Matthew Henry on Genesis 21:1-8
Long-looked-for comes at last. The vision concerning the promised seed is for an appointed time, and now, at the end, it speaks, and does not lie; few under the Old Testament were brought into the world with such expectation as Isaac was, not for the sake of any great person eminence at which he was to arrive, but because he was to be, in this very thin, a type of Christ, that seed which the holy God had so long promised and holy men so long expected. In this account of the first days of Isaac we may observe,
I. The fulfilling of God's promise in the conception and birth of Isaac, Gen 21:1, Gen 21:2. Note, God's providences look best and brightest when they are compared with his word, and wh…
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The Lord visited Sarah - That is, God fulfilled his promise to Sarah by giving her, at the advanced age of ninety, power to conceive and bring forth a son.
John Gill on Genesis 21:1
And the Lord visited Sarah as he had said,.... To Abraham, Genesis 17:16; in a way of mercy and kindness, by fulfilling his promise, giving strength to conceive and bear a child; see 1 Samuel 2:21,
and the Lord did unto Sarah as he had spoken; which intends the same thing in different words; and the repetition is made to cause attention to God's fulfilment of his promise, who is always faithful to his word, even in things very difficult and seemingly impossible, as in the present case: hence the Targums of Jonathan and Jerusalem paraphrase it, God did a wonder or wonders for Sarah in causing her to conceive when she was so old, and in such circumstances as she was.
John Calvin on Genesis 21:1
And the Lord visited Sarah. In this chapters not only is the nativity of Isaac related, but because, in his very birth, God has set before us a lively picture of his Church, Moses also gives a particular account of this matter. And first, he says that God visited Sarah, as he had promised. Because all offspring, flows from the kindness of God, as it is in the psalm,
The fruit of the womb is the gift of God;' (Psalm 127:3;)
therefore the Lord is said, not without reason, to visit those, to whom he gives children. For although the foetus seems to be produced naturally, each from its own kind; there is yet no fecundity in animals, except so far as the Lord puts forth his own power, to fulfill…
