C 2 For Sarah conceived, and bare Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him. d 4 And Abraham f circumcised his son Isaac, being eight days 3 And Abraham called the old, as God had commanded name of his son that was born him. c Acts 7. 8. Gal. 4. 22. Heb. 11. 11. d ch. 17. 21. e ch. 17. 19. f Acts 7. 8. g ch. 17. 10, 12. as individuals. 'Heaven and earth may pass away, but ny woid shall not pass away.' a special putting forth of onnipotence. Isaac was born of parents who were both superannuated, so that the gift of a child to them in their old age was a 2. For Sarah conceived, &c. This positive miracle. 'Moses herein com-is stated as explanatory of the minner mends the secret and unwonted power in which the divine veracity affirmed of God, which is superior to the law in the first verse was established. of nature; nor without good reason; God had promised that Sarah should for it concerns us greatly to know that conceive and hear a son, and she did mere gratuitous goodness reigns in the thus conceive and bring forth; but it origin as well as in the progress of the does not necessarily follow that the church, and that children are born to time of her conceiving was subsequent God only in consequence of his good to the events related in the preceding pleasure. Hence it is that Abraham chapter. On the contrary, there is was not made a father till impotency every reason to believe that this took had befallen his body.' Calvin.- -T place some weeks or months before The Lord did unto Sarah as he had (comp. ch. 17. 21), but it is mentioned spoken. This is an emphatic repetition, here without regard to date merely as in which the writer, as it were, takes a fulfilment of the promise. It is not hold of the reader by the hand and de- said where Isaac was born, nor are we tains him in order that he may more expressly informed whether Abraham deeply consider how exactly the divine availed himself of Abimelech's genefaithfulness had fulfilled, to the minu- rous invitation to remain in any part of test particular, the promise long before the land that might seem good to him, given. A similar language, and sug- ch. 20. 15, but as it appears from the gesting the same sentiments, occurs latter part of the chapter that he abode Josh. 21. 45, in reference to the poster- for a considerable time in Abimelech's ity of Abraham being put in possession territories, though not at Gerar, the of the promised land; 'The Lord gave probability is that Isaac was born in them rest round about, according to all Beersheba, v. 31. that he sware unto their fathers-there failed not aught of any good thing which the Lord had spoken unto the house of Israel; all came to pass.' The same train of reflection also arises from the fact mentioned in the ensuing verse that the child was born at the set time of which God had spoken to him.' And such will be our language, sooner or later, concerning all the good things promised to the church, or to us 3. Abraham called the name of his son-Isaac. In obedience to the direction given him ch. 17. 19, on which see Note. The name implies not so properly 'laughter' in the abstract, as one shall laugh,' or 'there shall be laughter,' i. e. joy. 4. Abraham circumcised his son Isaac, being eight days old. The patriarch here pursues his accustomed tenor of obedience by subjecting his 5 And Abraham was an hundred years old, when his son Isaac was born unto him. h ch. 17. 1, 17. 6 And Sarah said, i God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me. i Ps. 126. 2. Isai. 54. 1. Gal. 4. 27. child to the painful rite of circumcision. Although as a parent and a man of humane feelings he must have shrunk from lacerating the flesh of a tender infant, yet his supreme deference to divine authority overcomes every natural instinct and he does to his new-orn child 'as God had commanded him.' Nothing is of higher value in the sight of God than an implicit observance of his positive precepts, and a disposition to adhere with punctilious strictness to the letter of the command, neither failing nor exceeding in the rule of duty. This is peculiarly important in the matter of sacramental institutions, where, as we learn from the example of the Papists, human perverseness is prone to fabricate new observances, and enforce them by promises and threatenings equally unknown to the Scriptures. Well would it be were they as much in'ent upon performing what God has really enjoined. 5. And Abraham was an hundred years old. After all delays and difficulties the promised mercies of Heaven come at last. The child of hope, of prayer, of faith at length is born, and the previous years of patient waiting compensated an hundred fold. Moses again makes mention of Abraham's advanced age in order the more forcibly to excite the attention of the reader to the consideration of the miracle. What could afford a more illustrious display of omnipotence than the fact, that after a childless union of more than sixty years, they should now, when exhausted nature in its common course forbade all hope of offspring, find themselves the parents of a smiling babe! Well therefore may the reader of the wondrous narrative be called upon to join with them in magnifying the Lord, who placeth the desolate in families, and causeth the barren woman to become a joyful mother of children.' The joy of such an event can be better imagined than described. The birth of a child is always matter of unfeigned de ight, at least to the mother's heart; what then must have been the solid, the heartfelt joy of Abrahanı and Sarah, on the birth of a son, the progenitor according to the flesh of the Saviour of the world, given by promise and raised up by miracle! 