1 Samuel 1 · NIVAC

Original Meaning

Background of Hannah and Her Problems (1:1–8)

THE OPENING UNIT of this chapter introduces Samuel’s family. The details of geography and family heritage (1:1–2) are clues that Samuel was born to propitious circumstances, and these details anticipate the significance of his birth. The fact that Elkanah’s long line is preserved in the sacred traditions indicates that Samuel is from aristocracy. In fact, the Chronicler gives the added detail that Samuel’s line is from the Kohathite family of Levitical priests (1 Chron. 6:26–27, 33–34), who were originally responsible for caring for the ark of the covenant (Num. 3:31). Nor is Elkanah’s polygamy a problem (1 Sam. 1:2), since such practices were not uncommon in the Old Testament.3 Indeed, Hannah’s inability to conceive children may well have given rise to the need for a second wife.4

This opening paragraph contains several features that illustrate the righteousness of Samuel’s parents. Elkanah is depicted as an upstanding Israelite who cares deeply for his family and carefully attends to his religious commitments. (1) He gives himself faithfully to the proper worship of Yahweh at great personal cost and sacrifice (“year after year this man went up,” 1:3). The law of Moses mandated regular trips to the tabernacle to worship (Deut. 16:16), and Elkanah is a faithful Israelite, concerned to fulfill his vows to Yahweh. The yearly festival in view here is likely the Feast of Tabernacles, celebrated at the end of each summer (Lev. 23:33–43), though it may also have been a private, personal pilgrimage distinct from the regularly prescribed requirements.5 (2) Elkanah carefully and generously distributes meat to his family, likely a common practice during the festivals in which certain sacrifices were offered (1:4). (3) Finally, Elkanah loves Hannah deeply, despite her unenviable position as a barren wife (1:5, 8).

The concluding statement of verse 2 sets up the painful situation for Hannah: “Peninnah had children, but Hannah had none.” In the ancient social setting, the most important role for a wife was to bear children. Men of financial means needed to have a male heir to continue the line, and barren wives suffered the embarrassment and shame of seeing another wife provided for their husbands, as Hagar did for Sarah and Bilhah for Rachel. Elkanah’s impressive past (1:1) will find a future in Peninnah’s children rather than through his favorite wife, Hannah. Hannah’s intense pain is exacerbated by the insufferable cruelty inflicted on her by her counterpart, Peninnah: “Her rival kept provoking her in order to irritate her” (1:6). This is a perpetual burden for Hannah, since it recurs each year at the time for the festival in Shiloh (1:7).

The passing reference to the ruling priestly family is a subtle reminder that the nation has strayed far from God (1:3): “Hophni and Phinehas, the two sons of Eli, were priests of the LORD.” The next few chapters reveal just how apostate the priestly leadership has become. But even as this becomes clear in the narrative, it is equally clear that Samuel has been prepared from birth to lead the nation back to God.

Hannah’s Prayer (1:9–18)

Bridging Contexts

HANNAH’S PROBLEM AND ITS SOLUTION. The internal literary structure of 1 Samuel 1 shows the timeless message of Samuel’s birth narrative. The chapter opens with a problem. Hannah’s pain is more than she can bear. A barren wife was seen as an embarrassment in the ancient world. Children were gifts of God, but they were also important economically in the ancient social structure. They contributed to the family wealth through their work, they cared for their parents in old age, and they ensured the future of the family by inheriting the family wealth. Hannah’s inability to fulfill what was seen as her raison d’être was devastating. When Elkanah follows social custom by having a second wife so that children can be brought into the home, that second wife proves to be a constant source of pain and agony to Hannah. Peninnah hurts her deeply, to the point of emotional depression (she weeps and cannot eat, 1:7).

Hannah’s earnest prayer in the Shiloh sanctuary is the pivotal point in the narrative. After Eli blesses her, she is able to eat, and “her face was no longer downcast” (cf. vv. 7–8, 18). There is a telling contrast between the Hannah who is too despondent to eat and the Hannah who emerges from God’s presence full of hope and confidence. Though her circumstances have not yet changed, she has found a peace with God, a peace that leaves her buoyant and capable of returning with her family. The way in which the narrative immediately turns to the birth of Samuel (1:19–20) brings quick resolution to Hannah’s problem. In response to her changed circumstances, she piously fulfills her vow by giving the boy over to the Lord.

