1 Samuel Lesson 2
Hannah’s Dilemma – 1 Samuel 1:1-28
In our introduction we gave you some of the background both historically
and theologically for these two books. 1
Samuel has to be taken with 2 Samuel, the two are the same book in the Hebrew,
they’ve just been divided in the English for the sake of ease of reading, but
actually they are one complete book. And
these books have a very important function in the Word of God. It is not just a set of Sunday School
stories; these stories have been given to us as revelation of God’s character
and His work in history, and the particular job of these books, as far as you
are concerned as believers in Christ, these books are designed to awaken you to
the role of Christ. It is going to define
this word for you, which means Mashach
or Messiah. The Messiah in turn means
the anointed one, who in turn means the King. And so therefore these books are
the historical background so you may understand what the word “Christ” means.
Now this is very much lacking in our generation because we have the
Jesus this or the Jesus that. We have
the Jesus sweatshirts and Jesus watches, etc.
The point is, which Jesus. Jesus
is a common name and it means nothing more than Bob, Bill, William or anybody
else, that’s as common as the word “Jesus” is in the ancient world. And so Jesus doesn’t say a thing, so these
people that float around with this pious look on their face and say oh, I love
Jesus, etc. it really doesn’t mean a thing.
If you’re sensible, the next thing to do is say I love Mark, or
something like this, just substitute some common name, because I love Jesus
doesn’t say a thing. It is the point of
the Lord Jesus Christ that counts. And
if you begin in the New Testament you will not understand all of the content to
the word “Christ.” To whom was the New
Testament written? To people who had
studied the Old and therefore reading the Old will fill us in on the content of
Christ.
Around 1400 BC when you have the beginning of the conquest under Joshua
you have the land go into a state when it is partially freed, not all the way,
it could have been but the negative volition of the people of Israel prevented
it and so this conquest era came to a halt and we have for a period of four
centuries a group of charismatic leaders.
Now that is not to be identified with the modern charismatic movement,
the charismatic leader term refers to people who have special gifts of
leadership given to them in the Old Testament dispensation. These men were called judges and women were
included. A woman could be a judge, as
for example Deborah in Judges 5. So we
have both men and women leading the nation.
After the period of the judges, you remember, it landed in a bad state
because you have this cyclic view of history where the nation apostacizes, it
is chastened, and then it recovers. It
apostacizes, is chastened, and recovers.
Except in the last cycle under Samson.
Samson is the last judge mentioned in the book of Judges and with
Samson’s ministry you have the nation go on negative volition, you have them
chastened but they never recover and Samson is never able to pull the nation
through. Samson winds up a victim of
suicide in a
And now in order to get the nation out of the bind it is in, out from
under the discipline, God is going to pull off a new thing. And it begins with the book of Samuel. We gave you an outline; the first seven
chapters deal with the topic that God prepares to deliver
We are studying from 1 Samuel 1:1-2:10, and this section entitled God
causes Samuel to be born. That
summarizes the thought from 1:1 all the way through
However in this time and era of history we have a very poignant
illustration of how God works into a bad, negative situation and turns cursing
into blessing and we’re going to see this in the dramatic story that unfolds in
this first chapter, dealing with a woman in the middle of one of the greatest
adversities a woman could have been exposed to in the ancient world. So it is going to take this woman, Hannah, it
is going to take and trace her life, her mental attitudes, how this woman is
responding to life, etc. and out of all of this will come God’s great work of
deliverance. This is a most marvelous
study on the psychology of the female, incidentally, for you men because it
will show you how they react and it shows you what happens when they get out of
fellowship. And it’s all presented here,
blood and guts and everything, in the first chapter. It will also show you why men have trouble
when women go out in the toulies like this and they don’t quite know what to
do. Elkanah, the husband of Hannah, he
doesn’t really know what to do in this situation and he tries to be as gracious
as he can when he probably shouldn’t have, but nevertheless he was a very
gracious and maintains his cool in the middle of it.
But you watch how Hannah is responding to her problem and what a
fantastic thing God is going to do and it’s all going to be by grace, and to
start the ball rolling, that’s what her name means. Hannah is taken from the Hebrew noun which
means grace. So here’s a woman whose
very name means grace and there will be a parallel in this and I want to brief
you on the parallel because next week we’ll deal with Hannah’s song of praise
in chapter 2 and she is going to recognize the parallel; tonight she’s not
going to. Tonight we meet Hannah when
she’s out of it. She doesn’t have
anything on her mind except vengeance on this other woman in the house. So apart from that she just can’t think of
anything else. She is a woman who is
involved in hysterics, she’s almost psychotic with depression and so
forth.
