Genesis 12 to 21 · Story · Patience
Abraham and Sarah: The Twenty-Five Years
Genesis 12 to 21 follows Abraham and Sarah from the LORD's promise at Haran to the birth of their son Isaac in their old age.
The LORD answered Sarah's doubt with a question to Abraham: "Is anything too difficult for the LORD?"
So Sarah conceived and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised.
- Where
- Haran, Canaan, Mamre
- Who
- Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Isaac
Summary
Abraham's patience was a long wait for a son God had promised to an aging husband and a barren wife. The LORD spoke the promise again over the years. The couple once tried to gain the son by a plan of their own, and the promise still waited until both were past the age of bearing. God kept His word, so the story teaches both the patience of the believer and the faithfulness of the God he waits on.
- Abram was seventy-five when he left Haran and a hundred when Isaac was born, a wait of twenty-five years (Genesis 12:4; Genesis 21:5).
- When Abram complained that he was still childless, the LORD showed him the stars and said, "So shall your offspring be", and Abram believed the LORD (Genesis 15:2 to 6).
- After ten years in Canaan Sarai gave her servant Hagar to Abram as a wife, and the son born to Hagar was Ishmael (Genesis 16:3; Genesis 16:15).
- Hebrews says that Abraham obtained the promise after waiting patiently, and it adds that the patriarchs died without having received all they were promised (Hebrews 6:15; Hebrews 11:13).
- Paul says that Abraham did not waver through disbelief and was fully persuaded that God was able to do what He had promised (Romans 4:20 to 21).
The Promise at Haran
The LORD's first word to Abram promised a great nation to a man whose wife had no children.
Abraham and Sarah: The Twenty-Five Years is the story of a husband and wife who waited for the son God had promised them. It belongs to the Bible's teaching on patience, which in Scripture is the slowness to anger God shows to sinners and the steady endurance He asks of His people under wrong, suffering and delay. Their story speaks to every believer who has been given a promise by God and has not yet seen it kept.
The question the page answers is how Abraham waited, since Hebrews calls him patient while Genesis records his doubt and his haste.
But Sarai was barren; she had no children.Genesis records Sarai's barrenness before the call, so the promise of a nation was given to a couple with no child.
The LORD told Abram to leave his country and his father's household (Genesis 12:1). Then He said, "I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing" (Genesis 12:2).
So Abram departed, as the LORD had directed him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran.The verse gives Abram's age when he obeyed and left Haran, the first number of the wait.
At Shechem the LORD appeared to him and said, "I will give this land to your offspring" (Genesis 12:7). After Lot parted from him, the LORD promised that his offspring would be like the dust of the earth (Genesis 13:16).
Later the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, and Abram answered with a complaint: "I remain childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus" (Genesis 15:1 to 2).
And the LORD took him outside and said, “Now look to the heavens and count the stars, if you are able.” Then He told him, “So shall your offspring be.” Abram believed the LORD, and it was credited to him as righteousness.The LORD answered the complaint with the stars, and Abram's belief in that promise is the faith Paul cites in Romans 4:22.
The Ages Along the Way
The promise of offspring was spoken at Haran, at Shechem, after Lot left, under the stars, at the new names and at Mamre.
Genesis states Abraham's age at four events of the story, and fourteen years separate the birth of Ishmael from the birth of Isaac.
- Leaves Haran75Genesis 12:1 to 4
- Promise at ShechemNot givenGenesis 12:7
- Promise after Lot leavesNot givenGenesis 13:16
- The starsNot givenGenesis 15:5 to 6
- Hagar givenAbout 85, adding ten years in Canaan to 75Genesis 16:3
- Hagar at the springNot givenGenesis 16:7 to 13
- Ishmael born86Genesis 16:16
- New names99Genesis 17:1 to 15
- Abraham laughsAbout to be 100Genesis 17:17
- Sarah laughsNot givenGenesis 18:10 to 15
- Isaac born100Genesis 21:5
A timeline of eleven events in the order Genesis tells them, each with its reference and, where the text gives or implies it, Abraham's age.
Ishmael born, New names, Abraham laughs, Sarah laughs, Isaac born
Ten Years and Hagar
Sarai proposed that Abram have a son by her Egyptian servant, and the plan brought strife into the household.
Sarai still had no children, and she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar (Genesis 16:1). She told Abram that the LORD had prevented her from bearing children and asked him to go to Hagar, and "Abram listened to the voice of Sarai" (Genesis 16:2).
So after he had lived in Canaan for ten years, his wife Sarai took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to Abram to be his wife.The verse dates the plan to ten years after Abram settled in Canaan, so by the text's numbers he was about eighty-five.
When Hagar conceived, she began to despise her mistress. Sarai blamed Abram, Abram left Hagar in her hands, and Sarai treated her so harshly that she fled (Genesis 16:4 to 6).
The angel of the LORD found Hagar by a spring on the road to Shur. He sent her back to her mistress and promised her a son named Ishmael, "for the LORD has heard your cry of affliction" (Genesis 16:7 to 11).
So Hagar gave this name to the LORD who had spoken to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “Here I have seen the One who sees me!”Hagar names the LORD from her own meeting with Him, so the chapter records God's care for the servant whom the plan had wronged.
Hagar returned and bore Abram a son, and Abram named him Ishmael (Genesis 16:15).
The Laughter of Abraham and Sarah
Abraham laughed at the promise of a son before Sarah did, and when the son came Sarah said that God had made her laugh.
