Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible Part in the Book of Genesis. Tonight is Part #16 of Genesis, chapter 17 and we are going to read Genesis 17:17-22:

Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear? And Abraham said unto God, O that Ishmael might live before thee! And God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou shalt call his name Isaac: and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him. And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee: Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation. But my covenant will I establish with Isaac, which Sarah shall bear unto thee at this set time in the next year. And he left off talking with him, and God went up from Abraham.

This is a very interesting time in the lives of Abraham and Sarah. God has just changed their names and now He is telling them a definite time that He will fulfill the longstanding promise. God first gave the promise to Abram when he was 75 and had entered into the land of Canaan. Now Abraham is 99 years old and it has been 24 years since he arrived. Now the Lord is telling him that it will be “at this set time in the next year.”

Notice the reaction of Abraham when he heard this: “Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old?” It is not the reaction we are accustomed to seeing of Abraham. God told Abraham when he was in Ur of the Chaldees to leave that land and Abraham immediately obeyed. Whenever God told Abraham to do something, he did it. As we look at the scriptures, we see Abraham as a great man of faith, according to Hebrews, chapter 4 and chapter 11. It just seems out of character for Abraham to laugh and to say in his heart, “Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old? And shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?” It is doubt. It is unbelief.

This is why it is such a blessing that we are saved by the faith of another, the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is always perfect. It is always 100% faithful and true. Our faith is faltering and weak and, of course, it is also a work and no man is saved by the works of the law, so faith could not have saved us to begin with, but if God had established a program wherein we stand in our own faith, we could not stand. There would be none that could endure. We believe, but help thou our unbelief. Due to our feet of clay and the frailty of our fallen condition, even after God has saved us we still dwell in our unsaved flesh, so there is a struggle.

But, here, God is revealing that Abraham laughed and said these things in his heart. Abraham may just as well have said these things aloud because God knows the heart and He knew what was going on inside of Abraham.

Let us look at this word “laugh” because the Lord is going to make a special point of this word. For instance, it says in Genesis 18:11-15:

Now Abraham and Sarah were old and well stricken in age; and it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also? And JEHOVAH said unto Abraham, Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I of a surety bear a child, which am old? Is any thing too hard for JEHOVAH? At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son. Then Sarah denied, saying, I laughed not; for she was afraid. And he said, Nay; but thou didst laugh.

Where did Sarah laugh? Again, it was in the heart: “Therefore Sarah laughed within herself.” These appear to be inward thoughts and she seems to be doing the same thing Abraham did in the previous chapter: “Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed,” and he said, “Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old? And shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?” Sarah was aware of this challenge also and, yet, God asks the question: “Is any thing too hard for JEHOVAH?” What is the answer to that question? It is a good question for us to ponder. We are not going to spend too much time on it because we will get to this in the next chapter, but the answer is that nothing is too hard for JEHOVAH. What is impossible with man is possible with the Lord. Salvation is possible with the Lord. As far as God fulfilling His promises, no matter how long it has been since God first gave the promise and no matter how conditions have changed for the worse and do not seem right for the fulfillment of the promises, there is nothing too hard for JEHOVAH. He will fulfill His Word and He will do the thing He has said.

You see, God is emphasizing a point about laughter. If we go to Genesis 21 we see the time of the birth of Isaac that was according to the Word of God and according to God’s promise to Abraham. Yes – Abraham had to wait. Typically, all of God’s promises are something that require patience and something that must be waited for and Abraham had to wait for over two decades (25 years) and he was getting older and older and older. And the fulfillment of the promise seemed less and less likely, even to the point where Abraham and Sarah took matters into their own hands and Sarah gave Abraham her handmaid Hagar to wife. But God fulfilled the promise through Sarah.

It says in Genesis 21:4-7:

And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac being eight days old, as God had commanded him. And Abraham was an hundred years old, when his son Isaac was born unto him. And Sarah said, God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me. And she said, Who would have said unto Abraham, that Sarah should have given children suck? for I have born him a son in his old age.

She remembered what she had done the previous year when she laughed within herself. Although she had denied it, God said, “Nay; but thou didst laugh.” So, here, she is making a declaration: “God hath made to laugh.” We will just look at this in passing for now because we do plan to get to Genesis, chapter 21 in the future, but we will look at what is meant by that statement and we are going to see that “laughter” has to do with God’s program of times and seasons and Judgment Day. When we get to that chapter, we will look at that.

Right now, we want to look at the Hebrew word for “laugh” that is used in Genesis 17:17. It is Strong’s #6711 in Strong’s Concordance. It is translated as “laugh,” like it was in Genesis 18 and Genesis 21, but it is also translated as “mock” or “mocked” in Genesis 19:12-14:

And the men said unto Lot, Hast thou here any besides? son in law, and thy sons, and thy daughters, and whatsoever thou hast in the city, bring them out of this place: For we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of JEHOVAH; and JEHOVAH hath sent us to destroy it. And Lot went out, and spake unto his sons in law, which married his daughters, and said, Up, get you out of this place; for JEHOVAH will destroy this city. But he seemed as one that mocked unto his sons in law.

