And being not weak in faith
Abraham was not weak in the exercise of his faith, on the promise
of God; nor was his faith weakened about the accomplishment of
it, neither by the length of time after the promise was made, nor
by the seeming insuperable difficulties of nature which attended
it; for
he considered not his own body now dead.
The Alexandrian copy reads without the negative, "he considered
his own body now dead", and so the Syriac version: which makes
his faith the greater, that though he did consider his case, yet
his faith was not weakened: the phrase, "his body now dead", is
an "euphemism" of the "merebrum virile", which by the Jews, when
unfit for generation, is called (tm rba) , "merebrum emortuum" F20:
when he was about an hundred years old;
not being quite an hundred years of age, wanting a year or
thereabout:
neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb;
how unfit she was to conceive and bear children: now though he
might consider these things in his mind, yet they did not dwell
upon his mind, nor he upon them; at least he did not consider
them, so as to distrust the divine promise.
F20 T. Bab. Yebamot, fol. 55. 2. & Gloss. in ib. Sanhedrin, fol. 55. 1. & Gloss in ib. Shebuot, fol. 18. 1.