6. God hath made me to laugh, &c, Heb. pyn hath made to me laughter; i. e. hath given me occasion of laughter, by which she means simply rejoicing. 'A woman advanced in years, under the same circumstances, would make a similar observation: 'I am made to laugh.' But this figure of speech is also used on any wonderful occasion. Has a man gained any thing he did not expect, he will ask, 'What is this? I am made to laugh.' Has a person lost any thing which the moment before he had in his hand, he says, 'I am made to laugh.' Has he obtained health, or honour, or wealth, or a wife, or a child, it is said, 'He is made to laugh.'‘Ah, his mouth is now full of laughter; his mouth cannot contain all that laughter.'' Roberts. Comp. Ps. 126. 1, 2. The expression carries an allusion to Isaac's name (phy¬ yitzhak) and to the circumstance mentioned Gen. 17. 17-19, on which it was founded. It is a mode of speech which not only shows how sincerely she recognised the propriety of Abraham's laughing on the occasion referred to, and how 9 And Sarah saw the son of 7 And she said, Who would | great feast the same day that have said unto Abraham, that Isaac was weaned. Sarah should have given children suck? for I have borne him a son in his old age. 8 And the child grew, and was weaned and Abraham made a 1 ch. 8. 11, 12. cordially she assents to the name thence bestowed on the child, but intimates also that God had made her, as well as Abraham, to laugh; which was in fact a virtual condemnation of her former incredulity. We meet in the prophets with some striking allusions to this incident where Sarah is considered a symbol of the church. Thus, Is. 54. 1,Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear,' &c. Comp. Is. 51. 2, 3. Gal. 4. 22-28.- -T All that hear will laugh with me. Will sympathize in my joy, and tender to me their congratulations. To this also, the prophet alludes, Is 66. 10. 'Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye that love her; rejoice with joy with her; where the Jerusalem mentioned is expressly said by the Apostle, Gal. 4. 22. 27, to be mystically shadowed out by Sarah. Hagar m the Egyptian, n which she had borne unto Abraham, mocking. m ch. 16. 1. n ch. 16. 15. O'Gal. 4. 22. came primary idea of the verb is that of return, requital, restitution. How it to be applied to the act of weaning a child it is difficult to say. As it is in several instances employed to denote the yielding or returning of fruits and flowers to the earth when fully ripened, Parkhurst suggests that it is used in like manner of a mother or nurse, who at the proper season drops the child, as it were, from the breast and returns it to the father; thus making out a striking resemblance between the animal and vegetable world. Adam Clark remarks that our verb to wean comes from the Anglo-Saxon awendan, which signifies to convert, transfer, turn from one thing to another; and hence to wean is to turn a child from the breast in order to receive another kind of nourishment. This is perhaps a correct view of the import of the English word, but when he says that this is the exact import of the Heb. a gamal in the text, the assertion is stronger than the evidence will warrant. The etymology of the term, however, is not a point of any great moment, as there can be no doubt of its being here correctly rendered. At what time children were weaned among the ancients is a question that admits 7. Who would have said, &c. It would have exceeded the bounds of belief; it could never have entered into the thoughts of a mortal. It is a virtual acknowledgment that God's mercies are as high above our thoughts, as they are above our deserts. Yet the fact had been previously announced not only to Abraham, but also to her, and she was bound to believe it, strange and incredible as it might appear. of much dispute. Most oriental peoProbably she was now deeply abased in her own eyes in view of her former unbelief. The church expresses a similar admiration, Is. 49. 21, 'Who hath begotten me these ?--Behold I was left alone; these, where had they been?' 8. The child grew and was weaned, &c. Heb. 1 vayiggamēl. The ple,' says the editor of the Pictorial Bible, 'suckle their children much louger than is customary in Europe, and the same custom may be traced in the Bible. When Samuel was weaned, he was old enough to be left with Eli, for the service of the tabernacle; in 2 Chron. 26. 16, nothing is assigned for the pro thy of notice that we find the Gr. word for playing (raiovra), which is here employed, occurring also, 2 Sam. 2. 14— 16, in the sense of fighting; 'And Abner said to Joab, Let the young men arise and play (raığarwoav) before us,— And they caught every one his fellow by the hand, and thrust his sword in his fellow's side; so they fell down to doubt that the Heb. phrase implies a contemptuous and malignant treatment, a bitter and sarcastic jeering, sufficient to constitute a very grave of fence. This is clear from the language of Paul, vision of the children of priests and Levites until after three years of age, which renders it probable that they were not weaned sooner; and in the second book of Maccabees ch. 7. 