Gen 17:17 in the KJV reads:
Then Abraham fell upon his face,
and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is an
hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?
However, Joseph Smith revised this verse in the JST. Both OT
manuscripts 1 and 2 have Abraham rejoicing, not laughing:
OT1, p. 42:
. . . Then Abraham fell on his
face and rejoiced . . .
OT2, p. 44:
. . . Then abraham fell on his face
and rejoiced . . .
Interestingly, there are commentators who believe that Abraham’s
action is positive, not negative:
And laughed: in order to avoid giving the impression that Abraham
was so amused that he fell down laughing, it will often be necessary to
separate the act of reverent submission from the laughter that follows. tev
does this effectively with “but he began to laugh when he thought.” The Hebrew
verb translated laughed has an even
wider range of meaning than the English word, and in some contexts it is better
translated “played” or “smiled.” However, many languages have a range of
different terms for laughing that are used in different situations or suggest
different attitudes and feelings in the ones who laugh. In translation it is
important to use a term that is appropriate to Abraham’s emotion in this
context: this is a laugh of disbelief, not of amusement; and Abraham probably
did not have a smiling face, which is what the common word for “laugh” would
suggest in a number of languages.
Translators should notice that
the word “laugh” occurs a number of times and has a prominent place in the
story of the birth of Isaac. It describes the reaction of both Abraham and
Sarah when the birth of a child is promised, here in 17:17 and again in 18:12,
13, 15. It comes again in 21:6, when the promise is fulfilled. And the name
given to the child (17:19; 21:3) is Isaac, which means “he laughs.” As far as
possible the word “laugh” should be rendered in the same way each time it
occurs throughout this story. (William David Reyburn and Euan McG.
Fry, A Handbook on Genesis, [UBS
Handbook Series; New York: United Bible Societies, 1998], 377)
17. he smiled. Heb. way-yiṣḥaq
anticipates, of course, the personal name Isaac (Yiṣḥaq). P does this
here, J offers a variant explanation
in 18:12, and E still another in
21:6. Each allusion operates with the verb ṣḥq,
which covers a wide range of meanings, including “to play, be amused,” and
notably also “to rejoice over, smile on (a newborn child).” A Hurro-Hittite
tale describes the father (Appu) as placing his newborn son on his knees and
rejoicing over him (ZA 49 [1956], 220, line 5). Such acts were often the basis
for naming the child accordingly. The shortened form Isaac (with the subject
left out) undoubtedly reflects some such symbolic gesture: (X) rejoiced over,
smiled on (the child).
To judge from the three separate
explanations in our documentary sources, this last application was no longer
familiar at the time of the writing, even as far back as the time of J. Tradition was thus reduced to
speculations based on the later connotations of the verb. The meaning chosen
varied with the source and the context. In the earthy treatment by J, an incredulous Sarah could well be
shown as laughing bitterly to herself (18:12). But the concept of Abraham in a
derisive attitude toward God would be decidedly out of keeping with P’s character. The above translation,
therefore, should come close to the spirit of the received text, though not the
original use of the pertinent verb. (E. A. Speiser, Genesis: Introduction, Translation, and
Notes [AYB 1; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008], 125)