But this particular Israelite is going to play a role against this other
woman, and her name is given in verse 2, “Elkanah “had two wives: the name of
the one was Hannah, and the name of the other was, Peninnah.” Just what you’d always like to name a
daughter, call her Penny for short. So
we have these two women and like the Chinese symbol for trouble, two women
under the same roof, and it’s about this problem, so we’re going to have these
two women actually play two roles against each other that are going to in a
microcosm replay the thing that’s been happening between
So watch the parallels that will exist between Hannah and
So now we come to verse 3, “And this man went up out of his city yearly
to worship and to sacrifice unto the LORD of hosts,” and “the Lord of hosts” is
the title that is now going to be used of God beginning in 1050 BC. The “Lord Sabaoth,” that is not the Lord
Sabbath, now watch the spelling, Saba-oth,
which is the Hebrew plural ending. “Lord
Sabaoth,” and
And so God is cast in the role of a conqueror, so hence He is known as
the Lord Sabaoth, the Lord of armies.
This pictures what is happening in our Church Age from the day of
Pentecost until Christ returns, for during the age of history in which we live
Christ is conquering. Now you don’t see
Him conquering and He’s not doing it through the crusaders or somebody
else. Christ is conquering, believe it
or not, through you. And He is
conquering every time you reject human viewpoint and every time you align
yourself, by obedience with the Word of God, under the authority of Jesus
Christ. Every time you do that, it may
be a private mental act that nobody ever will know except you and the
Lord. But every time you resist the
satanic temptation, every time you articulate divine viewpoint in some
situation, every time you take a stubborn aggressive stand for the Word, that
is when Christ is conquering. So the
Lord Sabaoth refers to the things we dealt with last week and here now is going
to start dealing with the Lord in His conquering role. The nation is going to take a new lease on
life beginning with Samuel.
Now beginning with verse 3 we have a Hebrew imperfect. The whole sense of this passage is going to
hang on two Hebrew verb tenses, so let’s pay attention and see what these verb
tenses are like. It’s not too difficult
as long as you know what a verb is. The
Hebrew has two tenses for the verb; one the imperfect and one the perfect. The imperfect is looking at an action without
looking at its start or its beginning. And so here we’re going to say these are
habitual imperfects, that is they refer to action that goes on and on and on
and on and on. Then there are going to
be other verbs that we’re going to see in this passage that are in the perfect
tense and that means they refer to a past act in this passage. So we have these which refer to acts that go
on and on and on and on and on and on, and this one is past act. Watch how this starts.
Verse 3, “And this man went up out of his city yearly,” that is an
imperfect habitual tense, the habitual imperfect, it means that the author is
describing to you a man’s habits. So in
verse 3 Elkanah is pictured as a very good worshiper, he’s loyal and faithful
and particularly is verse 3 significant because this is the middle of the dark ages
when the Philistines have control over the land, when Baalism in its early
forms is rampant, when you have a lot of apostasy, it is very hard for
believers to do this, and yet this man slugs it out. As we’re going to see, he had all sorts of
problems; he slugged it out with his wives for many years, so this man gets the
medals because he was faithful in the midst of tremendous adversity. And he went up and he would go up, if you
want to translate this better it would be this man would go up every year, year
after year after year, “to sacrifice unto the LORD of armies in Shiloh. And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas,
the priests of the LORD were there.”
That’s just background for you.
Verse 4, “And when the time was that Elkanah offered,” now beginning at
verse 4 we have the introduction of something that is abnormal in Elkanah’s
experience. In other words up to this
point he’s going up, and so forth, the Hebrew is just simply telling you what
the man does year after year after year.
But now beginning in verse 4 we have a clause in the Hebrew that reads,
“when the day came,” literally, “when the
day came,” and we’re going to find out what that day is. But this is not talking about something that
was habitual to his normal behavior pattern.
This is a special day, it is one day, not repeated, this only is going
to happen once, this one day. And so
“when the day came Elkanah offered,” now from the point where you see the word
“offered” in verse 4, all the way down to the verb at the end of verse 7,
“wept.” So if you draw line from the
word “offer” in verse 4 all the way down to “wept” in verse 7, you have the
connection of the perfect tense verbs.
All verbs in between these two are imperfects of habit. Just bear with me, we’ll get to the reason
why this is important in a moment.
These two verbs, speaking of the same point action, the same event, not
a habit, one event, every verb in between these, in other words, you read the
rest of verse 4, “he gave to Peninnah, his wife, and to all her sons…” that is
habitual, he habitually gave to this woman.
“But unto Hannah he habitually gave….”
Verse 6, “And adversary habitually provoked her….” Verse 7, it “habitually happened year by
year, when she went up to the house of the Lord, that she habitually provoker
her.” All those verbs describe the
repeated action, over and over and over and over and over. Now the verb, “therefore she wept, and did
not eat,” speaks of what happened on that day.
She had what modern people would call a nervous breakdown, she went into
hysterics, couldn’t control herself, fell apart, etc. So this is the day when Hannah has a nervous
breakdown. Let’s look at the background
sandwiched between the first part of verse 4 and the last part of verse 7.
