FIRST SAMUEL 1-6

Translation & Commentary by Nate Wilson updated in the year of our Lord 2020

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1 Samuel 1:1-11 – Hannah’s Prayer

Introduction: New study on the book of First Samuel

• The division of Samuel into two books was because it took two scrolls of Greek writing to contain all that text, but it’s really one book.

• Samuel’s name is on the book title, not as its author but as the foundation of its subject-matter. First and Second Samuel record the history of the transition in Israel from local judges to a unified monarchy, and Samuel is the foundation of the kings because he was the first king-maker, the one who anointed Saul and David as the first two kings of Israel. Therefore the story starts with the miraculous conception of Samuel following the prayers of his mother.

• Here’s my translation of the first half of chapter 1. Please follow along in your Bibles. “Now there was a certain man from Tsophim Heights of the hill-country of Ephraim, and his name was Elqanah, son of Jerocham, son of Elihu, son of Tochu, son of Tsuph, an Ephraimite, and two women were [married] to him: the name of the first was Hannah, and the name of the second was Peninnah, and it happened that children were [born] to Peninnah but there were no children [born] to Hannah. And this man went up from his town [of The Heights] holiday-season after holiday-season to worship and to sacrifice to Yahweh of Hosts at Shiloh, for there the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, [served as] priests to Yahweh. When the holiday would happen and Elqanah would slaughter [a sacrificial-animal], then he would give portions to Peninnah his wife and to all her sons and her daughters, but to Hannah he would give one apayim portion [since she didn’t have a child because the Lord had not given a child to her, and also] because it was Hannah whom he loved, even though Yahweh had closed her womb. Now, her rival would provoke her even to provocation in order to get her to groan because Yahweh had closed her womb instead. And thus it played out year by year, as often as she went up to the house of Yahweh she would cause provocation to her like this, and she would weep and wouldn’t eat. Now Elqanah her husband said to her, “Hannah, why are you weeping and why are you not eating? And why is your heart breaking? Am I not better to you than ten children?” Then, after eating in Shiloh and after drinking, Hannah got up. Now, Eli the priest was sitting on his seat at the entrance of the temple of Yahweh. Meanwhile, she was bitter of soul and prayed to Yahweh and wept intensely. Then she vowed a vow and said, “Yahweh of Hosts, if you will really look into the deprivation of your maid and remember me and not forget your maid and give to your maid a male descendant, then I will give him to You until the day of his death, [and he shall not drink either wine or beer,] and shears will never be put to his head.”

vs.1-2 (&6) The Main Characters and Place

• ^{Elqanah was a Levite whose ancestry is traced to one of Kohath’s sons.}

  • ^{Apparently from the tribe of Benjamin (as David and Jesus later would be), but somewhere along the line, his family had relocated a few miles North into Ephraim and developed a town on two hills (which is why Rama “High place” is pluralized Ramathaim or “Heights”) and named the town after their ancestor Tsoph.}

  • ^{This town is called “Ramah of Benjamin” elsewhere in the Old Testament, and some scholars believe it is the same as “Aramathea” in the New Testament.}

  • ^{Elqanah means “God obtained” which indicates that His parents had faith in God. He also had faith, calling God the LORD of Hosts and teaching his wife to do the same (the first time in the Bible we run into this name for God which speaks of His authority over everything in the heavens and the earth in contrast with mere earthly army commanders).}

• He married Hannah, his first wife. “Hannah” means “Grace.” Jewish tradition says that they were married 10 years without children before Elkanah decided that he needed another wife.

  • He should have remembered from Abraham and Jacob and others that having more than one wife would create more problems than it solved.

  • God, from the beginning, ordained marriage to be between one man and one woman.

  • Polygamy is a sin, even if there isn’t an explicit law in the Bible prohibiting it, because it is opposed to what God revealed positively of His will concerning marriage.

  • But, as Matthew Henry so aptly put it in his commentary: The rods we are beaten with are often of our own making!

• So he married Peninnah. (“Peninnah” means “gem-stone” - or something like that.)

  • A man had to be relatively wealthy to support more than one wife – usually a second home would have to be acquired for her, so Elqanah was probably well-off.

  • At the opening of the story, in v.4, Peninnah has had multiple sons and multiple daugh­ters, so I would guess Hannah has been putting up with Peninnah as a rival for 10-15 years.

  • Peninnah is portrayed as being a hard person to get along with:

    • Verse 6 uses a word instead of Peninna’s name that means “one who puts pressure/stress” - She constantly pushed on Hannah

    • Furthermore it says that Peninna provoked Hannah on purpose, in an aggrivated manner with the specific goal of getting Hannah so irritated that she would literally go “aaagh.” (That Hebrew word רעם is translated “rumble like thunder” or “roar” pretty much everywhere else it appears in the Bible.)

    • There are words in the Greek and Hebrew text which are not translated into the standard English texts, but I think they add a nuance which gives further insight into Peninnah’s disagreeableness. It says in Hebrew literally, “because the LORD had closed instead [בעד] her womb.” In other words, Peninnah would say, “Isn’t it ironic that you are so devout and I do whatever I please, and yet it is you who is barren and me who gets all the kids! Your God is unjust; he closed your womb instead of mine! What do you have to say about that? Ha!”

• So, as the book of 1 Samuel opens, Hannah is probably around her 25^th wedding anniversary without having had any child, and the end of any physical possibility of childbearing is just around the corner due to her age.

vs. 3-5 Time and Spiritual context

• There are only 4 other times this Hebrew phrase in v.3 miyamim yamimah – literally “from days to days” occurs.

  • The first is in Ex. 13:10, the institution of the Passover, that was to be observed annually.

  • Judges 21:19 mentions this same annual Passover holiday in Shiloh: "...there is a yearly feast of the LORD in Shiloh, which is north of Bethel, on the east side of the highway that goes up from Bethel to Shechem, and south of Lebonah." (NKJV)

• The tabernacle built during the Exodus under Moses’ instruction, had been pitched in Shiloh after Joshua had led Israel into the Promised Land. (Over the years, the tent had been added to with wood and stone here and there.)

  • Shiloh was about 15 miles north of Ramah up the mountain ridge road. (The Jordan River valley went down on the East side, and the Mediterranean Ocean was down on the West side where the Philistines lived.)

• The tabernacle at Shiloh had been tended by a succession of priests for about 300 years during the time of the Judges, and it appears that 1 Samuel picks up right at the end of the book of Judges.

  • This puts us around 1000 BC, in the Iron Age of Archaeology. Iron had become so popular that nobody used Bronze for tools anymore, so the manmade metal things that archaeologists dig up from that time period are mostly made of Iron. So this is a little over 3,000 years ago. This is real history.

  • As the story begins, Eli was High Priest & Judge of Israel, and he sat at the entrance of the tabernacle, making himself available to judge any matter brought to him by people, but Eli was too old to wrangle sheep and calves for the sacrifices anymore, so his two sons, Hophni & Phinehas, officiated as priests over the people’s sacrifices, but, as we’ll see in chapters to come, Hophni and Phinehas were corrupt.

• It had been over three centuries since Moses had given the law and the tabernacle had been built and the Jordan River had parted and the miraculous defeats of Canaanite kings had been wrought by God, and things had slipped spiritually.

  • Think about how much the USA had changed and gotten worse in the last 300 years since the original Puritan colonies.

  • Are the spiritual foundations you are setting in your household strong enough to sustain 10 generations of faith in your descendants?

• Sure, over the time of the Judges, there were godly folks like Boaz and Ruth and Deborah, but they were apparently pretty rare:

  • most of the leaders were guys whose only strong point seemed to be that they could win a fight, judges like Othniel, Ehud, Shamgar, and Abimelek.

  • Then there’s Gideon whose profligate lifestyle led to having 70 sons and who also made the golden vest that led the Jews away from worshipping God.

  • And there’s the outlaw Jepthah, the son of a prostitute, who thought it would please God to offer a human sacrifice of his daughter.

  • And, of course, Samson, another outlaw who ruined himself chasing after pagan women. (Some scholars place Samson at the same time as Samuel, others say he lived as much as 100 years earlier.)

  • And the priests weren’t any better.

    • Remember Micah in Judges 17, who made a silver idol as the centerpiece of his worship center – either near or at Shiloh.

    • Furthermore, from Eli’s indulgence of the unholy and unBiblical practices of his priestly sons, it appears that not even the priests were trying to uphold true religion and teach God’s word anymore.

    • Ramah in Benjamin, in fact, was the very place where the Levite’s concubine (and you have to wonder what on earth a Levite was doing with a concubine instead of a legitimate wife!) was brutally abused all night long by the men of that town after the mean had first tried to do degraded acts with the Levite himself!

