And there was a certain man of Ramathaim-zophim, of mount Ephraim, and his name was Elkanah, the son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zuph, an Ephrathite.
The book of Samuel opens with no throne and no battle. It gives us one man from a hill town, his family line back five generations, and a note about where he lived. Everything that follows grows out of this quiet household. Why does the story begin here?
This book picks up where Judges ends. The picture it opens with is grim.
In the opening chapters of the first book of Samuel (1—7) we have one of the darkest periods of Israel's history. The downward movement of the book of Judges went on until the nation was not only evil but desperate. Their sin was so great that God could no longer keep His outward links with Israel. To do so would have meant approving their sin or staining His glory.
The story starts with a man of the priestly tribe, and with the priesthood itself.
Elkanah was a Levite. Eli was the high priest; so we are on the ground of the priesthood. If the priesthood had stayed faithful, there would have been no need to change the way God dealt with His people. So the priesthood had to be proved ruined first, before the true king could enter the scene. God could not stay in relationship with the people through a corrupt priesthood.
The verse calls Elkanah an Ephrathite, yet 1 Chronicles traces his line through Levi. Some call that a contradiction. One writer answers it, and reads the meaning of the names too.
Elkanah means "acquired of God." He was the son of Jeroham (tenderly loved), the son of Elihu (my God is He), the son of Tohu (prostration), the son of Zuph (honeycomb)... Elkanah was an Ephraimite. But from 1 Chronicles 6:20-28 we learn that Samuel and his father were of levitical descent. Some have pointed to this as a discrepancy. But it does not clash at all with the statement that Samuel's father was of Ephraim. He was one of those Levites to whom cities were assigned in the portion given to the tribe of Ephraim (Josh. 21:20).
The town's full name is a longer form of Ramah, where Samuel later lived. One writer finds its parts fitting for the man God was about to raise up.
Elkanah's town is the one that later belonged to Samuel — Ramah, or ha-Ramah, "the height." Here we find it under its full title, Ramathaim-zophim, "the two heights of the watchers." The prophet's place was always that of a watcher. The prophet's face was always turned toward the slowly coming dawn. The "height" fits naturally with that place: those who are in it are, by that very fact, lifted up out of the world.
The same writer reads the genealogy in reverse — from Zuph forward to Elkanah — and finds a path rather than a list.
To be an "observer" in the sphere of responsibility is the beginning of all blessings. Zuph is an Ephrathite, so "fruitful"; and we cannot wonder that his son Tohu speaks of being "low, sunk down" — humiliation. This is always the way of blessing and of the knowledge of the Lord. So the next name is Elihu, "my God" — or my Mighty One — "is He." Moving forward we have Jeroham, "he is tenderly loved." Then we end with Elkanah, whom "God has purchased," or "acquired." How easily a Samuel comes out of such a stock as this!
That Levite line runs back to one of Israel's most notorious rebels.
Samuel was not only of the tribe of Levi. He was of the very family of Korah. God spared Korah's children, in sovereign distinguishing grace, from going down alive into the pit. At that very time Korah, and all the men who belonged to him, and the families of Dathan and Abiram went down into the pit, and the earth closed over them... "But the sons of Korah did not die" (Num. 26:11).
That history explains something one writer notices about how Elkanah came to give his offerings.
A debtor to mercy alone, he had good cause to worship. Others might go up merely to sacrifice, but Elkanah both worshipped and sacrificed. It was no formal or meaningless ceremony with him. He knew what he owed to the Lord's distinguishing grace — not only the blessings of his life, but his very existence as a descendant of one of the spared children of Korah. It is the knowledge, and acknowledgment, of grace that produces worship and obedience in the believer's life.
- Dark: The verse opens one of Israel's darkest times. Judges had slid downward until God could no longer keep His outward links with the nation.
- Levi: The book starts with a Levite, not a king. The ruin of the priesthood had to come out first, before the true king could come.
- Spared: Elkanah's line runs back to Korah, whose children did not die — the family exists only because of grace.
- Grateful: So he both worshipped and sacrificed. Knowing grace is what produces worship and obedience.
- Watching: He lived at "the two heights of the watchers" — the raised, waiting ground out of which a Samuel comes.
And he had two wives the name of the one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah; and Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children.
One man, two wives, and a home split between the wife with children and the wife with none. This small detail raises a large question. Why does God so often begin His greatest work with someone who has nothing?
Elkanah's home had a fault line running through it. One writer traces the trouble to the choice itself, and to an earlier household that made the same mistake.
Elkanah had two wives. Did he not know better than this? It bred unhappiness in the home, and it reminds us of the trouble around Abraham when he took Hagar as well as Sarah.
Others suggest the motive was not lust but longing — and still say the arrangement never worked.
Among the Israelites, taking a second wife was not always driven by the lower nature. In many cases it came from the desire for children, which the first wife could not give. This was the likely reason for Elkanah's double marriage. But "from the beginning it was not so" (Matt. 19:5-8)… plural marriages never seem to have worked well in practice. Look at the shameful conflict in Abraham's family over the lower-ranking Hagar, and in Jacob's family the bitter jealousy between the two sisters, Rachel and Leah. What could have been an ideal Hebrew home is spoiled by the bitter taunts of the proud Peninnah, and by the sorrow this brings to her barren rival.
The order of the two names points to a reason for the second marriage.
Elkanah had two wives. Hannah, whose name means grace, was much loved but barren. Peninnah, whose name means pearl, had children. Hannah's name stands first, which makes it likely that her barrenness led Elkanah to marry a second wife.
Commentators differ on what Peninnah's name means. One reads it as "pearl." Another reads it as "shining" or "glittering," and draws a warning from it.
She flourishes while Hannah is barren, but grows weak once Hannah becomes fruitful. Her name, Peninnah, has an uncertain meaning, but it probably means "shining, glittering." She may stand for the earthly things that so easily pull the heart away, even a Christian's heart, from what alone should hold it… After all, Elkanah did love Hannah. But grace cannot be at peace with a love that stays barren and bears no fruit.
Hannah's childlessness is more than a private sorrow. One writer sees in it a picture of what every person is before God.
The barren woman is in Scripture the type of nature's ruined and helpless condition. There is no ability to do anything for God — no power to bring forth any fruit to Him; all is death and barrenness. Such is the real condition of every child of Adam.
The same pattern runs through Scripture. Each time, human strength counts for nothing.
Like Sarah, like Hannah, like Rebekah, there is nothing of nature's energy and nothing of nature's strength in the barren woman at all. She is completely desolate, completely helpless… In Hannah we see someone so deeply troubled before God about her need that He can meet it and answer her soul's prayer.
One writer finds a purpose behind Hannah's closed womb.
Here we find that it was God who had closed her womb. I believe He did it to test her faith and to make her pray as she did. In this way she becomes an example to us of prayer, of perseverance, and of God's answer and response.
Peninnah's children gave her an argument as well as an advantage. Her taunts deepened Hannah's loneliness.
This was true of Peninnah. She had proud contempt and scorn for Hannah's tender conscience, and she used this public occasion to provoke her. She did it all the more boldly because she could point to her many children as proof of the Lord's blessing, while Hannah's barrenness must be a sure sign of His displeasure. This deepened not only her grief but her loneliness. In a crowd of outward worshippers, and in the presence of Eli, she was alone — but alone with God.
The reversal reaches far beyond one family.
However, the Lord made His grace abound over all Hannah's weakness and need, and He put a song of praise into her mouth… Making the barren woman rejoice is the Lord's own work. He alone can say, "Sing, O barren one, who did not bear; break forth into singing and cry aloud, you who have not been in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of her who is married, says the LORD." (Isa. 54:1)
- Two wives — Elkanah's divided home repeats Abraham's and Jacob's. The custom was allowed, but it always bred grief.
- Two names — Hannah means grace and has nothing. Peninnah means pearl, or glittering, and has everything: the shining thing that pulls the heart away.
- Empty first — barrenness pictures what every person is before God: helpless, fruitless, without strength.
- Emptied on purpose — the Lord shut her womb to test her faith and drive her to pray. Peninnah's taunts left her alone in a crowd, but alone with God.
- Filled at last — grace abounded over her need and gave her a song. Only God can make the barren rejoice.
And this man went up out of his city from year to year to worship and to sacrifice to Jehovah of hosts in Shiloh. And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, the priests of Jehovah, were there.
In the closing days of the judges, one man went up every year to the place God had chosen. The verse also names the two men serving at the altar there. The whole book grows out of that contrast: a worshipper who keeps coming, and a priesthood already rotten.
Israel set up the tabernacle at Shiloh once the land was conquered. The name itself carries the idea of rest.
Shiloh means "peace" or "rest." Israel had conquered a large part of their inheritance and were now at rest, for the land was subdued before them. So they set up the tabernacle in the place the Lord had chosen to put His Name there (Deuteronomy 12:11).
Years of forgetfulness had not changed the place God had chosen. Nothing inside the tent had gone missing.
After all the forgetting and turning away, Shiloh was still the only place where the Lord had recorded His name. It was still the same. The mercy-seat, cherubim, golden altar, lampstand, laver, altar of burnt offering — all were there as at the first. There Elkanah brought his whole house, all his sons and daughters. There they came to worship.
The verse says he went up both to worship and to sacrifice. One writer traces that worship back to his family line.
This godly Israelite came from the family of Korah, the man destroyed with all his company for his rebellion in the wilderness. Yet Korah's children did not die (Numbers 26:11). "A debtor to mercy alone," he had good cause to worship. Others might go up merely to sacrifice, but Elkanah both worshipped and sacrificed. For him it was no formal or empty ceremony. He knew that Jehovah's distinguishing grace had given him not only the blessings of his life, but his very existence, since he came from one of the spared children of Korah. Knowing grace, and owning it, is what produces worship and obedience in a believer's life.
This verse holds the first use of the title "the LORD of hosts" in the Bible.
We do not meet with this name until 1 Samuel 1:3. It came in with prophetic testimony. Faith laid hold of Jehovah's glory when Israel had corrupted themselves and were weak and low. Scripture reveals that there is a mighty heavenly host, and principalities and powers in the unseen world. God is the God of them all, as well as God of all the elements of nature, which He has often used to punish His enemies.
That timing is the comfort in it. The title belongs to the worst seasons, not the best.
We first find this title in the first book of Samuel, in the time of the judges. Every man then did what was right in his own eyes, much as is the case today. Many of the prophets use the name, especially in days of weakness and failure. It is good to know that, despite man's failure, there is an all-sufficient God, who has unlimited resources at His disposal.
The verse calls Eli's two sons priests of the LORD. Their conduct worked against the whole purpose of priesthood.
Eli was godly himself and feared God, but he kept no order in his family of priests. The priesthood should have bound the people to God. Instead it morally separated them from Him. Hophni and Phinehas, the sons of Eli, were at Shiloh; but their conduct made the people despise the offering of the Lord.
Eli's own name is missing from the altar in this verse.
Eli seems to have taken the place of high priest, though he is not called that. He left the duties of priesthood to his sons. Scripture says "every priest stands daily" (Hebrews 10:11). Yet Eli is never shown standing. He is shown sitting twice (chapter 1:9; 4:13) and lying down once (chapter 3:2).
Here a faithful family stands beside a corrupt sanctuary. Scripture tells the story this way again and again.
All through Scripture, the brightest testimony for God comes in the times of worst corruption among His people… In the opening chapters of this book we see God working in grace. The sons of Aaron had failed, yet He kept the light of His lampstand burning… He did it to guide and comfort the godly, and to deliver His oppressed people in due time. This is a great encouragement to count on the Lord in an evil day.
- Place. Shiloh means rest. God chose it for His name, and after years of national drifting everything inside it still stood as at the first.
- Person. Elkanah came from Korah's spared children. He went up to worship, not only to sacrifice. Knowing grace is what produces worship.
- Name. "The LORD of hosts" enters Scripture right here, in Israel's weakest hour. Faith reached for the God of every unseen power.
- Contrast. The men called priests of the LORD made people despise the offerings. Eli sits and lies down where a priest should stand.
- Pattern. God keeps His lamp burning through faithful people just when the priesthood has failed. That is reason to count on Him in an evil day.