In between verse 4 and verse 7 we’re dealing not with the day, we’re dealing with background
material to describe and set up the situation for the viewer. “And when the time was the Elkanah offered,”
and then the rest of this verse is this is what he would do, “he would give to
Peninnah, his wife, and to all her sons and her daughters, portions.” This refers to the fact that they are going
before this one of the three feasts, we don’t know which one it is but they had
three feasts, they had Passover, Pentecost and the Feast of Tabernacles, and so
far I haven’t been able to figure out which one it is but one of these three
feasts, when they went to this they would eat a meal, meaning that they would
enjoy God’s blessing. The man, being the
head of the house, would dispense the food and he would give a portion.
And this event is going to tell us what really got Hannah upset. This is the event that knocked this woman for
a loop every single year. She was doing
fine until she came to this thing and then she’d fall to pieces and this went
on over and over and over and over again. And it’s going to show you something
about Hannah, something she wasn’t doing that she should have been. But this is the incident that would flip her
out every year. It would come right down
to the religious ceremony, she would go there, and she would have to sit at the
table while her husband gave these portions to her rival wife and to her sons
and her daughters.
And then in the Hebrew in verse 5 we have a very difficult
translation. The only modern translation
that I have consulted that correctly handles verse 5 is the RSV. All of the translations are wrong on this
verse. “But unto Hannah he gave a worthy
portion,” it says in the King James, “for he loved Hannah: but the LORD had
shut up her womb.” Now the trick is that
in the Hebrew there’s a strange word that’s used here and nobody really knows
what the word is. And it’s “unto Hannah
he gave” this strange thing “portion.”
And in the Hebrew it looks like this translated; “he gave her a portion,”
one, and then there’s a word that looks like this, ’aphim, “im” is the dual
ending, which means whatever this noun means it’s got two of them, and this has
been used in other places for nostrils.
This sometimes comes down to be “face.”
So you could argue that what he’s talking about here is he gave her a
portion with two faces, but that doesn’t make much sense because any portion
has two sides to it. Or you could argue
that it’s a double portion, some of the translations will have this, some translations
read double-portion; well the reason they’re getting double portion here is
because they see a dual ending on the word.
However, many of the Hebrew authorities notice something about this, the
text of 1 Samuel is very badly preserved.
Now not the autographer, we’re not talking about sliding on inerrancy
here; inerrancy has to do with the autographa, or the first text that was
written. But during the course of the
centuries as these texts were transmitted it appears that of all the books of
the Old Testament something happened to 1 Samuel, the text is very bad and very
hard. There is another Hebrew word that
looks like this; notice how close that looks to the other one and so some
scholars say if that is the word then it makes a lot of sense because that is
the Hebrew word that means except, and so then it would read, “But unto Hannah
he gave one portion, except for the fact that he loved her.” Now what does this mean? It means that the author here is saying
here’s what happened, he would go around the table and he’d put a portion in
front of Peninnah, and then in front of all her children, all her boys, all her
girls, and then he would have to come around and drop one piece before
Hannah. Now if the sentence stopped
there the conclusion might be that well, he just doesn’t like her and so he
only gives her… and so to add that and correct us so that we don’t blame the
man, it says but it’s really true that he loved her. “He loved Hannah, but the Lord had shut up
her womb,” and the last phrase means that’s why he only gave her one
portion. So it is this ceremony that
went on year after year after year that recalled to Hannah’s mind here
problem.
What is Hannah’s problem?
Hannah’s problem is the fact that she can’t bear any children. Now if we just forget about that specific
problem we can generalize what is happening here and make it apply to any one
of us by simply saying that Hannah’s problem was a crippling weakness; any kind
of a crippling weakness that you have from birth is what Hannah had; that is
her problem. Now watch how she is going
to deal with it, the wrong way and the right way. Hannah has a congenital defect; she cannot
bear children and therefore she has become very bitter; she is a woman with a
lot of animosity in her heart; outward she may smile but inward she has a lot
of bitterness. Now I want to first show
you two passages in the New Testament that deal with congenital defects or
crippling weaknesses to show you what is not taught in the Bible. Some people would say Hannah must have sinned
more than all the other women and so God is cursing Hannah, God is picking
Hannah out to suffer because of something Hannah did. That is a wrong
inference; let me prove it to you from two New Testament passages, one in John
9. We’ll take one passage because of our
time, there’s another passage in Luke 13:1-5 which we won’t turn to but that
has to do with accidents that happen in your life.
John 9:1-3 is the authoritative New Testament answer to what about
congenital defects; is the person who suffers from congenital defect somehow
sinning more than someone else. “As
Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from his birth. [2] And the
disciples asked Him,” same thing then as people ask now, “saying, Master, who
did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? [3] Jesus answered,
Neither has this man sinned, nor his parents, but that the works of God should
be manifest in him. [4] I must work the works of Him that sent me, while it is
day; the night come, when no man can work.”
Verse 6, “When He had thus spoken, He spat on the ground, and made clay
of the spittle, and anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. [7] And
said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam…He went his way, therefore, and
washed, and came seeing.” What Jesus is
saying here must be interpreted in the framework of the fall. At a point in time the creation left the
fingertips of God perfect; there were no congenital defects in Adam and
Eve. All congenital defects come,
basically, from what happened after that, the fall. You have man rebelling against God, as a
result of this you have chaos introduced into the created order, chaos on a
genetic level, which leads to these kinds of congenital defects.