So, he seemed as one that “mocked” or “laughed,” meaning that they did not listen to him and they took it lightly. They did not heed the precious warning that God sent his servant Lot to give to others in the city, including his sons in law. They heard the warning with their physical ears and they dismissed it: “Fire and brimstone from heaven! Are you kidding? What a joke.” We are very familiar with that kind of attitude, based on our experience in sending forth the Gospel to warn people in the days prior to May 21, 2011. It was a common reaction for people to laugh, mock and joke about it, in an effort to dismiss the warning: “I am not going to take that seriously. Are you kidding me?” They would question that there was even a God in heaven. They would question the Bible. They would question how we could know that. They would question “everything under the sun,” just so they would not have to take the message seriously.

But God had His elect people and those elect people did take it seriously and God used the warning message of Judgment Day to save the whole company of the elect.

It is interesting that this word “mocked” is the same word used to describe Abraham’s reaction (he laughed) and Sarah’s reaction (she laughed). Yes – they were at the point in their old age when the natural physical processes had come to an end and it was physically impossible for Sarah to have a child, so they did not believe. But God was able to create a baby in Sarah’s womb and qualify her body to nourish a child and allow it to grow to birth. God is able to do those kinds of things because nothing is too hard for JEHOVAH.

This word, Strong’s #6711, is also found in the book of Judges regarding the time when Samson was captured and they put out his eyes. He was being tormented by the Philistines and it says in Judges 16:23-25:

Then the lords of the Philistines gathered them together for to offer a great sacrifice unto Dagon their god, and to rejoice: for they said, Our god hath delivered Samson our enemy into our hand. And when the people saw him, they praised their god: for they said, Our god hath delivered into our hands our enemy, and the destroyer of our country, which slew many of us. And it came to pass, when their hearts were merry, that they said, Call for Samson, that he may make us sport. And they called for Samson out of the prison house; and he made them sport: and they set him between the pillars.

The word translated as “sport” here is our word, Strong’s #6711, that was translated as “laughed” or “mocked.” We can picture this. There is a stadium full of enemies of Israel, Samson and the kingdom of God. And here is their chief nemesis, Samson, who had slain many of them. He had killed a great many Philistines, but they had finally captured him. And now he was weak, like other men, and they were making fun of him and mocking him: “Where is your strength now, Samson?” It says, “And they called for Samson out of the prison house; and he made them sport: and they set him between the pillars.” This has to do with the (earthly) end of Samson. He will die. (I recommend that you read this account because this historical account has a wonderful ending for God’s people and the kingdom of heaven.) But they were “making sport” of him or mocking him and this is our word that was translated as “laughed.”

Again, this Hebrew word translated as “laughed,” where it said, “Abraham fell on his face and laughed,” can be translated as “mocked” or “made sport.” It is Strong’s #6711 and it is also related to Strong’s #6712. It is spelled with three consonants in the Hebrew. If you want to see these letters, you can go to Psalm 119, where each of the stanzas there features a Hebrew letter and also gives the English pronunciation. The letter “TZADDI” looks like a pitchfork on top of an “S.” The letter “CHETH” looks like a little like a square without much of a bottom line. The letter “KOPH” is an unusual looking letter that looks like a cross between an English “P” and “Q.” It is pronounced “tsaw-khak’” and these three letters look like this in the Hebrew:צָחַק

Again, it is comprised of three Hebrew letters that make up Strong’s #6711. I am mentioning this because there is another Hebrew word that is Strong’s #7832 and it is also translated as “laugh” or “mock” or “derision,” which carries the same idea as “making sport” or “mocking.” This word is found several times, but we will just look at one place right now, in Ecclesiastes 3:4:

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

Here, the word “laugh” is Strong’s #7832 and it is similar to our word #6711 in the way it was translated by the King James translators. It is also similar in that the last two consonants are identical, the “CHETH” and the “KOPH.” But the third consonant, in this case, is “SCHIN,” but it was “TZADDI” in Strong’s #6711. There is an “S” sound in both, but “TZADDI” has more of a “TS” sound and “SCHIN” has more of a an “SCH” sound. It is pronounced “saw-khak’” and I think there is a definite relationship of these two words to the point of them being synonymous.

We will take a look at the name “Isaac” when we get together in our next Bible Part and through the use of the name “Isaac,” we will see how God brings both of these words together to show, without question, that they are synonyms and they are related in how they are used in the Bible. Therefore, we can look at Strong’s #7832 and understand that it identifies with what God is emphasizing in His focus on Abraham laughing and Sarah laughing and in regard to Sarah saying, “God hath made me to laugh.” Isaac was the subject of the laughter and whether he would ever be born, but he was born and he was given the name “Isaac,” which is related to “laughter.” We will see how this all ties together, Lord willing, when we get together our next Bible study.