And it came to pass on the day that Elkanah sacrificed, he gave to Peninnah his wife and to all her sons and her daughters portions;
The verse slows down to watch a family meal on the day of Elkanah's sacrifice. It looks happy, yet these portions open the sorrow of the whole chapter — and show how God works.
Elkanah did not go up alone. His whole family travelled with him, at a time when almost everyone else had forgotten the place.
After all the forgetfulness and departure, Shiloh was the only place where the name of the Lord was recorded. It was still the same as at first. The mercy seat, cherubim, golden altar, lampstand, basin, altar of burnt offering — all were there as at the beginning. There Elkanah brought his whole house, all his sons and daughters. There they came to worship.
One writer separates the act of sacrificing from real worship. He also ties Elkanah's worship to his family past. Elkanah descended from Korah, who died in the wilderness for rebelling against God. But God spared Korah's children.
Others might go up merely to sacrifice, but Elkanah both worshipped and sacrificed. For him it was no formal or meaningless ceremony. He knew what he owed to the Lord's distinguishing grace: not only the blessings of his life, but his very existence, since he descended from one of the spared children of Korah. It is knowing grace, and acknowledging it, that produces worship and obedience in the believer's life.
These portions were not just dinner. They belonged to a sacrificial feast. That is why Hannah's refusal to eat stood out.
Hannah, on her visits to Shiloh, presents a sorrowful picture. Elkanah loves her and gives her a double portion. Meanwhile Peninnah, her rival, provoked her about her childlessness. So she wept and did not eat at the feast. Then she got up from the sacrificial feast, which she had not tasted, and sought the presence of the Lord.
The verse names the problem: one wife has sons and daughters, the other has none. Commentators trace this back to Elkanah's two marriages. The same pattern brought trouble in other homes as well.
From the start, marriage was meant to give a man one companion only. Marriages with more than one wife appear never to have worked well in practice. Look at the humiliating discord in Abraham's family over the inferior Hagar. Look at Jacob's family, and the bitter jealousies between the two sisters, Rachel and Leah. Here too it breeds strife and bitterness of spirit that is shameful to see. This might have been an ideal Hebrew home. Instead the elated Peninnah spoils it with her bitter taunts, and her barren rival is left in sorrow.
The names of the two wives carry meaning.
Hannah means "she was gracious," and Peninnah, "glittering."
Elkanah left no one out when he handed round the portions, yet his love had a favourite. One writer explains why God lets nature take the lead first.
In sacrificing, Elkanah did not forget his wives and Peninnah's children, but he showed more favour to Hannah because he loved her. The Lord had, in His wisdom, kept her from having children. Hannah was to learn the lesson, as we all should, that "it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual" (1 Cor. 15:46). The Lord allows mere human nature to have its way at first, to prove its own emptiness. Then He brings in what is altogether superior to it — just as Adam was the first man, and Christ the second Man.
This family scene opens something much larger. The people God will use are not the ones with the full table.
Here we see the barren wife, the persecuting woman, two worthless men as priests, and a feeble, failing old man as high priest. In such circumstances we are allowed to see the sovereign grace of God at work. It passes by the strength of nature in the fruitful woman. It works through the weakness of nature in the barren woman. And it abounds over the sin of man in the priests.
- Place. Elkanah brought his whole household to Shiloh. It was the one spot where God had recorded His name, and almost everyone else had forgotten it.
- Heart. He did not just sacrifice; he worshipped. He knew that God's grace had spared Korah's children, and so given him his very existence.
- Portions. The shares came from a sacrificial feast. Hannah left hers untasted, and the family meal became the start of her prayer.
- Division. Two wives meant a divided home. The same strife marked Abraham's house with Hagar and Jacob's with Rachel and Leah.
- Order. The glittering wife with children comes first, the gracious barren one second. The natural comes before the spiritual, so grace works through weakness, not strength.
but to Hannah he used to give a double portion, for he loved Hannah; but Jehovah had shut up her womb.
Elkanah's sacrifice should have been a family celebration, but it exposed a wound: Hannah got the larger share and no child. The verse sets a husband's love beside a closed womb, and it names God as the one who closed it.
A doubled share carried a clear message. Boaz sent Ruth home with one:
The "six measures" of barley that Ruth was carrying to Naomi equalled two ephahs. That was twice what she had gleaned herself. It was a "double portion," a sign from Boaz of special favour (Deuteronomy 21:17; 1 Samuel 1:5).
There are two portions because there are two wives. That arrangement is where the trouble starts:
Among the Israelites, taking a second wife was not always driven by lower motives. In many cases it came from the desire for children, which the first wife could not have. This was probably the reason for Elkanah's double marriage. But "from the beginning it was not so." Marriage was meant from the start to give a man only one companion. Marriages with more than one wife never seem to have worked well in practice. Look at the humiliating discord in Abraham's family over Hagar, and the bitter jealousy in Jacob's family between the two sisters, Rachel and Leah. Here too it breeds strife and bitterness that is shameful to see. The bitter taunts of a proud Peninnah spoil what might otherwise have been an ideal Hebrew home, and they leave her barren rival in sorrow.
The verse puts the husband's love beside the wife's emptiness. That love made the home harder to live in:
Hannah means "grace"; but before she matched her name, she pictures the flesh that cannot bear fruit for God. We must always begin there… Like Sarah long before, she faced the hatred and contempt of the wife according to the flesh. That wife was thriving, for Peninnah "had children" when Hannah had none. But the first wife hated her all the more, because their husband's love turned toward Hannah — the wife who was miserable and barren.
The text does not blame nature or bad luck. It puts the closed womb in God's hand, and one writer sees purpose in that:
When he sacrificed, Elkanah did not forget his wives and Peninnah's children, but he favoured Hannah because he loved her. The Lord had, in His wisdom, withheld her from bearing children. … But Hannah was to learn the lesson, as we all should, that "it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual." The Lord allows mere human nature to have its way at first, to prove its own emptiness. Then He brings in something far better — just as Adam was the first man, Christ the second Man. … Even though the Lord Himself is enough to satisfy our hearts, He has planted in every believer a desire to bear fruit for Him. This is only normal and right.
Hannah had a choice about where to take her pain:
Here we find that it was God who had closed her womb. I believe He did it to test her faith and to make her pray as she did. In this way she would be an example to us of prayer and perseverance, and of answer and response to God. What a wonderful story it is. So Hannah was persecuted and ridiculed, and how deeply she felt it. She could have gone to her husband and complained about the treatment, but in verse 10 she prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly.
Her barrenness stands for more than her own grief:
The barren woman is in Scripture the picture of nature's ruined and helpless condition. There is no ability to do anything for God — no power to bring forth any fruit to Him; all is death and barrenness. Such is the real condition of every child of Adam.
But that is not the end. The same writer names the one who can reverse it:
It is the Lord's special work to make the barren woman rejoice. He alone can say, "Sing, O barren one, who did not bear; break forth into singing and cry aloud, you who have not been in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of her who is married, says the LORD."
- Love — the double portion was a sign of special favour. Elkanah gave Hannah more because he loved her.
- Lack — his love could not give her a child. A home with two wives bred taunts and grief instead of peace.
- Lord — the verse names God as the one who shut her womb. He withholds in wisdom, letting what is natural prove its emptiness first.
- Lesson — barrenness pictures our own inability to bear fruit for God. Every child of Adam starts there.
- Later — the closed door drove Hannah to prayer and tears. It is God's special work to make the barren woman sing.
And her adversary provoked her much also, to make her fret, because Jehovah had shut up her womb.
Hannah lived with a rival wife who kept up the pressure, and the wound that rival aimed at was one God Himself had made. Why would the Lord close her womb, and then let that pain become a weapon against her?
Elkanah had two wives. One writer traces the trouble back to a marriage God never designed, and points to the same pattern in earlier families:
Among the Israelites, taking a second wife was not always based on lower motives. In many cases it came from the desire for children, which the first wife had not been given. This was likely the reason for Elkanah's double marriage. But "from the beginning it was not so" (Matt. 19:5-8). Marriage at first meant a single companion for a man, and plural marriages appear never to have worked well in practice. Look at the humiliating discord in Abraham's family over Hagar, and the bitter jealousy in Jacob's family between the two sisters, Rachel and Leah. The bitter provoking of the proud Peninnah, and the sorrow it caused her barren rival, spoil what might otherwise have been an ideal Hebrew home.
To grasp why the taunt cut so deep, you have to know what childlessness meant to a woman of Israel.
We know from the book of Daniel that Jewish women longed to give birth to a son. They hoped that son would prove to be the Messiah, the One long promised to Israel. So for a Jewish woman to be barren was a great reproach to her.
Peninnah picked a public moment, and she had proof ready to hand — her own children:
She looked at Hannah's tender conscience with proud contempt and scorn, and she used this public occasion to provoke her. She did it all the more boldly because she could point to her many children as proof of the Lord's blessing, while Hannah's barrenness must be a sure sign of His displeasure. This intensified not only her grief but her isolation. In the middle of a crowd of outward worshippers, and in the presence of Eli, she was alone — but alone with God.
The verse traces her barrenness to the Lord Himself. That is what Peninnah used against her, and it is also where the hope lies:
Here we find that it was God who had closed her womb. I believe He did it to test her faith and to make her pray as she did. In this way she becomes an example to us of prayer and perseverance, and of answer and response to God. So Hannah was persecuted and ridiculed, and how deeply she felt it. She might have gone to her husband and complained of the treatment, but in verse 10 she prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly.
Writers see more in Hannah's condition than a personal sorrow; they read it as a portrait of what every one of us is by nature:
The barren woman is in Scripture the type of nature's ruined and helpless condition. There is no ability to do anything for God — no power to bring forth any fruit to Him; all is death and barrenness. Such is the real condition of every child of Adam. He can neither do anything for God nor for himself, as regards his eternal destiny. He is emphatically "without strength"; he is "a dry tree," "a heath in the desert."
Her name carries the point further. Rossier observes that she has to reach the end of herself before she can live up to what she is called:
Hannah means "grace"; but before answering to her name, she represents the flesh incapable of bearing fruit for God. We must always begin there… It is easier to confess that we are guilty than to admit that we cannot do anything. Admitting that our flesh has no power humbles us deeply.
The taunt was aimed at making her fret. One writer warns that the same tactic is still used:
The devil would seek to occupy our thoughts with the trial, to bring in distance between our souls and the LORD. He would seek to fill our minds with the harsh words and unjust acts of those who oppose us. In this way he leads us to "fret" and "grieve" and complain in bitterness of soul, like Hannah of old. Faith turns the trial into an occasion for turning to the LORD. It not only defeats the devil but gets blessing out of the trial.
Hannah took it to God instead. In the end her circumstances did not change — she did:
The contrast is striking. First we see Hannah unable to eat, weeping in bitterness of soul. Then we see Hannah go on her way and eat, with her face no longer sad. How did this difference come about? Was it a change of circumstances, or the removal of what caused the sorrow? Not at all; the circumstances had not altered; she was still the barren woman. The secret of the change is that she had poured out her soul before the Lord. The persecution of her adversary, the fretting of spirit, the bitterness of soul — she poured it all out with weeping before the Lord. Her sorrow is poured out and God's peace is poured in.
- Cause — A home built outside God's design for marriage bred the strife. Going against His Word brings its own pain.
- Weapon — Barrenness was a deep reproach for a woman of Israel. Peninnah aimed there, and used her own children as evidence that God was against Hannah.
- Hand — The verse says the Lord Himself closed her womb. One writer reads this as God's own work to test her faith and drive her to prayer.
- Picture — The barren woman stands for human nature, with no power to bear fruit for God. Hannah, whose name means grace, must first admit she is helpless.
- Result — She did not repay the taunt. She poured it out before the Lord, and though her circumstances stayed the same, her face did not.
And [as] he did so year by year, as often as she went up to the house of Jehovah, she provoked her thus; and she wept and did not eat.
Hannah's sorrow was not one bad day. It came back every year, at the house of the Lord, when the family had come to worship. Why did God allow years of this? And why would a grieving woman not eat?
The trouble started long before Hannah wept. One writer sets this home beside two earlier ones.
