Romans 9:9 – A son for Sarah

For the word of the promise is this: “ At this season” I shall come “and there will be for Sarah a son.”

God’s promise to Abraham was very specific. Not Hagar or Keturah would be the mother of the promised son but Sarah. She was old, childless, and her womb was, as Paul wrote earlier in this letter (4:19), “deadened.” Which is to say that Isaac’s birth is a representation of life from (and victory over) death.

The “word of the promise” that Paul refers to here are the statements found in Genesis 18:10 and 14. Sarah listened with suppressed laughter at the entrance of the tent to her husband’s conversation. YAHWEH had said that about the same time a year later He would come and Sarah would have a son. And in Genesis 21:1 we read that this has actually been fulfilled. Exactly at the agreed time.

The Lord would return in a year. But not by visiting, as before, but in the birth of Isaac. Do we not immediately recognize in this formulation the coming of “the Son of Abraham” (Mat.1:1)? God himself comes to visit “in the fullness of time” (Gal. 4:4) in the promised Son!

Delen: