Peninnah always upset Hannah and made her feel bad because the LORD had not made her able to have children. This happened every year when their family went to the LORD's house at
And God, who is rich in mercy, did not disappoint her.. Hannah was burdened with grief and sorrow: she longed to be a mother yet was childless (1 Samuel 1:2). Her infertility was a source of anguish and misery. Deeply distressed, Hannah was so spent with crying that she couldn't even eat (1:7).
So one day, Hannah went up to the temple, and prayed. She wept with great sorrow of heart. Eli the High Priest heard her weeping bitterly at the altar. Hannah was in bitterness of soul, and prayed to the Lord and wept in anguish.
Her rival used to provoke her severely, to irritate her, because the Lord had closed her womb. So it went on year by year; as often as she went up to the house of the Lord, she used to provoke her. Therefore Hannah wept and would not eat.
Hannah is the second and barren yet preferred wife of Elkanah. She suffers silently in this predicament but eventually goes to a temple and prays fervently. She promises to return her child to YHWH if she is able to have a male baby, showing that she is most focused on securing her position in the community.
Hannah demonstrates her faith through obedience, even when it means an extreme personal sacrifice. She has longed for this child, and she loves him as only a mother can love a child. But her love for God is greater and she shows it by letting go of Samuel.
Hannah's story is a powerful one of strength, courage, persistent prayer, and unwavering commitment to seeking God's face. She faced challenging circumstances, felt discouraged and angry with God. Despite her challenges, feelings of rejection and abandonment, she did not stop praying.
The Bible does not specify how long Hannah was barren, a period that, according to the. midrash, extended for nineteen years. Why was this righteous woman forced to suffer so many years of childlessness?
Not only did God remember Hannah with the birth of Samuel, he also gave her three more sons and two daughters. Samuel continued in his service at the temple, and when he was a young man, the Lord called to him and gave him the first of many visions. As he grew, the Lord was with him, and he became a trusted prophet.
Every year she would go with her husband to a place called Shiloh. While they were there, there would be a big festival and everyone would celebrate all that God did for them. They would thank God for their crops and everything God gave them, and give sacrifices or presents to God to show how thankful they were.
Hannah had no other place to turn. It was as if, in her great anguish and grief, she cried, “Make me fruitful, or I don't want to go on.” She was at her end. “Give me a child or I will die!” God heard Hannah's weeping, and her prayer became the pathway to divine intervention.
Prayer has the ability to move us from a place of infertility to place where we can conceive new life. When Hannah's prayer concludes, the scripture says that she was no longer sad. As a matter of fact, she was able to go home to eat and drink with her husband…and conceive a child.
A few months earlier, she had entered the temple in Jerusalem and opened her heart to God, even promising that if God gave her a son, she would dedicate him to God's service. Now that she was a mother, her life was so dif- ferent. She named her son Samuel, which means “heard by God”.
At the beginning of the series, 17-year-old schoolgirl Hannah Baker took her own life by cutting her wrists. Her school locker becomes a memorial adorned with students' letters and her pictures.
2:21 attests that the Lord took note of Hannah and “she conceived and bore three sons and two daughters.” The midrash tells that when Hannah bore her children, Peninnah was punished: Hannah would give birth to one child, and Peninnah would bury two; Hannah bore four, and Peninnah buried eight.
We observe that Hannah was a woman of prayer with a lot of faith and who lived the Word. One year after her child was born, she brought him to the Lord's house in Shiloh with a three-year-old bull, an ephah of flour, and a bottle of wine.
Hannah's specific request for a male child is therefore a reflection of the preference for sons in ancient Israel, which derived principally from the fact that, in that society, male children were greatly desired for the purpose of the perpetuation of the husband's lineage, as well as for land inheritance.
In I Samuel 3:1 we read,” In those days the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions.” God needed a prophet to communicate His heart to the Israelites. Hannah longed to give birth to a son.
There are six barren women in the Bible: three of the four matriarchs (Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel) in Genesis; Hannah, mother of the prophet Samuel (1 Samuel 1-2); the anonymous wife of Manoah, mother of Samson (Judges 13); and the “great woman of Shunem,” also called the Shunammite, an acolyte of the prophet Elisha (2 ...
Hannah's desire to have a child wasn't selfish ambition. It was God's plan all along despite all the pain and agony that it caused her. Hannah was a wife to Elkanah who has a second wife Peninnah. Having children in those days would have been part of the identity and the purpose of a married woman.
Hannah's Worship
For example, she conversed with God (like Abraham), she made a vow (like Jacob), she heard Eli speak (like Isaiah listened to the angels), and she gave her best to the LORD—Samuel (like Mary of Bethany gave perfume). ¹ Furthermore, she trusted in the promise of God when Eli said.
That is a beautiful characteristic, and it was Hannah's distinctive virtue: constant, steadfast faith: And she continued praying before the Lord [1:12]. She stayed before the Lord, even with a broken heart, pouring out tearful prayers. Her trials thus had the benefit of making her a woman of prayer.
She fervently pleaded and asked that the God of Israel grant her a male child and made a vow to dedicate the baby back to the Lord as a servant all the days of his life if He opened her womb. Faithfully, the Lord heard Hannah's vow and allowed her to conceive a baby boy, Samuel.
According to him, he also considered Hannah one of the heroines in the Bible. Because aside from her prayer life, Hannah was very faithful. She promised God that if He would give her a son, she would dedicate her son to the ministry. What great faith and beautiful prayer life, indeed!
Hannah asked the Lord for a son. She promised God that she would give this son to Him to serve God all of his days. God heard and answered Hannah's prayer and she kept her promise to Him and took Samuel to the tabernacle to serve the Lord all his days. Read 2 Samuel 2:1-10.