Among the Israelites, taking a second wife was not always based on lower motives. In many cases it came from the desire for children, denied to the first wife. This was probably the reason for Elkanah's double marriage. But "from the beginning it was not so" (Matt. 19:5-8). Marriage as first set up planned only one companion for man. Plural marriages seem never to have worked well in practice. Look at the humiliating discord in Abraham's family over Hagar, and in Jacob's family, the bitter jealousies between the two sisters, Rachel and Leah. The proud Peninnah's bitter provoking spoils what might otherwise have been an ideal Hebrew home, and leaves her barren rival in sorrow.
The words "year by year" cover a long stretch of time. What stands out is what Hannah never did in it.
This unwarranted provoking of Hannah by her unworthy companion must have gone on for years. Only someone in the same position could understand what the poor, childless wife suffered from her adversary's tongue during those years of hope deferred. It is beautiful to see her submit without resentment to the persecution of Peninnah, the proud, if not happy, mother of children. There is no hint of anger in Hannah. She did not pay back insult with insult, but poured out the story of her grief in the ears of the God of Israel. He heard her complaint and answered, after her weary years of waiting, beyond anything she likely expected.
The taunting came at the house of the Lord, in public. Peninnah even had an argument ready.
Men despised the offering of the Lord. Those who kept up the outward form did so with heartless indifference to the holiness of God and the authority of His word. This was the case with Peninnah. With proud contempt and scorn for Hannah's tender conscience, she took this public chance to provoke her. She was all the bolder because she could point to her many children as proof of the Lord's blessing, while Hannah's barrenness must be a sure sign of His displeasure. This deepened not only her grief but her isolation. In the middle of a crowd of outward worshippers, and in the presence of Eli, she was alone — but alone with God.
Grief takes away appetite. But one writer finds more than grief in her fasting.
Notice another admirable trait in Hannah's character: she refused to eat of the sacrificial feast. She "wept and would not eat." By this she shows that she knew the law of the Lord and obeyed it. It appears that law did not allow the sacrifices to be eaten in mourning. (See Lev. 10:19; Deut. 26:14; Hosea 9:4.) How lovely this subjection of soul! In all Israel, what fitter vessel could give the nation its long-needed deliverer? She lived up to the meaning of her name, to bend. She bent under her cruel adversary's constant reproaches, and she bent to the Lord's will.
Her sorrow had a source above her rival.
Here we find that it was God who had closed up her womb. I believe He did this to test her faith and to make her pray as she did. In this way she might be an example to us of prayer and perseverance, and of God's answer and response. So Hannah was persecuted and ridiculed, and she felt it deeply. She might have gone to her husband and complained about the treatment. Instead, in verse 10 she prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly.
Eleven verses later the same woman eats, and her face is no longer sad.
How striking is the contrast! In verse 7 Hannah cannot eat and weeps in bitterness of soul. In verse 18 she "went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad." What made the difference? Had her circumstances changed, or had the cause of her sorrow gone? Not at all; the circumstances had not altered; she was still the barren woman. The secret of the change is that she had poured out her soul before the Lord. The persecution of her adversary, the fretting spirit, the bitterness of soul — she poured it all out with weeping before the Lord. Her sorrow is poured out and God's peace is poured in.
- The cause. Her closed womb was not Peninnah's doing but the Lord's, to test her faith and drive her to pray.
- The pressure. Peninnah struck at the house of the Lord. She held up her own children as proof of God's favour, and Hannah's barrenness as proof of His displeasure.
- The silence. Through years of taunting Hannah returned no insult. She carried her complaint to God instead.
- The bending. She would not eat, because the law did not allow the sacrifice to be eaten in mourning. God chose that yielded woman to give Israel its deliverer.
- The result. Her grief ended when she poured it out before God, not when her life changed. Sorrow poured out, peace poured in.
And Elkanah her husband said to her, Hannah, why weepest thou? and why eatest thou not? and why is thy heart grieved? Am not I better to thee than ten sons?
Elkanah finds his wife weeping and refusing to eat. He answers her tears with four questions, and the last one offers himself in place of the children she does not have. His words are warm and sincere. Yet Hannah keeps weeping, and the story asks why the best human love could not reach her sorrow.
The question is not a rebuke. It is affection trying to fill a gap from a man who already had children by Peninnah.
It was a tender word from Elkanah to his weeping wife, when he said, "Am I not more to you than ten sons?" — meant to console her in her sorrow. Hannah, no doubt, fully appreciated the love and sympathy behind it. But she would not be put off by it. She still longed for the one gift from the Lord that could satisfy her aching heart — a son. He clearly did not share her longing for a son. He seemed satisfied with the children Peninnah had given him, and Hannah prayed and bore her grief alone.
Elkanah measured her sorrow by what he could supply.
Elkanah was a kind, considerate husband. But he did not understand how deep her grief was, for he thought she would consider him better to her than ten sons. There is a spiritual lesson here. The Lord Himself is enough to satisfy our hearts. Even so, He has planted within every believer a desire to bear fruit for Him, and this is only normal and right.
In the account, Hannah's childlessness is more than a private sorrow. Commentators read it as a picture. Her name and her condition point in opposite directions.
Hannah has a remarkable trait: her character is that of the believer in all ages. Hannah means "grace"; but before answering to her name, she represents the flesh unable to bear fruit for God. We must always begin there… It is easier to confess that we are guilty than to admit our incapacity. To admit that our flesh is powerless is deeply humiliating… She does not desire this son for herself. She is entirely willing to "give him to the LORD all the days of his life." What she needs is a sign of God's favor. What she needs is "grace!"
Elkanah offered himself in place of children. But Hannah did not simply want children.
And why a son? Was it merely a preference for boys? No; a higher motive moved her — she seems to have had in view God's glory and the good of His straying people. She knew well the condition of Israel. Eli's sons held the highest position, and what they did told the sad and undeniable story: "Fallen! fallen!" So her earnest desire goes up to God for a son who might grow up under the blessing of the LORD to be a deliverer in Israel.
Hannah's sadness lifts later in the chapter. What lifted it was not a change in her situation.
See the striking contrast. In verse 7 Hannah cannot eat and weeps bitterly in her soul. In verse 18 she "went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad." How did this difference come about? Was it a change of circumstances, or the removal of what caused the sorrow? Not at all; the circumstances had not altered; she was still the barren woman. The secret of the change is this: she had poured out her soul before the Lord… Her sorrow is poured out and God's peace is poured in.
The verse also warns about where a hurting mind settles. One writer reads Hannah's fretting as the enemy's opportunity.
The devil would seek to occupy our thoughts with the trial to bring in distance between our souls and the LORD. He would seek to fill our minds with the harsh words and unjust acts of those who oppose us. In this way he leads us to "fret," and "grieve," and complain in bitterness of soul, like Hannah of old. Faith, making the trial an occasion of turning to the LORD, not only triumphs over the devil, but gets blessing out of the trial.
- Love — Elkanah's question is real affection, not criticism. Hannah felt its warmth and still kept asking God.
- Limit — He was kind, but he did not see how deep her grief ran. God Himself plants in every believer the desire to bear fruit.
- Longing — She wanted more than a child. She wanted a son for God's glory and for a people whose leaders had fallen. Ten sons could not have supplied that.
- Outpouring — The turn came when she poured out her soul before the Lord. Faith makes the trial itself the occasion for going to God.
- Peace — Her face changed before her circumstances did. She was still the barren woman when she went away eating and no longer sad.
And Hannah rose up after they had eaten in Shiloh, and after they had drunk; (now Eli the priest sat upon the seat by the door-post of the temple of Jehovah;)
A family meal at Shiloh comes to an end, and one woman gets up from it to go and pray. One sentence puts two figures side by side: a grieving wife on her feet, and Eli the priest seated by the doorpost. Much of what follows turns on that contrast.
There was no stone building at Shiloh yet. The word here describes the tent Israel carried through the wilderness and set up in the land. Scripture gives that tent several names.
The tabernacle had been the house of God in the wilderness. Israel carried it, with all its sacred furniture, into Canaan and pitched it at Shiloh (Joshua 18:1). So this was the place Israel came to with their yearly sacrifices (1 Sam. 1:3). It was still called "the tent of meeting" (1 Sam. 2:22), but also "the temple of the LORD," and "the house of the LORD" (1 Sam. 3:3, 15). These later names only pointed forward to the house that would later be built in Jerusalem.
The verse marks the moment: the eating and drinking were over, and then Hannah got up. Food could not touch what was wrong with her.
One resource remained to her: to present her affliction before the Lord. Only God's heart could give her an answer in grace; so she presents herself before Him at Shiloh. A new trial awaits her there… What suffering! She has no resource in herself; the world is hostile to her; those who bear the Lord's name judge her and do not understand her! How can she eat and drink and rejoice, when her soul's only desire has found no answer?
Eli's posture is not a neutral detail. God gave the priests no seat in that tent.
Eli, the high priest, was a man of much personal piety. He comes before us as a weakened old man sitting by a post of the temple (verse 9). He mistakes the exercises of a godly soul for the ravings of a drunken woman (13). Sitting where God had provided no seat would show a lack of spiritual energy. His mistake about Hannah would show a lack of spiritual discernment.
The seat also shaped how he treated her.
Eli was a stranger to such exercise. He sat on a seat by a post of the temple, in effect sitting as a judge instead of standing as priest… He knew how to reprove her. He did not give the help and compassion which was the very purpose of priesthood (Heb. 5:1-2).
One man in Israel was meant to carry the people's griefs to God. He misread Hannah.
Others went to worship there with their thank-offerings; she drew near with her tears… But here is the remarkable thing in the story. God draws our attention to the high priest himself, who did not share His mind. This was the very man who should have entered into the greatest difficulties of God's people. Here he was among the last to understand. I have no doubt that Peninnah, bad as she was, knew more of the secret of Hannah's grief than Eli did… So at the very start God shows us a failure. Up to that moment this man was outwardly the appointed channel of communication — from God to the people, and from the people to God.
Her tears also had a cause outside her own home.
The sights around the tabernacle doors stirred her devoted heart deeply. The shameless immorality and greed of Hophni and Phinehas told a repulsive tale of wickedness — and that in front of the sanctuary! They flaunted sin in the very face of Israel's God; "men treated the offering of the LORD with contempt"… Eli himself should above all others have understood this. He should have been low in the dust before God over such a shameful state of things. Instead he seemed hardly troubled. A good, easy-going man, he sat calmly at the temple entrance — not to watch and correct his corrupt sons, but to observe, misread and rebuke a godly woman at prayer!
What she asked for was not simply a comfort for herself.
She asked at Shiloh for a son, and she asked for him for Shiloh… There may be two parties at Shiloh who do not understand each other. Eli sits on a post, and Hannah weeps bitterly. But God grants the weeping woman what she asked.
- Place. Shiloh's "temple" was the wilderness tent, set up in the land. Israel brought its yearly sacrifices there.
- Rising. Hannah gets up from a meal that cannot satisfy her, because only God's heart can answer her affliction.
- Sitting. Eli sits where God gave him no seat. The posture marks a man whose spiritual energy has drained away.
- Judging. From that seat he judges instead of serving as priest. He reproves her, where compassion was the whole point of the office.
- Answering. The one no leader understood is the one God hears; she asks for a son at Shiloh, and asks him for Shiloh.
and she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed to Jehovah, and wept much.
Hannah weeps at the one moment you would expect joy: the family feast at Shiloh, Israel's place of worship. Her tears raise two questions: why does sorrow grow sharper in a holy place, and what do you do with grief no one around you understands?
Her hardest moment came where everyone else was celebrating. Peninnah, the rival wife who had children, aimed her taunts at that very setting.
Peninnah looked on Hannah's tender conscience with proud contempt and scorn, and she used this public moment to provoke her. She did it all the more boldly because she could point to her many children as proof of the Lord's blessing, while Hannah's barrenness must be a sure sign of His displeasure. This deepened not only her grief, but her isolation. In the middle of a crowd of outward worshippers, and in the presence of Eli, she was alone — but alone with God.
Her pain had a source and a purpose, and she had a choice about where to take it.
It was God who had closed her womb. I believe He did this to test her faith and to make her pray as she did, so that she might be an example to us of prayer and perseverance, and of God's answer and response. Hannah was persecuted and ridiculed, and she felt it deeply. She might have gone to her husband and complained about the way she was treated. Instead, in verse 10, she prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly.
The man watching her pray was the high priest. His task was to carry the people's case to God, yet he misread her.
