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COMMENTARY
1. BEFORE THE MONARCHY: GOD RULES AND RESCUES HIS PEOPLE (1 SAMUEL 1:1 – 7:17)
A. God’s prophet: Hannah, Samuel and the priestly house of Eli (1:1 – 4:1a)
Context
How a story begins is important. As the book of Samuel opens, we find ourselves at the end of the period of the judges. But kingship is in the air. The book will in due course recount the lives of powerful men and far-reaching political changes. But it begins with the story of a woman in pain. With all its human interest, Hannah’s story serves a much larger purpose in the book of Samuel.
i. Hannah’s problem (1:1–28)
Comment
1–3. Master storytellers can say a lot in just a few lines. The first three verses of the opening scene to the book of Samuel introduce the main characters, locate them and suggest the point of tension that will propel the story along. In verse 1 we meet a certain man named Elkanah. The manner of his introduction,1 along with his ample genealogy and the mention of his two wives, Hannah and Peninnah (v. 2), suggests that Elkanah was a man of some importance.
Whenever the names of characters are expressly mentioned in biblical narratives, it is worth asking whether the meanings of the names bear some significance beyond their function as labels. With respect to the present narrative, and in answer to the question ‘sunt nomina omina’ (lit. ‘are names omens?’), Walter Dietrich (2007: 317–318) writes:
‘El-kanah’ means ‘God created’, and ‘Hannah’ means ‘He (God) was merciful’ (probably a shortened form of Ḥani-El). God emerges from the period of the judges – not in person, but through this man and this woman. Elkanah will prove himself to be a mild and loving (yet not especially helpful) husband, very different from the men who were the subject during the end of Judges (Judg 19–21). Hannah is a strong and determined woman, not merely the victim of male action and violence, like so many women during the end of the period of the judges.
In a sense, then, the book of Samuel opens not just with the story of Elkanah, Hannah and Peninnah, but with the story of God’s response to ‘the desperate hopelessness of Israel. God makes a new beginning possible by giving Elkanah and Hannah to Israel, Samuel to Elkanah and Hannah, and Saul through Samuel to Israel’ (Dietrich 2007: 318).
What are we to make of Elkanah’s two wives? Polygyny (having more than one wife) was practised by ‘kings’ in this period, but seldom by commoners.2 Elkanah was a commoner, even if a prominent one, and so the question arises as to what may have prompted him to take two wives. The text does not tell us directly. But if Hannah was Elkanah’s first wife, as may be suggested by the fact that she is named first before Peninnah in verse 2, then perhaps it was her childlessness that led Elkanah to take a second wife. If so, then neither childless Hannah nor second-wife, baby-producing Peninnah (whose name may suggest something like ‘fruitful’ or ‘fecund’) can have been very happy. Such a familial arrangement would have been a formula for conflict.3 And conflict there was, not least when Elkanah would take his family Year after year . . . to worship and sacrifice to the Lord Almighty4 at Shiloh5 (v. 3). Religious festivals were a regular feature of ancient life, and not just in Israel. Ancient Egyptians may have celebrated as many as fifty or sixty festivals annually (Kitchen 1977: 86). The Pentateuch stipulates three, named in Deuteronomy 16:1–16 (cf. also Exod. 23:14–17; 34:18–23). The present passage may have in view ‘the annual festival of the Lord in Shiloh’ referenced in Judges 21:19 or perhaps a family ceremony in Shiloh such as the one in Bethlehem presupposed in 1 Samuel 20:6.
Three more characters are mentioned in verse 3: Eli (‘exalted one’?) and his two sons, Hophni (‘tadpole’?) and Phinehas (‘black one’?), who were priests of the Lord in Shiloh.6 They will not figure in the story, however, until later. So the story begins with the introduction of Elkanah, a man from Ramathaim (‘Twin heights’?), a Zuphite from the hill country of Ephraim.7 But the story is chiefly about Hannah, a woman of faith and a woman in pain.
