1 Samuel begins with a woman who cannot have a child and a rival wife who never lets her forget it. Year after year Hannah goes up to Shiloh and comes home in tears. One year she stays at the temple door and prays so hard, and so silently, that the old priest takes her for drunk. God gives her a son — and she gives him straight back: for this child I prayed; therefore also I have lent him to the LORD.
A study in 1 Samuel 1 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 8 min read
The LORD Had Shut Up Her Womb
“But unto Hannah he gave a worthy portion; for he loved Hannah: but the LORD had shut up her womb. And her adversary also provoked her sore, for to make her fret… Then said Elkanah her husband to her, Hannah, why weepest thou?… am not I better to thee than ten sons?”
1 Samuel 1:5-8
Elkanah has two wives, a compromise the account quietly marks as a failure — a step, Ellen White notes, prompted by a lack of faith in God. Peninnah has children and a sharp tongue; Hannah has neither, and gets the taunting “year by year.” Elkanah loves her and means well, but “am not I better to thee than ten sons?” misses what she is grieving. Some sorrows a good husband cannot reach. Hannah takes hers somewhere else.
“Hannah uttered no reproach. The burden which she could share with no earthly friend she cast upon God. Earnestly she pleaded that He would take away her reproach and grant her the precious gift of a son to nurture and train for Him.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 570
I Have Poured Out My Soul Before The LORD
“Now Hannah, she spake in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard: therefore Eli thought she had been drunken… No, my lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit… but have poured out my soul before the LORD… So the woman went her way, and did eat, and her countenance was no more sad.”
1 Samuel 1:13-18
In a place where worship had grown loud and careless, a woman praying silently looked so strange that the priest assumed she was drunk. Her answer is gentle, not defensive: “I have poured out my soul before the LORD.” And then the striking detail — her face changes and she eats again before anything about her circumstances has changed. The child is still months away. What lifted was the weight, and it lifted at the place of prayer.
For This Child I Prayed
“And she vowed a vow… if thou wilt indeed look on the affliction of thine handmaid… but wilt give unto thine handmaid a man child, then I will give him unto the LORD all the days of his life… and she bare a son, and called his name Samuel, saying, Because I have asked him of the LORD.”
1 Samuel 1:11, 20
Hannah’s vow is unusual: she asks for a son not to keep but to give away — dedicated to God for life, a lifelong Nazarite like Samson (Judges 13). The name she chooses, Samuel, means “asked of God,” so that every time it is spoken it says what he is: an answered prayer, on loan. “The LORD remembered her” (verse 19) — the same phrase used of Noah, of Abraham, of a God who does not forget.
I Have Lent Him To The LORD
“For this child I prayed; and the LORD hath given me my petition which I asked of him: therefore also I have lent him to the LORD; as long as he liveth he shall be lent to the LORD.”
1 Samuel 1:27-28
She waits until he is weaned — three years, perhaps — and then walks him to Shiloh and leaves him there, with the priest whose own sons are a scandal. The hardest part of a vow is not the making but the keeping, when the thing vowed is now a small person you love. Hannah does it because she never regarded him as hers in the first place. He was a gift consecrated to God from the start, and she would not keep back from the Giver what was already His.
“She loved her child with all the devotion of a mother’s heart… but she had received him as a treasure consecrated to God, and she would not withhold from the Giver His own.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 570