• That kind of sexual immorality was par for the course in Canaanite religion. Instead of wiping out those evil religions and establishing Biblical worship of the one true God, most Israelites converted to the local Canaanite religions, particularly the worship of Baal, the storm-god and Ashtoreth the fertility goddess.

  • This kind of laziness with the things of God and compromise with sin was what was all around Elqanah and Hannah, and it would define the life-mission of their son Samuel. But I’m getting ahead of the story!

• Jewish tradition has it that Elqanah and his family were devout, and on the holidays they would be like a church bus, driving around the hills, picking up people and taking them to Shiloh for a week of worship and feasting and camping. I can’t help but wonder, however, why it was that Elqanah only went once a year, when the law of Moses required three times a year.

  • Perhaps he went to the tabernacle for Pentecost and Succoth in addition to Passover, but the other times weren’t mentioned just to keep the story simple, or

  • perhaps even this comparatively-devout family was nevertheless spiritually compromised.

• At any rate, when they went to observe the Passover, they brought the tithe and offerings and sacrifices that they were supposed to.

  • Since this was a thousand years before Jesus died on the cross, they were still sacrificing animals which pointed them to the future sacrifice of the Messiah, and, after the lamb or goat or bull had been slaughtered and burned up on the altar to atone for the worshippers’ sins, one last animal would be slaughtered as a peace offering and cooked as a BBQ dinner and served with bread and wine or beer to the worshippers and the priests in the presence of God to celebrate the forgiveness of sin and renewal of a good relationship with God.

  • The family didn’t always have to come along with the head of household to these festivals, but when they did, as Elqanah’s family did every spring, Elqanah would split up the meat to give his wives and children each a portion.

• The two Hebrew words describing the portion of meat that Elqanah gave Hannah at these feasts are, אַחַת אַפָּיִם, literally translated as “one nostrils.” So Bible teachers have advanced quite a number of ideas as to how it should be interpreted:

  • A very astute modern scholar said that calf’s nose was a delicacy.

  • The ancient Septuagint Greek translation took it to be from a different Hebrew root spelled with the same two letters meaning “except/nevertheless.”

  • The Vulgate Latin translation made around 400AD renders the word as “with sorrow.”

  • Midieval Jewish rabbi’s translated it: “a portion which could be accepted joyfully” or “to appease her anger”

  • The King James goes for “a worthy portion,” and contemporary English versions render it “double” - basically recognizing that the word is plural, but giving it a different meaning than is given everywhere else it occurs in the Bible.

  • Because of these uncertainties, I decided to just render the letter sounds of the Hebrew word into English and leave it at that; whatever it was, it was called an “apayim.”

• I should mention one other thing at this point, and that is that the oldest-known manuscripts of 1 Samuel have additional details in them not found in modern Hebrew Old Testaments.

  • You see, the Jews had a different way of handling scripture. They destroyed copies that got old, so there is no preserved copy of the original 1 Samuel document, and, until recently, if you had a copy of the Hebrew Bible, it stood by itself and there weren’t many other copies to compare it to.

  • Meanwhile, when the Old Testament was translated into Greek around 200-300BC, many of its copies were preserved, the oldest-known being from the 300’sAD, so, unlike the Hebrew Old Testament it is possible to compare Greek manuscripts of the Old Testmant from one century to the next almost back to the time of Christ.

  • Furthermore, Christians by-and-large took to using the Septuagint Greek translation of the Old Testament instead of the Hebrew because it connected better with the growing numbers of Gentile Christians, it was probably easier to obtain, and, for some, there was a suspicion that the Hebrew text was a relic of Judaism that needed to be abandoned for Christianity, so, when Jerome translated the Bible into Latin around the year 400AD, he translated mostly from the Greek Septuagint. And the first English Bibles were translations of the Latin Vulgate, not from Hebrew.

  • So, for about 1,500 years, the only Bibles Christians had were based on the Septuagint, which has these additional details in 1 Samuel.

  • During the Rennaisance, however, Hebrew scholarship and European Christian scholarship were exposed to each other, old Hebrew manuscripts began to be preserved in libraries, and the study of Greek and Hebrew was revived.

  • Furthermore, Protestant Bible translators became eager to throw off the chains of Roman Catholicism, so, beginning with the Geneva Bible and the King James, they switched from translating the Bible from the Latin Vulgate to translating the Old Testament from stand-alone Hebrew manuscripts that had no known historical succession, the oldest of which dates only to the 900’s AD.

    • Protestant scholars assumed that the Hebrew manuscripts were accurate copies and therefore scoffed at the Septuagint for having so many differences.

    • The classic Keil & Delitzsch commentary poked fun at the Septuagint of 1 Samuel chapter 1 by saying that the translators ran away with their imaginations.

  • But then in the mid-1900’s, in caves near the Dead Sea, a library of scrolls was found, containing, among other things, the Old Testament written in Hebrew from between 300BC to 100BC.

    • For the first time, the 10^th century Hebrew copies of the Bible could be compared with other Hebrew Bibles dating over a thousand years older!

    • The Dead Sea Scrolls of 1 Samuel weren’t published until the 1990’s, and lo and behold, these scrolls by-and-large support the Septuagint, showing that before the time of Christ, there were Hebrew scriptures which contained these extra notes in 1 Sam.

    • Now, all of our standard English versions are based on translations made before the 1990’s, so they don’t have the extra information contained in the Dead Sea Scrolls, so I will try to share with you what I’m discovering as I compare the DSS and LXX with the MT.

  • But let me give a few caviats about this extra information that’s not in the traditional Hebrew Old Testament:

1. Don’t expect any of this material to give you any new theology; it’s all things that could have been inferred from the more terse narrative of the Masoretic Hebrew text.

2. Don’t forget that this material is currently controversial. I expect it could take another century or so for Bible publishers to establish consensus.

3. There’s still about a thousand years between the time of Samuel and the oldest-known manuscript, so we have no way of knowing scientifically which is more original.

• That leaves us having to rely on God’s sovereignty in preserving His word, which is ultimately what we have to do. I believe that God has so worked over the millennia that, although there are slight differences in Bible texts that have survived, God has prevented any important errors from being introduced, such that if you are an honest person reading an honestly-translated version of the Bible you’ve got all you need for life and godliness.

  • (I’m ruling out dishonest translations like the Jehovah’s Witnesses New World Translation which was purposefully edited to remove the deity of Jesus.)

  • I’m sorry for such a long explanation, but I think these issues about God’s word need to be carefully framed.

• So, what is this new information which was preserved in the oldest-known and longest-used Bible texts? Basically nothing more than this: it says of Hannah in 1 Samuel 1:5-6, “...she didn’t have a child... because the Lord had not given a child to her...”

• Could you have figured that out without reading that in the Septuagint? Of course. God hadn’t held anything important from modern Christians who don’t know Greek.

• But this extra text highlights some important applications:

  • First, that that Hannah’s barrenness was no cosmic accident, nor was the blame to be laid at the feet of Satan – or anybody else, for that matter. It was the result of a decision God had made; God had not decided to give her a child, so she didn’t have a child. It was God’s decision.

  • The same is true in your life. The fact that you aren’t married or you don’t have a million dollars in the bank or you don’t have so-and-so’s looks is because God decided not to give that to you. It’s His decision.

  • You can turn that around.

    • If you have a child, it was God’s decision to give you that child; that baby was a gift from Him, and we should welcome them as such.

    • If you are married, your spouse was a gracious gift to you and you have no business being spiteful.

    • If you have money in the bank, it was God who provided it for you, so it is God’s to decide how it should be spent.

• I want to conclude with four lessons from...

vs. 7-11 Hannah’s Prayer

1. Going to church triggered intense grief for her because it reminded her of her barrenness, and Peninnah was the most cruel in her words during those worship times for some reason. For that reason, most of us would choose never to go to church again, but not Hannah. Even though she didn’t have perfect control over her emotions and she knew she would embarras herself by making a scene and crying, she went anyway with her husband and Peninnah and her children to worship the Lord because she believed there was no greater God than the Lord of Hosts. As Peter the Apostle said many years later, “Where else would we go? You alone have the words of life!” So, when you are depressed or worried about what people will think of you, don’t let it stop you from worshipping with God’s people.

2. Also, don’t let the immaturity and pettiness and misunderstandings of other Christians stop you from connecting with the Lord of Hosts. Eli was a negligent pastor. The priests Hophni and Phinehas were creeps. Hannah’s husband could have taught a course on how to offend women in 15 words or less: “Why are you crying? Am I not better to you than 10 sons?” But despite all the shortcomings of the believers around her, Hannah still worshipped the Lord with them. Your pastor may be a dud, and your family may be a mess, and the other Christians at church may be inconsiderate, but don’t let the thought of them hinder you from coming to worship Jesus.