Hannah knew how desolate she was as a wife without a child. Grace led her to cast her care on the Lord without judging Him hard toward her. She spreads her soul's desire and grief before Him. Others went to worship there with their thank-offerings; she drew near with her tears… The remarkable feature of the account is this: God points out that the high priest himself did not share His mind. The man who should most of all have entered into the greatest difficulties of the people of God was here among the last to understand her case. The very man who should have pleaded for her, carrying her cry to the Lord as her intercessor, misjudged her instead.
Eli's sons had corrupted the worship at Shiloh, and Hannah's longing for a son reached further than her own grief.
In Hannah's desire for "a man child" we see not only the heart of a mother but the heart of an Israelite. She had, no doubt, seen and mourned over the ruin of everything connected with the temple of the Lord. The dimmed eye of Eli, the vile actions of Hophni and Phinehas, the fading lamp, the desecrated temple, the despised sacrifice — all of it told Hannah that something was truly missing. Only one thing could supply that lack: the precious gift of a man-child from the Lord.
Her name carries the point of her story, and she has to reach the end of her own resources before it becomes true of her.
Hannah has a remarkable trait: her character is that of the believer in every age. Hannah means "grace." But before she answers to her name, she stands for the flesh, unable to bear fruit for God. We must always begin there.
God's way of working runs against every appearance of strength in the chapter.
The story sets before us the barren wife, the persecuting woman, two worthless men as priests, and a feeble, failing old man as high priest. In such circumstances God lets us see His sovereign grace at work. It passes by the strength of nature in the fruitful woman. It works through the weakness of nature in the barren woman. And it abounds over the sin of man in the priests.
Eight verses later she eats again and her face has changed — though nothing outside her has.
How came this difference? Was it a change of circumstances, or the removal of what caused the sorrow? Not at all; the circumstances had not altered; she was still the barren woman. The secret of the change is this: she had poured out her soul before the Lord. The persecution of her enemy, the fretting spirit, the bitterness of soul — she had wept it all out before Him. She pours out her sorrow, and God pours in His peace.
- Pour it out — Hannah took her bitterness of soul to God, not to her husband. That one choice turns the whole chapter.
- Poured out where — she wept at the place of worship. Provoked in front of everyone and alone in a crowd, she was still "alone with God."
- Poured out to One who listens — even the high priest misjudged her. The one man meant to understand her failed her, and God noted it.
- Poured out for more than herself — her longing met the ruin of the temple worship, not just her own emptiness.
- Peace poured in — nothing around her had changed when she rose. She had changed.
And she vowed a vow, and said, O Jehovah of hosts, if thou wilt indeed look on the affliction of thy handmaid, and remember me, and not forget thy handmaid, but wilt give unto thy handmaid a man child, then I will give him to Jehovah all the days of his life, and there shall no razor come upon his head.
A childless woman stands at the sanctuary in Shiloh. Israel's worship had sunk low, and she turns her grief into a vow: give me a son, and I will give him back. Three questions follow. Why does she ask for a son? Why does she call God by a name no one had used before? And what does it cost to give away the thing you begged for?
She asked God for a son, not just for a child. Her reason reached beyond her own home.
And why a man child? Was it just a preference for boys? No; a higher motive moved her — she seems to have had God's glory and the good of His erring people in view. She knew the condition of Israel well. The sons of Eli held the highest position, and what they did told the sad and undeniable tale of "Fallen! fallen!" So her earnest desire goes up to God for a son who might grow up under the blessing of the Lord to be a deliverer in Israel.
Why does she call God the LORD of hosts here? The state of Israel at that moment explains it.
Hannah was alone and shamed. Around her was either spiritual deadness or shameless wickedness. Judgment from the Lord was coming, for He had been dishonoured in His sanctuary. It was at such a moment that it pleased God to reveal Himself by a name which He had not taken before... The time had come for such a revelation of the divine glory. It was well suited to encourage the faith of the weak when hostile power stood against them. Hannah was the first that we read of who cried to the Lord as Jehovah Tzebâôth (the Lord of hosts or armies, 1:11). David also met and overthrew Goliath in the might of that name (17:45).
Three times in one sentence she calls herself God's servant. Older translations read "handmaid" here. Other women in Scripture used the same word of themselves.
These words often refer in Scripture to a female slave, as applied to Hagar the Egyptian, Gen. 25:12; but were also used by women themselves as a term of humility, as when Hannah spoke to the Lord and to Eli, 1 Sam. 1:11, 16, 18; as Abigail to David, 1 Sam. 25:24-41; and by Mary and Elizabeth as handmaids of the Lord. Luke 1:38, 48.
Something changed in Hannah before anything changed around her.
How striking the contrast in Hannah. In verse 7 she cannot eat and weeps in bitterness of soul. In verse 18 she "went her way and did eat and her countenance was no more sad." How did this difference come about? Was it change of circumstances or the removal of that which caused the sorrow? Not at all; the circumstances had not altered; she was still the barren woman. The secret of the change is this: she had poured out her soul before the Lord... Her sorrow is poured out and God's peace is poured in.
The word she used in her vow comes back later as the word for God's answer.
She had prayed, "O LORD of hosts... remember me" (11); now we read, "the LORD remembered her" (19). She gets a son — the man-child she had asked for. The child that she receives from the Lord she gives back to the Lord.
Uncut hair was one mark of a Nazarite, a man set apart for the service of God. Many have read Hannah's promise about the razor that way.
Many expositors have concluded from this that Samuel was a Nazarite. The other two marks of a Nazarite are not mentioned. But Hannah's words do carry the thought that Samuel was to be wholly for God and live for Him: "I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life."
Why hair, of all signs? Because of what it said about the man who wore it.
The long hair of the Nazarite announced to everyone that he had given up his dignity and personal rights as a man, so that he could devote himself to the service of God... He was born to this dignity, yet he set it aside. He was meant to rule, yet he submitted himself to the Lord as a wife to her husband. Without this dependence there can be neither service for God nor power for it. That which was a sign of weakness for the Nazarite became the source of his strength.
- Ruin — Hannah prayed while the priesthood was corrupt. She wanted a son who could be a deliverer in Israel, not just a child of her own.
- Name — she is the first in Scripture to call on the LORD of hosts. God took that name when His people were at their weakest.
- Servant — the word she repeats is a word of humility, later used by Abigail, Mary and Elizabeth.
- Peace — her face changed before her circumstances did. She poured out her sorrow, and God poured in His peace.
- Given back — she asked God to remember her, and He did. The son she received she gave back, marked by uncut hair as one who gave up his standing to serve God.
And it came to pass as she continued praying before Jehovah, that Eli marked her mouth.
Hannah prays at the sanctuary in Shiloh, and she prays so long that the priest Eli starts to watch her lips. The scene shows what real prayer is like from the inside — and how badly people can misread it from the outside.
The words "she continued praying" describe how she prayed. One writer follows that praying to where it ended:
This dear woman, after making this vow, continued praying before the Lord. She continued praying. This was not a prayer you can put in the files and draw out at some convenient moment. It was a continuing in prayer, the desire of the heart so active in this way. Prayer, prayer, prayer. I do not know how long she prayed, but she continued in prayer. She had made her request. She had expressed her vow. She had expressed her determination to do this. And she continued in it until the time came when she got peace and assurance. The bitterness passed away.
Her lips moved, but no sound came out. A comment on the woman who touched Jesus' garment puts Hannah beside her:
Faith in the heart may express itself in many ways. It may come as urgent earnestness, like Abraham pleading for Sodom and Gomorrah. Or it may come as patient endurance of suffering, as with Job and Joseph. Here the silent appeal of the woman's touch shows how eloquent before God the very silence of faith may be. In the same way, the wordless posture of Hannah did not escape the pitying eye of Jehovah (1 Sam. 1). For it is with the heart that man believes, whatever the way faith expresses itself before people.
Eli watched her mouth and read it wrong. One writer notes where he sat and what his office should have supplied:
Eli was a stranger to such exercise. He sat on a seat by a post of the temple, in effect sitting as a judge instead of standing as priest. He saw Hannah's lips move as she prayed silently, and made the sad blunder of judging that she was drunk. He knew how to rebuke her. But he did not give the help and compassion which was the very purpose of priesthood (Heb. 5:1-2).
His mistake also exposes the state of Israel at the time:
Here the account names Eli the priest for the first time. Her silent prayer astonished him, and he accused her of drunkenness. His astonishment and his accusation are a witness to the sad state of Israel. Clearly few ever sought the presence of the Lord. His rebuke also makes it clear that drunkenness during the feasts at Shiloh was not unusual.
Hannah came to Shiloh for relief and found a fresh wound there:
One resource remained to her: to bring her affliction before the Lord. Only God's heart could give her an answer in grace; so she presents herself before Him at Shiloh. A new trial awaits her there. She meets a spiritual leader of her people who does not understand her. He confuses the working of the Spirit of God with the working of the flesh. He believes she is drunk, when in fact she is in anguish. What suffering! She has no resource in herself. The world is hostile to her. Those who bear the Lord's name judge her and do not understand her!
Another writer sets Eli beside the risen Christ:
Of all people, this man should have been in close touch with God. Instead he was so far out of communion with Him that he could not tell a sorrowful woman from a drunken woman. God's priest should be both compassionate and sympathetic (Heb. 5:2). The risen Christ is all this and more; Eli, sadly, was only a poor foreshadowing of Him.
Her circumstances did not change that day. Something else did:
Hannah found this long ago. In her deep trial she could say, "I have poured out my soul before the Lord." As a result we read, "her face was no longer sad." Yet at that moment her circumstances were just the same. Afterwards the Lord did change her circumstances, but first He showed that He had the power to change Hannah. God brought her from grief of heart and bitterness of soul into great peace — the peace of God which surpasses all understanding — as she made her requests known to Him.
- Continued — Hannah did not pray once and move on. She stayed in prayer until peace and assurance came.
- Silent — Her lips moved and no one heard a voice. God's pitying eye still read that silence of faith.
- Misjudged — Eli sat as a judge instead of standing as a priest. He rebuked her where he should have helped her.
- Symptom — Silent prayer looked like drunkenness to him. Few in Israel ever sought God's presence.
- Changed — God changed Hannah before He changed her circumstances. Her grief lifted while her situation stayed the same.
Now Hannah spoke in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard; and Eli thought she was drunken.
Hannah prays at God's tent of worship in Shiloh, her lips moving without a sound, and Eli the old priest reads her completely wrong. So the verse raises two questions: does God hear a silent prayer, and how could a priest misjudge a godly woman?
The words "Hannah was speaking in her heart" describe a prayer with no audience but God. One writer notes what that hidden prayer received:
When she poured out her request in sorrow, "only her lips moved, and her voice was not heard." She prayed "in secret" to Him who "hears in secret," and He had rewarded her "openly."
Silence took nothing away from that prayer. It also shows how anyone can pray while sitting among other worshippers:
This godly woman prayed in the house of the Lord, when the worshippers had gathered. Notice it says of her: "Hannah was speaking in her heart; only her lips moved, and her voice was not heard" (v. 13). To have prayed out loud in that mixed company would not have been proper. Yet she could pray in her heart, and God heard and answered.
The verse shows two things at once: what Hannah was doing, and what Eli saw. The gap between them is the whole problem.
"Hannah was speaking in her heart," but Eli only marked her mouth. He judged by the "outward appearance," and decided she was drunk!
His posture matched his mistake. He sat by the doorpost, and gave her correction, not help:
Eli was a stranger to that kind of praying. He sat on a seat by a post of the temple. He was sitting as a judge rather than standing as priest. He saw Hannah's lips move as she prayed silently, and made the sad blunder of judging that she was drunk. He knew how to correct her, but did not provide the help and compassion which was the very purpose of priesthood.
Eli's assumption says as much about Shiloh as it does about him. That silent prayer struck him as strange, and drink did not:
This is the first time Eli the priest appears. He was amazed to see her praying in silence, and he accused her of being drunk. His astonishment and accusation are a witness to the sad state of Israel. Clearly few ever sought the presence of the Lord. And his rebuke makes it plain that drunkenness was not uncommon during the feasts at Shiloh.
