Annotatio XCVIII

”Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed in his heart, saying: Shall a son, thinkest thou, be born to him that is a hundred years old? and shall Sarah that is ninety years old bring forth?” — Genesis 17:17

Chrysostom, homily 40 on Genesis, for the explanation of this passage [writes]: “Abraham, seeing the excellent promise, and considering the greatness of him who had promised, fell upon his face and laughed.”¹ A Greek codex of Chrysostom — a most ancient one, which we saw at Lyon in the library of Santes Pagnino — had, immediately after this passage, certain words which are not read in the other common volumes. These are they: “God, that he alone might be without sin, sometimes permitted the just, according to their own choice, to fall into sin: whence holy Abraham too sinned by unbelief, and received punishments from God, so that his seed should serve four hundred years. Moses also, when he did not glorify God — who bestowed on him water from the rock — was ungrateful, and God said to him, ‘You shall see the land of promise, and you shall not enter into it.’”² Thus far the Greek copy: whose words, since they by no means cohere with the following narration — in which [the author] testifies that Abraham burst out into those thoughts and words not from unbelief but from immense joy, not knowing what he said — I suspect that the aforesaid words were taken elsewhere out of Chrysostom by some studious [reader], and set in the margin of the present passage, and at last (as often happens) by the carelessness of copyists carried over into the text. For at the end of the sixth homily On Penance a passage not unlike the aforesaid is found, in plainly the same sense and the same words, in this manner: “But, since God was the same, and alone without sin, he permitted the just to be bent by human errors according to their own choice — not himself now impelling to sin, but by [their] choice permitting [them] to walk according to their own inclination. And so holy Abraham sinned by unbelief; on that account he did not escape punishment from God, so that his seed should serve for four hundred years. And again Moses, not glorifying God when he gave water from the rock, was ungrateful, and therefore God said to him, ‘You shall see the land of promise, and you shall not enter into it.’” The same opinion Jerome embraces, book 3 Against Pelagius, in these words: “Abraham did not believe what God promised, but laughed in his heart, thinking to conceal it from God, and not daring to laugh openly. Finally, expounding the causes of his incredulity, he says in his heart: How can it be that a hundred-year-old should beget a son from a ninety-year-old? ‘Let Ishmael live,’ he says, ‘in your sight, whom you once gave: I do not seek difficult things; I am content with the benefit I have received.’ Whom God, rebuking with a hidden response, says: ‘Let even that be done which you think will not be; and from your error, by which you laughed, your son Isaac shall receive the name “laughter.”’”

Paul seems altogether opposed to this assertion, since, writing to the Romans, he says: “And he was not weakened in faith, neither did he consider his own body now dead, when he was almost a hundred years old, nor the dead womb of Sarah; in the promise also of God he did not hesitate through distrust, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, most fully knowing that whatsoever God has promised he is able to perform: therefore it was reputed to him also unto justice.”³ Expounding this sentence, Ambrose and Theophylact hold that Abraham did not hesitate at all, but rather, against hope, believed most fully in hope. Moreover Augustine, book 16 On the City of God, chapter 26, writes that Abraham’s laughter was the exultation of one giving thanks, not the derision of one distrusting; and he says that those words too — “Shall a son be born to one a hundred years old, and shall Sarah at ninety bring forth?” — were the words not of one doubting, but of one wondering. John Arboreus, in the first book of his Theosophia (Θεοσοφία), settling a controversy of this kind, says that Abraham somewhat doubted, and hesitated in mind at the beginning, when he laughed in his heart, saying, “Shall a son be born to a hundred-year-old?”; but that the words of the promise which God subjoined raised up his mind — engaged as it was in a doubtful judgment — and thus freed it from all doubt, so that thereafter he leaned upon the divine promises with a most certain and immovable faith.