When Abram was ninety-nine, the LORD appeared to him as God Almighty and renamed him Abraham, for He had made him a father of many nations (Genesis 17:1 and 5). He renamed Sarai as Sarah and promised Abraham a son by her (Genesis 17:15 to 16).
Abraham fell facedown. Then he laughed and said to himself, “Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah give birth at the age of ninety?”Abraham's question sets Sarah's age, ninety, beside his own, and both ages stood against the promise.
At Mamre the LORD repeated the promise while Sarah listened at the entrance to the tent, and she laughed to herself because she and her husband were old (Genesis 18:10 to 12).
Is anything too difficult for the LORD? At the appointed time I will return to you—in about a year—and Sarah will have a son.”The verse fixes the time of the birth and rests the promise on the power of the LORD.
Sarah was afraid and denied that she had laughed, and the LORD replied, "but you did laugh" (Genesis 18:15).
Isaac was born at the time the LORD had set (Genesis 21:2 to 3).
Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.The verse gives Abraham's age at the birth, the last number of the wait.
Then Sarah said, "God has made me laugh, and everyone who hears of this will laugh with me" (Genesis 21:6).
Ishmael at Thirteen
Genesis records Ishmael's age at his circumcision and God's promise to make him a great nation.
On the day God gave the covenant of circumcision, Abraham circumcised his son Ishmael and every male of his household, and Ishmael was thirteen years old (Genesis 17:23 to 25).
As for Ishmael, I have heard you, and I will surely bless him; I will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly. He will become the father of twelve rulers, and I will make him into a great nation.God's answer to Abraham's plea for Ishmael is a promise of blessing, so the son of the plan with Hagar also received a promise.
Faith and Patience in Hebrews
Hebrews names Abraham's wait with the New Testament's word for patience and sets Sarah's faith beside his.
Then you will not be sluggish, but will imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.The writer's call to imitate patient heirs leads straight into his example of Abraham in the verses that follow.
When God made His promise to Abraham, He swore by Himself, since He had no one greater to swear by (Hebrews 6:13 to 14).
And so Abraham, after waiting patiently, obtained the promise.Hebrews sums up all of Abraham's years between the call and the birth of Isaac in one word of patience.
The Greek behind "after waiting patiently" is makrothymesas, a form of the verb makrothymeo, and the noun for patience in verse 12 is makrothymia (Strong's G3114 and G3115). James uses the same verb three times when he tells suffering believers to be patient as the farmer is (James 5:7 to 8).
By faith Sarah, even though she was barren and beyond the proper age, was enabled to conceive a child, because she considered Him faithful who had promised.Hebrews gives Sarah her own place among the faithful, and it names the ground of her faith, the faithfulness of the One who promised.
All these people died in faith, without having received the things they were promised. However, they saw them and welcomed them from afar. And they acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.Hebrews counts Abraham among those who confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth while they waited.
Isaac was born in Abraham's lifetime, and God told him that his descendants would return to the land in the fourth generation (Genesis 15:16).
Wesley's count of thirty yearsJohn Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, on Hebrews 6:15
John Wesley's note on Hebrews 6:15 counts Abraham's wait as "Thirty years" and names the promise obtained as "Isaac, the pledge of all the promises". Wesley's thirty years is five more than the span Genesis gives from Haran to Isaac's birth.
Hebrews 11:11, Hebrews 11:13
Tertullian on the Long Wait
Tertullian of Carthage, a teacher of the early church, wrote a treatise on patience and named Abraham in it.
died 220 · Tertullian
Tertullian made patience the root of the faith for which Abraham was blessed.
“Rightly then is he blessed because he was faithful; and rightly was he faithful because he was patient.”
Tertullian · On Patience 6.2 · on Genesis 22:17Patristic
Was the Plan With Hagar Impatience?
Teachers have read Abram's taking of Hagar in three ways, according to how they weigh the promise, the custom and the later use Paul made of the story.
Impatience with God's promiseMatthew Henry
Matthew Henry, in his Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), traced the plan to the want of "a patient waiting for God's time" and wrote, "He that believes does not make haste."
Henry found the same fault already in Abram's complaint of Genesis 15:3, where he saw "a weariness of waiting God's time".
A custom that could be excusedJohn Wesley
John Wesley, in his Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765), wrote of Abram's yielding to Sarai that "though he may be excused, he cannot be justified; for from the beginning it was not so".
Wesley traced the custom to "an irregular desire to build up their families, for the speedier peopling of the world".
The son of the flesh and the son of the promiseThe apostle Paul, Galatians 4:21 to 31
Paul wrote that the two women represent two covenants, and he named Hagar as the covenant from Mount Sinai that bears children into slavery (Galatians 4:24).
His son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but his son by the free woman was born through the promise.Paul sets the son born to the slave woman according to the flesh beside the son born through the promise, the contrast his argument rests on.
Fully Persuaded
Paul reads the wait as faith that grew stronger while the bodies of Abraham and Sarah grew weaker.
Paul writes, "Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations" (Romans 4:18). He adds that Abraham "acknowledged the decrepitness of his body (since he was about a hundred years old) and the lifelessness of Sarah’s womb" (Romans 4:19).
Yet he did not waver through disbelief in the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God was able to do what He had promised.Paul says that Abraham was strengthened in faith as he waited, and he names its ground, God's power to do what He had promised.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible TBESG lexicon, Tyndale House, CC BY 4.0.
- Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710)
- John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)
- John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755)
- Tertullian, Of Patience, translated by S. Thelwall, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3 (1885)
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