This problem-solution literary structure enables us to focus on the timeless features of this text, which we should use in building a bridge to our contemporary context. This passage is not advocating polygamy for our times, though it does not condemn Elkanah’s polygamy. The practice of multiple wives was always and forever less than God’s ideal for Israel (Gen. 2:18, 24), and if we read this text in light of others in the Old Testament, it is clear that, wherever practiced, polygamy resulted in problems (e.g., Gen. 16:4; 30:1). While Elkanah is following cultural custom, especially in light of Hannah’s barrenness, this is certainly not the timeless truth we would apply to today’s context. Rather, the problem-solution structure we have observed above, pivoting as it does around Hannah’s prayer in the Shiloh sanctuary, emphasizes Hannah’s personal piety and highlights the importance of Samuel’s birth.

A new era in salvation history. Hannah’s spiritual sensitivity and devotion are the anvil God uses to hammer out his will for her and her family. Moreover, Hannah’s piety results in the introduction of Samuel into the biblical story, whose significance goes far beyond Elkanah’s and Hannah’s circumstances. His arrival in salvation history is notable on two levels. (1) This chapter (taken together with chs. 2–3) begins a new stage in God’s overarching plan of salvation as it unfolds in the pages of the Old Testament. (2) The account of Samuel’s birth reveals the way God uses holy individuals and the circumstances of their lives to accomplish his purposes. Let us look at these separately.

(1) This chapter introduces Samuel as the miraculous and gracious gift of God to Hannah and to the nation Israel. The recurring wordplay in his birth narrative using the name Samuel and the forms of the root “ask, request” portrays Samuel as the one desperately needed, not only for Hannah but especially for the whole nation.

This broader, national significance of the passage is apparent from its location at the beginning of 1 Samuel. The book of Judges had concluded with accounts of brutal intertribal warfare and cruel acts of cultic and moral disobedience. The birth of Samuel is cast against this shocking backdrop. Israel is barren like Hannah; each has a desperate need that only God can satisfy. The chapter opens with the account of God’s intervening on behalf of both Hannah and Israel. He delivers Hannah from her barrenness and intervenes in the history of Israel. The deliverance is the same for Hannah and Israel, that is, the birth of a weak and innocent child. The birth of Samuel signals the end of Hannah’s painful sterility and Israel’s anchorless apostasy.

This scenario reminds us of other times in biblical history when the birth of a child was the answer to hopelessness and desperate need. Isaac’s birth marked the fulfillment of the great ancestral promises and the beginning of God’s salvation from sin. Moses’ birth initiated the beginning of salvation for the nation of Israel, so long in bondage to Egypt. And the birth of the Messiah will initiate an era of salvation (Isa. 9:6–7). God seems to find particular delight in using the ultimate in weakness and vulnerability—a newborn baby—as the means of accomplishing his great purposes. In human weakness, God’s strength can be seen with greater clarity. When the apostle Paul pleaded for the Lord to take away his thorn in the flesh, God told him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Thus Paul could say, “I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me” (2 Cor. 12:9).

(2) The significance of Samuel’s birth narrative centers not on Samuel himself but on his mother, Hannah. Much of the Old Testament historical books are devoted to narrating events surrounding Israelite leadership: kings and prophets. Indeed, the majority of 1-2 Samuel will center around Samuel himself and the two kings he anoints, Saul and David. But here, as elsewhere in a few other instances, the narrative considers events related to an average Israelite family. Elkanah was apparently from aristocracy, but he was no king or leading priest. He was only an individual who worked, ate, and took his family to Shiloh regularly for religious observances. His wife Hannah became the center of the narrative because of her pain and the saintly way in which she and Elkanah handled themselves.

All of this illustrates the way God continually works out his purposes through the everyday affairs of righteous people. He is looking for people whom he can afford to bless, and in Hannah, God finds a woman who can be trusted. Building on her devotion, God provides Israel’s future deliverer through her, illustrating again that God takes the weakness and barrenness of his people to demonstrate his might. The chapter is a witness to God’s transforming power, which creates a new historical possibility where none has existed.12 Hannah waits—and worships—in her barrenness, and so does Israel. The answer for both is a surprising gift of grace.

