From barrenness to blessing: The miraculous births that changed history (Genesis 21; 1Samuel 1; Matthew 1)

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A barren woman and a boundless God: The miraculous birth of Isaac

God is sovereign and He can and He does fulfill His promises, namely that the Seed of Chavah (Eve) would crush the head of the serpent (Gen 3:15). The serpent is the one who deceived Adam and Eve away from the Tree of Life and enticed to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad. 

Yeshua (Jesus) said His body and blood are real food and real drink, He is the only true source of subsistence. Yeshua’s crucifixion and victorious resurrection, conquered the deceiver and death, crushing their power over us. 

From Genesis 12, we read about the progenitors of the promised Seed, who would come in due time as Yeshua of Nazareth, starting with first with Abraham and Sarah. God saved Abraham and Sarah were called out of an idolatrous, wicked culture. On the surface, choosing Abraham and Sarah as the progenitors of the Messiah was an absolutely ludicrous decision as she was barren. 

In those days, if a wife could not have children, husbands were permitted to take concubines to conceive children with them to be raised by the wife. This is not how the kingdom of heaven works. The Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, we see how man kind were supposed to live and how God is working through history restore mankind back to their rightful place. 

In Genesis 21, Yitzkhak (Isaac) was born to Sarah in her old age, fulfilling God’s promise through a woman who was previously never able to have children. God’s promises are sure and much more faithful than the paper currency we carry in our wallets. Our cash only has value because we have faith in their value because we put our faith in the government that issued them.

When we see how God makes a promise and keeps the promise, we can have faith that when God makes a promise that hasn’t been fulfilled yet, that He will keep it, because He has already shown Himself faithful with other promises. Sarah and Abraham struggled with trusting God’s faithfulness but eventually witness promises kept — and to be fulfilled in time.

Yitzkhak will carry on the covenant to his descendants, Israel.

Hannah’s legacy: How one woman’s prayer shaped Israel’s future

In 1Samuel 2:21, Khannah (Hannah), a woman who was once barren, was blessed with Samuel. Khannah fully trusted God and dedicated her first son Samuel before seeing further blessings. She prayed and plead for a child, yet she said that if God gave her a son, she would give him back to God. 

Samuel, Hannah’s son, became one of the greatest prophets that Israel has had. He anointed Israel’s first kings, revealing how Israel would stray in seeking a king like other nations when they should have sought Heaven’s King. God was the one who they should have been seeking, but in their sin, they sought another. 

When God interrupts: Miriam’s unexpected mission

In Matthew 1:18–25, Miriam (Mary), a virgin, conceives Yeshua (Jesus) through the Holy Spirit, fulfilling the ultimate divine promise. She was unique that she was not yet married and desperately seeking a son through normal marital relations. Quite the opposite, actually. She was not trying to have a son, yet God gave her one. 

This placed Mary into a very interesting place which was a little bit emblematic of Israel’s position at a time when Israel should have been giving birth to the king, the Messiah. There was no husband involved. 

The Angel of the Lord came and gave Mary this message, and she accepted the mission. Later the Angel of the Lord also appeared to her fiancee, Joseph, informing him that Miriam’s pregnancy was actually Heaven’s doing and not the fruit of any carnal actions on Mary’s part. Because of this, Joseph stepped forward into the scorn, the cultural scorn that Miriam would have been facing. 

The difference between what men make vs. what God makes 

Ishmael was conceived and brought into the world with a spirit of “we willed it and it happened. Isaac was conceived and brought into the world with a spirit of joy and laughter and astonishment at what God made. Yitskhak was Abraham’s 100th year gift. 

“Then the LORD took note (פָּקַד paqad) of Sarah as He had said, and the LORD did for (יַּעַשׂ ya’as) Sarah as He had promised.” (Gen 21:1 NASB95)

Abraham had prayed for Abimelech’s wife and her maids to conceive, after the ruler’s household was under divine judgment for taking Sarah as wife when Abraham had used his usual “sister act.” 

• Can we pray for answers for others to the same questions we have?
• Can we rejoice with those who are praising the answers we’ve been seeking? 

After decades of struggling to have children, Abraham and Sarah prayed for others to be blessed with children. It was only after this act of selflessness that God blessed Abraham and Sarah with a son. When we can genuinely rejoice in someone else’s success—even while we are still waiting for our own breakthrough—this kind of humility and compassion is something God can use for His purposes.

“Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him.” (Gen. 21:4)

God gave this command a year earlier, that the sign of circumcision was the sign of the covenant of God through Abraham (Gen 17:1, 9–14).

So, though Moshe (Moses) circumcised his sons and then later the people of Israel had to be circumcised before entering the Promised Land, the ceremony and lasting sign points back to the trust-based promise through Abraham, not the deal cut with Israel at Sinai. 

Apostle Paul addressed circumcision head-on in Galatians 4:21–31. 

