Bible Commentaries

Hannah's prayer for a son. - 1 Samuel 1:9-11. “After the eating at Shiloh, and afterthe drinking,” i.e., after the sacrificial meal was over, Hannah rose up witha troubled heart, to pour out her grief in prayer before God, whilst Eli wassitting before the door-posts of the palace of Jehovah, and vowed thisvow: “Lord of Zebaoth, if Thou regardest the distress of Thy maiden, andgivest men's seed to Thy maiden, I will give him to the Lord all his lifelong, and no razor shall come upon his head.” The choice of the infinitiveabsolute שׁתה instead of the infinitive construct is analogous tothe combination of two nouns, the first of which is defined by a suffix, andthe second written absolutely (see e.g., וזמרת עזּי, Exodus 15:2; cf. 2 Samuel 23:5, and Ewald, §339, b). The words from ועלי onwards to נפשׁ מרת form two circumstantial clausesinserted in the main sentence, to throw light upon the situation and thefurther progress of the affair. The tabernacle is called “the palace of Jehovah” (cf. 1 Samuel 2:22), not onaccount of the magnificence and splendour of the building, but as thedwelling-place of Jehovah of hosts, the God-king of Israel, as in Psalm 5:8,etc. מזוּזה is probably a porch, which had been placed beforethe curtain that formed the entranced into the holy place, when thetabernacle was erected permanently at Shiloh. נפשׁ מרת, troubled in soul (cf. 2 Kings 4:27). תבכּה וּבכה is really subordinate to תּתפּלּל, in the sense of “weeping muchduring her prayer.” The depth of her trouble was also manifest in thecrowding together of the words in which she poured out the desire of herheart before God: “If Thou wilt look upon the distress of Thine handmaid,and remember and not forget,” etc. “Men's seed” (semen virorum), i.e., amale child. אנשׁים is the plural of אישׁ, a man (seeEwald, §186-7), from the root אשׁ, which combines the two ideas offire, regarded as life, and giving life and firmness. The vow contained twopoints:(1) she would give the son she had prayed for to be the Lord's all the daysof his life, i.e., would dedicate him to the Lord for a lifelong service, which,as we have already observed at 1 Samuel 1:1, the Levites as such were not boundto perform; and (2) no razor should come upon his head, by which he wasset apart as a Nazarite for his whole life (see at Numbers 6:2., and Judges 13:5). The Nazarite, again, was neither bound to perform a lifelong servicenor to remain constantly at the sanctuary, but was simply consecrated fora certain time, whilst the sacrifice offered at his release from the vowshadowed forth a complete surrender to the Lord. The second point,therefore, added a new condition to the first, and one which was notnecessarily connected with it, but which first gave the true consecration tothe service of the Lord at the sanctuary. At the same time, the qualificationof Samuel for priestly functions, such as the offering of sacrifice, canneither be deduced from the first point in the vow, nor yet from thesecond. If, therefore, at a later period, when the Lord had called him to be aprophet, and had thereby placed him at the head of the nation, Samuelofficiated at the presentation of sacrifice, he was not qualified to performthis service either as a Levite or as a lifelong Nazarite, but performed itsolely by virtue of his prophetic calling.

But when Hannah prayed much (i.e., a long time) before the Lord, and Elinoticed her mouth, and, as she was praying inwardly, only saw her lipsmove, but did not hear her voice, he thought she was drunken, and calledout to her: “How long dost thou show thyself drunken? put away thywine from thee,” i.e., go away and sleep off thine intoxication (cf. 1 Samuel 25:37). לבּהּ על מדבּרת, lit. speaking to her heart. על is not to be confounded with אל (Genesis 24:45), but has thesubordinate idea of a comforting address, as in Genesis 34:3, etc.

Hannah answered: “No, my lord, I am a woman of an oppressed spirit. Ihave not drunk wine and strong drink, but have poured out my soul beforethe Lord (see Psalm 42:5). Do not count thine handmaid for a worthlesswoman, for I have spoken hitherto out of great sighing and grief.” לפני נתן, to set or lay before a person, i.e., generally to give aperson up to another; here to place him in thought in the position ofanother, i.e., to take him for another. שׂיה, meditation, inwardmovement of the heart, sighing.

Eli then replied: “Go in peace, and the God of Israel give (grant) thyrequest (שׁלתך for שׁאלתך), which thou hastasked of Him.” This word of the high priest was not a prediction, but apious wish, which God in His grace most gloriously fulfilled.