So chaos at the genetic level is introduced at the point of the
fall. This is the “why” of the
suffering. But it still doesn’t explain
why some suffer more than others. In
other words, if we were to take a chart and we were to say look, here are five
people, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, all of these people deserve that much suffering because
all are in Adam and we have all fallen in Adam; yet here’s the problem, you
look at those same five people in their lifetime and you’ll have some that will
suffer this much, some suffer more, some suffer a little bit, some suffer more,
and some don’t suffer as much. In other
words, there’s unevenness; some people suffer more than others. Why is this, that’s the problem. After we
solve why is there suffering in general, answer: the fall, we still have an
additional problem, the distribution of suffering. Why is suffering distributed like it is. And the Bible answers that ultimately by
saying back to the sovereignty of God that God did not introduce suffering but
once suffering was introduced the suffering is under His sovereign control and
He has as His ultimate purpose what Jesus says in verse 3, that His works will
be made manifest in these areas.
So let’s take person number 4, they suffer a lot, even they don’t suffer
as much.. no member of the human race, by the way, suffers as much as we
deserve, but let’s take 4 and let’s say that person is Hannah. Hannah is a woman born into the ancient
culture and a woman in the ancient culture, her great honor hung on bringing
forth a male child. Now you notice this
because when this woman goes to pray, she doesn’t pray for a child. She prays for
a male because in the ancient world, as in the Arab world today, a man
says I have four children and two sons; the girls are not looked upon in the
same status as the males. And so therefore
in the ancient world… now actually that has resulted in iniquity to the woman,
but historically girls don’t let it bother you because the reason why this
started was the fact that the ancient Semitic woman valued the male only
because she thought she might be the mother of Mashach, or the mother of Messiah.
And so it isn’t because the man is inherently superior to the woman in
Scripture. This is distortion of the Messianic hope.
But let’s suppose this fourth person who suffers a lot is Hannah. Let’s just suppose she suffers a lot; now she
says what purpose does God have in the particular kind of suffering that I
receive. Here I have been born and I am
humiliated day by day, month by month, year by year, I have to live with this
humiliation, with this congenital weakness that I have. Why me?
And God’s answer throughout Scripture always is because He is going to
work a special work in that kind of a person.
That kind of a person has the opportunity to show the grace of God like
no other person. This is why Hannah’s
very name means grace; she is going to have a tremendous opportunity of turning
that crippling weakness around into something that will not only deliver her
but deliver the entire nation. So
why? The same thing as this blind man in
John 9; that blind man in John 9 was prepared from eternity; God knew that men
would sin and God said I’m going to distribute the evil this way so that when
My Son walks by that road that congenitally blind man will be sitting there and
My Son can heal him and through that act I can glorify Myself to man and men
can come to know Me better.
Now it’s the same thing with Hannah.
Hannah has been prepared from all eternity. God knew what Hannah’s
problem was going to be; God knew that man would fall and He said all right,
I’ll distribute the evil this way and here’s a woman I am going to pick out and
this woman will be born physically such that she cannot bear children. And I am deliberately going to do this
because if this woman will take this crippling weakness and turn it around and
give it to Me, then I can show a mighty work through her life.
So let’s look back in 1 Samuel to see whether Hannah does this. Verse 5, “But unto Hannah he gave one
portion; but he loved Hannah,” this shows the husband’s attitude, that he was a
very mature believer, that he did everything he could to handle this woman,
except the day, finally even Elkanah doesn’t know what to do because his wife
finally falls apart. She falls apart every
year at this time, but finally it comes down she really falls apart, she goes
into absolute hysterics this time. And
so you can watch Elkanah, it’s kind of amusing and I think every man can put
yourself in that Elkanah’s shoes. But he
loves Hannah, “but the LORD had shut up her womb.”
Then verse 6 describes what would always happen, every year this thing
would start. “And her adversary,” now that’s the word for the other woman, and
this is the answer to those sidewalk critics that come up to you and say I
don’t believe the Bible because the Bible has polygamy in it in the Old
Testament, they’re all immoral back then, they have polygamy. But here is an
adequate Old Testament passage that shows you the Old Testament attitude toward
polygamy; it was allowed but never enjoyed.
And the women were always called the adversaries. Even the men didn’t enjoy it so don’t get
tempted fellows. The men didn’t enjoy it
either, Elkanah is going to have his double dose, he has to act as the ref
every time we have Passover or something, he has to don his white and his black
clothing and go out in the field. And
that’s his job for as long as this feast would last.
So “her adversary,” this word “adversary,” one of the great Hebrew
scholars, S. R. Driver points out a comparison of Hebrew with cognate languages
such as Arabic and Syriac, shows that in old times when polygamy was prevalent
a common term was in use among Semitic peoples to denote the idea of a rival or
fellow wife and it was derived from the root which means to vex or injure. Now does that sound like they really enjoyed
polygamy in the Old Testament? So the
sidewalk critic that brings this objection against the Scripture is like most
sidewalk critics; he’s never read it too carefully. And here is a passage where the true picture
of polygamy emerges in the Old Testament.