• Are you born into the covenant, or are you promised into it?
• Is the person who chooses circumcision in adulthood superior to the one who had that choice put upon him in infancy?
• Spirit (promise and trust) vs. flesh (effort and self-confidence) is the heart of the matter.

The punchline of the reading is at the end in Gal. 4:31.

“So then, brethren, we are not children of a bondwoman, but of the free woman.” (Galatians 4:31 NAS95)

How can Mt. Sinai be a “bondage,” or slavery, when they were just freed from the “house of slavery” (Egypt)? Paul starts his discourse with the question, “Tell me, you who are under law, do you not listen to the law?” Paul tells us that the law is given to bring us to maturity, it’s a tutor. But who decides when one graduates from student to master, from son to heir? It’s not the law that makes that decision, but the father. Paul is telling the Galatians that it isn’t the law that brings people into the family of God but the Father, the Patriarch, who decides who is part of the family. 

Hagar was not free to decide whether she wanted to be a part of Abraham’s family or not. That choice was made for her. She was not a free woman. Sarah, on the other hand, was the free woman. 

When you work for a company, and you are vying for a promotion, it’s not the employee handbook that decides when you get promoted, it’s the boss who makes that decision. The employee handbook didn’t hire you, the owner of the company, or a designated representative is the one who hired you. The employee handbook provides the guidelines of your job but it’s your boss who decides if you are performing those duties properly. 

The Jerusalem above never changed, while the Jerusalem below changed over the course of many centuries from the time when it was the capital of the Jebusite kingdom, to the time when David conquered it and dedicated it to the Lord and then even into the days of Yeshua, when the government of Jerusalem was exceedingly corrupt. Jersualem’s identity didn’t end with the Jebusites, because once God put His name on it, it became His holy possession. 

Surrogacy and the sanctity of life: Navigating modern challenges with biblical wisdom

Abraham and Sarah did not have the benefit of modern medical technology to address Sarah’s barrenness. Their only option was to have Hagar bear a child for Abraham, whom Sarah would then raise. For centuries, men who desired children but had barren wives could only turn to concubines or mistresses, a practice that directly violated the Bible’s principles of monogamy and trusting in God’s timing.  

However, in the past 40 years, advancements in Western medicine have introduced new reproductive technologies that allow spouses to hack the process of childbearing — raising ethical questions similar to those faced by Abraham and Sarah.

If you speak with an OB-GYN, they could spend hours describing how childbirth begins and progresses. They can explain the intricate rise and fall of hormones, the precise sequence that sustains pregnancy, and the many ways this delicate process can (and does) go wrong. Despite our extensive scientific understanding, every conception, pregnancy, and birth remains a profound miracle. 

However, taking the act of conceiving children outside the conjugal act creates a cascade of ethical dilemmas. If a couple want to have a child, they need an egg and they need a sperm. The IVF process of gathering the eggs starts with using hormones to stimulate a woman’s ovaries to produce multiple eggs at a time, between 8-15 is typical. Then all of these eggs are fertilized. 

Thus you can start seeing where some of the problems come in, because then there’s a lot of times in the process of where you’re finding out which ones will fertilize, which eggs will fertilize, and which of the fertilized eggs will take that there can be a decision that we will, as some physicians have said, cut the losses.

There will be some eggs that won’t fertilize, or fertilize eggs that won’t implant, or ones that implanted that won’t stay, and so the clinicians decide to eliminate some of them out of the process, implanting only those which have the best chance of successful gestation into the biological mother’s womb.  

These clinicians are put into a situation where they are making life and death decisions, like an ER triage. 

There’s another layer of ethical challenge if the wife can’t produce viable eggs or can’t carry a child to term. This is where medical practices such as donated eggs and surrogacy are offered as a solution to the family’s desire for children. 

Today, IVF and surrogacy are often seen as solutions to infertility, offering hope to those who long for a child. Yet, science has revealed something profound: When a child implants in a woman’s womb, she leaves part of herself behind in the woman’s body that remains long after pregnancy, forging a deep, physical bond. Maternal instinct isn’t just an emotional or spiritual connection; it’s written into the very fabric of her body. Whether the pregnancy reaches full term or not, that bond is real, unbreakable, and imprinted at the most fundamental level. So, the surrogate, who is not biological related to either the father or mother is now biologically linked, permanently, to the child she carried. 

So surrogacy is not even a simple matter, because scientists have found genetic material from a child that was implanted into a surrogate in the brain of a surrogate mother, so we know these things are possible, they actually do happen.

In this push to circumvent infertility, we never stopped to ask, should we make this happen? We can make this happen, but should we make this happen?

Ishmael’s mockery & blessing: Reconciling God’s promises with difficult realities

“And you brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise. But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now also.” (Galatians 4:28-29 NAS95)

It is very curious that Paul, in this passage here, says, but at that time, he who was born according to the flesh, ie Ishmael, persecuted Isaac. Paul uses the word there, persecuted. And that’s the word there that’s very commonly used throughout Scripture, talking about persecution you face when someone’s trying to attack you. 