Hannah then went her way, saying, “Let thine handmaid find grace in thineeyes,” i.e., let me be honoured with thy favour and thine intercession, andwas strengthened and comforted by the word of the high priest, whichassured her that her prayer would be heard by God; and she did eat, “andher countenance was no more,” sc., troubled and sad, as it had been before. This may be readily supplied from the context, through which the wordcountenance (פּנים) acquires the sense of a troubledcountenance, as in Job 9:27.

Samuel's birth, and dedication to the Lord. - 1 Samuel 1:19, 1 Samuel 1:20. The next morningElkanah returned home to Ramah (see at 1 Samuel 1:1) with his two wives, havingfirst of all worshipped before the Lord; after which he knew his wifeHannah, and Jehovah remembered her, i.e., heard her prayer. “In therevolution of the days,” i.e., of the period of her conception andpregnancy, Hannah conceived and bare a son, whom she called Samuel;“for (she said) I have asked him of the Lord.” The name שׁמוּאל ( Σαμουήλ , lxx) is not formed from שׁמוּ = שׁם and אל, name of God (Ges. Thes. p. 1434), but from אל שׁמוּע,heard of God, a Deo exauditus, with an elision of the ע (see Ewald, §275,a., Not. 3); and the words “because I have asked him of the Lord” are notan etymological explanation of the name, but an exposition founded uponthe facts. Because Hannah had asked him of Jehovah, she gave him thename, “the God-heard,” as a memorial of the hearing of her prayer.

When Elkanah went up again with his family to Shiloh, to present hisyearly sacrifice and his vow to the Lord, Hannah said to her husband thatshe would not go up till she had weaned the boy, and could present him tothe Lord, that he might remain there for ever. הימים זבח, the sacrifice of the days, i.e., which he was accustomed to offer onthe days when he went up to the sanctuary; really, therefore, the annualsacrifice. It follows from the expression “and his vow,” that Elkanah hadalso vowed a vow to the Lord, in case the beloved Hannah should have ason. The vow referred to the presentation of a sacrifice. And this explainsthe combination of את־נדרו with לזבּח.

(Note: The lxx add to τὰς εὐχὰς αὐτοῦ the clause καὶ πάσας τὰς δεκάτας τῆς γῆς αὐτοῦ (“and allthe tithes of his land”). This addition is just as arbitrary as thealteration of the singular נדרו into the plural τὰς εὐχὰς αὐτοῦ . The translator overlooked the special reference of the wordנדרו to the child desired by Elkanah, and imagined - probablywith Deuteronomy 12:26-27 in his mind, where vows are ordered to be paid atthe sanctuary in connection with slain offerings and sacrificial meals - that when Elkanah made his annual journey to the tabernacle hewould discharge all his obligations to God, and consequently would payhis tithes. The genuineness of this additional clause cannot besustained by an appeal to Josephus (Ant. v. 10, 3), who also has δεκάτας τε ἔφερον , for Josephus wrote his work uponthe basis of the Alexandrian version. This statement of Josephus isonly worthy of notice, inasmuch as it proves the incorrectness of theconjecture of Thenius, that the allusion to the tithes wasintentionally dropped out of the Hebrew text by copyists, whoregarded Samuel's Levitical descent as clearly established by 1 Chronicles 6:7-13 and 1 Chronicles 6:19-21. For Josephus (l. c. §2) expressly describes Elkanahas a Levite, and takes no offence at the offering of tithes attributedto him in the Septuagint, simply because he was well acquainted withthe law, and knew that the Levites had to pay to the priests a tenthof the tithes that they received from the other tribes, as a heave-offering of Jehovah (Numbers 18:26.; cf. Nehemiah 10:38). Consequently thepresentation of tithe on the part of Elkanah, if it were really wellfounded in the biblical text, would not furnish any argument againsthis Levitical descent.)

Weaning took place very late among the Israelites. According to 2 Macc. 7:28, the Hebrew mothers were in the habit of suckling their children forthree years. When the weaning had taken place, Hannah would bring herson up to the sanctuary, to appear before the face of the Lord, and remainthere for ever, i.e., his whole life long. The Levites generally were onlyrequired to perform service at the sanctuary from their twenty-fifth totheir fiftieth year (Numbers 8:24-25); but Samuel was to be presented to theLord immediately after his weaning had taken place, and to remain at thesanctuary for ever, i.e., to belong entirely to the Lord. To this end he wasto receive his training at the sanctuary, that at the very earliest waking upof his spiritual susceptibilities he might receive the impressions of thesacred presence of God. There is no necessity, therefore, to understand theword גּמל (wean) as including what followed the weaning,namely, the training of the child up to his thirteenth year (Seb. Schmidt),on the ground that a child of three years old could only have been a burdento Eli: for the word never has this meaning, not even in 1 Kings 11:20; and,as O. v. Gerlach has observed, his earliest training might have beensuperintended by one of the women who worshipped at the door of thetabernacle (1 Samuel 2:22).