Contemporary Significance

CHRISTIANITY AND POSTMODERNISM. Samuel was born in a period of great moral and spiritual crisis. Israelite society had become ethically pluralistic, and everyone was doing whatever seemed right in his or her own opinion (Judg. 17:6; 21:25). Without righteous leadership, the nation was perilously close to ruin. Internal moral decay was leading to social unrest and conflict. This portrait of ancient Israel offers alarming parallels with modern culture, which at the beginning of the twenty-first century has been described as postmodern.

It is impossible to define with precision what current philosophers mean by postmodernism. Indeed, few generations have been able to analyze and critique their own philosophical climate. But most agree that postmodern America is committed to at least three principles.13 (1) Postmodernism is postrationalistic. It rejects the idea that truth is absolute and purely rational. By dethroning the human intellect, postmoderns accept other paths to truth besides reason, such as the emotions and intuition.

(2) Postmodernism is postindividualistic. Rejecting modernism’s paradigm of the self-determining, autonomous individual, who stands outside any community, postmoderns prefer to think of the individual within community.

(3) Postmodernism is postnoeticentric, which means it desires more than knowledge for knowledge’s sake. Our world today is full of data and information. But postmoderns want more than purely intellectual apprehension. They want to know how to live well. Knowledge is of no value unless it works, unless it helps the postmoderns get along in life. In this sense, the fiercely pragmatic postmodern will consider something “true” if it works. If it does not work, then it is not true regardless of how much empirical data seems to support it.

Of course, much of this philosophy is not bad. American culture has needed more emphasis on the community and social responsibility. But one of the consequences of this combination of ideas is the assumption that there is no absolute truth governing the universe. Since truth has to be defined for each context, it is up to each community to determine truth in the sense of finding what works for it and its individuals. Truth, then, is communally defined. The community accepts as truth the laws and ideals agreed upon by the majority. Truth is determined by a sort of collective knowledge (or ignorance, as the case may be).

The many cultural differences between twenty-first-century America and ancient Israel at the time of Samuel’s birth are obvious. Such profound historical and sociological differences over three millennia are hard to imagine. Nevertheless, human nature is limited in its inherent, psychological composition. As finite beings, humans are not very creative or imaginative in expressing their desire to be independent of God’s covenants and loving direction. Israel’s tendency to fall into rebellion over and over again, as narrated in Judges, is not unlike America’s propensity to strive for a secular, nonreligiously driven society. The libertarian impulses in America during the last half of the twentieth century provide parallels to ancient Israel’s rebuff of Yahweh’s covenant in the period just prior to Samuel’s birth. More apropos theologically and more alarmingly, the church has displayed similar propensities toward abandoning biblical principles and redefining the nature of life with God.

God’s answer today is the same as then, and Samuel’s birth presents us with two aspects of that answer. When a nation is in such despair, the only hope is the appearance of righteous individuals, both in national leadership and in the common citizenry. First Samuel 1 announces both. Samuel is the coming new leadership, and he is given to the nation through a righteous family. Let us consider the significance of this passage in terms of leadership and individual responsibility.

(1) Israel’s problems were deeply rooted in the national psyche, but they were compounded by her failed religious leadership. Eli and his sons were so perverse that they provided no hope of renewal. Without godly leadership, any nation faces eventual ruin. The birth of Samuel provided hope for the future for Israel. So too for modern states, the role of leadership should not be overlooked. The twentieth century has left behind examples of tyrannical despots who manipulated the nations in their charge and inflicted untold pain and suffering on the masses (Adolf Hitler, Romania’s Ceausescu, Cambodia’s Pol Pot, and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, to name the most notorious). But other national leaders too have allowed the spiritual infrastructure of their nations to deteriorate through less dramatic and less obviously evil policies.

Now, the beginning of the twenty-first century has produced Osama bin Laden, in perhaps a chilling forewarning of the kind of despotism we can expect in the future. As illustrated by 1 Samuel 1, God desires to use godly leaders to reform nations. In the Old Testament, kingship was a source of great potential good for the nation Israel. It became the means through which God himself would eventually redeem his people (i.e., through the Messiah). But kingship was also a potential for great evil. These principles are no less true of the Christian church generally, which also suffers from a lack of godly leadership.