3. Hannah went to the LORD and prayed about her problems. She didn’t get catty with Peninah; she didn’t go whining to Elqanah; she didn’t isolate herself; she didn’t call her friend on the phone, she took her problems to God. When Elqanah called her down for falling to pieces at Peninah’s jeering, she got ahold of herself and ate her holiday meal, then she crept past the imperious-looking high priest in the doorway and let it all hang out with God. Jesus likewise, “when he was in agony prayed more earnestly” (Luke 22:44). Will you take your problems to God rather than keep on trying to solve them yourself or complain about them to other people? Remind yourself with the hymn, “I must tell Jesus! I must tell Jesus! I cannot bear these burdens alone… Jesus can help me, Jesus alone!” And Jesus answered Hannah’s prayer.

4. The last thing I want to point out is Hannah’s example of asking for God to give her something that she can give back to God. She asked for a son that she could dedicate to God’s service. In the law, Levites only had to serve in the temple for 25 years, from age 25 to 50, and that only when they were on-call (Num. 8:24ff), but Hannah goes beyond that to give her son to God from the time he was weaned at around 3 years old until the day he died – all the days of his life. He would never be able to mow the grass for her or visit her on Mother’s Day or move back into town with the grandkids, he was a gift from God and so he was dedicated for God to use as God wanted rather than as Hannah wanted. When you ask God for things, are you thinking about what He wants or just what you want? When you ask God for that relationship or that car or that healing or that job or whatever, it needs to be because we want to do His will with it. Hannah saw herself as God’s servant; and that’s what you are too.

1

1 Samuel 1:12-28 – Answered Prayer

Introduction & v.12:

• Let me read through my translation of the whole chapter for context: please follow along in your own Bible:

• Now there was a certain man from Tsophim Heights of the hill-country of Ephraim, and his name was Elqanah, son of Jerocham, son of Elihu, son of Tochu, son of Tsuph, an Ephraimite, and two women were [married] to him: the name of the first was Hannah, and the name of the second was Peninnah, and it happened that children were [born] to Peninnah but there were no children [born] to Hannah. And this man went up from his town {of The Heights} holiday-season after holiday-season to worship and to sacrifice to Yahweh of Hosts at Shiloh, for there the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, [served as] priests to Yahweh. When the holiday would happen and Elqanah would slaughter [a sacrificial-animal], then he would give portions to Peninnah his wife and to all her sons and her daughters, but to Hannah he would give one apayim portion {since she didn’t have a child because the Lord had not given a child to her, and also} because it was Hannah whom he loved, even though Yahweh had closed her womb. Now, her rival would provoke her even to provocation in order to get her to groan because Yahweh had closed her womb instead. And thus it played out year by year, as often as she went up to the house of Yahweh she would cause provocation to her like this, and she would weep and wouldn’t eat. Now Elqanah her husband said to her, “Hannah, why are you weeping and why are you not eating? And why is your heart breaking? Am I not better to you than ten children?” Then Hannah got up after eating in Shiloh and after drinking. Now, Eli the priest was sitting on his seat against the door-frame of the temple of Yahweh. Meanwhile, she was bitter of soul and prayed to Yahweh and wept intensely. Then she vowed a vow and said, “Yahweh of Hosts, if you will really look into the deprivation of your maid and remember me and not forget your maid and give to your maid a male descendant, then I will give him to You until the day of his death, {and he shall not drink either wine or beer,} and shears will never be put to his head. So it happened that she prolonged her praying before the face of Yahweh, and Eli was watching her mouth. As for Hannah, she was speaking with her heart, and her voice could not be heard; merely her lips were moving. As for Eli, he reckoned her to be drunk, so Eli said to her, “How long are you going to make yourself drunk? Put away your wine from you!” Then Hannah replied and said, “No, my lord, I am a woman of a hard-pressed spirit; I have not been drinking either wine or beer; I was just pouring our my soul before the face of Yahweh. Don’t identify your maidservant as having a character of ungodliness, for it is from the enormity of my complaint and my provocation that I spoke as much here.” Then Eli answered and said, “Go into peace, and may the God of Israel grant your request which you requested from Him.” So the woman said, “May your maidservant find grace in your eyes,” and she went along her way {into her lodging} and ate, and her sad-face was not on her anymore. Then they got up early in the morning and worshipped before the face of Yahweh, and then they turned around and went to their house at “The Heights,” and Elqanah knew Hannah his wife, and Yahweh remembered her. So it was for the term of her days Hannah was also pregnant, and she gave birth to a son, and she called his name Samuel - “because I asked for him from Yahweh.” Then her husband Elqanah and all his household went up to sacrifice the holiday sacrifice along with what he vowed to Yahweh, but Hannah did not go up {with him} for, she said to her husband, “Whenever I wean him and the boy is to go up, then he will be seen before the Lord, and he will settle down there forever.” And Elqana her husband said to her, “Do what is good in your eyes. Stay settled down until you have weaned him. May Yahweh indeed confirm what came out of your mouth.” So the woman stayed settled down and nursed her son until she had weaned him. Then she went up with him {to Shiloh} as usual, with a 3-year-old bullock {and bread} and one bushel of meal and a container of wine, and she brought it to the Shiloh house of Yahweh, and the boy was with them. {Then they brought him before the face of Yahweh, and his father slaughtered the sacrifice before the LORD, as he did from holiday to holiday, and he presented the child}, then they slaughtered the bullock, and {Hannah} presented the boy to Eli, and she said, “Please, my master, may your soul live. My master, I am the woman who took a stand beside you in here to pray to Yahweh. It was for this boy that I prayed, and Yahweh granted to me my request which I requested from Him! And so, as for me, I have made him the fulfillment of a request to Yahweh. He shall be the fulfillment of a request to Yahweh all the days which he lives.” Then they bowed down to Yahweh there. (NAW)

• In my introductory sermon on 1 Samuel, we followed Hannah to the point where she was praying in the tabernacle for a son, after being heckled by her husband’s other wife about her infertility, so that’s where I’ll pick up again now.

v.13-14 Eli thinks Hannah is drunk, so he reprimands her

• ^{This story with its dramatic irony must have been a family favorite to tell over the years. The grammar of this passage sets up the stark contrast between the perceptions of the two main characters and the word-for-word dialogue that ensued.}

• ^{Eli sees Hannah acting quietly distraught in the tabernacle and assumes she is drunk.}

• ^{Now, alcohol was not off-limits to God’s people when they gathered at these religious festivals, but God’s people were to be moderate and self-controlled about it.}

  • ^{Deut 14:}22-26 "You shall truly tithe all the increase of your grain that the field produces year by year… or you shall exchange it for money, take the money in your hand, and go to the place which the LORD your God chooses. And you shall spend that money for whatever your heart desires: for oxen or sheep, for wine or similar drink [sheker/beer?], for whatever your heart desires; you shall eat there before the LORD your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your household.” (NKJV)

  • But most of the rest of scripture concerning alcohol comes in the form of warnings against getting drunk, most notably Proverbs 20:1 “Wine is a mocker, Strong drink is a brawler, And whoever is led astray by it is not wise.” (NKJV, cf. Gen. 9, Isa 5, 28:7, 56:12, Hab. 2:15, Eph. 5:18)

  • ^{Alcohol and drugs inhibit people’s self-control and good judgment and open them up to committing further sins against God.}

  • ^{Those substances have been used to excess throughout history in pagan religious pract­ices, and that was one area where Canaanite paganism was leading Israelites astray. Eli’s sons were drunkards, and it was apparently not uncommon to see other Israelites stagger­ing in to the tabernacle drunk after the holy feast (just as Greek paganism later on would influence young Christians in Corinth to get drunk while observing the Lord’s Supper – 1 Cor. 11).}

  • ^{Christianity, unlike paganism, upholds having a “sound mind” (2 Tim. 1:7), “discern­ment” (Phil. 1:9), and self-control (2 Pet. 1:6),}

    • ^{and that’s one reason why God’s word commanded priests and civil magistrates not to drink while on-duty (Lev. 10:9, Prov. 31:4)}

    • ^{and it also disqualifies people from being prophets, elders, or deacons if alcohol has any control over them (Micah 2:11, 1 Tim. 3).}

  • ^{So, it was right for Eli to speak out against drunkenness; he just misjudged Hannah.}

vs.15-16 Hannah corrects Eli’s mistaken impression

• ^{Eli seems to be a bit faulty in his judgment:}

  • ^{He did not stop his sons from their blasphemous behavior as priests,}

  • ^{but he was awful quick to judge a woman who was a regular at the temple and who had not shown a proclivity to drunkenness before.}

  • ^{The Apostle James warned, “}let everyone be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger” (James 1:19, NASB).