“Her adversary provoked her” and again this is habitual imperfect,
Hannah may say something, probably not even say anything, you know you ladies
have interesting way of being real catty toward each other and it’s fascinating
from the man’s point of view to sit and watch what goes on. Women have the most fantastic ways of digging
one another and doing it politely with a nice sweet smile wrapped all over
their pretty little face and yet they can really dig one another. They do it all the time, and here you see it
and it doesn’t mean that her adversary had to make some crack. Just visualize it if you were the dramatist
and you put this in a play, here you have Peninnah sitting here taking her
piece and all the time she’s getting her piece she’s looking over at Hannah and
you get the point. And this is what kind
of vexation was going on.
And the word “provoke her sore [relentlessly]” is a doubling of the
Hebrew verb to provoke, it other words it means this is the most intense form
of provocation. And this shows you a little bit about Hannah and here’s a
lesson that we can get from her on how not to do it. First of all, she has an adversity; is it or
is it not genuine? It’s genuine, she was
born with a congenital defect. So she
starts off all right; she goes astray in resenting the Father; she resents God
for giving this congenital defect in her life.
She has never given thanks to God for it. 1 Thessalonians 5:18, “in everything give
thanks.” Hannah hasn’t given thanks, she’s
going to admit she’s never given thanks, there’s a Hebrew expression coming up
in the text and this woman has never once in her life ever given thanks for
this thing. So automatically we can tell that she’s been on negative volition
for a long time in this area. This
doesn’t mean that she was always out of fellowship, it simply means that in
this area when this was made an issue in her life that’s when she fell apart.
She might stay in fellowship all summer and then came fall and she’d go to this
thing and then bang out of fellowship, probably out of fellowship for a month
ahead of time thinking about it and she was certainly out of fellowship every
time she went to this thing.
Now let’s look at some of the mechanisms. Every time that we’re out of
fellowship in our souls we have ways of handling the problem,
illegitimately. We have fantasy, that’s
one way; in other words, when we are violating our conscience, the
God-consciousness in our conscience says we’re wrong, we’re on negative volition
and we know that, and yet we still like it and we’re going to go anyway. So then we’re going to have some defense
mechanism set up and the first one is fantasy.
Hannah probably used fantasy and this is exactly why she had trouble
every time she came to this festival.
All during the year she could operate in a fantasy world, oh it doesn’t
exist, it doesn’t exist, it doesn’t exist but reality came every time her
husband dropped that piece in front of her during that ceremony. In other words, she was able to live in her
little fantasy world in this area of her life until, so to speak, the mud hit
the fan, every time she was involved.
Isolation, she probably could get out of Peninnah, if she’s like most
woman she probably had Elkanah make her an addition to the house on the south
side and Peninnah was on the north side, and she made sure there were a lot of
rooms separating them and so she was able to halfway isolate herself in the
household from this woman. But guess
what happened, during the religious ceremony she had to sit right across the
table. So again, collapse of this
one. She could suppress it into her
unconscious mind all during the year but she could suppress it then because she
was eyeball to eyeball. So she had one
left, projection and that is where you blame somebody else for it and she
blamed God for it, of course, God’s fault.
So this is the story of this woman’s mental attitude. And we see later on in the text how her
emotions got out of control; obviously she’s going to pieces here. So this woman never learned how to handle her
problem honoring to the Lord, she resented God, she was bitter against God and
she was engaged in self-pity all the way.
Let’s look at what this adversary would do; the adversary would take
advantage of this situation, and keep in mind the parallel between Israel and
Philistia. You have Israel and
Philistia, Israel, the nation is negative volition and in disobedience, and has
certain very great weaknesses. Philistia
is God’s tool to spank Israel; Philistia comes in and disciplines, so Philistia
is like the adversary in verse 6 in the sense that Philistia is doing the
disciplining. What is Peninnah
doing? Apparently Peninnah could care
less, she’d just probably… this is a good time to dig Hannah, probably she
resents Hannah, Hannah is the woman whom she knows this man loves than he loves
her, so therefore this is a time to get back, a time to be catty about
things. So she picks this ceremony to
try it.
But I want you to notice something, there’s another parallel here
between these two women and the nations Israel and Philistia. Both of them depend on the same thing, they
are sharing what can only belong to one.
And this is the problem of polygamy, one husband and one land as far as
the nations; Philistia and Israel are trying to share one land and that land
can only belong to one or the other but it can’t belong to both. And this husband can only belong to one woman
but he can’t belong to both. So you have
another parallel there.