Hannah was not the last person to look drunk while praying. Her reply to the false charge teaches as much as her prayer did:
This was not the only time people moved by the Spirit were judged to be drunk with wine. It happened again at Pentecost, twelve hundred years later. The "spiritual man" is always thought "mad" by those who know nothing of the power of God moving the soul... She addresses him with all the respect due to his age and office. She does not hit back. She does not remind him of his sons' failings, or tell him to look to his own house before he rushes to accuse and condemn others.
Hannah's mouth moved while her voice stayed silent. One writer applies that to how we handle trouble among God's people:
We read of Hannah, the mother of Samuel, that in a crisis her mouth moved but her voice was not heard. It would perhaps be a good thing if in a crisis our feelings were more active than our voices. We would feel the difficulties that come in as our own, and weep over the dishonour brought to the name of Christ.
She walked away from that unheard prayer a different woman, long before she held a son:
So Hannah found, long ago, when in her deep trial she could say, "I... have poured out my soul before the Lord." As a result, we read, "Her countenance was no more sad." Yet at that moment her circumstances were just the same. Later the Lord did change her circumstances. But first He showed that He had the power to change Hannah.
- Heard — no one at Shiloh heard her voice. She prayed in secret to a God who hears in secret and rewards openly.
- Misheard — Eli watched her mouth and judged by outward appearance. He sat as a judge instead of standing as a priest.
- Unheard-of — silent prayer looked strange to him, and drunkenness looked normal. His wrong guess exposes the state of Israel's worship.
- Overheard — the same charge came again at Pentecost. Earnestness before God has always looked like madness to those who have never felt it.
- Answered — she left with a changed face before her situation changed. God showed His power to change Hannah first.
And Eli said to her, How long wilt thou be drunken? put away thy wine from thee.
Hannah stood at the entrance of the tabernacle at Shiloh and prayed without a sound. The priest who watched her lips decided she was drunk. How could the man who stood between God and Israel misread a woman at prayer in the place he served?
The words Eli used were not gentle or figurative. One writer traces the Hebrew word for wine through every place it appears:
By "wine" we mean an intoxicating drink made from the grape, unless the context changes that sense. That this is the force of yayin will be clear from looking at all the texts where it occurs... The word was even used to denote the effect of wine.
So Eli was not hinting at something mild. "Put your wine away from you" told a grieving woman to sober up.
This was no small slip. One writer sees in it the state of a whole priesthood, not of one man only:
In himself he had a heart for the Lord, but not enough to stand for Him. With him the whole order he belonged to is wearing out. His spiritual sense is blunt, as is his nature. He cannot see what kind of woman stands sorrowing in front of him. He sees only the moving of lips, and he misreads it. He passes a judgment that he very soon has to take back. Yet this stirs no self-judgment in him, and no sight of his own shallowness. We find this in Eli all the way through.
Eli also aimed his correction at the wrong person:
Eli himself should have understood this shameful state of things more than anyone. He should have been low in the dust before God over it. Instead he seemed hardly troubled. Like a "good and easy man," he sat at ease at the temple entrance. He was not there to watch and correct his corrupt sons. He was there to watch a godly woman at prayer, misread her, and rebuke her! ... "She was speaking in her heart," but Eli only watched her mouth; he judged by the "outward appearance," and decided she was drunk!
One writer sets her prayer beside the place where Eli sat:
Eli was a stranger to such exercise of soul. He sat on a seat by a post of the temple, in effect sitting as a judge rather than standing as priest. He saw Hannah's lips move as she prayed in silence, and made the sad blunder of judging her drunk. He knew how to reprove her, but did not provide the help and compassion which was the very purpose of priesthood.
Another writer turns the failure into a question for the reader:
Poor Eli made a serious blunder in his dealings with Hannah. He supposed her to be drunk. In reality she was a sorrowful woman pouring out her heart to her God. Nearness to God was meant to give the priests good judgment about holy and unholy, clean and unclean. That way they could instruct the people... How is it with us? Grace has put every believer into the priestly place, but are we in the power of it? Are we spiritually discerning?
Hannah came looking for help, and met this instead:
She meets a lack of understanding in the spiritual leader of her people. He confuses the work of the Spirit of God with the work of the flesh. He believes she is drunk, when in fact she is in anguish. What suffering! She has no resource within herself. The world is against her. Those who bear the Lord's name judge her and do not understand her!
Yet a wrong verdict from a priest could not block God's answer:
The ordered way of blessing is closing up, and God is finding new channels to pour His grace into. His grace must not lack expression while the need is there that demands it. The cry of distress may be misinterpreted, even by His people; but His own ear cannot be stopped.
- Silence. Hannah spoke in her heart, and only her lips moved — prayer God could hear but a watching man could not.
- Misread. Eli's charge meant plain drunkenness. His spiritual sense was blunt, and he had to take his verdict back at once.
- Misaimed. He rebuked a praying woman at the door and left his own corrupt sons alone. He judged by the outward appearance.
- Misplaced. He sat as a judge instead of standing as a priest. He was quick to reprove, but gave none of the help and compassion a priest exists to give.
- Still heard. God's own representative misread her cry. But God's ear cannot be stopped, and His grace found a new channel.
And Hannah answered and said, No, my lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have poured out my soul before Jehovah.
Hannah has been praying at the tabernacle in Shiloh. Eli the priest saw only her lips move and accused her of being drunk, and her answer became one of the clearest pictures of prayer in the Bible.
The phrase Hannah uses became a standard Bible expression for prayer that is not merely said but meant. It describes intensity, not volume.
"The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working" (James 5:16). Cold prayers, like cold suitors, never get anywhere. Prayer without fervency is like a sacrifice without a fire. Prayer is called a "pouring out of the soul" to show its intensity (1 Sam. 1:15). Formality starves prayer.
What she empties out is her grief. She holds nothing back and tidies nothing up first.
How often we carry our sorrows instead of pouring them out before the One who came into this world of weeping, to bear our griefs and carry our sorrows. Have we a secret sorrow? Have we an adversary who provokes us bitterly (verse 6)? Is there anything or anyone that makes our spirits fret (verse 6)? Anything that grieves our hearts (verse 8)? Anything that fills the soul with bitterness and the eyes with tears (verse 10)? Then let us pour out our souls before the Lord and He will pour in His peace.
Hannah's denial about wine is not the main thing she wants Eli to grasp. She wants him to know what kind of person he is looking at — and the contrast with his accusation is total.
Hannah's reply to Eli was most beautiful and precious. Completely unlike the effects of liquor, she was a woman of sorrowful spirit who had poured out her soul before the Lord. She pleads with him not to consider her a daughter of Belial, a virtual enemy of the Lord, for the facts were quite the opposite.
The term she pleads against is not a family name but a label for a certain kind of person:
The Hebrew word means "worthless, lawless." It is not a proper name. It stands as a personification of evil, so we have "son of Belial," "daughter of Belial," and so on. Deut. 13:13; Judges 19:22; 1 Sam. 1:16; 1 Sam. 25:17, 25; and others.
Commentators point out where God places the failure in this scene: with the high priest himself.
Others went to worship there with their thank-offerings. She drew near with her tears, and there too she felt the provocation of her adversary just as keenly. But here is the remarkable feature of the story: God calls our attention to the high priest himself, who did not share His mind. The one who should above all have entered into the greatest difficulties of God's people was in this case among the last to understand her.
Others note this is a repeated pattern, not a one-off blunder.
This is not the only time people have judged those moved by the Spirit to be drunk with wine. It happened again at Pentecost twelve hundred years later. The "spiritual man" is always thought "mad" by those who know nothing of the power of God moving the soul.
Hannah could have answered by pointing at Eli's own sons. She does not.
She addresses him with all the respect due to his age and office. She does not answer back by reminding him of the failures of his sons. She does not tell him to look to his own house before he rushes to accuse and condemn others. No, nothing of this; true to her name, she bends again, and tells the aged priest the story of her grief, if not its cause.
Between verse 7 and verse 18 nothing outward moves. Hannah is still childless when she leaves. Yet she leaves a different woman.
How did this difference come about? Was it a change of circumstances, or the removal of what caused the sorrow? Not at all. The circumstances had not altered; she was still the barren woman. The secret of the change is this: she had poured out her soul before the Lord... Her sorrow is poured out and God's peace is poured in.
- Poured out — prayer with real force behind it. Formality starves prayer; Hannah empties her grief out instead of tidying it up.
- Misjudged — the one man who should have known prayer when he saw it called it drunkenness. Others made the same mistake at Pentecost.
- Answered meekly — she could have shamed Eli about his own sons. Instead she told him her grief.
- Not a daughter of Belial — the word means worthless and lawless. Hannah asks Eli not to count her among the Lord's enemies; the facts were the opposite.
- Peace poured in — her circumstances did not change, but she did. The sorrow went out and God's peace came in.
Take not thy handmaid for a daughter of Belial for out of the abundance of my grief and provocation have I spoken hitherto.
Hannah has been praying silently at Shiloh, and the priest Eli has read her moving lips as the sign of a drunk woman. Her reply here is a strange kind of defence. She denies the charge, names her real condition, and never attacks the man who accused her.
Where the ESV says "worthless woman," older translations read "daughter of Belial." The phrase Hannah rejects is a description of character, not a name:
The Hebrew word means "worthless, lawless." It is not a proper name. It is used as a picture of evil itself, so we have "son of Belial, daughter of Belial," and the like. Deut. 13:13; Judges 19:22; 1 Sam. 1:16; 1 Sam. 25:17, 25; and others. In the New Testament it stands in contrast to Christ, as if it meant Satan, 2 Cor. 6:15.
One writer shows how far that verdict was from the truth:
Hannah's reply to Eli was most beautiful and precious. Her state was the very opposite of the effects of drink. She was a woman of sorrowful spirit who had poured out her soul before the Lord. She pleads with him not to think of her as a daughter of Belial, a virtual enemy of the Lord. The facts were quite the opposite.
Eli's mistake went deeper than the facts. His office called for something he never gave:
Eli was a stranger to such exercise of soul. He sat on a seat by a post of the temple, in effect sitting as a judge rather than standing as priest. He saw Hannah's lips move as she prayed silently, and made the sad blunder of judging that she was drunk. He knew how to reprove her. He did not give the help and compassion which was the very purpose of priesthood (Heb. 5:1-2).
Hannah was not the last person misread this way, and her reply kept its respect:
She spoke in her heart, but Eli only watched her mouth. He judged by what he saw, and decided she had been drinking. This is not the only time that people moved by the Spirit were judged to be drunk with wine. It happened again at Pentecost twelve hundred years later. Those who know nothing of the power of God moving the soul always think the "spiritual man" is "mad." "How long will you go on being drunk? Put your wine away from you," the old man harshly calls to her. Notice her meek reply... She speaks to him with all the respect due to his age and office. She does not answer back by reminding him of the failures of his sons. She does not tell him to look to his own house before he rushes to accuse and condemn others.
Years later she brought the child back to Eli at the tabernacle, the tent where Israel worshipped. She still made nothing of the insult:
She does not say, "I am the woman you misjudged so rashly at the door of the tabernacle. This is the child I was praying for when you charged me with drunkenness." No, there is nothing of this. Her triumph is in God, as one who knows Him as the generous Giver of all good.
Hannah calls herself Eli's servant instead of using her own name. The word has a settled use across Scripture:
These words often refer in Scripture to a female slave, as applied to Hagar the Egyptian, Gen. 25:12; but they were also used by women themselves as a term of humility, as when Hannah spoke to Jehovah and to Eli, 1 Sam. 1:11, 16, 18; as Abigail spoke to David, 1 Sam. 25:24-41; and by Mary and Elizabeth as handmaids of the Lord. Luke 1:38, 48.
The leader of her nation misread her. That was a fresh sorrow on top of the old one, and it left her asking for one thing:
Poor Hannah was full of bitterness and wept a great deal. One resource remained: to lay her affliction before the Lord. Only God's heart could answer her in grace, so she presents herself before Him at Shiloh. A new trial awaits her there. She meets the lack of understanding in the spiritual leader of her people. He confuses the work of the Spirit of God with the work of the flesh, and believes she is drunk when she is in fact in anguish. What suffering! She has no resource within herself; the world is hostile to her; those who bear the Lord's name judge her and do not understand her!... but what she needs is a sign of God's favour; what she needs is "grace!"
- Misjudged. Eli watched her lips and reached the worst possible verdict. He sat as a judge where he should have stood as priest, reproving without compassion.