• ^{Hannah, now having been chided by her husband for not eating and drinking and then chided by her priest for drinking too much, doesn’t explode in anger, she just explains her behavior by saying, “I am a woman of [literally] hard spirit.”}

  • ^{She was “sorrowful/oppressed/troubled.”}

  • ^{Perhaps she is picking up the phrase from Exodus 6:9 the same words, “...the children of Israel... did not heed Moses, because of anguish of spirit and cruel bondage.” (NKJV)}

• ^{Hanna begs Eli not to identify her as a “worthless/wicked woman,” literally a “daughter of Belial.”}

  • ^{The root meaning of בְּלִיָּעַל has to do with “worthlessness,”}

  • ^{but it isn’t saying that a human life is intrinsically worthless but rather that the person has associated themselves with worthless things that God hates – like idols, lying, stealing, murder, adultery, etc.}

  • ^{So it is judging a person’s character to be ungodly to call them “Belial.”}

  • ^{Ironically, the label will stick to Eli’s own sons in 1 Sam. 2:12.}

• ^{Hannah explains her unusual way of praying as being “from the enormity/abundance of my complaint and grief” (KJV)/ “my great concern and provocation” (NASB)/ “my great anguish and grief” (NIV)/ “my great anxiety and vexation” (ESV).}

  • ^{The 2nd word is the same as that in v.6 describing Peninnah getting under Hannah’s skin and provoking her to be upset.}

  • ^{Job used the same word to describe his suffering in Job 7:11 “Therefore I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit, I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.” (NASB)}

vs.17-18 Eli and Hannah part peaceably

• ^{If I am reading the nuances of Eli’s response rightly (and I might not be), he seems a little reserved.}

  • ^{He does not join in with her like a good pastor in praying for the same thing she has asked for. He seems instead to distance himself by calling it “your request which you have requested.”}

  • ^{Even his benediction seems a little reserved, for he says literally, “go to peace” - using the Hebrew lamed preposition for “to/toward” rather than the beth preposition for “in/with” - as though he’s not sure she’s headed the right direction and isn’t sure he wants to bless her unless she proves herself to be headed the right direction.}

  • ^{This seems to be underscored by his qualification as to which God he was talking about, as if to say, “Woman, you’d better have been praying to the ‘God of Israel,’ and not to any of those Canaanite gods1.”}

• ^{Nevertheless, we should be gracious toward men whose difficult battles against evil have made them a little rough around the edges.}

  • ^{Eli has had to stand as a bulwark against idolatry and pagan practices in his nation for decades, sometimes not so successfully, but he is continuing to affirm that it is the God of Israel who should be prayed to;}

  • ^{he is still continuing to affirm that this God hears prayer and has the power to answer prayers and to give peace.}

  • ^{Hannah doesn’t sass back; she replies respectfully, “Let your maidservant find favor in your sight.”}

  • ^{And the next time she sees Eli, in v. 26, she again speaks respectfully and shares openly with him.}

• ^{The oldest-known manuscripts of this passage add that when Hannah went her way, she was going back to the campsite or the inn where the family was staying for the festival week, and she shared a last supper with her husband there before they had to go home the next morning.}

• ^{What is impressive to me is that after Hannah had been so upset and had prayed to God, she was able to leave this heavy matter in God’s hands and enter into joyful worship of God and family time, even though she could not see the answer to her prayer. Even though her prob­lem was not solved, she was able to trust God so much that she could leave her sad-face be­hind and cheerfully enjoy a meal with Elqana (and presumably Peninnah too).}

• ^{This is faith, to be able to leave troubling matters in God’s hands, pouring out your heart to Him and then trusting that He will take that into account and do what’s best, trusting Him so much that you have no reason to remain anxious about it.}

• ^{Think about what it would have communicated if she had stomped around scowling as she prepared supper (as I know none of you ever do). What would that communicate?}

  • ^{God is unjust. I have to worry about these things for Him.}

  • ^{Life is out of control, and I want everybody around me to feel it too!}

  • ^{Happiness comes from getting your own way.}

  • ^{These are some of the unspoken lies that would embed in her family’s minds if she couldn’t find peace after praying.}

• ^{Eli’s blessing was already coming into effect on Hannah by the time she got back from praying at the tabernacle!}

• ^{“Oh what peace we often forfeit; Oh what needless pain we bear, All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer!” (from “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”)}

vs.19-20 Elqana and Hannah give birth to Samuel

• ^{And so the family finished their weeklong retreat at Shiloh with a Sunday morning worship service and a return trip to the mountains of Ephraim2.}

• ^{Notice the two statements which conclude this section of the story: Elqanah knew Hannah/ the LORD remembered her. I think those statements are very intentionally placed in parallel with one another.}

  • ^{Husbands, when you love your wife, do you maker her feel like God cares for her?}

  • ^{Is it a matter of awe to you that the LORD of Hosts would humble Himself to collaborate with you at all to answer prayers and achieve His will?}

  • ^{Let us be reverent and recognize how holy love is in relationship with God Almighty!}

• ^{At any rate, this results in 40-odd weeks of pregnancy for Hannah, and then her son is born.}

• ^{It is curious that Hannah is said in v.20 to be the one who named the child,}

  • ^{but I can imagine that the relationship between father and child is less significant in a polygamous household,}

  • ^{and Elqanah may have recognized what this child meant to Hannah and felt it appropriate for her to give him that name.}

  • ^{He obviously approved of the vow his wife made to dedicate this child to the service of the LORD. If he hadn’t approved, he could have followed the procedure in Numbers 30 and nullified her vow, but since he supported her vow, that meant this child could not be his heir to take over the management of his estate, so that may have been another reason he seemed standoffish.}

• ^{The name “Samuel” has been interpreted into English a few different ways, but the one that makes most sense to me is, “heard by God3” so, Hannah called this miracle-baby by a name that would testify that God hears prayer.}

  • ^{“Thus she designed upon every mention of his name, to take the comfort to herself and to give God the glory… [She also] intended by this name to put her son in mind of the obligation he was under to be the Lord’s...” ~M. Henry}

  • ^{She must have told so many people the meaning behind that name (“...because I asked for him from the LORD”) that her little explanation was brought over ver batem into the scriptural account and left at that, without even changing the pronoun!}

  • ^{What would your historian put down if he were to write about your life and the things you often say?}

    • ^{Do you have any catchphrases that give frequent glory to God?}

    • ^{When I think of my childhood Coach Jeff Young, the phrase “Man of God” immediately comes to mind because I heard him say it so often.}

    • ^{When I think of Dad’s friend, George Moss, the phrase “Let’s pray” comes to mind because he said it so often.}

    • ^{Or Professor Henry Krabbendam, “The heart of the matter is the matter of the heart”}

    • ^{Or R.C. Sproul “Dust to Glory”}

    • ^{Are there any catchphrases you could develop that would give glory to God?}

vs.21-23 Elqana & Hannah discuss holiday arrangements while Samuel nurses

• ^{So, by the time the next Passover rolls around, Hannah has a newborn, but she is not ready to bring him to the Lord’s house yet.}

  • ^{Different manuscripts have different formulations of her statement to this effect and I’m following the Septuagint and Dead Sea Scroll here over the Masoretic text, but they are all agreed on the gist that she wanted to wait until Samuel is weaned.}

• ^{Only the heads of households were commanded to appear before the Lord on the Israelite holy days (Ex. 23:17), so it was no problem for Hannah to stay home.}

  • ^{It was rather a sign of her devotion to God that even went at other times.}

  • ^{Matthew Henry noted in his commentary, “Those that are detained from public ordin­ances by the nursing and tending of little children may take comfort from this instance and believe that, if they do that with an eye to God, He will graciously accept them therein...”}

• ^{The Dead Sea Scroll, which is the oldest-known manuscript of this passage, also mentions that Elqanah was going to pay his tithe at Shiloh, along with his Passover sacrifice and his votive offerings.}

  • ^{The tithe would have been ten percent of his profits over the course of the season.}

  • ^{He apparently had made other vows to give above and beyond the 10% - or perhaps he was, as Jameison, Fausset and Brown suggested in their commentary, expressing concurrence with his wife’s vow by means of an offering.}