You have a third parallel in the fact that as Philistia over-exceeded
its legitimate disciplinary task, so Peninnah just rubbed it in a little bit
more and instead of coming around to the Lord, Israel resented and Hannah,
instead of coming around to the Lord she just resented it some more. Now look at it this way, from God’s point of
view. God, for eternity knew what He was
doing when He allowed Hannah to have this crippling weakness. But you notice something, Hannah would never
return thanks to Him for it. And you can
just see God, now I wonder how long it’s going to be before that woman down
there is going to wake up, how long is it going to be before this kid gets
straightened out. And she was miserable
and she obviously made her husband very miserable because he loved her and when
you love somebody and you see them miserable it hurts you too; it always
does. You always suffer if you love
someone who is suffering. So she spread
her suffering around, she spread her suffering back to her husband so he
suffered in all this mess. So here’s God
looking down, I wonder when that kid’s going to wake up. So I presume that God allowed Peninnah to
just add the heat a little bit. On the
surface it looks kind of cruel to do it this way but it’s the only way Hannah
is going to wake up, the hard way. She probably has been taught the Word of God
by her husband over and over and over; it doesn’t mean beans, in every other
area of her life she can claim the Word of God except this area. And no matter how much of the Word she gets,
it doesn’t mean anything. So since the
simple teaching of the Word of God doesn’t do the trick, now what does God have
to do. He is going to tough, pardon the
expression, He’s going to get nasty, and so he brings this woman that is
deliberately going to be nasty to her and finally it gets through. All right, let’s see how it gets
through.
Verse 7, “And he did so year by year,” actually it’s probably the third
person impersonal, it happened, “year by year, when she went up to the house of
the LORD, that she” the adversary, would “provoke her,” end of the habitual
imperfects. Now the next verb is the
verb that takes up to this one time, this one incident that is going to be
related from this point forward. All the
habitual imperfects are behind us now, no more of this text is describing
habits or customs, now it describes straight history. “…therefore she was weeping, and did not
eat.” Now by itself this is not unusual,
but the point of verse 7 is that it was at this point of time in this feast, obviously
Elkanah had gone around, he had given the meals, and there goes Hannah, are you
crying dear, and so this starts out, and she goes into hysterics and like most
men, he doesn’t really know what to do when she starts bawling and so he kind
of stands there and says what do I do now.
So he comes up with three brilliant questions. Time for the interrogation to begin.
Verse 8, “Then said Elkanah, her husband, to her, Hannah, why are you
weeping?” That’s the first obvious
question. And then second one is equally
obvious, “Why aren’t you eating, dear?”
Now he knows exactly why she’s not eating. But he has to do something, there she is
crying and so he doesn’t know what else to do.
And then he comes up with something that is at least halfway a winner, and
that is, “Why is your heart grieved? Am
not I better to thee than ten sons?” And
actually this is a smart move on this part because it is this one phrase that
apparently shakes her. We don’t know and can’t reconstruct everything that went
on in her mind at this point but something he said in that last remark was
something that got her moving off dead center.
We can only surmise what it must have been like. It might have been the fact that she suddenly
realized that if her husband loved her and remember how much a boy would mean
to a Jewish man, if her husband loved her in spite of the fact that she could
not bear her husband a son, might it possibly be that somewhere in the heart of
God that God might love her too. If my
surmise is correct this shows you then, how personal relationships can lead you
back into fellowship with the Lord. They
can knock you out of fellowship and they can bring you back in fellowship. And why is this? Why is our fellowship with the Lord so
intimately connected with personal relationships. Very simply, what are the
people? People made in the image of
God. So therefore the vertical
relationship is very much related to the horizontal.
So in verse 9, “So Hannah rose up after they had eaten in Shiloh, and
after they had drunk. Now Eli, the
priest, sat upon a seat by a post of the temple of the LORD. [10] And she was
in bitterness of soul, and prayed unto the LORD,” now this described how she
prayed, she is still falling apart, but at least she’s doing something; never
before had she done this. Every other
year this would happen, every year she’d get mad, provoked, and so on, break
down, hysterics and all the rest of it.
But finally this year she does something about it. “Prayed” is the main verb of verse 10. What accompanied this prayer. The first thing, “in bitterness of soul,”
this means during the prayer she was still bitter, she still had a bad attitude
and she still was not thanking the Lord in all this thing while she’s praying,
but at least she’s beginning to move.
She moves and it’s a selfish request she’s going to make and we’ll see
more of that later but still, though she’s bitter, she does pray. And though “bitterness of soul” describes her
inner mental attitude sins, the last verb that you read in verse 10 describes
her overt behavior, this is what the priest sees, “and wept sore
[bitterly].” He sees her “weeping sore,”
and the word “weep sore” is a word that means very much, it’s an infinite of
absolute in the Hebrew, it increases the mood of the verb, so therefore it
means that she was weeping hysterically, this woman was just falling apart
completely.
Verse 11, “And she vowed a vow, and said, O LORD Sabaoth,” there’s the
Lord of armies, “if You will indeed look upon the affliction of Thine handmaid,
and remember me, and not forget Thin handmaid, but will give unto Thy handmaid
a male child, then will I give hum unto the LORD all the days of his life, and
there shall no razor come upon his head,” he will be the original hippie. Hannah was a woman who at this point decided
that she wanted to take that crippling weakness and turn it around. She doesn’t realize what she just did,
because what she just did, as is indicated by the Hebrew verb, from this point
in the passage there’s a play on the Hebrew verbs, this is going to be the play
for the rest of the book, she just started in motion something that even she
doesn’t know. And she’s not going to
learn about for at least three years, but after three years, by the time she
gets to chapter 2 and she sings her song of praise she’s going to realize what
she just did. She has set off a chain
reaction in the throne room of God that is going to deliver the entire nation
as well as solve her problem.
