This week, we launch into our study of 1 and 2 Samuel. I am excited about this text. As I mentioned in last week’s episode, I have been daydreaming about it since digging at Shiloh this summer.
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The double book of Samuel begins where Judges ends. Judges’ closing refrain describes an era defined by ethical and theological anarchy: “In those days there was no king in Israel, and all the people did what was right in their own eyes.” To be certain, “right in their own eyes” means wrong in God’s eyes. The tribes’ problems were both external and internal. They struggled constantly with neighboring enemies, especially the Philistines. However, they were also prone to violence and injustice with each other. When necessary, God raised up judges to lead them in battle and guide them toward victory. However, the victories were short-lived. Few judges lasted longer than it took to avert the next crisis. The book of Judges ends with the fractured nation desperate to break out of its downward spiral. Although God was not pleased with the idea of a king, he allowed for it.
To help navigate this turning point in their national history, God appointed Samuel as kingmaker, the one who would prepare the way for the first monarch. The first seven chapters are known as the Samuel Cycle. Of the three main characters in the two books, Samuel has the most detailed biography, including the events leading up to his conception and even his childhood.
Two Wives
1 Samuel 1 opens with a brokenhearted woman named Hannah, agonizing over her inability to have a child with her husband, Elkanah. Elkanah resided in the hill country of Ephraim and possessed an impressive four-generation genealogy. The narrative explains, “He had two wives; the name of one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children” (1:2). Elkanah must have been a man of means because multiple wives were usually reserved for royal houses, while commoners were monogamous. Most likely, Elkanah took a second wife because Hannah, his first wife, could not have children. Abraham had done something similar when he could not produce an heir with Sarah, turning instead to their maidservant Hagar.
In both cases, bigamy created rivalry between the wives, as it did with Sarah and Hagar and with Rachel and Leah. In all three households, the husband favored the barren wife while the rival wife bore the children, creating an obvious cause for mutual jealousy.
Twice, the narrator attributes Hannah’s closed womb to God. Just as the nation of Israel had lost all hope at this time, Hannah’s childlessness left her feeling alone and desperate. However, God allowed this affliction for a higher and unseen purpose, just as he had with Sarah, Rebecca, and Rachel.
Pilgrimage
The annual gathering Elkanah and his family attended at Shiloh could have been any one of the mandatory biblical pilgrimages: Passover, Sukkot, and Shavuot (Deut 16). The narrator of Samuel leaves the special event unclassified, but Judges 21 describes a “yearly festival of God” at Shiloh when the people came to dance in the vineyards. In the festival in Judges, the whole affair devolves into a mass abduction of the women of Shiloh to marry the men of Benjamin. Recall that the period of Judges was defined by chaos/
Elkanah, by contrast, is a righteous man—a welcome sign that not all in Israel had lost their way or forgotten the covenant. His faithful attendance at the yearly pilgrimage bears no resemblance to the debauched episodes in Judges. Traveling from the rural lands of Ephraim, he brought his household to offer generous sacrifices and share in the fellowship meal. While they were at Shiloh, Elkanah asked Hannah, “Why do you weep? Why do you not eat? Why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?” (1:8). Elkanah was well-meaning, but also unhelpful. Peninnah taunted and provoked Hannah to the point that she could not even eat. Recall that eating meat was a rare treat in those days.
Driven to the end of her emotional endurance, Hannah left the family on the hillside and approached the tabernacle. The narrator explains:
Now Eli the priest was sitting on the seat beside the doorpost of the temple of the Lord. She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly. And she vowed a vow and said, “O Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head.” (1:9–11)
In this desperate cry, Hannah calls God the “Lord of hosts.” This is the first time someone in the Bible uses this title to address God. Hannah is a prayer innovator in every way, which we will discuss more next week in our study of chapter 2. Later, the prophets—like Isaiah and Jeremiah—will frequently use this title to emphasize God’s supreme sovereignty over the cosmos and all earthly powers.
Hannah attempted to make a deal with God. She promised that if God blessed her with a son, the boy would belong entirely to Yahweh and serve unconditionally at the tabernacle. Perhaps Hannah understood the problems in Eli’s house. She may have had the foresight to understand that someone needed to stand in the gap for Eli’s corrupt sons. If she did not know, God certainly did.
The text does not tell us how long Hannah had been petitioning God for a child. Perhaps her prayer at Shiloh was the culmination of a years-long back-and-forth with God. Only at Shiloh did she finally submit to God’s will, convicted enough to surrender her future son to lifelong sanctuary service.