  • ^{He was a devout man, and his example of devotion is worth following.}

vs.24-25 Hannah brings Samuel and holiday sacrifices to Shiloh

• ^{Elqana held his wife accountable to her promise, and she was good on her word too, as hard as it must have been for a mother to part with her only child after two or three4 years with him.}

• ^{The oldest manuscripts say Hannah brought one three-year-old bull (LXX, DSS, Peshitta), but the Masoretic Hebrew tradition says it was three bulls, so different English versions go different ways on that.}

  • ^{If it was three bulls, Elqanah was wealthy and generous.}

  • ^{If it was only one, they were still fulfilling the law.}

  • ^{We may have to wait until we run into Hannah or Elqana or Eli in heaven and ask them whether it was one or three bulls, and it may not matter enough for them to remember.}

  • ^{It may be that Hannah brought one specifically for the “sacrifice of days” required in Leviticus 12:6-8 to signify purification after recovering from a birth, and that there were other bulls brought along as usual by Elqana for the burnt offering and the peace offering.}

    • ^{The Septuagint and Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts add details along these lines in v.25,}

    • ^{and the offering of a whole ephah-bushel of ground grain would fit closer with the Levitical command to offer 3/10 of an ephah of flour with each bull offered, thus 3 bulls would be 9/10s of an ephah of flour and maybe Elqana just made it a round 10/10s - 1 bushel.}

• ^{They also brought food offerings of coarsely-ground grain, cooked bread, and wine. But the important thing was that they brought this little boy up the mountain-ridge road 15 miles to the tabernacle at Shiloh.}

vs.26-28 Hannah’s testimony to answered prayer before Eli

• ^{The wording of the narrative and dialogue in these verses connotes great eagerness or excitement on the part of Hannah to present her son to Eli, and the conversation she has with Eli upon this momentous occasion is recorded in detail to round out the chapter.}

  • ^{She begins with an extremely respectful greeting, calling Eli her “master” as though she were his slave.}

  • ^{Then she says, “May your soul live!” What a great salutation for a believer! (The word “as,” which is used in most English translations, is simply not in the Hebrew text.)}

  • ^{She identifies herself as “that woman” - notice how she doesn’t mention Eli’s mistaken accusation or even his hesitance to get behind her request. From her words, you’d think he had been in full agreement with her prayers all along: “remember how we were standing there together to pray?”}

  • ^{Matthew Henry commented, “Good men ought not to be upbraided with their infirmities and oversights. They have themselves repented of them; let them hear no more of them.”}

  • ^{Then Hannah excitedly relates how God answered her prayer by giving Samuel to her.}

  • ^{She gives all the credit to Jehovah, and His Name is in almost every sentence she utters!}

• ^{The Hebrew root “sha’al” appears twice in verse 27 and two more times in verse 28. It is hard to bring over all four instances with the same verb in English, so it gets translated “petition,” “ask,” “request,” “lend,” “loan,” “dedicate,” “give,” or “give over,” depending on which version you’re reading.}

• ^{Now, there are other words in Hebrew that would normally be used for “dedicate” (נזר or} חנך) or “loan” (נשׁה or לוה) or “give” (נתנ), but Hanna didn’t use any of those words in v.28; she used the word she had been using all along for “asking” and “granting requests.” ^{It is my belief, therefore, that Hannah’s words in v.28 are a continuation of her testimony to answered prayer rather than a dedicatory statement5.}

  • ^{Nowhere does she speak of the anxiety of separation or loss of him, although the oldest-known manuscript of this passage does have a note to the effect that Hannah left Samuel there at the tabernacle in Shiloh.}

  • ^{The fact that she uses forms of the same word for “request/ask” in the final verse that she did in verses 17, 20, and 27 lead me to believe that she is continuing to say the same thing that she repeated in those verses: “This boy was an answer to prayer; God answers prayer! I asked and I got what I asked for!”}

  • ^{This is Hannah’s consistent message. This is the life lesson she wanted us to learn from her: God answers prayer.}

  • ^{Do you believe that?}

  • ^{What would you do differently if you lived like you really believed God answers prayer?}

Conclusion

• ^{Well, our narrative closes as Hannah and her family bows in worship,}

  • ^{although there is some debate as to who it says was worshipping.}

    • ^{The 4th century Vaticanus manuscript doesn’t mention anybody worshiping.}

    • ^{The ancient Vulgate, Syriac and Arabic versions say, “they worshipped.”}

    • ^{The Dead Sea Scroll renders it feminine singular, “she worshipped.”}

    • ^{And the more-recent Masoretic manuscripts render it masculine singular, “he wor­shiped.” Some interpret that “he” as Samuel (Henry, Gill), some as Elqana (K&D, Goldman), and some as Eli (Willett).}

  • ^{From the context, however, each one proves true.}

    • ^{Did Elqana worship God at the tabernacle? Of course.}

    • ^{Did Hanna worship God at the tabernacle? Yes!}

    • ^{But what is even more impressive is that little Samuel worshiped God at the temple.}

• ^{Wait, is it possible for a two- or three-year-old to worship God? Absolutely.}

  • ^{He might not be able to explain the difference between trans-substantiation and con-substantiation,}

  • ^{but he knows there is a God,}

  • ^{he knows how to bow down on his knees with his face to the ground the way his parents do when they pray;}

  • ^{he knows how to lift his little hands and toddle back and forth with the psalms of praise;}

  • ^{he knows to be kinda quiet and listen to the reading of the Holy Scriptures;}

  • ^{he knows something special is going on when the family travels out of town to the taber­nacle and makes burnt offerings and eats the celebratory dinner before the presence of the Lord.}

  • ^{A two- or three-year-old is perfectly capable of that.}

• ^{The fact that little Samuel worshipped the LORD is also a testimony to the faithfulness of his parents training him how to worship the LORD through their own examples of bowing down in prayer, singing worship music, showing respect to God’s word, and attending worship services.}

  • ^{Parents who don’t model worship before their children and who think their kids will choose to follow their Sunday School teacher’s example over their own poor example are gambling with their children’s eternity – at very high odds!}

  • ^{The role of a father is crucial in establishing the patterns of faith which the next genera­tions will follow. Fathers, your sacrificial commitment to lead family worship times and to risk the embarrassment of bumbling through trying to be spiritual leaders to your family is priceless. Your children will learn from your example, and there is “no greater joy” (3 John 4) than to see God’s blessing fall upon your children – and their children after them! Don’t fail to start when they are little, and don’t give up when it is hard!}

1 Samuel 1 - Side-by side comparison of versions^A

1

1 Samuel 2:1-3 – Lessons on Worship from Hannah

Introduction

• A lot of the Psalms I’ve preached on lately towards the end of the first book of Psalms are “trouble songs” with pleas for God to intervene and bring deliverance from trouble. It is good to sing to the Lord when we are down and anxious. But it is also good to sing to the Lord during the good times when we are happy, so it’s a joy to study a “triumph Psalm” by Hannah after all the trouble Psalms by David!

• The Song of Hannah, recorded in 1 Samuel chapter 2 was delivered as a prayer at the tabernacle by a middle-aged woman a couple of years after God gave her her first child.

  • This was a moment of triumph for her. She had been criticized for years for her barrenness; it felt like a curse from God to be childless.

  • But she had prayed for a child, promising God that if He answered her prayer in the affirmative, she would give that child to Him to serve in the tabernacle his whole life, as soon as he was weaned.

  • And God gave her a son in answer to her prayer, and now here she was at the house of God with little Samuel, worshipping the Lord with him and handing him over to the priests to serve in the tabernacle for the rest of his life.

• Hannah opens with four statements about the result of her faith in the one true God. The verbs are all perfect tense in Hebrew, so I rendered them all in English perfect tense. Although it is kind-of past-tense, she is still experiencing these four results of faith in Yahweh

• Then she goes on in v.2 to speak of God’s incomparable greatness and to warn in v.3 against being proud around God. Every word teaches us poignant lessons about how to worship God – and now not to to worship Him. Let’s learn all we can from this!

v.1 Then Hannah prayed and said, “My heart has been exuberant in Yahweh; my “horn” has risen up in Yahweh; my mouth has gone wide over my enemies; I have become happy in Your salvation,

1. The 1^st statement is pretty straightforward: She is exuberantly happy, rejoicing in the LORD.

• This reminds me of Psalm 5:11 “… all who take refuge in You will be happy, they will sing out forever... lovers of Your name will exult in You!” (NAW)

• John Gill remarked in his commentary that “[T]his joy of Hannah's was not worldly, but spiritual… it was not in her son the Lord had given her, but in the goodness and kindness of the Lord... she rejoiced not in her husband, nor in the wealth and riches they were possessed of... but in the Lord, the giver of all...”

