Now Abraham and Sarah are old and well advanced in years, and Sarah is past the age of childbearing. The narrator inserts a medical reality check: everything about this situation is humanly impossible. Both old. Sarah past menopause. The biological conditions that make the promise impossible are stated clearly before Sarah's response is recorded — so that the response is fully understandable and the fulfillment fully miraculous. Romans 4:19 states this plainly: Abraham considered his own body, which was as good as dead, and the deadness of Sarah's womb, and did not weaken in faith. The application: God's promises regularly come with a stated impossibility attached. The impossibility is part of the point — if it were possible naturally, the fulfillment would not require the God who gives life to the dead.

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