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חדל להיות means [that] it had ceased from her.

‘BA’IM BAYAMIM’ (ADVANCED IN DAYS). In his youthful days a man is called “standing in days,” and they are referred to as “his days” because they belong to him, just as in verse The number of thy days will I fulfill.⁹⁷Exodus 23:26. But when he gets old and has lived longer than most people of his generation, it is said of him that he is ba bayamim, [literally, “came into days”], because it is as if he came into another land, travelling from and arriving in a city each and every day.

ואברהם, this line has been written only in order to account for the reason of Sarah’s laughter.

חדל להיות לשרה אורח כנשים, “Sarah had long stopped menstruating.” Here the Torah refers to the process of menstruation as אורח כנשים, whereas in connection with Rachel the Torah uses the term דרך נשים. The reason is that Rachel being in her prime at the time, experienced the flow of menstrual blood coming directly from her ovaries, whereas in the case of aged Sarah the blood had to find other conduits until it could exit from her body.

Ceased from her. You might object: Rashi explained on v. 8 that she began to menstruate that day, and the dough became impure. Doesn’t this indicate that she now had the “way of women”? [The answer is:] She seems to have thought it happened by chance, not as a regular cycle. Thus she asked: היתה לי עדנה? (v. 12). She meant: “I am in doubt about the blood I saw. Is it my regular cycle, or a chance occurrence caused by my hurrying to knead the dough?” For Avraham had said (v. 6): “Hurry! Three measures of flour...” This is preferable to Re’m’s explanation — on v. 13 — that Sarah was saying, “My regular cycle has indeed returned, although I was worn out. But Avraham is an old man.” The Maharshal writes: Hashem set her childbirth to be one year later, to give her three months to establish a regular period, as she had ceased seeing blood and now returned to her youth, and then nine months for pregnancy. However, it says in Rosh Hashanah 11a that Sarah conceived on Rosh Hashanah, which implies that she gave birth in the seventh month of pregnancy. This calls for further thought.

חדל להיות לשרה אורח כנשים, “Sarah had ceased to have the periods of women.” She suddenly saw menstrual blood again, something that does not occur in women over a certain age which she had long passed attaining. The meaning cannot be that “she did not see such blood,” as in his commentary on verse eight, Rashi told us that she menstruated, and that this was the reason why she did not bake and offer bread as she had been commanded to do by her husband (Compare verse 6)

ואברהם ושרה זקנים, “and both Avraham and Sarah were old;” seeing that the Torah tells us in Genesis 24,1 that Avraham was old and advanced in years, what is the point of the Torah telling us here that Avraham was old? The answer must be that in the interval G-d had restored a degree of youthfulness to Avraham, so that in chapter 24 we are told that by then he had become “old” again. (Compare B’reshit Rabbah 48,16.

אורח כנשים means the way of menstruation.

IT HAD CEASED TO BE WITH SARAH AFTER THE MANNER OF WOMEN. This is the time of pregnancy, for after menstruation has ceased due to old age, a woman will not become pregnant.

באים בימים, this is the standard mode in which the Torah describes people who feel that aging has affected their general physique and imposed limitations on them. What the Torah means is that both Avraham and Sarah had reached the years when other people are subject to the limitations of old age. These are the years when the soul begins to separate from the body.

זקנים באים בימים, “old advanced in years.” We do not find a single reference to old age in the Torah anywhere before this point. Avraham was the first human being described as having “aged.” The Midrash attributes the fact that the Torah here refers to Avraham’s age as due to his having said to G-d: “with all respect, G-d, when father and son walk together and come to a town where neither of them is known, how will they know to honour the father, seeing that they both appear as equally youthful? If You were to “crown” elderly people with a visible sign of their being old, they will know to whom to pay their respects first.” G-d answered Avraham that he had presented a valid argument and that therefore he would be the first human being upon whom this distinction would be bestowed. Along similar lines, the Midrash points out that before Yitzchok, no one was afflicted with physical handicaps, (such as Yitzchok’s blindness) Yitzchok was afflicted with such a handicap at his own request, having said to G-d: “if a human being dies without ever having endured physical handicaps and pain, the attribute of Justice will present a strong case against him by saying that he had never had to suffer any pain for any of the sins he had committed while alive. These pains would have been deemed as punishment so that upon death he could proceed to the regions of eternal bliss in the celestial regions without further delay. G-d agreed with him, and made him the first human being to be thus afflicted. We have not read about anyone falling sick before Yaakov requested that sickness become part of life on earth. Yaakov argued that unless sickness precedes death, a person would not have an opportunity to allocate his estate to his various beneficiaries. G-d agreed with him, and thus he became the first person of whom sickness preceding his death is reported in the Torah in Genesis 48,1. The two or tree days that his sickness lasted, gave him an opportunity to arrange his affairs. This is the reason why the Torah informed us that Joseph was given notice that his father was sick. Otherwise, seeing that he had 11 other sons around him in Goshen, why did special notice have to be sent to the capital where Joseph resided? To sum up: Avraham introduced the concept of old age; Yitzchok introduced the concept of people becoming afflicted with serious physical handicaps. Yaakov introduced the concept of sickness due to approaching death.

אורח כנשים, the signal of old age for women, i.e. cessation of their menstrual cycle. The Torah uses a euphemism to describe that phenomenon. Rachel used the same euphemism when she explained to her father Lavan why she could not let him search her camel (Genesis 31,35). During old age, due to the body drying out, the flow of blood stops, i.e. a woman no longer ovulates. Our sages in Ketuvot 10 relate that the volume of such a flow of blood is in direct relation to the number of children a woman is likely to bear. There was a well known family by the name of Dorkaty in those days, whose female members never experienced either menstrual blood, nor the blood associated with the puncturing of the hymen. This is why the family was named Dorkaty, meaning that something was radically wrong. None of the females in that family ever had children, the reason being attributed to this abnormal condition of their not menstruating.

חדל להיות לשרה אורח כנשים, the Torah emphasises that although other elderly women had stopped menstruating, Sarah had continued to experience menses, as Rashi has explained on the line; “he took butter and milk,” i.e. that he could not take bread as on that day Sarah had become niddah, had menstruated, thus causing the dough she had handled to become ritually unclean.