Sarah laughed when the angels told her she would bear a son. She was ninety years old. Abraham was a hundred. The idea was absurd—and yet Isaac was born, and his very name, Yitzchak (יצחק), means "laughter" (Genesis 21:3).
But before the laughter came fire. According to Josephus, three angels appeared to Abraham at the oak of Mamre disguised as travelers. He offered them food, and they pretended to eat. Then they dropped the disguise and delivered two messages: Sarah would have a son, and Sodom would be destroyed.
Abraham bargained with God for the city. Would God spare it for fifty righteous people? For forty? For ten? God agreed to ten—but there weren't ten. So the angels went to Sodom, where Lot took them in. When the men of the city demanded the visitors, Lot offered his own daughters instead. They refused. God struck the mob blind and told Lot to run.
The destruction was total. God rained fire on Sodom and its surrounding country until nothing could grow there again. Lot's wife looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt—which Josephus claims he personally saw, still standing in his own day. Lot and his daughters fled to a tiny settlement called Zoar, believing themselves the last people alive.
Meanwhile, Abraham moved south to Gerar, where King Abimelech fell for Sarah—just as Pharaoh had—and was struck with disease until he returned her. It was the same story playing out a second time: the beauty of Sarah, the greed of a king, the intervention of God.
When Isaac finally arrived, Sarah's joy curdled into jealousy. She demanded that Ishmael—Abraham's firstborn by Hagar—be sent away. Abraham resisted at first, horrified at the cruelty of it. But God told him to listen to Sarah. So Hagar and Ishmael were sent into the wilderness with a single bottle of water and a loaf of bread. When the water ran out, Hagar laid her dying child under a fig tree and walked away so she wouldn't have to watch. A divine angel appeared, showed her a fountain, and promised that Ishmael would become the father of a great nation (Genesis 21:18). He did. His twelve sons became the ancestors of the Nabateans, the Arabian people who traced their lineage back to Abraham.