• Joy is part of the Christian’s experience too. All the New Testament writers wrote of it.

  • Jesus said, “... I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you." (John 16:22, KJV)

  • Paul said, "...we have access by faith [in Christ] into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God." (Rom. 5:2, KJV)

  • and he even commanded in Philippians 4:4 “rejoice in the Lord always”!

• We might consider, however, what it means to rejoice “in the LORD.” I believe that the word “in” here means “in the context of a good personal relationship with” Him.

  • That involves filling our minds with His words – as we’ll see Hanna did;

  • it involves obeying His word – as we also see Hannah did in offering sacrifices properly and fulfilling her vows;

  • it involves trusting that the sacrifice God prescribed will indeed make her right with Him – as we see in her boldness to pray fervently in God’s presence after offering the sacrifice,

  • and it involves living in relationship with Him as our God – again, we see Hannah calling Him “our God” in v.2.

  • This filling our minds with God’s word, obeying Him, trusting in His salvation, and walking in relationship with Him as “our God” is also described in the New Testament, most prominently in Ephesians 1: “...to the faithful in Christ Jesus... Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us… in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him... he hath made us accepted in the beloved. In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace... That... he might gather together in one all things in Christ... In whom also we have obtained an inheritance... That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ… after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise...” (KJV) Are you “in Christ” and experiencing His joy?

• Hannah sure was! “My heart has been exuberant in Yahweh” describes the last couple of years between the last time Hannah had been in the tabernacle and now. She has been so excited to hold this little miracle baby in her arms and nurse him and play with him. What a joy it has been, and she shares that joy with God! Will you share your joy with God too?

2. Hannah’s second statement is a little more obscure: “my horn has risen up.”

• 22 out of the 25 times that this Hebrew word for “horn” occurs before 1 Samuel in the Bible, it means a ram’s or a bull’s horn – or something shaped like that.⁶ But Hannah calls it, “my horn,” and I’ve never met a woman who has horns, so I think we need to look for a figurative meaning.

• This Hebrew word for “horn” has a root meaning of “that which protrudes outward,” and it occurs three times in Ex.34 to describe the glory of God “radiating” out of Moses’ face,

  • so another possible translation would be to render the word “horn” intangibly as, “my issue has risen up,” indicating that her prayer came out of her and up to God,

  • however, the more-tangible thing that “issued” of her body – that is, the son that she had given birth to – seems more likely to be what she’s talking about. Hannah certainly is rejoicing that God gave her a child and that this child is growing up healthily.

  • The verb “lifted up/exalted” was also used in the Law of Moses to describe “wave” offerings which were not burnt up on the sacrificial altar, but merely lifted up in a gesture of offering to the Lord and then handed over to the priests and Levites for their use, and that is what Hannah was doing with her little offspring.

• I am intrigued, however, with another interpretation that I think is even more likely, and that is based on the last use of this word for “horn” in the Bible, before 1 Samuel, in Joshua chapter 6.: For six days, the priests were to carry ram’s horns by their sides and walk around the city of Jericho with the people of Israel, but on the seventh day, they were to raise those horns to their lips and blow for all they were worth, and the walls would come tumbling down.

  • I wonder if this was perhaps what Hannah was thinking of when she said her horn was up. In other words, “This is my moment of triumph. I’ve got the trumpet to my lips instead of down at my side, and I’m going to toot my horn now, because God is coming through, and nobody can stop us!”

  • If so, it would fit well with the next phrase in verse 1, which speaks of “opening [her] mouth wide” and “boasting loudly over” her foe.

  • And if we look at all the other passages in the Old Testament which speak of “lifting up the horn,” it appears they consistently stand parallel to phrases about gloating, triumphing, boasting, and revelling in glory⁷.

  • We’ll see Hannah make the parallel statement in v.10 of raising the horn of His anointed one.

  • This kind of boasting is a Biblical act of worship, for instance in Ps. 34:2 “ Boasting about Yahweh is what my soul will do. Lowly men will hear and be happy.” (NAW)

  • This is also in the experience of the New Testament believer! 1 Corinthians 1:31 says, "The one who boasts in the Lord, let him keep boasting!" (NAW⁸). The thought is continued in Galatians 6:14, “But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” (KJV) Are you bragging about Jesus in such a way that those oppressed by sin will gain the hope of salvation?

3. This leads us to Hannah’s third statement in v.1. It makes sense, whether we translate it literally: “my mouth enlarged/went wide” [Gasp! Ha Ha! I’m pregnant! God has given me a child too!] or figuratively: “boast/speak boldly over/against my enemies.”

• We see the same phrase in Psalm 35:21 “...my enemies... opened their mouth wide over me; they said, ‘Aha! Aha!…’” (NAW) It’s the body-language of triumph.

• Now, Peninnah seems to be the only person portrayed as Hannah’s enemy in this text, so why does Hannah speak of plural “enemies”?

  • I imagine⁹ Peninnah’s children probably joined with their mom in speaking derisively to Hannah. Children are quick to imitate our bad attitudes and habits and even take them one step further, aren’t they? We must be careful what attitudes we allow ourselves to show around our children. But anyway, that could have been why Hannah saw this as a situation with more than one enemy.

  • On the other hand, I think it’s possible that Hannah could have used the plural for “enemies” because she saw that we contend not only with flesh and blood, but also against spiritual enemies – in the world and the flesh and the devil. David Tsumura noted in his recent commentary that, “God’s enemies… are Hannah’s enemies too… because his enemies attack her trust in God and his dealings with her.” But this affirmative answer to her prayer for a child strengthened her faith to trust God to bring victory over every other enemy she would ever face in every future circumstance. We should certainly use answers to prayer to bolster our faith for future challenges.

4. Hannah’s fourth and final statement about the result of her faith is, “I have become happy/rejoiced in Your salvation/deliverance”

• The immediate context of Hannah’s salvation/deliverance experience, of course, was that God gave her a son, even though she had not been able to have a child.

• Notice that Hanna didn’t come back to God and say, “Hey, thanks for the brat, but since I have give him back to You, thanks for nothing. Now, if you’d give me the same amount of children as Peninnah, then I’d be happy.” No! Hannah’s relationship with God was such that even one child from the Lord – even one that she could only hold for a couple of years – satisfied her and made her happy.

• In other words, her happiness was not based on how many children she had or how many things she had, but rather on appreciating what God had given her.

• Matthew Henry commented on this passage that “Praise is our rent, our tribute. We are unjust if we do not pay it [to God]… What we win by prayer we may wear with comfort, and must wear with praise.”

• Here is another wonderful lesson to us whose lives are glutted with things. We have so many blessings from God that we hardly even think to thank Him for them. We are tempted to think that if we had just one more thing then we’d be happy, and we think God is somehow holding out on us when other people have more things than we do, and we struggle with feeling that God is somehow unfair to us. What utter nonsense! That one more thing won’t make you happy. Things don’t people happy. A good relationship with God is the only thing that makes people happy. If you will choose to see your relationships and your possessions as blessings from God and delight in them as His gifts, you will find happiness so deep that you’ll be totally satisfied.

• Now after four statements about how her relationship with God has benefited her, Hannah makes four more statements explaining the reasons why all these good things have come about in her life:

v.2 for there is no one holy like Yahweh, and there is no one righteous like our God; there is no one besides You, and there is no rock like our God!

1. First Hannah states that He is holy, and she adds that not only is He holy, but He is uniquely holy with no one being comparable to Him in holiness.

• In this, she is merely repeating the doctrinal statement made over and over again in the book of Leviticus, where God says, “...I am holy… I am holy… I am holy….” (Lev. 11:44&45, 19:2; 20:26; 21:8)

• “Holiness” can be defined positively as “faithfulness” in developing personal relationships; it can also be defined negatively as being “unblemished” by evil. Hannah proclaims Yahweh, the one God of the Bible, to be more faithful in interpersonal relationships and more unblemished by evil than anyone else. Do you believe that’s true? ‘Cause it is!

• This phrase “there is none holy” also indicates that, not only is Yahweh faithful and sinless, it is also a fact that nobody else is holy. Not only is this an expression of worship to God, it is a theological statement about the fallenness of humanity. We have all failed other people in relationships and we have all become tainted by evil, so we all need help from the one person who is above all our problems, and that is the Lord, whom we know now as Jesus.

2. The second phrase, “there is no one righteous like our God” is in the oldest-known and longest-used Bibles, but is not in modern Bibles because of scholarly competition between the currently-popular Masoretic Hebrew manuscripts (supported by the Vulgate which dates to the 5th^th century AD) and the formerly-popular Septuagint Greek manuscripts (supported by the Dead Sea Scrolls which date back to the 1^st century BC). I’m including it because it was apparently in most Bibles at the time of Christ, and it matches the rest of the doctrine of Scripture.