The word that is translated as “mocking” in Gen. 21:9 is  צָחַק tzachaq (H6711), which means to laugh. But it’s not just about laughing at a joke, because the word is used for the kind of laughter and mockery that comes when acting in a licentious and salacious manner. Often in pagan temples, the worship rituals and fertility ceremonies were of a sensual nature. Just as the Golden Calf was a mockery of the Creator. 

There are many reasons we might laugh in a situation. We might be nervous, we might be uncomfortable about a situation that is stepping on our boundaries and morals. Laughter can be a defense mechanism, but what makes one laugh is very culturally informed. 

When Yeshua was on the cross, He was repeatedly attacked with sarcastic retorts: 

• “If you think you’re the Son of God, just come down off that cross.”
• “He saved others, but he can’t save Himself.” 

Sarcasm and parody are forms of humor that can help break through taboos to reveal hard truths or they can be weaponized to attack others. Sarcasm can be useful but it can also wound people deeply. 

When we see the context of the conversation between Ishmael and Isaac, he might have been mocking the fact that this child who was much younger than him would be the one who would carry on the family name. What should be laughter and joy that Sarah, who was barren, has now given birth to a son, Ishmael turned into derision and mockery of what God has done. But when Sarah saw this, she realized that Hagar and Ishmael could no longer be trusted to live in Abraham’s household and needed to be evicted. 

God knew exactly what would happen when Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham and yet He allowed Ishmael to be conceived. The Lord intervened. He gave a blessing to Hagar. Now 14 years later, He also blesses Ishmael. We are the witnesses of  what has resulted from the blessings upon Hagar and Ishmael. Ishmael indeed became a great nation. 

The legacy of Philistia, which is where modern day Gaza is located, and the legacy of Ishmael are still a thorn in the side of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to this day. We may wish that God had blessed anyone else except Ishmael, but God chose to bless Ishmael and his descendants even though we don’t understand why. 

When God told Abraham that those who bless Abraham will be blessed, the blessing didn’t just go to Isaac, some of it was also granted to Ishmael. When Yeshua tells us to pray for our enemies and those who deceive, use and abuse us, that wasn’t a suggestion. 

Ichabod: The glory departs, but God’s plan remains

“The LORD visited (פָּקַד paqad) Hannah; and she conceived and gave birth to three sons and two daughters. And the boy Samuel grew before the LORD.” (1Sam 2:21 NASB95)

The same use of the LORD and paqad and conception connects this haftarah to the Torah reading. 

The blessings that came through Hannah and Samuel were a blessing given by God to the tribe of Ephraim. Even though there was so much cultural degradation in Israel in this time, there were also those who still loved to fellowship with God. 

Samuel’s father was named Elqanah/Elkanah (“God took possession”) of Ephraim he had two wives: Peninnah (“cornerstone”), who could have children, and Khannah/Hannah (“graciousness”), who Heaven prevented from having children.

In this time, the High Priest at the Tabernacle in Shiloh was named Eli. 

Eli’s two priest sons, Khophni and Pinkhas, were בְּנֵי בְלִיָּעַל benei b’liya’al (sons of obsolescence [worn out]). They would steal meat from the offerings, they wanted the choice meat cooked their way. They were exceedingly selfish and carnal. They were also known to sexually harass and carouse with the women at the entrance to the Mishkan. 

When Samuel was given over to the Temple, the word of the LORD wasn’t heard in the Land, but Heaven started speaking to Samuel when he was old enough to understand. When Eli realized that God was trying to speak to Samuel, he was humble enough to tell Samuel how to address God and when that child received the instruction from God, Eli humbly accepted God’s judgement. 

And when that judgement came, it was spectacular. Israel is harassed by Philistia. The people go to Shiloh to bring up the ark to take into battle after losing 4,000 soldiers. After initial fear of the presence of the Elohim who delivered Israel from Mitzraim, Philistia rallies, killing 30,000 soldiers, Eli’s two sons and taking the ark.

One of Eli’s daughters in law was in childbirth at the time and when she was informed of her husband’s death, she names her child Ichabod (“glory is gone”).

This wasn’t the last time that the “glory would be gone” from God’s temple. God’s glory returned with Solomon’s temple but that glory left again when Solomon’s temple was destroyed and it never returned to that same extent, even when the exiles returned from Babylon. 

When Paul wrote to the Galatians, the Temple in Jerusalem and its priesthood were steeped in corruption, making it Ichabod — the glory had departed — just as it had in the days of Shiloh. Yet, God’s path remains unshaken, His plan unfolding with precision.  

Abraham witnessed some promises fulfilled in his lifetime, like the birth of Isaac, while others required faith that God would bring them to pass long after he had gone to his rest.  

God’s glory is not found in the roads we construct for ourselves but in walking the path He has already laid. Just as He has been faithful to every promise in the past, we can trust that He will fulfill all that remains in His perfect time.

Summary: Tammy