(2) The second necessary element in the spiritual rebirth of a nation is probably more important, though it receives less attention in the Bible and in the modern world: the importance of a godly citizenry. A devout ruler alone cannot reform a rebellious and sinful populace. Interestingly, the good news of this passage begins with the righteous, everyday affairs of a faithful family. Through her suffering and trials, Hannah was used as an instrument of God to initiate spiritual rebirth in Israel. Like Elizabeth and Mary after her, she was honored by God with miraculous conception in order to show God’s mercy and grace and to continue his salvation story. But without a host of other, nameless Israelites who also prayed and lived their lives in quiet devotion, such reform would not be possible. These individuals become the salt and light of their society (Matt. 5:13–16).

I believe the Bible illustrates that social change and reformation takes place primarily in this way. As the waves of the sea slowly and gradually alter the landscape of the seashore, we need billow after billow of godly people, swelling up to contribute their influence on our culture and slowly to chip away at the evil in our society. To use another metaphor, as the slow but incessant drip, drip of water on a granite boulder will eventually change its surface, so Christians must be faithful to God’s Word, living devout and godly lifestyles over the long duration in order to reform the church and the nation.

(3) Finally, we should also note the connection between Hannah’s suffering and her effective prayer. She had every reason to be bitter (1:10). She was incapable of bearing children, Peninnah ridiculed her, Elkanah was unable to comfort her, and Eli mistook her motives. Yet rather than capitulate to her emotions, she let her circumstances drive her to prayer. Hannah’s profound pain prodded her to an abiding faith, which issued forth in earnest prayer. Her prayer and vow exemplify the persistent and tenacious kind of faith that is borne out of pain and suffering. She is an example of the believing soul lost in desire before a heavenly Father. Bonhoeffer summarizes Jesus’ teaching on prayer in this way:

We are privileged to know that he knows our needs before we ask him. This is what gives Christian prayer its boundless confidence and its joyous certainty. It matters little what form of prayer we adopt or how many words we use, what matters is the faith which lays hold on God and touches the heart of the Father who knew us long before we came to him. Genuine prayer is never “good works,” an exercise or a pious attitude, but it is always the prayer of a child to a Father. Hence it is never given to self-display, whether before God, ourselves, or other people. If God were ignorant of our needs, we should have to think out beforehand how we should tell him about them, what we should tell him, and whether we should tell him or not. Thus faith, which is the mainspring of Christian prayer, excludes all reflection and premeditation.14

The introduction of Samuel into the biblical story line begins with the heartfelt and effective prayer of his mother: “The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective” (James 5:16b, NRSV).

Original Meaning

Hannah’s Prayer (1:9–18)

WHILE AT THE Lord’s temple for the festival at Shiloh, Hannah weeps and prays earnestly, making a vow to Yahweh.6 In despair, she turns to Yahweh for help. Her years of barrenness have convinced her that any children born to her will be nothing short of a miraculous gift from God. Therefore, she vows to return such a precious gift to God forever, if he will only answer her cry. Her vow also promises that “no razor will ever be used on his head” (1:11), which implies the so-called “Nazirite” vow.

The term nazir (“Nazirite”) is defined in Numbers 6, where a man or woman can make a special vow of separation to Yahweh. The vow involves a period of time in which the Nazirite abstains from wine and other products of the vine, uses no razor on his or her head, and avoids contact with dead bodies. Numbers 6 probably regulated and standardized an already ancient Semitic institution. After the period of separation was over, Numbers 6 prescribed a ritual for terminating the vow. Interestingly, in the case of Samson (Judg. 13) and Samuel, the vow does not appear to be temporary but permanent. Thus, Hannah is offering her unborn child as a permanent Nazirite, whose life will be wholly and exclusively God’s.7

The encounter between Eli and Hannah contains an ironic twist. Eli represents the corrupt and apostate leadership of the priesthood and Hannah the simple faith that issues from suffering and pain. Yet Eli mistakes her earnestness for drunkenness. The spiritual leader of the nation is unable to discern the spiritual significance of this woman’s struggle. In the end, he recognizes in her the faith he was supposed to represent (1:17). After she has poured out her soul to Yahweh (1:15), she finds a new peace with herself and her circumstances. She is able to eat and is no longer disconsolate (1:18).

The Birth of Samuel (1:19–20)