God Has Made Me Laugh

The LORD attended to Sarah as He had said and did for her what He had promised. She conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the very time God had named. Abraham called the boy Isaac. At eight days old, he circumcised him as God had commanded.

Abraham was a hundred years old when Isaac was born. Sarah, whose childlessness had been stated so plainly at the beginning, now spoke for herself: “God has made me laugh, and everyone who hears of this will laugh with me.” She no longer denied the laughter. She spoke of others joining her in it.

“Who would have told Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.” There was a child to nurse now, the son she had heard promised from the entrance of the tent. Her words held the astonishment of what had happened without hiding how old Abraham was.

Isaac grew and was weaned, and Abraham held a great feast on the day of his weaning. During this time, Sarah saw the son Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham mocking her son. The account moved from the celebration of one boy to the place of the other. Sarah went to Abraham with a demand.

“Expel the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac!” She called Hagar the slave woman and named Isaac as her own son. Abraham was greatly distressed because the matter concerned Ishmael, who was also his son. The demand would send both Hagar and the boy away.

God told Abraham to listen to everything Sarah said, because his offspring would be reckoned through Isaac. He also said He would make a nation of the slave woman’s son because Ishmael was Abraham’s offspring. Early in the morning, Abraham took bread and a skin of water and put them on Hagar’s shoulders. He sent her away with the boy.

Hagar left and wandered in the Wilderness of Beersheba. When the water was gone, she left Ishmael under one of the bushes and sat down about a bowshot away. “I cannot bear to watch the boy die!” she said. Sitting nearby, she lifted up her voice and wept.

God heard the boy’s voice, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven. He asked what was wrong and told her not to be afraid, because God had heard the boy where he lay. “Get up, lift up the boy, and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.” The words directed her back to her son.

Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. Hagar went to it, filled the skin, and gave the boy a drink. The empty water skin Abraham had sent with her could be filled again. The account brought mother and son through the moment she had feared would be his death.

God was with the boy, and he grew up in the wilderness and became a great archer. He settled in the Wilderness of Paran, and Hagar found him a wife from Egypt. His story continued beyond the household that had sent him away. His mother remained with him in that life.

Sarah had borne Isaac, nursed him, and seen him grow to his weaning feast. Hagar had carried bread and water into the wilderness and filled the skin again for Ishmael. The account kept Sarah’s words of laughter and her words of expulsion, then followed the woman who had to leave. Sarah’s long wait had ended with a son in her arms; Hagar’s son lived too, and grew up elsewhere.