- Named. The "worthless woman" of this verse is a "daughter of Belial" — lawless, an enemy of the Lord. Hannah was the exact opposite.
- Answered. She replies with respect, denies the charge, and never throws Eli's own sons back in his face.
- Lowered. She calls herself his servant, the same word of humility used by Abigail, Mary and Elizabeth.
- Sustained. When God's own people misread her grief, one request was left worth making: grace.
And Eli answered and said, Go in peace; and the God of Israel grant thee thy petition which thou hast asked of him.
Israel's high priest has just accused Hannah of being drunk while she prayed. Her quiet answer turns the rebuke into a blessing — so what is a blessing worth when the man who speaks it is failing?
Eli had misread Hannah. Her honest reply reaches something in him, and he speaks for God, not for himself.
Eli has enough conscience — he is, after all, a true servant of God — for the language of truth to carry weight with him. It makes him reverse his first impression. He blesses Hannah on God's behalf (v. 17).
Commentators differ on how to read Eli here. Rossier sees a true servant recovering himself. Fereday sees a man who could not tell sorrow from drunkenness, and whose blessing came out thin.
Of all people, this man should have been in close touch with God. Yet he was so far out of communion with Him that he could not tell a sorrowful woman from a drunken one. God's priest should be both compassionate and sympathetic (Heb. 5:2). The risen Christ is all this and more; Eli, sadly, was only a poor shadow of Him. When Hannah corrected him, all he could vaguely say was, "Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant your petition that you have made to Him."
This misjudgement did not end with Hannah.
This was not the only time that people moved by the Spirit have been judged to be drunk with wine. It happened again at Pentecost, twelve hundred years later. Those who know nothing of the power of God moving the soul always think the spiritual man is mad.
She could have thrown the charge back at him and pointed to his sons. She did neither.
She addresses him with all the respect due to his age and office. She does not answer back by reminding him of his sons' failures. She does not tell him to look to his own house before rushing to accuse and condemn others. No, nothing of this... Her deserved reward is an answer of peace. She does not despise the blessing of a man who a moment before had charged her falsely. At that time he was God's highest representative on earth. She took his blessing as the voice of God to her soul, little as he may have understood it himself, and she went on her way rejoicing.
Nothing in Hannah's situation had changed when she left. No child, no sign, only a sentence spoken over her — and that was enough.
Hannah's faith lays hold of grace at once, even before receiving its effects. "And the woman went her way, and ate, and her face was no longer as before" (v. 18). This assurance of faith is enough to strengthen her heart and fill her with a joy that everyone can see.
God worked on the woman before He worked on her circumstances.
Hannah found this long ago. In her deep trial she could say, "I have poured out my soul before the Lord." As a result, we read, "Her face was no longer sad." Yet at that moment her circumstances were exactly the same. Later the Lord did change her circumstances. But first He showed that He had the power to change Hannah. By making her requests known to God, she passed from grief of heart and bitterness of soul into great peace — the peace of God that surpasses all understanding (1 Samuel 1:6-18).
Assurance is not the same as delivery. The answer was certain; the timing was not.
I believe there are times when we pray and know that our prayer has been heard and will be answered. I can humbly say I have known this in my own experience. All we have to do is wait patiently until the Lord's time comes. I often say there are three answers to our prayers: yes, no, and wait. It is the waiting that is the testing time.
The blessing stayed with Hannah long after the day it was spoken.
We can judge how deep the comfort and consolation of these words went into that wounded heart. Several years later she herself uses almost these very words.
- Poured out — Hannah took her grief to God, and that is where the change began.
- Spoken over — a failing priest still spoke a true blessing. She took it as God's voice, not as one man's opinion.
- Peace first — nothing around her had changed, yet her face had. God changed Hannah before He changed her situation.
- Then waiting — the assurance came first, the child came later. Yes, no and wait are all real answers, and waiting is the testing one.
- Given back — years later Hannah was still speaking almost the same words herself.
And she said, Let thy bondwoman find grace in thy sight. And the woman went her way, and did eat, and her countenance was no more [as before].
Hannah came to worship crushed by years of childlessness, and left eating again with the sadness gone from her face. Nothing in her situation had changed — so what did change, and how can a person be lifted before the answer comes?
Earlier in the chapter Hannah is weeping and refusing food. Here she eats. One commentator asks what caused the change. He rules out the obvious answer first.
What a contrast. In verse 7 Hannah cannot eat, and weeps bitterly in bitterness of soul. In verse 18 "the woman went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad." How did this difference come about? Was it a change of circumstances, or the removal of what caused the sorrow? Not at all; the circumstances had not altered; she was still the barren woman. The secret of the change is that she had poured out her soul before the Lord... Her sorrow is poured out and God's peace is poured in.
The same writer notes the order: God dealt with Hannah before He dealt with her circumstances.
And yet, at the time, her circumstances were just the same. Afterwards, indeed, the Lord changed her circumstances, but first He showed that He had the power to change Hannah.
Here Hannah is speaking to Eli, and she calls herself his servant. She had already used that word twice in this chapter — once to God in her vow, once to Eli. A Bible dictionary explains what women meant by it.
These words often refer in scripture to a female slave, as applied to Hagar the Egyptian, Gen. 25:12; but were also used by women themselves as a term of humility, as when Hannah spoke to Jehovah and to Eli, 1 Sam. 1:11, 16, 18; as Abigail to David, 1 Sam. 25:24-41; and by Mary and Elizabeth as handmaids of the Lord. Luke 1:38, 48.
No child had come. No sign had appeared. She carried away one sentence from Eli, and she treated it as enough.
Hannah's faith at once lays hold of grace even before receiving its effects... This assurance of faith is enough to strengthen her heart and fill her with a joy that is visible to all.
Another commentator looks at the man whose words she trusted.
He does not even ask why she is sad. He simply sends her away "in peace," with the wish that the God of Israel would grant her request. But even though Eli showed no real interest, she takes his words as coming from the Lord. That is a precious sign of her faith. Her sadness lifted, and she went back to normal living.
One writer applies this to every burden we carry, and then points to Jesus at prayer.
As we pour out our complaint and roll our burden on the Lord, He lifts the burden. Our sorrow and distress turns into the peace that passes all understanding... So it was with Hannah. That peace, beyond understanding, kept her soul and changed her face. It reminds us of our own blessed Lord. "As He prayed, the appearance of His face was altered." I know the meaning there is quite different, and those circumstances were special and extraordinary. But in a certain sense it is true of us too. As we pray — truly pray — the look on our face changes.
In the next verse Hannah worships. One writer lists the troubles that should send us the same way.
Do we have a secret sorrow? An adversary who provokes us deeply (verse 6)? Anything or anyone that makes our spirits fret (verse 6)? Anything that grieves our hearts (verse 8)? Anything that fills the soul with bitterness and the eyes with tears (verse 10)? Then let us pour out our souls before the Lord and He will pour in His peace. And a glad heart will make a glad face... The heart at peace, and filled with the gladness of the Lord, is the heart that worships.
- Poured out. Hannah emptied her bitterness before the Lord. Her situation had not changed; her prayer was the turning point.
- Poured in. Her sorrow went out and God's peace came in — the exchange happened while she was still the barren woman.
- Taken on trust. She received Eli's blessing as the word of God, though he never even asked what was wrong.
- Shown in the face. The peace did not stay hidden. She ate again, and her joy was there for all to see.
- Ended in worship. A glad heart makes a glad face, and the heart at peace is the heart that goes on to worship.
And they rose up early in the morning and worshipped before Jehovah, and returned and came to their house at Ramah. And Elkanah knew Hannah his wife; and Jehovah remembered her.
Hannah had wept and prayed, and others had misjudged her; no sign had yet come that God had heard. Now she rises early with her husband to worship, goes home to Ramah, and finds her prayer answered word for word.
Hannah poured out her sorrow before the Lord, and her face changed before the child came. One writer asks what we should do with grief, and ends with the worship of this verse.
How often we carry our sorrows instead of pouring them out before the One who came into this world of weeping. He came to bear our griefs and carry our sorrows. Have we a secret sorrow? An adversary who provokes us bitterly? Anything or anyone that makes our spirits fret? Anything that grieves our hearts? Anything that fills the soul with bitterness and the eyes with tears? Then let us pour out our souls before the Lord and He will pour in His peace. And a glad heart will make a glad face. As we read, "her face was no longer sad." The heart at peace, filled with the gladness of the Lord, is the heart that worships. So with Hannah we read that she "worshiped before the LORD."
Nothing had happened yet. Hannah held only the word spoken to her, and she treated it as enough. That is why she rises to worship before anything has changed.
Hannah's night of mourning is over. The word had gone out: "The God of Israel grant your petition that you have made to Him." As yet there was no sign or token, but she rested in the spoken word. The words about her New Testament counterpart fit her too: "Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord" (Luke 1:45).
The verse puts worship, the journey home, and the marriage in one line. One writer starts with that order and describes the home it makes.
The first thing is that husband and wife worship together. It is a happy thing when the home has this character. Husband and wife give themselves to the Lord's interests. They can worship together, pray together, and think about the Lord's interests together. What a happy home that is! The Lord's blessing is there. There is a response to the Lord. They care for the Lord's interests there, and the Lord is welcome in a home like that... Think of a God who hears our prayers and takes account of the motives and the desires.
Hannah had asked God to remember her. Scripture uses her own word when it reports what God did. The order matters: she learns to worship first, and then her circumstances change.
First she learned that the Lord can sustain her in the circumstances and make her a worshipper despite them. Then the mercy of the Lord changes the circumstances by granting what she asked. She had prayed, "O LORD of hosts... remember me"; now we read, "the LORD remembered her." She gets a son — the boy she had asked for. The child that she receives from the Lord she gives back to the Lord.
She had waited a long time. That long wait makes the outcome unmistakable.
They returned to Ramah, and very soon she conceived a child. For we read, "the LORD remembered her." At his birth she named him "Samuel," meaning "asked of God." She had waited long, but faith can afford to wait. God answered in His own time, and the evidence was clear that this was His sovereign work.
One writer points to the meaning of Hannah's home town and to what her waiting cost.
Hannah is the one who represents the work of God. She lives at Ramathaim-zophim, "the heights of watching." She is watching for what God will do, and the concerns of her heart match what she sees... We may have to wait. We may have to pass through reproach and misunderstanding, suffering and perhaps persecution as Hannah did. But depend on it: if the concerns of our hearts line up with the light God has given, He will answer.
- Pour out — Carrying sorrow helps no one. Pour it out before God and He pours in His peace, and the glad heart shows in a glad face.
- Then worship — Hannah worshipped before she had any proof. God first made her a worshipper in her circumstances, then altered them.
- Rest on the word — With no sign or token, she rested in the spoken word. Her night of mourning was over before the answer came.
- Worship together — Husband and wife worship, pray, and care for the Lord's interests together. The Lord is welcome in a home like that.
- Remembered — She prayed "remember me," and Scripture records, "the LORD remembered her." Faith can afford to wait. God answers in His own time, and the long delay shows the work was His.
And it came to pass when the time was come about after Hannah had conceived, that she bore a son, and called his name Samuel, [saying,] Because I have asked him of Jehovah.
A childless woman had poured out her grief at the sanctuary. The answer arrives as a baby with a name that tells the whole story. One ordinary birth in one ordinary home became a turning point for a whole nation.
She had waited long, but the timing of the answer belonged to God. One writer ties the birth back to the words of the verse just before: the LORD remembered her.
They returned to Ramah. Very soon she conceived a child, for Scripture says, "the LORD remembered her." At his birth she named him "Samuel," meaning "asked of God." She had waited long, yet faith can afford to wait. God answered in His own time, and the evidence was clear that this was His sovereign work.
Hannah's mourning ended before there was any sign of a child. She had nothing but a word spoken to her.
The night of Hannah's mourning is ended. The word had gone out: "the God of Israel grant your petition that you have made to Him." She still had no sign or token. Yet she rested in the spoken word. We can say of her what Scripture says of her New Testament counterpart: "Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord" (Luke 1:45).
The name "Samuel" is read two ways: "asked of God" and "heard by God." One writer keeps both, and follows the name into the man Samuel became.
