Genesis 18:12

Summary

Genesis 18:12 narrates Sarah's internal laughter upon hearing that she would bear a son, given her advanced age and that of her husband. The verse presents her unspoken reasoning as a rhetorical question about whether she could still experience sexual pleasure under these circumstances.

Key words

• titzchak ("she laughed", H6711) — qal narrative verb marking the sequential action that opens the verse: "and she laughed."
• kirbah ("her inner being", H7130G) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, literally "in the midst of her," indicating the laughter is internal, not audible.
• velotí ("my being worn out", H1086) — qal infinitive with 1st person suffix, functioning as a temporal clause: "after my wearing-out" i.e., "after I have worn out/aged."
• haytah ("has it been/would it be", H1961) — qal perfect, 3rd feminine singular, forming a rhetorical question about a completed or hypothetical state.
• ednah ("pleasure", H5730B) — feminine singular noun, the subject of Sarah's rhetorical question, denoting delight or sexual pleasure.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence structure builds Sarah's interior monologue through a chain of clauses introduced by le'mor ("saying", H0559), the standard formula marking direct speech. The core of her question uses acharei ("after", H0310A) governing the infinitive velotí, creating a temporal frame: "after my wearing-out." This is followed by haytah-li ("has it been to me"), a perfect-tense construction with the preposition le (H9005) plus suffix, which frames the question as asking whether something could now exist for her that had not existed before — namely ednah, "pleasure."

The second half of the verse adds a parallel clause with va-adoni zaken ("and my lord is old", H0113 + H2204), using the qal perfect zaken to state a completed condition. The word adoni ("my lord") is a construct noun with a 1st person suffix, a term of address also used elsewhere for a husband, reinforcing the domestic and marital framing of Sarah's doubt. The two perfect-tense statements — her own aging and her husband's — are joined by the conjunction va (H9002), producing a two-part rhetorical question about the plausibility of future pleasure given both conditions.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the clause differently, stating "not yet has it happened to me until now" (οὔπω μέν μοι γέγονεν ἕως τοῦ νῦν), which lacks a direct equivalent to the Hebrew velotí ("my wearing-out") and instead frames the statement negatively as something not yet occurring. For "my lord is old," the LXX uses the comparative πρεσβύτερος ("older"), while the Hebrew zaken (H2204) is a simple perfect verb without comparative force. The Vulgate's postquam consenui ("after I have grown old") uses a different verb root than the Hebrew balah (root of velotí, "to wear out"), and frames the entire statement as a question ending in voluptati operam dabo? ("shall I attend to pleasure?"), restructuring the Hebrew's rhetorical perfect-tense question into an explicit future-oriented query.