What Does Genesis 21:5 Mean?
And Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And Abraham was an hundred years old, when his son Isaac was born unto him.THE KEY
Isaac’s name means “he laughs,” so the laughter surrounding the promise remains audible in the child who is born.
THE MEANING
A promise reaches the body of a real person, and its astonishment remains audible in his name: Isaac means “he laughs.” The verse holds fulfillment and laughter together instead of erasing one when the other arrives.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The moment a promise is fulfilled, its earlier doubt must be forgotten.
THE ROOT
יִצְחָק
Yitzḥaq
GROWS FROM
צחק
To laugh; in the name Yitzḥaq, “he laughs.”
“Isaac” in this verse is Yitzḥaq. The name grows from the Hebrew root for laughter, keeping that sound inside the birth itself. The child is not merely given a label: his name carries the astonishment that surrounds the promise.
ALSO GROWS
tzāḥaq: to laugh
צָחַק
This verb is the root from which Isaac’s name grows, placing laughter inside the meaning of the name.
tseḥoq: laughter
צְחֹק
Sarah uses this noun in the next verse when she says God has made her laugh, making the name’s root explicit.
metzaḥeq: playing or mocking
מְצַחֵק
The same root appears in the surrounding scene with a different shade, showing that the laughter word family can hold more than one tone.
THE PATTERN
What begins as laughter at an unlikely promise can become laughter shared aloud.
And Sarah laughed in her inward parts, saying, After I am worn out, shall I have pleasure, and my lord is old?Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with a ringing cry. Then they said among the nations, The LORD has grown great in doing with these.And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth.THE THREAD
And Sarah said, God has made me laugh, and all who hear will laugh with me.Sarah says God has made her laugh, using the same צחק (tzāḥaq), “to laugh,” root that forms Yitzḥaq’s name. The birth and the laughter are joined in the language itself.
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