Sarah's age and the barrenness motif (4:19)

Says "Without weakening in his faith, he acknowledged the decrepitness of his body (since he was about a hundred years old) and the lifelessness of Sarah's womb" (4:19), "fully persuaded that God was able to do what He had promised" (4:21). Genesis says "Sarai was barren" (Gen 11:30), asks "Can Sarah give birth at the age of ninety?" (17:17), notes she "had passed the age of childbearing" (18:11), and answers, "Is anything too difficult for the Lord?" (18:14).

Barrenness recurs at turning points in Israel's story: Rebekah (Gen 25:21), Rachel (29:31), Manoah's wife (Judg 13:2), Hannah ("The barren woman gives birth to seven," 1 Sam 2:5), and Zion (Isa 54:1). Elizabeth continues it (Luke 1:7, 37). Josephus retells Sarah's laughter, "since she was ninety years of age, and her husband was a hundred" (Ant. 1.198), and Isaac's birth to parents past child-bearing (1.213). Hebrews uses Paul's verb: Abraham was "as good as dead" (νενεκρωμένου, Heb 11:12; cf. νενεκρωμένον, Rom 4:19), and Sarah "barren and beyond the proper age" (11:11).

Implies The "dead" body and womb answer to "the God who gives life to the dead" (4:17), and Abraham's faith is the pattern for those who "believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead" (4:24).

Uncertain Some witnesses read "he did not consider" (οὐ κατενόησεν, literal) his body; SBLGNT and BSB lack οὐ. This note follows SBLGNT, leaving the evidence to the Greek Scholar's variant record; on either reading Abraham's faith rested on God's power and promise (4:20–21).