Back to Eden
Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I have become old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?” Genesis 18:12 NASB
Pleasure – What did Sarah expect? Or maybe we should ask, “What didn’t she expect?” The translation suggests that she didn’t think “pleasure” was possible at her age. But what did she mean? Orgasm? Pregnancy? Birth? Having a child? A few translations try to answer this question for us. “So Sarah laughed to herself and said, ‘Now that I am old and worn out, can I still enjoy sex?’” (Good News). “So she laughed to herself: ‘After I have become shriveled up and my lord is old, will I have delight?’” (Holman Christian Standard). “So she laughed and said to herself, ‘Now that I am worn out and my husband is old, will I really know such happiness?’” (CEV). No translation bothers to tell us that this is its only occurrence. The problem with this word isn’t the possible implication. It’s the word itself. ʿednâ is a hapax legomenon, a one-time word in the Bible. No one really knows what it means. All we know is that it is probably derived from ʿādan, a parent noun that is also a hapax. Fortunately, ʿēden (another variation) occurs three times (no, not the Garden word). Those three occurrences are about luxury. Then there’s the other ʿēden, the Garden, probably derived from an Akkadian word. “However the LXX seems to derive this word directly from the Hebrew root ʿādan by translating it ‘garden of delight.’ This has led to the traditional identification of the Garden of Eden with Paradise which was apt enough (Rev 2:7).”[1] The bottom line? Whatever Sarah had in mind, it probably had something to do with her longing for absent feelings, but we just don’t know if she was focused on the possibility of sexual delight or on finally having a child or on something else. Since she includes Abraham’s condition in her statement, translators are apt to conclude she’s taking about sex, disguised as always in Hebrew allusions. But your guess is just as good as anyone else’s.
Don’t you find it just a little interesting that this hapax word has the same consonant arrangement as the other word, Eden? I really don’t think this is an accident. The narrator is writing this story, not Sarah. His perspective often lets him tie things together by choosing Hebrew words or phrases that recall other events. This seems to me to be likely here. What the story tells us is that Sarah longs for the “Garden” in her life, in her household. She’s experienced betrayal (twice), heartache, decades of disappointment, a decline in her faith, and purposelessness. What she wants is a return to innocence, purpose, and communication (with her husband and her God). She wants to get back to the Garden.
What is in ʿēden that provides ʿednâ?[2] If you’ll allow a bit of midrash, it seems to me that we all wish to return to the innocence we experienced when life was a wonder. We all want a place of safety, a place where we have total trust and confidence in both God and Man. If Eden represents anything at all, it represents the womb. Total dependence on another’s grace, without personal responsibility, without personal wariness. A place where who I am as I am is enough. It is the mythology of longing that makes this story so powerful. Sarah is just us, longing for what she lost in the course of a tragic life of despondency. It didn’t turn out the way she hoped. It never does. The inability to accept that fact is the root of the desire for ʿednâ. ʿēden is an answer no longer available. Isaac will be born after ʿēden has disappeared. Perhaps every birth is like that now. What Sarah longs to experience once again is the wonder of life. Like Naomi, she is used up, waiting to escape into nothingness. And because she lacks wonder, she cannot believe.
“What we lack is not the will to believe but a will to wonder.”[3]
Topical Index: ʿēden, ʿednâ, pleasure, hapax legomenon, Genesis 18:12
[1] Schultz, C. (1999). 1568 עֵדֶן. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 646). Chicago: Moody Press.
[2] Paleo-Hebrew is suggestive, if not definitive: Ayin-Dalet-Nun-Hey: the Paleo-Hebrew combination of “to see, to know – pathway, enter – life – behold, reveal.”
[3] Abraham Heschel Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism (Free Press Paperbacks, 1959), p. 41.