27, a mother says, 'O my son, have pity upon me that bare thee nine months in my womb, and gave thee suck three years and nourished thee, and brought thee up unto this age.' When the Per-gether.' On the whole there can be no sian ambassador was in England he attributed to the custom of early weaning the greater forwardness of our children in mental acquirements than those of his own country; where male children are often kept to the breast till three years of age, and never taken from it till two years and two months. The practice is nearly the same in other Asiatic countries. In India the period is precisely three years. But everywhere a girl is taken from the breast sooner than a boy in Persia, at two years; in India, within the first year. When the child is weaned, the Persians make a great feast,' to which friends and relations are invited, and of which the child also partakes, this being in fact his introduction to the customary fare of the country. The practice is the same among the Hindoos.' : al. 4. 29, who says that Ishmael persecuted Isaac; and he is here specially designated as 'the son of Hagar the Egyptian,' to intimate that the predicted four hundred years' affliction of Abraham's seed by the Egyptians, commenced at this time in the insults and taunts of Ishmael, the son of an Egyptian woman. 'The fact would seem to be, that Ishmael, now a grownup lad of about sixteen or seventeen, and who up to the age of fourteen had expected to be the sole heir of his father, was not quite satisfied by being superseded in the inheritance by his younger brother, whom he does not appear 9. Sarah saw the son of Hagar the to have treated with all the consideraEgyptian-mocking. Heb. pr tion which Sarah required. Sarah, it metzahek; a word in this connection is evident, had little confidence in the of rather dubious import. It is derived promise of a son which had been made from the same root with Isaac (p to Abraham; and probably, until the tzahak) which signifies to laugh, and birth of Isaac, treated Ishmael as the here perhaps has the sense of laughing hope of Abraham's house, if not as her at, deriding. Both the Gr. and the own son. But the birth of isaac made Chal. render by the word 'play'-'saw a great change in Ishmael's condition; the son of Hagar playing with Isaac;' and the change is quite conformable but by this can scarcely be understood with the usages which still prevail in the mere sportive gambols of children, the East, where the son of a female which would be too frivolous an occa- slave would certainly be superseded by sion for the adoption of such a harsh the son of a free woman, afterwards measure as Sarah proposed. We are born. Nay, this feeling goes further; rather to conceive of it as a wanton for, leaving slaves out of the question, teazing, something which in its own in Persia, if a man has more than one nature was peculiarly calculated to irri-wife-and he may have four, all equaltate and vex; and it is not a little wor-ly his wives in the eye of the law-the 10 Wherefore she said unto be heir with my son, even with Ah aham, Cast out this bond- Isaac. woman, and her son: for the son of this bond-woman shall not p Gal. 4. 30. ch. 25. 6. & 36. 6, 7, son of the wife whose family is of the 11 And the thing was very grievous in Abraham's sight, a be cause of his son. q ch. 17. 18. rily involved the disinheriting of the son of the divorced woman, whose right of heirship flowed solely from his mother as a married mother. Such a step would, as a matter of course, require a separation of the parties, and viewed in this light the affair was not of a character to subject Abraham justly to the charge of cruelty in sending away the Egyptian mother and her child. In the nature of the case she could not remain, and Sarah be satisfied; so that a dismissal was unavoidable, and nothing can be adduced from the narrative to show that it was not ordered with as much kindness and generosity as the circumstances would admit.--Sarah, though right in her judgment re10. She said unto Abraham, Cast specting the means of obtaining doout this woman and her son. Expel mestic peace, seems to have been too her from thy house and family, and precipitate, and too imperious in her preclude her son from any participation demands for the expulsion of Hagar in the inheritance. This is perhaps the and her son. The consequence was, most obvious sense of the words, yet that Abraham demurred about carryas the Heb. w geresh is in several ing it into execution. He indeed had instances applied to the act of divorcing different feelings from Sarah. Sarah's or repudiating a wife, Lev. 21. 7, 14.- regards were fixed exclusively on Isaac. 22. 13. Is 57. 20, we shall probably She did not consider Ishmael as a son, more correctly understand it here as but rather as an intruder and a rival. expressing Sarah's wish that Abraham But Abraham, being the father of both, would divorce Hagar, or at least per- felt a paternal affection towards each; form some kind of legal act by which nor was he indifferent towards Hagar, Ishmae! might be excluded from all whom he considered and lived with as claim to the inheritance. This is a a legitimate wife. Perhaps too he susvery plausible view of the import of the pected that Sarah's proposal originated passage, for the mere fact of his re-in an irritation of temper, and that less maining at home would not of itself severe measures would in a little time entitle him to the inheritance, nor satisfy her mind. As may well be supwould the mere fact of his present ex-posed, he was exceedingly grieved at pulsion deprive him of such a title in case it had existed. A formal or actual divorce was evidently the requisite measure, and such a measure necessa the thought of proceeding to such extremities, but finding her resolutely bent upon it, he committed the matter to God, and sought direction from |