His mother, Hannah, had asked for a son, and God had granted her request. She gave him the name 'Samuel', which means 'asked of God' or 'heard by God'. Both were true. She asked for him, and God heard and answered her prayer. She also passed on to her son her own sense of the value of fervent prayer. Samuel was a man of prayer, as seen in the occasions on which he interceded for Israel.
Hannah did not name the child after herself, her husband, or her relief. She named him after the asking and the answer. Every use of his name repeated that story.
Getting what she asked for was not the end for Hannah. The gift itself became something to give back.
Here was a true heart. To such a person, blessing from God was only the occasion, and also the means, of returning that blessing to Him. Jehovah was the object of her soul. Who can suppose that there was any lack of affection for Samuel? She gave Samuel all the affection her heart could give a child, and a child born like this. But she held him with something more: a special sense of what the Lord had proved Himself to be to her in giving him.
Hannah's ache was personal, but it was not only personal. She lived at a time when the priest's own sons were trampling on the worship of the Lord.
The birth of Samuel filled a great blank. It filled the heart of Hannah, and no doubt the heart of every faithful Israelite who longed for the true interests of the Lord's house and the purity of the Lord's offering. The godless sons of Eli disregarded and trampled on both. In Hannah's desire for a son, we see not merely the heart of a mother, but that of an Israelite.
Her private grief did not stay private.
In the hidden and bitter exercises of soul that this godly, unknown woman went through lay the beginning of revival for Israel. A praying woman brought in, in the ways of God, a new era.
- Asked — Hannah named her son for her request, not for her relief. The name itself said she had asked God for him.
- Heard — the birth came from God remembering her, not from time or nature. She had waited long, but faith can afford to wait.
- Trusted — her sorrow lifted while she still had no sign. She rested on the word spoken to her, like the woman later called blessed for believing.
- Returned — the blessing became the means of giving that blessing back to God. Her love for the child lost nothing.
- Multiplied — one unknown woman's hidden grief filled a blank in every faithful heart in Israel. Her praying opened a new era for the nation.
And Elkanah her husband, and all his house, went up to sacrifice to Jehovah the yearly sacrifice and his vow.
The family goes up to Shiloh again, and this time Elkanah has a vow to pay as well as the yearly sacrifice. Why did that trip still matter in such a broken time, and why did Hannah stay home?
Elkanah's journey was not to a thriving religious centre.
After all the evil recorded in the book of Judges, was not Shiloh still the only place the Lord owned as His dwelling place? The ark was still there, and those who sought the Lord, like Elkanah, came there. There Hannah prayed and worshipped. There she brought her young child. There she rejoiced in the Lord.
The men running the sanctuary were no credit to it, yet that did not stop him going up.
Elkanah goes up yearly to worship and to sacrifice before the Lord at Shiloh. There we find Hophni and Phinehas, two wicked men, as we know from 1 Samuel 2:12, serving as priests of the Lord. Eli, the high priest, was a man of much personal piety. Yet he comes before us as a weakened old man sitting by a post of the temple, mistaking the deep prayer of a godly soul for the ramblings of a drunken woman. Sitting where God had provided no seat points to a lack of spiritual energy. His mistake about Hannah points to a lack of spiritual discernment.
The yearly sacrifice could have been mere routine. One writer traces Elkanah's worship back to his family line.
Elkanah was a descendant of the rebellious Korah — the Korah who was destroyed with all his company for his rebellion in the wilderness. Yet we read, "But the sons of Korah did not die" (Numbers 26:11). A debtor to mercy alone, he had good cause to worship. Others might go up merely to sacrifice, but Elkanah both worshipped and sacrificed. This was no formal or meaningless ceremony for him. He knew that the Lord's distinguishing grace had given him not only the blessings of his life, but his very existence as a descendant of one of the spared children of Korah. Knowing grace, and owning it, is what produces worship and obedience in the believer's life.
Israel's history shows how easily a promise made to God is broken.
The Israelites were not told to make vows, but if they voluntarily made them, God said they must carefully perform them. Man is always ready to boast of his strength, not being conscious of his own weakness. Israel, on hearing the law, did not hesitate to say, "All that the LORD has spoken we will do;" but they failed badly. The law made vows binding, and gave directions for exceptional cases where it was impossible to keep them (Numbers 30:2-14; Deuteronomy 23:21-23).
Hannah's absence from this journey was not neglect. One writer explains why she was the exception.
Elkanah and the rest of his household went up to Shiloh for the yearly offering. Hannah remained at home with her little child. She decided to go only when Samuel was weaned, so that she could leave him there with Eli... It is precious to see her purpose of heart in carrying out her vow. It would be no small sacrifice to give up the child she had longed for so much and loved so deeply. But to her the Lord's interests came first.
What she received became the very thing she handed back.
Here was a true heart. To such a person blessing from God was only the occasion, as it was the means, of returning that blessing to Him. The Lord was the object of her soul. Who can suppose that there was any lack of affection for Samuel?
One writer sees the weaning as more than a stage of childhood.
She did not go up again to Shiloh until the child was weaned. Then she went up to fulfil her vow and presented him to the Lord. Before Samuel could begin to serve the Lord he had to be weaned. "A weaned child no longer cries, frets, and longs for the breast. It lies still and is content, because it is with its mother. In the same way the soul must be weaned from all discontented thoughts and from all fretful desires for earthly good. It waits in stillness on God, finds its satisfaction in His presence, and rests peacefully in His arms." He was brought up in the sanctuary and became that solid, earnest, prayerful man of God. It is the weaning and the sanctuary that every servant of Christ still needs.
- Place — Shiloh was still the only place God owned. Corrupt priests served there, and Elkanah still went up.
- Praise — others went up only to sacrifice. Elkanah worshipped too, because he owed his very existence to grace.
- Promise — no Israelite had to make a vow, but a vow once made became a debt God required.
- Patience — Hannah stayed home to keep her vow in full. She put the Lord's interests above her own affection.
- Purpose — what God gave, she gave back. The weaning that cost her most is the training every servant still needs.
But Hannah did not go up, for she said to her husband, [I will wait] until the child is weaned; then will I bring him, that he may appear before Jehovah, and there abide for ever.
Hannah has her son at last, and the first thing she does with him is plan to give him away — but not yet. She stays home with a nursing child and a promise she means to keep.
The delay was not hesitation. One writer measures the cost of her gift by the slow work of weaning:
Elkanah went up to worship, but Hannah stayed at home. She said, "I am going to wean the child." It would have been very easy for her to give the child at once. "No," she said, "I will wean the child." Mothers know that weaning a child takes a long time. In that time the child gets entwined in the affections. The child becomes part of the mother, more and more so, as she cares for him before the weaning comes. I believe this shows the extent of the sacrifice Hannah made. She handed him over to the Lord thoroughly weaned.
Why weaning at all, rather than handing over an infant? Commentators read the detail as a picture of the state of soul that God's servants need:
Samuel is born to be in a special way the servant of the Lord. But he must be weaned before he can become this. We cannot help thinking of Psalm 131 here: "But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me." As Perowne says, "A weaned child no longer cries, frets, and longs for the breast. It lies still and is content, because it is with its mother. In the same way my soul is weaned from all discontented thoughts and from all fretful desires of earthly good. It waits in stillness upon God, finds its satisfaction in His presence, and rests peacefully in His arms." This is surely what is required for proper service: the childlike spirit, but the spirit of a weaned child.
Hannah names two things she wants for her son, and they are not the same thing. One writer takes them as the pattern for raising any child:
Here we find a mother who brings her child to the Lord. What is her aim? First, that he should appear before Him; second, that he should stay there for ever. This ought to be the great aim of all parenting and the bringing up of our children. First of all, they should appear before the Lord. In other words, they should accept Jesus as their Saviour and so come to know Him. Second, they should stay with Him for ever. In other words, they should accept Him as their Lord, the one they want to follow and serve.
Later, when she hands Samuel over, Hannah says she has "lent" him to the Lord. The word carries more than a temporary loan:
"Therefore also I have lent him to the Lord," she adds: "as long as he lives he shall be lent to the Lord." "Lent" should rather be "given." She did not cling to him for herself. She did not make a scene at parting with the loved and lovable "son of her vows." She gives him up freely and gladly. Was it not for this very purpose that she waited long and prayed earnestly? She was not one of those who make a vow and afterwards regret it.
She did not arrive empty-handed. One writer ties her weaned affections to the full offerings she brought:
Hannah waited until Samuel was weaned. How good it is to bring into the house of God affections that are weaned from the resources of this world. Look at the fullness of what is brought in: "three bulls, and an ephah of flour, and a skin of wine." I do not wonder that worship follows. That is the highest service of all.
The same writer turns the loan the other way round. Children are lent to parents, and letting go is not easy:
We can imagine that it was not an easy thing for Hannah to leave her boy, whom she loved so much, in Shiloh. However, she knew this was according to God's will and to her own promise. Children are a wonderful gift of grace from the Lord. But to a certain extent they are only given "on loan." It would be selfish of us to want to keep them for ourselves. They belong to the Lord. If the Lord wants to use them for Himself, we should count it a privilege to give them to Him.
- Asked. Samuel came in answer to prayer. Hannah now gives back the gift she asked for.
- Weaned. She refuses the quick handover; the slow work of weaning is what makes the gift complete, and it costs her most.
- Fitted. Weaning pictures a soul quieted and satisfied in God. Commentators say that state is what real service requires.
- Brought. Weaned affections do not arrive empty. She comes with full offerings, and worship follows.
- Abiding. Her two aims set the goal for every child brought to God: Saviour first, then Lord for life.
And Elkanah her husband said to her, Do what is good in thy sight abide until thou hast weaned him; only, may Jehovah fulfil his word. And the woman abode, and gave her son suck until she weaned him.
Hannah had promised her son to God. Now she asks to stay home until he is weaned, and Elkanah agrees. His short answer carries a prayer, and the quiet years of nursing that follow become Samuel's first training.
Elkanah could have insisted on the yearly journey. Instead he leaves the timing to his wife and adds a prayer. One writer takes that prayer as a sign that he too expected something from this child.
Elkanah's own faith had less energy than his wife's. Still he says, "May the LORD establish His word." That shows he shared her expectation, at least in some measure, that blessing would come to Israel through the child Hannah's prayer had won. His words suggest he hoped God would give Samuel some special mission. Like his noble wife, he expected better days for God's people through the birth of this son.
Hannah stayed home in order to keep her vow, not to escape it. What she received she meant to give back.
Hannah goes up at the proper time, when the child was weaned — not before... Here was a true heart. For a woman like this, God's blessing was only the occasion, and the means, of giving that blessing back to Him. The Lord was the object of her soul. Who can suppose that she loved Samuel any less? She could well gather — and she was right — that such a child was not born for nothing: hers was a son given for God's purposes in Israel.
The waiting made the parting harder, not easier.
It would have been very easy for her to give the child at once. "No," she said, "I will wean the child." Mothers know that weaning is a long process, and during it the child becomes wound around the mother's affections... To me this shows how great a sacrifice Hannah made. She handed him over to the Lord fully weaned.
Weaning is more than a stage of childhood here. One writer ties it to a psalm about a quiet soul, and to what makes a person fit to serve God.
Samuel is born in a special way to be the servant of the Lord; but he must be weaned before he can become this. We cannot help thinking here of Psalm 131: "like a weaned child is my soul within me." As Perowne puts it: "A weaned child no longer cries, frets, and longs for the breast. It lies still and is content, because it is with its mother. In the same way my soul is weaned from all discontented thoughts and from all restless desires for earthly good. It waits quietly on God, finds its satisfaction in His presence, and rests peacefully in His arms." This is what proper service calls for: the childlike spirit — but the spirit of a weaned child.
Where does such quiet come from? One writer traces it to the discovery of Christ Himself.
Once believers discover what Christ can be to their hearts, and let Him take first place there... every attraction and enticement this world can offer will lose its power. This weaned state is in this way the effect of enjoying Christ Himself.
The verse names two things Hannah did: she nursed, and then she weaned. One writer takes both as a pattern for raising children.
First, she nursed her young son (1:23). In spiritual terms, we must give our children spiritual food for their souls. It is never too early to feed them with such food, the "pure spiritual milk of the word" (1 Pet. 2:2)... Also, breast milk is formed ahead of time, and inside the mother. There is no spiritual version of fast food or a ready meal. Our children will be blessed only as we give them something that has first grown in us, that we have experienced and practised ourselves.
