Hebrews 11:11-12

‘By faith even Sarah herself received power for the laying down of seed when she was past age, since she counted him faithful who had promised, for which reason also there sprang of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of heaven in multitude, and as the sand, which is by the seashore, innumerable.'

And we must remember that the women also had their full part. From now on the writer introduces women deliberately into each section. Here it is Sarah. Sarah finally believed God on the basis of His promise, and the result was the coming to life again of her womb so that she could bear a child, she ‘received power'. And as a result, by Abraham ‘laying down his seed', from the laying down of the seed from one who appeared almost dead because of his great age (compare Romans 4:19), sprang through Isaac a great multitude of descendants, as many as the stars of heaven and the sand by the seashore. Out of apparent death God produced abundance of life because they believed perseveringly.

There is here a slight problem with the Greek. Having ‘power for the laying down of seed' usually refers to the action of the male. Yet on the basis of comparison with ‘by faith' as used elsewhere in the chapter we expect ‘Sarah herself' (which immediately follows ‘by faith') to be the subject of the sentence. Furthermore in most texts ‘Sarah herself' is separated from ‘she was past age' in such a way as to make it unlikely that the whole is a paranthetical clause.

Thus the thought may simply be that because her womb ‘received power', being transformed by God's power, it put her in a position where Abraham could lay down his seed. Or alternatively that she received from Abraham his activity in using his ‘power for the laying down of seed', that is, Abraham used his power to lay down his seed, which Sarah received. The reference to his appearing almost dead because of his great age may be seen as supporting the alternative. This at least takes the majority Greek text as it stands, even though we have no exactly comparable example elsewhere, and can be seen as arising because of the desire for putting the whole activity modestly. Others, however, translate that ‘Sarah received the power to establish (lay down) a seed (a posterity)'.

It should be noted here, as will become clear later, that while the sequence in the chapter is generally chronological it is not rigidly so, for having moved forward to Isaac and Jacob we have now moved back to Sarah and the birth of Isaac.