a baby??? That’s hilarious!” Or maybe just unable to really believe it even though she is hoping it is true, “What? Could something like that really happen to us when we are old?” Moses knew exactly how to say it. We can only guess. Once people started writing everything down, it got harder and harder to remember how to say it. That’s why hearing a story can be a lot better than reading a story. That’s how they used to do things before they built places where they could store things that were written down.
Was God surprised that Sarah laughed? Do you remember what God told Abraham after he laughed? God said that their baby would be called Isaac—and Isaac means “laughter.” Abraham laughed. Sarah laughed. And Sarah would later say that everyone who hears the story about it would laugh, too. God was about to make something unbelievable happen. We are even laughing today because it was just a crazy thing to happen to a ninety-year-old lady and a hundred-year-old guy.
But God seems to be maybe irritated with Sarah, but it is hard to know because we can’t hear the tone of His voice either. Maybe He is laughing at her laughing, or maybe He is unhappy because Abraham didn’t tell her and she seems to be totally taken by surprise. Or maybe Sarah’s laughter is angry and God needs her to understand that He is dealing with her now and she needs to understand that He can do anything He promises to do, so He is being firm and serious with her. I don’t think He is really angry because God would understand that Sarah has been disappointed all her life and gave up on having a baby a long time ago. One way or another, Sarah needs a reality check and she needs to begin to have faith again, like she probably did when she was still young. Remember that Sarah grew up as an idol worshiper just like Abraham and she is used to the gods letting her down. How should she know that Abraham’s god is any different? God needs Sarah to believe. And Sarah needs to know that she can trust God—God is going to prove to her that she can trust Him and that He can do anything He decides to do.
Sarah is being quiet and only talking to herself and so just imagine how shocking and scary it would be when one of the strangers says, “Why did Sarah laugh?” And then to make it worse, he read her mind and told Abraham all about it—well, most of it. God was very kind to Sarah and didn’t tell Abraham how old she thought he was. That would just be mean for no reason at all. I don’t know about you, but if someone heard me laugh to myself and then told me what I was thinking, I would be totally freaking out. I wouldn’t want anyone to know the person was right. I would be scared of what they would say next. One of the best things about our private thoughts is that they are private. No one knows them except for us and God. But in Sarah’s world of pagan gods and goddesses, they couldn’t read minds. They had no idea what people were thinking—only what they saw people do and heard them say. Sarah did what a lot of us might do when scared, she just up and lied. Remember that Sarah isn’t a Christian and she isn’t Jewish either. She’s chosen by God to be the mom of the universe’s first impossible baby. There will be seven in the entire Bible, but this one will be the first. That means she hasn’t ever even heard about anything like this happening before. The ancient world had a lot of what are called fertility gods and goddesses. That means they were in charge of making sure that crops grew—like fruit and vegetables and wheat—and that animals and people had lots of babies. Of course, they really couldn’t do anything of the sort. Plants and animals and people have babies because God created them to do that, and all those false gods could do was to take credit for what God had done. Each culture in the ancient world had a few, and they were all very different even though they had the same jobs. But our God, Yahweh, wanted everyone to know that He can do things that none of their fake gods could take credit for—He can make an old woman have a baby, one who has never had a baby! And everyone knew it because they had been with Sarah and Abraham for a very long time.
Sarah felt ashamed, sad, and probably even angry. It’s very hard to hope with all your heart for something like a baby while everyone around her was having babies from the time she was a teenager and newly married. But right now, I figure that Sarah is completely freaked out and confused and not sure what to think. I bet you that she had a long talk with Abraham later that day about what the heck was going on. “Abraham, who were those men and why would they talk to me like that—it’s one thing to give us a blessing because we took them in but that one man—he knew that I was laughing about what he said. And I didn’t make a peep. More than that, he told me exactly what I was thinking and how on earth did they know my name? I was here making bread the whole time and you never said a word about me. Abraham, I am scared. Were they sorcerers or magicians? How did they do that? And what’s all this about? They talked about your God—they used his name. No one else around here uses that name! What am I missing here?”
And maybe Abraham would have to tell her everything that had happened, and why he was calling her Sarah, and God’s promise to give her a son named Isaac and how he had fallen down laughing because of how old they were. And if all that happened, then I am very sure the first thing they thought of was what a mess they had made with Abraham’s son Ishmael. How much they had complicated everything by being impatient and not trusting God to give Abraham a son His own way. But, learning that God doesn’t need us to come up with plans to make His promises happen is hard for everyone. Let me tell you a story about something that happened about twenty years ago. I was at a church and the pastor there went to a conference. A man walked up to him and told him that God wanted him to hear a certain verse, which he shared with him. And then another guy comes up to him and says, “God has told me that your ministry will increase five times what it is right now.” Well, the pastor was very happy and he started making big plans. Without telling anyone, he bought the church a new piece of land and made plans to build a church five times the size of the one we were using. And he put up our church as collateral—which means that if the church couldn’t pay the bills on the land that the pastor had bought, that we would lose our church building. But he was wrong. The way he was interpreting God’s promise was entirely wrong—he was thinking that having a ministry get bigger was about more people and a bigger building but that wasn’t what God had in mind at all. God wanted the work of the church to get bigger and not the building. And the congregation lost the land and lost the church building too and the pastor moved somewhere else. If they would have just kept doing what they were doing, then God would have made His own promises come true. That’s always been the way of things with God. God said Abraham would have a son—but God never said how or when. It’s only when we trust God that we wait for Him to show us what His promises mean.
But now Abraham and Sarah have this promise—even if Sarah doesn’t quite know what to believe yet. After all, she hasn’t been visited by angels or had visions and they certainly didn’t have the land and they weren’t a great nation and Abraham didn’t even have a great name at this point. They had faced famine, and childlessness, and they were still wanderers with no home. They had a lot of stuff, which was great, but without a home and a son it must have seemed meaningless to Sarah. If Abraham died, there was nothing to save Sarah from being thrown out of the camp by Hagar and Ishmael—if that’s what Ishmael wanted. We haven’t had anything to do with Ishmael yet and so we don’t know how he felt about Sarah but it probably wasn’t very positive since she had been so mean to his mom and was still using her as a slave even though Ishmael was the second most important guy in the household. When we try to work things out ourselves, we just make a big mess for everyone. Ishmael the person wasn’t a mistake, but it was a mistake not to wait on God because Isaac was always His plan from the beginning.
I love you. I am praying for you. I hope you will try to remember, as you get older, that you don’t have to have things figured out. God doesn’t need you to figure out a way to make his plans work out. All you need to do is what is good and right and let Him make things happen in His own time and in His own ways.