• In this second phrase, Hannah seems to be quoting from the Song of Moses. Deut. 32:4, “He is the Rock, His work is perfect; For all His ways are justice, A God of truth and without injustice; Righteous and upright is He.” (NKJV)

• Notice the synonyms to the word “righteous” in Moses’ song: “perfect, just, faithful, true, without injustice, upright.” Righteousness has to do with integrity and consistency with the standard of what is right and fair. Once again, Hanna affirms that God is more righteous than anybody else, and no human has such goodness and integrity.

3. In Hannah’s third reason, she states that there are no exceptions. The Lord Yahweh – and no one besides Him – is holy and righteous, and He never fails to be holy and righteous; He never makes an exception which breaches His integrity.

• This reflects the statement that God made in Exodus 22:20, where the same Hebrew word is used to teach that sacrifices should be made to no one besides God. There should be no exception to the rule of worshipping God and God alone.

• This is the Old Testament foundation of the Reformed doctrine known as Solo Deo Gloria: “To God alone be the glory.”

• A New Testament foundation for that doctrine is in Ephesians 2: “...by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, lest any one should boast.” In other words, if you can’t save yourself by good works – if you can’t muster up enough faith to please God, then you can’t take any credit for sharing in God’s glory when Jesus says, “Enter into my Father’s joy,” on Judgment Day. All we can do is thank God for saving us. He alone deserves all glory.

• So, don’t try to draw other people’s attention to how good you are and steal the limelight from God. He alone deserves glory.

4. The fourth and final reason stated by Hannah is that “there is no rock like our God.¹⁰”

• As we’ve already seen, Moses compared God to a “rock,” 300 years before, in Deuteron. 32:

  • God is the “rock of [Israel’s] salvation” (Deut. 32:15),

  • He is the “rock who begot” Israel (v.18),

  • and in v.37, a “rock” is the supernatural relationship in which they “take refuge.”

• So this is once again a theological statement informed by the Torah – the part of the Bible which existed in Hannah’s day.

  • Hannah’s knowledge of God was not based on mystical spiritual encounters,

  • it was not built on existential experiences and feelings;

  • it was not built on mere scientific observation

  • or consensus of human opinion;

  • it was built on the written word of God.

  • That is the only place to get accurate information about God!

  • That is why we read the Bible.

  • That is why we read it to our children.

  • That is why we are careful about all the other spiritual books and magazines and pamphlets and podcasts and shows and movies and seminars and newscasts clamoring for our attention.

• One hundred years later, David will take up the same refrain in the Psalms about God being a “landmark-rock” fortress where there is refuge and protection from evil, and in 1 Corinthians 10:4, the Messianic fulfillment is announced: “that rock was Christ.”

• Is God your go-to, when you feel threatened by evil?

  • Some folks try other escape mechanisms like fiction novels, games, and movies, but those things never deliver anybody from evil, they just distract you from noticing evil while it gets worse.

  • Some folks try drugs when they are threatened by evil,

    • whether that’s natural feel-good hormones from eating food, listening to music , getting physical exercise or sexual experiences,

    • or whether it’s man-made drugs that are drunk or smoked or injected.

    • But none of these things ever protected anybody from evil, either. They just distract your mind temporarily while the evil gets worse.

  • Some folks seek refuge in other people;

    • they trust the Army and the Police to keep them safe from harm,

    • they trust the banks and insurance companies to keep them safe from losses,

    • they trust doctors and other experts to solve their health and social problems,

    • they trust businesses to keep them employed and to supply all their needs,

    • and they trust friends and neighbors to look out for them.

    • But people are evil too; they aren’t capable of saving you from evil. In the face of things like a new virus pandemic and mass-unemployment and race-riots in every major city, no human being – not even an army of them – can save you.

• There is no rock like our God.

  • He alone can control the development of virus-outbreaks,

  • provide flour and oil to the widow,

  • and turn the hearts of kings and of mobs any way He wishes.

  • There’s nothing necessarily wrong with using police and banks and doctors, and there’s nothing necessarily wrong with food and music and even legal drugs; we just can’t put our trust in them like we do in God.

  • Jesus is the rock we should go to first for deliverance from evil.

• Now, after uttering this amazing, Biblicaly-based prayer, Hannah turns to warn against speaking in any other way than with respectful worship toward God.

v.3 Don’t overdo [it when] y’all talk high [and] mighty. [Don’t] let careless-speech go out from y’all’s mouth, for Yahweh is the God of know­ledge, and licen­tious-deeds are not worth [it].

• This reminds me of Psalm 73:6-12 “...pride serves as their necklace... They scoff and speak wickedly concerning oppression; They speak loftily. They set their mouth against the heavens, And their tongue walks through the earth... And they say, ‘How does God know? And is there knowledge in the Most High?’ Behold, these are the ungodly...” (NKJV)

• Well, here’s the answer: Yes, God does know, and yes, there is knowledge with the Most High!

• The Proverbs say, “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, But the LORD weighs the hearts... If you say, ‘Surely we did not know this,’ Does not He who weighs the hearts consider it? He who keeps your soul, does He not know it? And will He not render to each man according to his deeds?” (Proverbs 21:2 & 24:12, KJV)

• And Psalm 31:18 says, “Lips that speak falsehood against the righteous – licentious-speech with haughtiness and scorn will be shut up.” (NAW)

• Now, different Bibles have interpreted the last phrase of verse 3 differently since at least the time of Christ:

  • The most widely-used Septuagint manuscript from the 4^th century reads, “God prepares his own designs.”

  • The fifth century Vulgate reads, “to him are thoughts prepared.”

  • A pre-Masoretic Hebrew tradition reads: “not worthy are licentious-deeds.”

  • The 10^th century Masoretic Hebrew margin note reads, “by him actions are weighed.”

  • And the scholarly author of the 2007 NICOT commentary renders it, “(his) deeds are immeasurable.”

  • These may sound like big differences, but the dispute is only over a single Hebrew letter¹¹.

• God has seen to it that the resulting variants could all be true. The basic idea in every version is that God has the final say; He is the ultimate judge of human thought and action, and proud, careless, wanton words from humans will be shown for what what they are: no good.

  • The only other occurrence of this word [עֲלִלוֹת] for “deeds/actions/thoughts” in the Bible before 1 Samuel was in Deuteronomy 22, describing scandalous behavior.

  • I think this word is intended to parallel the word for “arrogant, careless speech” [עָתָק] in the middle of this verse and to parallel the word for “haughty speech” [גְבֹהָה] at the beginning of this verse.

• The exhortation is, “You can’t get away with careless, unbridled, exaggerated, wanton words; God hears them all and will bring them all to judgment and show them to be the foolishness and worthlessness that they are, so don’t talk like that.

  • This is why we need to be careful with what we say,

  • not criticizing before we understand,

  • not passing along information when we don’t know whether it’s true or false,

  • and not exaggerating details,

  • not commenting too quickly,

  • not blurting out just anything that comes to mind,

  • and not speaking too highly of ourselves.

• Puritan commentator Andrew Willett summarized: “By Hannah, let women learne to lay aside all wanton and vnwomanly songs, and sing onely to the praise of God.”

• I might add that this is not just applicable to women but to men too.

• I might also add that, just as Hannah made a significant contribution to the worship of all believers, so the women of the church can still make contributions, such as writing songs, writing blogs or books, and making banners or other things of beauty, so don’t be shy to share the fruits of your labors with the church in a Biblical and orderly way.

Conclusion

• Contrast of attitudes and words. Instead of being proud, haughty, careless, selfish, or edgy, Hannah’s attitude is one of loosing herself in the Lord and simply extolling Him, basing her words on the Bible. That is our example for worship!

1

1 Samuel 2:4-6 – So You Want A Revolution?

Introduction

• Last week, the Municipal Ministerial Association published a letter with the signatures of representatives from about 15 local churches. It talked about “mak[ing] the voice of the oppressed heard” in terms of political protests, but nowhere does it mention praying to God. In 1 Samuel 2, Hannah said that it is God who lifts up the poor, so the poor need to look to God to bring about change. The Ministerial Association, however, said in its letter that it, as a group, was “established in the 1970’s to bring unity, peace and justice… to speak and act until equality and justice are known by all... creating a just world for all people.” Do you see how they took God out of the equation and put themselves in as the change agent and the hope of the oppressed? Of course we are to be agents of reconciliation and to do good works for the poor and needy, but Hanna’s message in her prayer in chapter two is that justice must be framed with the realization that it is God who is in control of the vicissitudes of social & political change, so we must look to Him rather than to human power.