Elkanah expressed his approval of Hannah's decision, and added, “only theLord establish His word,” i.e., fulfil it. By “His word” we are not tounderstand some direct revelation from God respecting the birth anddestination of Samuel, as the Rabbins suppose, but in all probability theword of Eli the high priest to Hannah, “The God of Israel grant thypetition” (1 Samuel 1:17), which might be regarded by the parents of Samuel afterhis birth as a promise from Jehovah himself, and therefore might naturallyexcite the wish and suggest the prayer that the Lord would graciously fulfilthe further hopes, which the parents cherished in relation to the son whomthey had dedicated to the Lord by a vow. The paraphrase of דּברו in the rendering given by the lxx, τὸ ἐξελθὸν ὲκ τοῦ στόματός σου , is the subjective view of the translatorhimself, and does not warrant an emendation of the original text.

As soon as the boy was weaned, Hannah brought him, although still aנער, i.e., a tender boy, to Shiloh, with a sacrifice of three oxen, anephah of meal, and a pitcher of wine, and gave him up to Eli when the ox(bullock) had been slain, i.e., offered in sacrifice as a burnt-offering. Thestriking circumstance that, according to 1 Samuel 1:24, Samuel's parents broughtthree oxen with them to Shiloh, and yet in 1 Samuel 1:25 the ox (הפּר)alone is spoken of as being slain (or sacrificed), may be explained verysimply on the supposition that in 1 Samuel 1:25 that particular sacrifice is referredto, which was associated with the presentation of the boy, that is to say,the burnt-offering by virtue of which the boy was consecrated to the Lordas a spiritual sacrifice for a lifelong service at His sanctuary, whereas theother two oxen served as the yearly festal offering, i.e., the burnt-offeringsand thank-offerings which Elkanah presented year by year, and thepresentation of which the writer did not think it needful to mention,simply because it followed partly from 1 Samuel 1:3 and partly from the Mosaiclaw.

(Note: The interpretation of שׁלשׁה בּפרים by ἐν μόσχῳ τριετίζοντι (lxx), upon which Thenius would found analteration of the text, is proved to be both arbitrary and wrong by thefact that the translators themselves afterwards mention the θυσία , which Elkanah brought year by year, and the μόσχος ,and consequently represent him as offering at least two animals, indirect opposition to the μόσχῳ τριετίζοντι . This discrepancycannot be removed by the assertion that in 1 Samuel 1:24 the sacrificialanimal intended for the dedication of the boy is the only onementioned; and the presentation of the regular festal sacrifice is takenfor granted, for an ephah of meal would not be the proper quantity tobe offered in connection with a single ox, since, according to the lawin Numbers 15:8-9, only three-tenths of an ephah of meal were requiredwhen an ox was presented as a burnt-offering or slain offering. Thepresentation of an ephah of meal presupposes the offering of threeoxen, and therefore shows that in 1 Samuel 1:24 the materials are mentionedfor all the sacrifices that Elkanah was about to offer.)

When the boy was presented, his mother made herself known to the highpriest as the woman who had previously prayed to the Lord at that place(see 1 Samuel 1:11.), and said, “For this child I prayed; and the Lord hathgranted me my request which I asked of Him: therefore I also make himone asked of the Lord all the days that he liveth; he is asked of the Lord.”וגם אנכי: I also; et ego vicissim (Cler.). השׁאיל, to leta person ask, to grant his request, to give him what he asks (Exodus 12:36),signifies here to make a person “asked” (שׁאוּל). The meaning tolend, which the lexicons give to the word both here and Exodus 12:36, has noother support than the false rendering of the lxx, and is altogetherunsuitable both in the one and the other. Jehovah had not lent the son toHannah, but had given him (see 1 Samuel 1:11); still less could a man lend his son tothe Lord. The last clause of 1 Samuel 1:28, “and he worshipped the Lord there,”refers to Elkanah, qui in votum Hannae consenserat, and not to Samuel. Ona superficial glance, the plural ישׁתּחווּ, which is found insome Codd., and in the Vulgate, Syriac, and Arabic, appears the moresuitable; but when we look more closely at the connection in which theclause stands, we see at once that it does not wind up the foregoingaccount, but simply introduces the closing act of the transference ofSamuel. Consequently the singular is perfectly appropriate; andnotwithstanding the fact that the subject is not mentioned, the allusion toSamuel is placed beyond all doubt. When Hannah had given up her son tothe high priest, his father Elkanah first of all worshipped before the Lordin the sanctuary, and then Hannah worshipped in the song of praise,which follows in 1 Samuel 2:1-10.