And Sarah said, God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me.
God hath made me to laugh - literally, God hath prepared laughter (joy) for me; i:e., as Havernick paraphrases it, 'That at which I formerly indulged a sceptical laugh has now been so turned by God as to become to me the subject of laughter or joy.'
All that hear will laugh with me, [Septuagint, sungchareitai moi] - will rejoice with me; congratulate me. These words carry us back to the first announcement of Sarah's child. 'In our record,' continues Havernick, 'there is no thought of a proper strictly so-called derivation of the name of Isaac: it is the simple naive oriental mode of narration, which delights in a pregnant style of expression. This might come about the more readily, since, because of the first laugh of Abraham, God had commanded him to call his son х yitschaaq (H3327)], laughing.'
The Hebrew language delights in paronomasia, or playing upon a word; and this alliterative tendency appears in this case on three occasions-namely, Abraham's smile of gratification (Genesis 18:17); Sarah's sneer of incredulity (Genesis 18:13; Genesis 18:15); and, lastly, her laugh of realized satisfaction and joy. 'Sarah's laugh was immortalized in the name of her son; and wherefore the sacred historian dwells on a matter so trivial, whilst the world and its vast concerns were then at his feet, I can fully understand. For then I see the hand of God shaping everything to his own ends, and in an event thus casual, thus easy, and thus unimportant, telling forth His mighty design of salvation to the world, and working it up into the web of His noble prospective counsel (Blunt's 'Scripture Coincidences').