Nazirite
Hannah promised that a razor would never touch her son’s head, and for that reason Samuel is often grouped with biblical Nazirites like Samson. However, the traditional Hebrew text—the Masoretic Text—never actually says Hannah dedicated him under a Nazirite vow. The Hebrew noun nazir, meaning “Nazirite,” never appears at all. According to the Torah’s legislation in Numbers 6:2–5, a Nazirite vow required three distinct commitments: total abstinence from wine and grape products; never allowing a razor to touch the head; and strict avoidance of ritual defilement by dead bodies. In the Masoretic Text, Hannah’s vow mentions only one of those three restrictions.
However, the Greek Septuagint goes further than the Masoretic Text in identifying Samuel as a Nazirite. The Greek Septuagint adds in verse 11 that Samuel would never shave his head or drink wine. Scholars were not sure which translation was the closest to the original until they identified a Dead Sea Scroll fragment from the book of Samuel. The Dead Sea Scroll version of 1 Samuel 1 agrees with the Septuagint, and explicitly names Samuel as a Nazirite. It has Hannah praying, “I have dedicated him as a Nazirite—all the days of his life.”
Depending on the English translation you use, verses 11 and 22 differ slightly. If you are reading the NIV, you will see a note about it in your footnotes, and if you read the NRSVUE, you will see an update to verse 11. It isn’t the biggest deal in the world, and it’s not fundamental to your salvation, but it does settle a long-running debate about whether Samuel was a Nazirite.
Drunk or Prayerful
As Hannah continued praying before the Lord, Eli observed her mouth. The text says:
Hannah was praying silently; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard; therefore Eli thought she was drunk. So Eli said to her, “How long will you make a drunken spectacle of yourself? Put away your wine.” But Hannah answered, “No, my lord, I am a woman deeply troubled; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord. Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time.” (1:12–16).
In Eli’s defense, over the years he had witnessed plenty of drunken behavior among the festival crowds; biblical festival culture included abundant feasting and wine. Still, his reaction suggests that fervent prayer was so lacking in the period of the judges that he could not even recognize it when he saw it. He could no longer distinguish drunken revelry from the groans of genuine intercession. Hannah had to explain to Eli that true prayer is the soul poured out before the Lord. She met his rebuke with a lesson on genuine communion with God.
Eli pronounced a priestly blessing, saying, “Go in peace; the God of Israel grant the petition you have made to him” (1:17). This is the only time in the Hebrew Scriptures that we see a priest blessing an individual. Normally, priests offered blessings over the people as a whole.
Throughout Hannah’s interaction with Eli, Elkanah does not seem to be around. He was probably picnicking in the hills around Shiloh with the rest of the family. When he returned, he noticed that Hannah was no longer sad and that her appetite had returned.
Both men in the story, Elkanah and Eli, are kind and understanding toward Hannah. Yet neither is credited with answering her prayer. Only God could give Hannah the desire of her heart, and only God could make such a big request of her: to give her son over to the service of the Lord. God had not even answered her prayer yet, but she was confident he had heard her cry, even if a fallible priest had spoken the blessing. Her heart’s grief had already given way to gratitude before she even knew the outcome of her prayer. She had no way of knowing that her son’s birth would also usher in a new era for Israel—uniting the tribes, centralizing worship in Jerusalem, establishing a royal covenant, and inaugurating a monarchic line that would eventually lead to the Messiah. The reader does have that great advantage, though. What the reader sees in 1 Samuel is that a major transition in Israel’s story begins with a barren woman pouring out her heart to God.
Tabernacle versus Temple
Most of what biblical scholars know about Israelite worship, pilgrimage, and ritual at Shiloh comes from these first three chapters of Samuel. Biblical historians wish they had more description to work with, but they closely analyze the clues in the narratives to learn more about the worship practices at the end of the period of the judges.
Scholars, rabbis, and archaeologists have long debated what the Shiloh sanctuary looked like by Eli’s time. Did it remain the portable tent of fabric and acacia-wood frames constructed at Mount Sinai, or did centuries of settled life transform it into a solid, temple-like stone structure?
During the forty years of wandering in the Sinai wilderness, Israel’s sanctuary was designed for mobility. Whenever the Israelites broke camp, the Levites disassembled the frames, wrapped the sacred furnishings, and carried the portable shrine to its next station. After crossing the Jordan River and subduing Canaan, the nation transitioned from nomadic camp to settled agricultural life. In Joshua’s day, they erected the tabernacle at Shiloh and designated it as the central sanctuary for all twelve tribes. Over the next three centuries, Shiloh functioned as the permanent home of the Ark of the Covenant and the focal point of Israel’s pilgrimage festivals.