Second, Hannah weaned her son (1 Sam. 1:23). Our children cannot depend only on spiritual food from their parents forever. We have to "wean" them. They need to learn to stand on their own two feet, and feed themselves spiritually. They need to build up their own close relationship to the Lord Jesus.
Hannah did not treat God's gift as a reason to sit back.
It was pure grace on God's part that Samuel became what he was. Yet Hannah also saw the human side: responsibility, which stands together with God's grace. She did not lean on God's grace and use it as an excuse to neglect her duty toward the heritage God had given her.
- Wait. Hannah stays home not to keep Samuel but to make her promise good; the delay is devotion, not hesitation.
- Word. Elkanah's prayer, "only, may the LORD establish His word," shows he shared her hope that this child had a mission for Israel.
- Weaning. Samuel must be weaned before he can serve — Psalm 131's picture of a soul quiet and satisfied in God, not fretting for what it lacks.
- Way. That quiet comes from enjoying Christ: when He has first place in the heart, the world's pull fades.
- Work. Feed, then wean: Hannah gave Samuel what she had lived herself, then let him stand alone — grace never cancels a parent's responsibility.
And she took him up with her when she had weaned him, with three bullocks, and one ephah of flour, and a flask of wine, and brought him to the house of Jehovah to Shiloh; and the boy was young.
Hannah had promised her son to God before he was born. This verse is the moment she keeps that promise. She walks up to Shiloh, where the house of the LORD stood, with the child, a bull, flour and wine. Two small details carry the weight: she waited until he was weaned, and she did not come empty-handed.
Hannah could have kept her vow the week Samuel was born. She chose the slower road, and those years of feeding and holding him made the parting cost more.
It would have been very easy for her to give the child at once. "No," she said, "I will wean the child." Mothers know that weaning takes a long time. In those years the child takes root in the mother's affections. The child becomes part of the mother. I believe this shows how great a sacrifice Hannah made. She handed him over to the Lord thoroughly weaned.
The animals, flour and wine are not travel supplies. Commentators read them as the standard offerings, each one picturing something of Christ.
When Hannah had weaned the child, she took him to Shiloh, and on the ground of sacrifice dedicated him to the Lord. The slain bullock for the burnt offering speaks of Christ in the complete devotedness of His death. The ephah of flour speaks of what He was in His lowly manhood under the eye of God. The bottle of wine speaks of the joy that God always found in Him. So, in this picture, the boy Samuel was presented to the Lord in the value of all that Christ is to God.
(The older translation quoted here says "three bullocks." The ESV says "a three-year-old bull.")
Why does a bull have to die before Eli the priest can take the child? Because this child, however much prayed for, comes to God on the same ground as everyone else.
One of the bullocks is sacrificed and the child brought to Eli. She knew this was important. We never read of a child rightly presented to the Lord without some symbol of the death of Christ going with it. Only on the ground of that death can any human being be acceptable to God.
Once the son was in her arms, she still did not take the promise back. Set beside the child, the offerings are almost nothing.
When God answers her request with the gift of Samuel, she does not take back her offer. This humble wife of Elkanah the Levite brings a costly sacrifice to the Lord: "three bullocks, and one ephah of flour, and a flask of wine." Yet it is nothing beside the gift of Samuel. She parts with her only son, the son God Himself had given her, the one she had "asked of God." So she shows that God was more precious to her than the son she had wanted so much.
The weaning and the offerings belong together. What fills God's house is a heart no longer feeding on other things.
Hannah waited until Samuel was weaned. How blessed to bring into the house of God affections which are weaned from the resources of this world. Look at the fullness of what she brings in: "three bullocks, and one ephah of flour, and a bottle of wine." No wonder worship follows. That is the highest service of all.
Beside the weaned child stands Eli, the aging priest at Shiloh. Age and standing do not wean a person.
There were two things very striking in the case of Samuel. He had been first weaned before he was presented to the Lord in Shiloh. You see that man of importance, who fails to hear the voice of the Lord in the assembly gathered to Him in Shiloh. Ah, he never was weaned. Have you been weaned, or did you take a place at Shiloh with your heart still linked with the world and like it in your ways?
Israel's revival did not begin in public. It began in a home, with one woman's hidden grief.
Away in Mount Ephraim a man named Elkanah lived with his wife Hannah. They were deeply attached to each other. Their one sorrow at home was that Hannah had no children. This godly, unknown woman went through hidden and bitter struggles of soul. In those struggles lay the beginning of revival for Israel. A praying woman brought in, in the ways of God, a new era.
- Asked — Hannah prayed for a son, and her hidden struggle became the start of a new era for Israel.
- Weaned — she did not hand over an infant. The waiting years wound the child into her affections, and that measures what the gift cost.
- Sacrificed — the bull, flour and wine picture Christ's death, His lowly manhood, and God's joy in Him. No one comes to God rightly except on the ground of that death.
- Returned — the offerings were costly, yet nothing beside Samuel himself. Handing him over showed that God mattered more to her than the son she had begged for.
- Worship — affections weaned from the world are what fill God's house, and worship is the result. The question the passage leaves is whether we have been weaned, or come with hearts still tied to the world.
And they slaughtered the bullock, and brought the boy to Eli.
Hannah comes to the house of the Lord at Shiloh with her weaned son and with offerings. Before she hands the boy over to Eli the priest, an animal dies — and commentators treat that death as the hinge of the whole scene.
The verse puts the death first. Mawson says why:
Blood had to be shed for Samuel so that he might be before God.
Mawson then turns the scene on his readers:
So we see that Samuel was not only CALLED, but CLEANSED. Before God could call any of us, blood had to be shed — not the blood of a bull, but the blood of Jesus. And all need to be cleansed by His precious blood. There is no salvation apart from it. Nothing else can take away your sins.
Grant reads the same detail as a rule that holds right through Scripture:
Hannah knew this was important. We never read of any child being rightly presented to the Lord without some symbol of the death of Christ. Only on the ground of that death can any human being be acceptable to God.
Willis notes that both parents act here. Giving a child back to God is an admission as much as a gift:
Notice, too, that the parents "slaughtered the bull and brought the child to Eli." We can only give our children back to the Lord through death. It is an admission that they deserve only death, but that Another died for them.
Hannah does not come with the boy alone. Fereday reads the animal, the flour and the wine as three pictures of Christ:
The slain bull for the burnt offering speaks of Christ in the absolute devotedness of His death. The ephah of flour speaks of what He was in His lowly manhood under the eye of God. The bottle of wine speaks of the joy that God ever found in Him. So, in picture, the boy Samuel was presented to Jehovah in the value of all that Christ is to God.
Kelly reads the size of Hannah's gift as a measure of her heart. (He follows an older translation of verse 24, which reads "three bulls"; the ESV has "a three-year-old bull.")
"She took him up with her, with three bulls, and one ephah of flour, and a bottle of wine... And they slaughtered a bull." There was openness of heart: did anything seem too good for the Lord?
Wallace reads the weaning the same way — as the cost, not just the timing:
Mothers know that weaning a child is a long process. The child gets entwined in the affections... I believe this shows the extent of the sacrifice that Hannah made. She handed him over to the Lord fully weaned.
Hannah leaves the boy with Eli. Grant does not pretend this was ideal:
She was returning him to the Lord, not for a time only, but permanently. We may well doubt that Eli could give him the same solid moral training and care that Hannah could. But by faith she was putting him into the Lord's hands, and the Lord cared for him despite Eli's inadequacy. In fact, the short time that Hannah had him no doubt left a lasting impression on his young heart that affected his whole life.
Stanley turns this into a warning for readers today:
Hannah not only brought him to the place, but also to the Lord. Many in this day may have been brought to the place, but not to the Person of the Lord.
The chapter closes not with loss but with worship, and Wallace notes that it spread beyond Hannah's own family:
Here is worship, fellowship in worship. Hannah and her husband worshipped; Eli, as he saw the result of the prayer, worshipped. What a wonderful thing prayer is.
- Blood first. The bull dies before the boy changes hands. Samuel could only stand before God on the ground of a death.
- Blood fulfilled. The animal was only a picture. Nothing but the blood of Jesus can cleanse anyone God calls.
- Blood applied. Parents give a child back to God on the same ground. The child deserves death, and Another died instead.
- Given whole. Hannah brings a weaned son and generous offerings — nothing seemed too good for the Lord.
- Ends in worship. Hannah leaves the boy with a weak priest, but puts him into the Lord's hands — and even Eli worships.
And she said, Oh my lord, [as] thy soul liveth, my lord, I am the woman that stood by thee here to pray to Jehovah.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
For this boy I prayed; and Jehovah has granted me my petition which I asked of him.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
And also I have lent him to Jehovah all the days that he lives, he is lent to Jehovah. And he worshipped Jehovah there.
Hannah stands in front of Eli with the son she once begged God for, and hands him over. It is the same child, given back in the same place where she asked for him. The verse turns on one word, translated "lent," and on the small act of worship that closes it.
Her word here goes back to a vow she made before Samuel was born:
She vowed that if God would hear her prayer and give her a son, she would give him to Jehovah all the days of his life, and no razor would ever touch his head. God heard her prayer, and she became the mother of Samuel (which means "asked of God"). When he was weaned, she gave him to serve Eli the priest. He was "lent" or "returned" to the Lord who gave him: see 1 Sam. 1:28, margin.
Commentators differ on the best English word here. One writer looks at how Hannah parted from her son:
"Lent" is better translated "given." She did not selfishly cling to him, nor make a scene at her parting with the loved and lovable "son of her vows" (Prov. 31:2). She gives him up freely, gladly, for was it not for this very purpose that she waited long and prayed earnestly? She was not one of those who make a vow and later go back on it (Eccl. 5:4–5).
Hannah's affection for Samuel is not in doubt; what she does with him is the point.
Here was a true heart. To such a person, blessing from God was only the occasion, as it was the means, of returning that blessing to Him. Jehovah was the object of her soul. Who can suppose that there was any lack of affection for Samuel? … She could well conclude that such a child was not born for nothing — that hers was a son given for the purposes of God in Israel. And she was right, for the secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him.
One writer weighs how young Samuel may have been:
Three years old is said to have been the age of weaning among the Hebrews. If this was Samuel's age when Hannah left him with Eli, then leaving her child at the tabernacle so young shows how deeply devoted she was to the interests of Jehovah and His worship. But "all things are possible for one who believes," and faith rises above nature. She gave him gladly, and surely with the assurance that the Lord had need of him, and would use him to honour His great and glorious name in Israel.
One writer draws from this a pattern for every parent:
These precious gifts must be given back — "loaned" (see New Translation) "to the Lord" as long as they live. … Then, as we realise Whose they are, we will feel our responsibility more solemnly. We will also know more deeply the One Who is ready and willing to give the infinite grace, patience and wisdom needed to train them for Himself. Notice, too, that the parents "slaughtered the bull, and they brought the child to Eli." We can only give our children back to the Lord through death, an acknowledgement that they only deserve death, but that Another died for them.
One writer marks where this happened, and what mattered more than the place:
So Samuel was dedicated to the Lord, at the place the Lord had chosen for His name — a place that had been almost forgotten. Hannah not only brought him to the place, but also to the Lord. Many in this day may have been brought to the place, but not to the Person of the Lord.
Who worshipped — the child, or the group around him? Commentators differ, and one lays out both readings:
If this refers to Samuel, it would argue that he was considerably more than three years old. The Revised Version notes that several ancient copies read they instead of he. If that is correct, it gives a beautiful picture of the whole company — Eli, Hannah, her husband, and others — praising the God of Israel together for this gift of His love to the nation.
If Samuel is the one worshipping, his service opens with worship. One writer notes how it ends:
The first expression of his service had been to worship before the Lord (1 Sam. 1:28); the worshipper's altar is the last expression of his service. Is not this life of faith fittingly framed by these two acts?
- Asked — the name Samuel means "asked of God"; he was an answered prayer before he was a gift given back.
- Returned — "lent" carries the sense of returned to the Lord who gave him; others read it as given outright.
- Freely — she did not cling or repent of her vow; faith rose above nature and gave gladly, not grudgingly.
- Through death — the parents killed a bull first; we hand our children back to God only on the ground that Another died for them.
- Worship — the transaction ends in worship, and worship frames the whole life that follows.