Genesis 18:13-14

18:13 The Lord said to Abraham, “Why ¹  did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really ²  have a child when I am old?’ 18:14 Is anything impossible ³  for the Lord? I will return to you when the season comes round again and Sarah will have a son.” ⁴ 

Genesis 16:10

16:10 I will greatly multiply your descendants,” the Lord’s angel added, ⁵  “so that they will be too numerous to count.” ⁶ 

Genesis 22:15-16

22:15 The Lord’s angel called to Abraham a second time from heaven 22:16 and said, “‘I solemnly swear by my own name,’ ⁷  decrees the Lord, ⁸  ‘that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son,

¹ tn Heb “Why, this?” The demonstrative pronoun following the interrogative pronoun is enclitic, emphasizing the Lord’s amazement: “Why on earth did Sarah laugh?”

² tn The Hebrew construction uses both הַאַף (ha’af) and אֻמְנָם (’umnam): “Indeed, truly, will I have a child?”

³ tn The Hebrew verb פָּלָא (pala’) means “to be wonderful, to be extraordinary, to be surpassing, to be amazing.”

⁴ sn Sarah will have a son. The passage brings God’s promise into clear focus. As long as it was a promise for the future, it really could be believed without much involvement. But now, when it seemed so impossible from the human standpoint, when the Lord fixed an exact date for the birth of the child, the promise became rather overwhelming to Abraham and Sarah. But then this was the Lord of creation, the one they had come to trust. The point of these narratives is that the creation of Abraham’s offspring, which eventually became Israel, is no less a miraculous work of creation than the creation of the world itself.

⁵ tn Heb “The Lord’s angel said, ‘I will greatly multiply your descendants….” The order of the clauses has been rearranged in the translation for stylistic reasons.

⁶ tn Heb “cannot be numbered because of abundance.”

⁷ tn Heb “By myself I swear.”

⁸ tn Heb “the oracle of the Lord.” The phrase refers to a formal oracle or decree from the Lord.