The book of 1 Samuel begins with a story that features what are becoming familiar elements in our study of the women of the Bible. First, a woman struggles to conceive. Second, she is one of two wives who are rivals. Third, the child the Lord gives in answer to prayer is someone very special in his plan. I love that another important storyline, that which leads to the establishment of the monarchy in Israel, starts in this way-- with an intense and emotional individual struggle with infertility, which is common for so many women. It tells me again that bearing children is not to be treated as a side thing which interferes with more important work. Whether a woman does or doesn't have children, the ability she possesses to do so is major. It's extremely important in the lives of most individual women, but it's also vital to the story of civilization who will be brought into the world, and by whom.
What we learn about women
- God often brings important developments of his plan through the lives of children who were difficult to conceive.
- Infertility reminds us of God's power over our bodies and the creation of new life.
- Deep misery over relationships can take us to God and be transformed as we build our most important relationship with our Creator.
What I'm wondering
- Did Mary the mother of Jesus think of Hannah's prayer when she composed her own song in Luke chapter 1?
- Where in my life is God waiting to meet me in my misery to comfort and provide what I want and need?
Hannah is Elkanah's wife, and their family are true people of God. They travel each year from the hill country of Ephraim to worship the Lord at the Tabernacle at Shiloh. It is on this trip that Hannah's lack of children always particularly plagues her, because her "rival" Penninah receives a much larger portion of the family's sacrificed meat to share with her children than Hannah does, and she harasses Hannah and makes her feel miserable about her lack of children. It gets so extreme that Hannah weeps until she cannot eat. Have you ever been there? This level of misery can be debilitating, but it can also have the unexpected effect, which it does here, of pushing people directly into the presence of the Lord, and becoming a means of healing and transformation.
Elkanah loves Hannah and wants her to feel better, but he cannot help her with her infertility. In an echo of the judgement of the women of Bethlehem about Ruth being worth more than seven sons to Naomi, Elkanah asks, "Don't I mean more to you than 10 sons?" But if Hannah validates that assessment, the text doesn't say so.
Following the description of this conversation, there are some interesting postural (yes, postural) details given. After the family is finished eating, the text says, Hannah stands up. She goes to the temple, where Eli the priest is sitting, by the door. Hannah stands up, Eli is sitting. Does it mean much? If nothing else, I think it shows Hannah driven to rise, to take action, the action being to approach the Lord. Eli lives in the Lord's presence, but he is sitting. Hannah seems to have the momentum. This makes sense since the son that will come out of her visit to God's house will have so much influence on the place.
In the sanctuary, Hannah is praying in bitter anguish, her lips moving without the sound of her voice. Eli misjudges her as a drunk. When Hannah corrects him, he offers her a blessing, and a prayer that God will give her what she asks for. What Hannah has been doing is pleading for a son, but also offering that son to God. I wonder if this was some kind of breakthrough for Hannah. Was there something special about her desperation in this time of prayer? Something seems to have changed, because when she leaves the sanctuary, her face is no longer downcast and she is able to eat. Perhaps in her rivalry with Penninah, she had been hoping for status and power over her enemy from children who would be her own? Is her desire changed in this prayer from a means to secure her own status, to a holy desire for motherhood as a part of her ability to glorify God in her female humanity? By seeking to bear a child for God instead of for herself maybe she has been able to remove the power of the selfish part of her desire to make her miserable, while continuing to hold the desire in a redeemed form? I have often been surprised to find what happens to my desires and feelings when I take them to the Lord in anguish. Sometimes a thing I thought I would have to relinquish is returned in a different form. Or sometimes a thing I thought I was entitled to is able to be released. But often in God's presence a light is shined that changes one's perspective completely. I think Hannah has an experience like this here.
Shortly after the family trip to Shiloh, Hannah finally becomes pregnant with the son she has pleaded for. The next year she skips her trip to Shiloh, staying home with Samuel (his name means "God hears") until he is weaned. It must be around the time he is two that Hannah brings Samuel to the temple to become a priest. They make a special sacrifice for him, and Hannah lets Eli know that the Lord has answered her.
Hannah then speaks a long prayer, presumably out loud this time. Its theme is that the Lord is the true source of success and power, that he often reverses the power of the weak and the strong, and that Hannah's strength is in him. Hannah's prayer reminds me a bit of Mary's prayer when she hears Elizabeth's blessing of her faith and pregnancy in the first chapter of Luke. I wonder if Mary knew of Hannah's prayer and was repeating it in summary? In both cases, the prayers open with the women rejoicing in God, and then describe how he reverses the lots of the strong and powerful and the weak and oppressed. For both women, it seems the experience of being given a child by God offers compelling testimony to his power.
At first I thought this prayer was a bit of an exaggerated description of the outcome of Hannah's conflict with Penninah. But the more I read it, I think Hannah seems to have left that far behind. Her experience of receiving a child in answer to prayer and also offering that child to the Lord, has widened her vision. The prayer ends with the statement that "He will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed." This seems like a prophetic vision about the role Samuel will fill in anointed and establishing the first kings of Israel.
I think that conceiving a child and carrying it inside one's body is one of the most remarkable experiences available to human beings. The combination of having your body itself performing a function of which it is capable, and that function bringing about another body beginning to perform its own functions inside of you, leads to all sorts of wonder. It is something of which a person may be technically capable, but not actually able to do even if they try their hardest. It is a place where decision and effort give way to waiting and prayer and hope. It is also a place where life may sometimes appear and make its demands without the will of the body which is carrying out the functions to bring the life about. The combination of two bodies and two lives within one body has no parallel in other relationships. It also encompasses all the sacredness of the sparking of a human life, along with, sometimes, the unholy use of a woman as an unwilling tool to support the desires and success of someone else, to her detriment. This is where abortion makes its attempt to separate the two humans who are are one in such an unparalleled way for a time.
For Hannah, the experience of pregnancy, was one of waiting and wanting and offering herself for the privilege of bringing life into the world, which she desperately wanted but could not obtain for herself. For Mary, the life came, unbidden, but was also welcomed. There are lots of other ways this happening and its sharing of flesh can be experienced, of course. But I find it interesting that for these two women, the experience of bringing a child into the world brought thoughts of rulers being brought down from their thrones and the humble being lifted up in God's faithful fulfillment of his promises. Is the connection that whatever great rulers may do once they are born, it is a woman waiting in humility for life to be given and hosted within her body that allows them to rise? Neither Hannah's prayer nor Mary's mentions cute little toes or lullabies. While these details of caring for babies are part of the dailiness of the role, I think it they are right to see the arrival of new life in their bellies in all its implications for power in the world.
But despite the momentous effects his life will bring about, there is one detail in the text that I think does point to Samuel as a cutie-pie. Chapter 2 v. 19 says, "But Samuel was ministering before the Lord—a boy wearing a linen ephod." Can you just imagine him in his darling little linen ephod?! But much would come of that outfit and role in the years to come.
To sum up what I think we can take from this story, as Hannah powerfully expresses, God is the one with the power over life and death. This power is experienced profoundly by the women who, with his help, bring new life into the world. The fact that it is so often difficult for the mothers of some of the most consequential characters in the Bible to conceive underlines the fact that it is God who creates new life when he wishes to bring it into the world. Another important thing to note is how the opening problem for Hannah, where she is teased into misery by Penninah, is never mentioned again after her time with the Lord in the sanctuary. The misery which brought her to God seems to have been completely transformed into vision with a different theme--wider, more profound and purposeful. I hope, and think, that Hannah was probably well beyond stressing over food portions by the time she was delivering her son to minister before the Lord at Shiloh. However, the story ends with the note that Hannah did have several other sons and daughters after Samuel. None of them will figure heavily into the main story of the old testament. But I think they do show us that although God asks us to leave behind petty concerns to do huge things, we can trust him to comfort us by giving us the desires of our hearts in his will.
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