But the funny think about it all is, is that she only has in view at
this point her own selfish need. She
still is not giving thanks for God, because if you look in verse 11, “if you
will indeed look,” that “if” is a conditional clause, plus the Hebrew
infinitive absolute, which always intensifies that, and what she’s really
saying, now Lord I know it’s not too possible, but if you would just look at me
once….” So this is still not the prayer
of somebody that’s giving thanks, that’s relaxed. No, she was still carrying on in
hysterics. And she is till upset, very
much upset, but at least she’s doing something about it; she’s taking it to the
Lord. It’s a selfish request, fine, but
she’s doing something about it. “And she
vowed a vow,” and she goes through this long spiel in verse 11, she asks for a
man child, and I prefer to think that the last part of verse 11 she really
doesn’t realize what she said, that she’s going to dedicate him to the Lord, I
think rather she’s really saying O Lord, all I care is that I have a man child,
I don’t care whether I get to raise him, I don’t care whether he’s around the
house, I don’t care whether he grows up to be my son, just give me a man
child. You see again the obsession with
that crippling weakness, she really isn’t in love with her own son, it’s just
to get one, any one, but just get me one.
It’s that attitude still that is controlling her. But watch what happens.
Verse 12, “And it came to pass, as she continued praying before the
LORD, that Eli marked [observed] her mouth. [13] Now Hannah, she spoke in her
heart; only her lips moved,” probably the reason why she did this is because
she was tremendously upset at this point, “only her lips moved, but her voice
was not heard. Therefore Eli thought she
was drunk. [14] And Eli said unto her, How long will you be drunken? Put away the wine from thee. [15] And Hannah
answered and said, No, my lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit,” and the
word “sorrowful” means a bitter or a hardened spirit, this is marah, and this is the word that means
to rebel, and so what Hannah is saying, Lord, I am a woman who has a bitter
spirit, and she realizes it here; this is the second stage in her
deliverance. Her first stage was she
begins to move toward the Lord. She
comes to Him with all her bitterness and all her mental attitude sins and
everything else, and as the prayer goes on and it’s finished and she starts to
talk with the priest she realizes, you know, I’ve got a bitter spirit, my heart
is hard. And there are two phrases in
here that show you that she’s gradually waking up. He says I have a marah ruach, I have a bitter spirit, “I have drunk neither wine nor
strong drink, but have poured out my soul before the LORD,” and it’s
interesting because there’s another Hebrew expression which means “pour out my”
and usually its spirit, but in this passage it is soul. And this means that she is emphasizing her
emotions. So she recognizes two things,
that she has a bitter mental attitude, it’s bitter, it refuses to give thanks
for that crippling weakness in her life, and she is still refusing to give
thanks. This prayer still, so far,
hasn’t said one bit of thanksgiving in it, not one. And she’s still bitter in her mental attitude
and she says therefore I’m emotional, my emotions are all out of whack and I’m
in hysterics and I just poured my hysterics out before the face of God. So this is what she describes, and verse 15
tells you her condition even while she’s praying.
Verse 16, “Count not thine handmaid for a daughter of Belial [as a
wicked woman],” this means worthless one, “for out of the abundance of my
complaint and grief have I spoken this. [17] Then Eli answered and said, Go in
peace, and the God of Israel grant thee thy petition that thou hast asked of
Him.” Now beginning here is where you
have this sleeky word play that’s starting to occur and to understand this word
play let me put up on the gizmo what the Hebrew words look like. Here’s the word for Samuel, S-m-u and the
best translation is this is a hard “l,” hard “a” and this is “el”. Sam, and you have to supply the vowels, Sam u
l, Samuel. All right, here his
name. Now the Hebrew verb to ask looks
like this: Sha’al. The Hebrew word for Saul is: Sha’uwl, this way. Now notice how these words tie together. The Hebrew word for “ask” is found here in
verse 17, “The God of Israel grant thee thy petition,” that noun is built off
the Hebrew word [sounds like Sa al] and what this woman has unconsciously done,
even she doesn’t realize it, is she has asked for the King. She has asked for deliverance and it’s going
to turn out her prayer request is going to be answered, not only in the birth
of Samuel, but is going to be answered with a man called Saul of Kish. She has asked like the nation has asked.