4–7. In verse 4 the action gets underway, signalled in the Hebrew text by the discourse marker wayĕhî (‘and it happened’). Though difficult to capture with precision in English translation, the Hebrew syntax suggests that verses 4–7 make up one lengthy sentence, with a digression in the middle. The sentence begins with the statement that on a particular day Elkanah sacrificed (v. 4a) and concludes with the statement that (on that day) Hannah wept and would not eat (v. 7b). In the middle is the digression explaining the cause of Hannah’s misery. Year after year (v. 7), at festival time, Elkanah would give portions to Peninnah, to each of her children and to Hannah. Just what kind of portion Elkanah gave to Hannah – ‘double’ (esv, nasb, niv, nrsv), ‘worthy’ (kjv), ‘one portion only’ (jps), ‘only one choice portion’ (nlt), and so on – is the subject of debate, as the Hebrew phrase mānāh ’aḥat ’appāyim is difficult.8 Whatever the precise nature of Hannah’s portion, Elkanah’s motivation is clear enough (as his words in v. 8 reinforce). He hopes to soothe Hannah’s wounded spirit, because . . . the Lord had closed her womb (v. 5). Not so Peninnah, Hannah’s rival (v. 6). Her every inclination, especially at festival times, is to rub as much salt into Hannah’s wound as possible. (Peninnah’s own pain may have been considerable if, as suggested above, she became Elkanah’s wife mostly for reproductive purposes.) And so, on the day, Hannah wept and would not eat.9
8. Don’t I mean more to you than ten sons? Elkanah matches his well-intended actions with well-intended words, but both prove ineffectual. In fact, Elkanah’s attempt to ‘fix’ Hannah’s problem through sublimation may have only deepened her despair. Her rival doesn’t care, and even her loving husband doesn’t understand. In her pain, several courses of action are open to her. Given her favoured status with Elkanah, Hannah could meet Peninnah’s fire with fire: ‘You have children, I have our husband’s love,’ she might say. Or she could follow Elkanah’s implicit suggestion and flee the pain through sublimation. As the next section reveals, however, she responds with neither fight nor flight, but takes her pain to God.
9–11. Once they had finished eating and drinking in Shiloh, Hannah stood up (v. 9). The pronoun they is supplied by lxx. mt lacks it and reads literally: ‘Hannah arose, after eating and drinking in Shiloh.’ It is possible that Hannah agreed to eat in deference to Elkanah’s concern. But it seems more likely – especially in view of the later notice in verse 18 that Hannah ate something – that the reference is to the generalized eating and drinking of those gathered, at the conclusion of which Hannah exited. In Shiloh has seemed redundant to some commentators, and various alternative readings of the Hebrew have been suggested. Gordon (1986: 74) lists the chief contenders as including ‘boiled flesh’ (Wellhausen), ‘in the dining hall’ (Kittel) or ‘privately’ (McCarter), all of which make some sense of the Hebrew consonants in mt and of the general context. He notes, nevertheless, that ‘the versional support for mt is very strong’, and we might add that it is not out of keeping with Hebrew narrative technique to recall by way of repetition something mentioned earlier in the text (viz., Shiloh in v. 3).
Before we are given any further information on what Hannah arose to do, the narrator digresses to recall another individual mentioned in passing in verse 3, namely, Eli. He is described as the priest, by which we should understand that he was ‘chief priest’ at this time (Gordon 1986: 74). He is sitting on his chair [or ‘throne’, Heb. kissē’] by the doorpost of the Lord’s house [Heb. hêkal, ‘temple’ or ‘palace’]. ‘Throne’ and ‘palace’ may hint at the trajectory of the book of Samuel towards kingship – and there will be further linguistic hints – but the more mundane understanding of Eli’s passive posture and cultic location is appropriate to the present context. Reference to the Lord’s ‘temple’ (v. 9) at this juncture in Israel’s story might seem anachronistic, as indeed might the earlier reference to the house of the Lord (v. 7). But the reference is almost certainly to the tabernacle.10
Weeping and praying (v. 10), Hannah makes a vow (v. 11). The modern reader may find Hannah’s vow surprising in a couple of respects. First, as Tsumura (2007: 118) notes, ‘a woman who had suffered so from not having a child would not [normally] give him up once he was born’. Second, Hannah’s if you . . . then I proposition might sound like crass bargaining with God. But the ancient writer would not likely have seen things this way. The making of vows was a regular feature in pet...
