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Sarah laughed when she heard the promise. She was ninety years old, far past every biological possibility, and the angel's words about a son by the next year struck her as absurd. God's response was not rebuke but a question: "Is any thing too hard for the LORD?" (Genesis 18:14). Sarah's laugh was not faith. It was the honest response of a woman whose hope had been deferred so long that hope itself had become painful. And God worked with that laugh anyway. The child's name — Isaac — means laughter. God named the miracle after her doubt.
Get These Verses Daily — Free“He maketh the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children. Praise ye the LORD.”
This verse closes a psalm whose structure is entirely about reversals — God lifting the lowest, turning the most entrenched human situations. The barren woman made joyful is presented as characteristic of God, not a one-time exception.
“Is any thing too hard for the LORD? At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.”
The question is not rhetorical comfort — it is a direct challenge to the logic of impossibility. The phrase 'at the time appointed' — moed — is the same word used for sacred seasons. God's timing is not arbitrary delay; it has an appointed structure.
“And she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed unto the LORD, and wept sore.”
Hannah's prayer is not composed or confident. The Hebrew mar nephesh describes the raw underbelly of prolonged grief. Scripture records this as the prayer God heard — bitterness of soul is not a disqualifier before God.
“And God remembered Rachel, and God hearkened to her, and opened her womb.”
The Hebrew zakar — 'remembered' — signals covenantal action, not recollection. God had not forgotten Rachel. This is the moment the interval between promise and fulfillment closes. Rachel had waited through six of her sister's pregnancies.
“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
The Greek synergei means to work together toward an outcome — multiple elements being coordinated. This does not mean each month of waiting is good in itself, but that God is working across the whole of it, including the months that felt like only loss.
The Hebrew word zakar — "remember" — appears in Genesis 30:22 when "God remembered Rachel, and God hearkened to her, and opened her womb." In Old Testament usage, when God "remembers" someone, it is not that he had forgotten. Zakar signals the moment God acts on a prior covenant commitment — the interval between the promise and its fulfillment closing. Rachel had watched her sister bear six sons while she waited. God's remembering was not an afterthought; it was the appointed movement after an interval that felt like silence.
Psalm 113:9 — "He maketh the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children" — sits inside a psalm cataloguing God's reversals of the most entrenched human conditions. The barren woman beside the poor man lifted from dust and the needy raised from the ash heap. These reversals are presented not as exceptional charity but as characteristic of who God is — the God who specializes in outcomes that defy the arithmetic of biology and circumstance.
Commentary is from a charismatic Protestant perspective, drawing on KJV text and public-domain sources including Spurgeon, Andrew Murray, and Matthew Henry.
1 Samuel 1:10 records Hannah's prayer in three details: "she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed unto the LORD, and wept sore." The Hebrew mar nephesh — bitterness of soul — is not polite distress. It is the raw, unguarded pain of someone who has stopped performing composure. Eli the priest watched her lips moving and assumed she was drunk. Scripture does not correct her emotional state. It records it as the prayer God heard. The bitterness was not an obstacle to being heard — it was the form the prayer took.
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