The biblical treatment of the miracle of conception proceeds out of Eden in what must strike the logical mind as a jumble of stumbling. We will never, for example, really be able to figure out what is meant by the pre-Flood episode of "the sons of God" appropriating "the daughters of men," to say nothing of the "giants in the earth in those days" (Genesis 6:4-5, KJV).
And we would not be the only people to find such things illogical. Overhearing the angel of the Lord tell Abraham "Sarah thy wife shall have a son,"
Now Abraham and Sarah were old and well stricken in age; and it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also? (18:11-12)
Whereupon the angel asks Abraham,
Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I of a surety bear a child, which am old? (18:13),
which is surely a polite way to characterize Sarah's amusement, which might well have borne at least some expectation that the geriatric act could have been a drooping, dribbling disappointment. Sarah is understandably upset:
Then Sarah denied, saying, I laughed not; for she was afraid. And he said, Nay; but thou didst laugh. And the men rose up from thence.... (18:15-16),
leaving Sarah, no doubt, in a state of terror (and probably ill-disposed to experience "pleasure") in the ensuing long months before Isaac was born--a span that saw her aged self be whored out to king Abimelech of Gerar by her righteous husband Abraham.
To doubt what is possible for God is no laughing matter.
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