A close reading of 1 Samuel 1–3 is all we really have to understand what the sanctuary must have been like after such a long period in one place. At the end of the chapter, when Hannah brings Samuel back to Eli, the text says she brought him to the “house of the Lord.” That phrase could apply to a tent or temple. However, several specific architectural features mentioned in the text belong to a solid building rather than a tent.
In 1 Samuel 1:9 and 1 Samuel 3:3, the Hebrew text does not actually use the words for “tabernacle” (mishkan) or “tent” (ohel). Instead, it calls the Shiloh sanctuary hekhal YHWH—a term derived from the Sumerian and Akkadian word for a “great house” or royal palace. , Eli’s official seat rests beside a mezuzah, which in biblical Hebrew points to a proper doorpost of a building, not a tent flap. Two chapters later, after the Lord calls to young Samuel in the night, 1 Samuel 3:15 reports that Samuel rose in the morning and “opened the doors of the house of the Lord.” The Hebrew noun delet denotes a solid swinging door.
Yet the biblical writers never allow the reader to conclude that the wilderness tent had simply been discarded. Psalm 78:60 laments that God “abandoned the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent where he dwelt among mankind.” In 2 Samuel 7:6, the Lord reminds King David, “I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought the Israelites up out of Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and in a tabernacle.”
1 Samuel describes the sanctuary at Shiloh as a solid structure, yet it is forever remembered as a tent. The Jewish sages explain this apparent contradiction by suggesting that the Shiloh sanctuary became an architectural hybrid and was part tent and part temple. According to the Mishnah, once the Tabernacle settled at Shiloh for generations, the Israelites replaced the portable acacia-wood frames with permanent stone walls. They stretched the original fabric tapestries and animal-skin coverings of the Mosaic Tabernacle across the top of the stone walls.
The sacred inner sanctuary housing the Ark of the Covenant remained the original, fabric-draped Tent of Meeting, while the outer courtyard of cloth hangings was gradually replaced with solid stone walls and wooden doors. When Hannah approached the house of the Lord to pray, she stood near the monumental entrance gate of this outer compound while Eli observed her from his seat at the threshold.
She Bore a Son
Hannah did conceive, and she bore a son. The next year, when Elkanah brought his household to Shiloh for the sacrifice, Hannah did not go. She told her husband, “As soon as the child is weaned, I will bring him, that he may appear in the presence of the Lord and remain there forever” (1:22). Weaning in ancient Israel typically occurred around age three, so Hannah had only a few fleeting years with her miracle son. Yet she kept her promise to God and to Eli. After she weaned Samuel, she brought him to Shiloh, along with a substantial offering. Of course, Elkanah could have invoked his paternity rights and not allowed her to submit Samuel to a life outside of their family. However, he was clearly a man of God and honored his wife’s pledge.
Perhaps Eli did not remember her after so much time had passed, because she reintroduced herself as the “woman who was standing here in your presence, praying to the Lord” (1:26). She presented the three-year-old Samuel to Eli, declaring, “For this child I prayed, and the Lord has granted me the petition that I made to him. Therefore I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he lives, he is given to the Lord” (1:27–28).
It is an enduring human habit to idolize God’s blessings once we receive them and forget their source. We fall so in love with the gift, that we forget to praise the Giver. We cling possessively to the very things we desperately requested in prayer and then forget that they were actually an answer to prayer. For a woman who had suffered years of childlessness, the temptation to take back her oath must have been immense. In Eli’s old age, he had surely forgotten the desperate woman’s one-time vow. Hannah’s promise was not made to Eli, and his crumbling priestly house. The vow was between her and God. Hannah’s hands were open when she begged for a son, and they remained open when she relinquished him.
That’s it for this week! Join us next week for 1 Samuel 2! This is the chapter that makes me cry!
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Shabbat Shalom
- The theological significance of Hannah’s vow (v. 11): Hannah addresses God as the “Lord of hosts”—the first time this title appears in Scripture—and vows a lifelong Nazirite dedication for her unborn son. What does this specific title and vow reveal about how she perceives God’s authority in the midst of Israel’s national decline?
- The spiritual discernment of the Shiloh priesthood (vv. 12–14): Eli observes Hannah praying silently from her heart and mistakenly assumes she is intoxicated. What does this misjudgment reveal about the spiritual vitality and perceptive state of the tabernacle leadership at the close of the period of the Judges?
- The covenantal meaning of divine remembrance (vv. 19–28): The text notes that “the Lord remembered her,” directly echoing God’s covenant interventions with matriarchs like Sarah and Rachel. What does biblical remembrance signify about God’s redemptive work, and why is Hannah’s dedication of Samuel pivotal for the larger narrative of Israel’s monarchy?