In 1 Samuel 8 the nation Israel is going to ask for a king. Now they don’t realize what they’re asking
for, they just want a king like the other nations. But what they have really asked for under the
sovereign work of God is for Christ. And
they have touched off by that petition, even that petition that was out of
fellowship, later in 1 Samuel 8 the nation does exactly what Hannah does; both
Hannah and Israel come to the Lord angry and bitter over their experiences in
life, they pour out their heart to God, they make a request, and then it turns
out after they’ve made the request that God was working even through their
bitterness and their request turns forth into not just what they immediately
asked for but the plan of God is actually going to start up again in history as
a result of this one frustrated hysterical woman’s prayer. Now what does that show you the instruments
that God can use. See, it’s a fantastic
story. Let’s finish it out. [Verse 18, “And she said, Let thine handmaid
find grace in thy sight. So the woman
went her way, and did eat, and her countenance was no more sad.”
Verse 19, “ And they rose up in the morning early, and worshiped before
the LORD, and returned, and came to their house at Ramah; and Elkanah knew
Hannah, his wife, and the LORD remembered her. [20] Wherefore it came to pass,
when the time was come about after Hannah had conceived, that she bore a son,
and called his name Samuel, saying, Because I have asked him of the LORD.” See the play on the words, Samuel is not
derivative of Saul but it is close to it.
Actually, we believe that “Sam”
here is name, and this is “el,” of
God. The name of God, in other words, he
calls on the name of God. But notice the
word “ask” here, now if you take a light pencil and in verse 17 underline
petition, and underline ask, and then when you get down to verse 20 underline
ask again, and every time we see this I’ll point it out to you, and then you
watch after you’ve underlined them how the author is playing here on this word
term.
Verse 21, “And the man, Elkanah, and all his house, went up to offer
unto the LORD the yearly sacrifice, and his vow,” the vow here is that he is
substantiating and enforcing and agreeing with the vow of his wife. That was the prerogative of the Jewish man of
the house, that if his wife had made a vow then he could nullify the vow or he
could substantiate the vow. And here he
chooses to substantiate the vow, to underscore and say yes Lord, I agree with
what my wife has asked. And so he pays
the vow.
Verse 22, “But Hannah went not up; for she said unto her husband, I will
not go up until the child is weaned,” and in the Hebrew culture at this time
this generally was approximately three or four years, this explains why without
any contraceptives they weren’t over populated; they had a long nursing period,
three or four years. And so this
explains that Hannah is going to have a long time interval in here to think,
and next week when we start chapter 2 you’ll see what she’s done in this three
year time to think. “…and then I will
bring him, that he may appear before the LORD, and there abide forever.”
And verse 23 is sort of humorous, now Elkanah doesn’t quite know about
his wife yet, he’s watched all these years her crack up, go into hysterics,
handle her adversities by falling apart instead of trusting the Lord for them,
and so he says, “Do what seems to you good; tarry until you have weaned him;
only the LORD establish His Word. [So the woman abode, and nursed her son until
she weaned him.]” In other words, what
he’s saying is, well Hon, I’ve seen you before and I’m just a little concerned
that now that you’ve got your boy you’re going to break your vow, so this is
kind of a gentle nudge. Elkanah is the
most diplomatic husband imaginable. The gentle nudge that he gave her back in
verse 8 is paralleled by this nudge.
Verse 24, “And when she had weaned him, she took him up with her,” and
it describes the offering, [“with three bullocks, and one ephah of flour, and a
skin of wine, and brought him unto the house of the LORD in Shiloh; and the
child was young.”]
Verse 25, “And they slew a bullock, and brought the child to Eli. [26]
And she said, O my lord, as thy soul liveth, my lord, I am the woman who stood
by Thee here, praying unto the LORD. [2] For this child I prayed; and the LORD
has given me my petition which I asked of Him. [28] Therefore also I have lent
him to the LORD; as long as he lives he shall be lent to the LORD. And he worshiped the LORD there.”
Now those of you who did the pencil work, in verse 27 if you underline
“petition,” there’s a noun that comes from sha’al,
“ask.” Also underline “ask,” that’s
obviously the verb again and then in verse 28 the word “lent” is another form
of the same verb root, “ask,” and you see that occurs twice in verse 28. So you see the frequency of sha’al, sha’al, sha’al, sha’al, sha’al. What do you suppose the writer has on his mind
here. He’s saying do you see what this
woman has done, she has touched off all sorts of things that are going to
influence the entire nation, and when we deal with chapter 2 I’ll prove it, but
this doesn’t have just Samuel in mind, but it has the king himself.
What’s the conclusion of this matter.
Here’s a woman that had a problem.
She tried to go around the problem and it didn’t work; that’s what she
tried all sorts of pseudo things, pseudo solutions to her problem and that
didn’t work. She tried to avoid her problem and that didn’t work because every
fall she had to face it. And so finally
the Lord is going to say Hannah, I’ve got a way to crack that problem and
you’re going to go right through it, I’m going to solve your problem Hannah,
and I’m going to solve your problem in such a fantastic way that not only your
problem is going to be solved but the whole nations. Hannah, you spread your misery to your
husband, you made everybody in your household miserable because of your lousy
attitude and the poor bad way you had of handling your problem; now Hannah I’m
going to show grace to you and when we get through showing grace to you and
changing your life your life is going to be a blessing not only in your house
but in the whole nation. With our heads
bowed.