• We have already looked at the first three verses of Hannah’s prayer-song of triumphant worship in 1 Samuel chapter 2, including the four results of faith in God in v.1, the incomparable greatness of God in v.2, and the warning against proud, careless words in v.3.

• In the remainder of Hannah’s triumph song in verses 4-10, we see the power of God extolled to turn things upside down and rightside up.

• Now, Hannah’s prayer sounds like the dream of Marxism and all its revolutionary offshoots, from the overthrow of the French aristocracy in the 1800’s to the overthrow of the Minneapolis and Seattle police this year, but it’s not the same thing.

  • Karl Marx’s Satanically-inspired writings from a few hundred years ago have become surprisingly-popular, especially among previously-Christianized nations.

  • He taught a secular, humanistic view of the world which frames history in terms of competition for worldly power. He taught that the problem with this world is not that mankind has sinned against God but rather that that some folks accumulate too much power and wealth and deprive other folks. The solution to this problem, he taught, is for the poor and powerless majority to undermine and destabilize everything that the rich and powerful have established in an effort to turn the tables on them.

  • The results of Marxist ideology have been horrifyingly consistent, from the French guillotines to the firing squads of Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China and Hitler’s Germany, and various other dictators throughout South America, Africa, and Asia.

  • Marxism promotes rebellion against authority and order, and the natural consequence of that is the anarchy and looting that we’ve been seeing lately in our cities, this, in turn, always results in the rise of a new, more-authoritarian government than before, resulting in more anger and frustration with the new folks who have become rich and powerful.

  • Marxism has no solution; it is never-ending hatred and chaos. But what humans try to do with abysmal results, God accomplishes with perfect justice and goodness. God superintends the overthrow of wicked rich and powerful people and takes care of the people He loves. God can turn the tables without endless revenge cycles and chaos, and so we must look to Him rather than to human effort when we see injustice.

• When Jesus taught on this earth, He also spoke of God’s good, divine reversals in His Beatitudes in Matthew 5, where He lists nine reversal statements – which is about the same number as Hannah makes in 1 Samuel!

• Jesus’ mother Mary also took notes from Hannah when she composed her Magnificat, although her list of reversal statements is much shorter. (See Appendix chart)

• The first divine reversal to bring about social justice in Hannah’s prayer-song comes in v.4:

v.4 The bow of strong-men came undone, while those who were enfeebled strapped on a weapon.

• This first contrast is between strong/mighty/warriors and weak/feeble/stumbling folk.

• In this first upset, the strong, mighty warrior’s weapons are coming apart and becoming useless, while the weak, feeble, stumbling folk are effectively equipping for war with weapons and arms and military power!

• Now, longbow archers generally store and transport their bows unstrung. At the point of use, they bend their bow over their leg and set the string on. But if the bow breaks while stringing it – or if the bowstring snaps under the tension, then they no longer have a weapon!

• Hannah attributes this shift in the balance of military power to God, just as David did later on.

  • Psalm 18:39 “You really equip me with resource[s] for the battle; You cause him who rises up against me to kneel under me.” (NAW)

  • Psalm 33:16-21 The king does not exist who is secured by a lot of power; a champion does not deliver himself by a lot of strength. A disappointment is the horse when it comes to security; even with a lot of power, it will not escape. Look, the eye of Yahweh is on those who respect Him (because they are hoping for His lovingkindness) in order to deliver their soul from death and to keep them alive during the famine. Our soul waits for Yahweh; He is our helper and our shield, for it is in Him that our heart is happy, because we have trusted in His holy name.” (NAW)

• Hannah may have been thinking immediately of her situation with Peninnah, where her rival would no longer have ammunition to question God’s love for her because her rival’s womb may have slowed down in production while Hannah’s ramped up. (The tradition of the Jews is that for every child Hannah bore afterward, Peninnah buried two until she had none¹².)

• But Hannah is talking about something bigger than just herself. The “mighty-men” and the “weak” people are plural. She sees herself as one of God’s people and applies these patterns of God’s revolutionary activity with broad strokes to the entire church.

• You who once were feeble spiritually under the controlling power of the Devil and sin have, by the revolutionary power of Jesus, been set free from their power to fight and win over them. “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day... taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one.” (Eph. 6:12-16, NKJV)

• The next reversal statement moves from a martial theme to an economic theme:

v.5 Those who were filled with bread went job-hunting while those who were hungry ceased [to be so]. Even the barren woman has had seven children while she who abounded in children became unproductive!

• This is part of the blessings and curses in Leviticus 26. God controls who has the food!

  • The Prophet Isaiah later on observed that the wicked who are focused on food rather than God "...on the one hand snatches, yet is hungry, and on the other hand eats but does not get full..." (Isaiah 9:19-20. NAW)

  • Psalm 33:18 “Look, the eye of Yahweh is on those who respect Him (because they are hoping for His lovingkindness) in order to deliver their soul from death and to keep them alive during famine/hunger." (NAW)

  • Psalm 22:26 "Lowly ones will eat and be satisfied; they will praise Yahweh – those who seek Him..." (NAW, cf. Ps. 37:18-19)

  • This is no Marxist revolution that is focusing on “haves” verses “have-nots,” this is God’s providing for those who focus on worshipping Him.

  • Jesus said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for it is they who will be satisfied." (Matt. 5:3-12, NAW)

• Productivity is also in the hands of the LORD. Isaiah used the last word in 1 Sam. 2:5, more than any other author in the Bible, describing how God caused

  • fields to stop growing crops (Isa. 16:8),

  • the Nile River to stop spawning fish (Isa. 19:8),

  • the vineyards of Tyre to quit growing grapes (Isa. 24:7),

  • and the land of Israel to wither its produce (Isa. 33:9).

  • When it comes to economic downturns, God claims responsibility, it is not merely about the rich and powerful who control the means of production.

• Hannah also links childbearing along with agricultural bounty in the economy because God put it that way in the blessings and curses of the law:

  • Exodus 23:25-26 "So you shall serve the LORD your God, and He will bless your bread and your water. And I will take sickness away from the midst of you. No one shall suffer miscarriage or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days." (NKJV)

  • Deut. 7:12-14 "Then it shall come to pass, because you listen to these judgments, and keep and do them, that the LORD your God will keep with you the covenant and the mercy which He swore to your fathers. And He will love you and bless you and multiply you; He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your land, your grain and your new wine and your oil, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flock, in the land of which He swore to your fathers to give you. You shall be blessed above all peoples; there shall not be a male or female barren among you or among your livestock." (NKJV)

• Hannah remembers great women in the Bible who were unable to have children like herself: Sarah, Rachel, and Samson’s mother, and how God gave them children miraculously, and she declares God to be in control of birth. Not Planned Parenthood. Not “the pill.” Not omega 3 fatty acids. Not obstetricians or midwives. God!

• The wording here in verse 5 doesn’t explain why there are seven children in particular.

  • Perhaps she is remembering the history of Leah whose fertility was also in doubt and who bore six sons and one daughter to Jacob.

  • Perhaps she is expecting more children herself (v.21 says she ended up with 6).

  • Or perhaps – and this seems most likely to me and to most other commentators – the number seven is just symbolic for the perfect number of children, enough for her, however many or few it turned out to be in literal numbers. This is poetic language, after all.

• Later on, Isaiah prophecied of the new covenant community: Isaiah 54:1 Sing, barren one – who has not given birth; Break forth into song and cry aloud, she [who] has not been in labour, for the children of the desolate one are more than the children of one who has a husband, says Yahweh." (NAW)

  • Because God controls the economy and God controls the population, we can trust Him to supply all our needs according to His riches in glory” - even if resources are scarce.

  • We also can be satisfied with what He provides and with what we produce, however much or little it looks like. At the end of the day if we’ve been faithful, we can be content with what we’ve produced because God is sovereign over the amount of children and the amount of other wealth we have and the amount of work projects we can accomplish.

• Now, after proclaiming God’s revolutionary sovereignty over the military and the economy, Hannah moves on the issues of life and death!

v.6 It is Yahweh who causes to die and who prolongs life, who causes to go down to Sheol and who causes to rise up.

• All four verbs in this verse have causal meanings in Hebrew¹³. God causes life and death! His sovereignty is emphasized by the placement of His name Yahweh/the LORD emphatically as the first word in the Hebrew verse.

• Where did Hannah get this theological idea? I suggest she got it from the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32:39 “...there is no God besides Me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; Nor is there any who can deliver from My hand.” (NKJV)

• David echoes this a couple hundred years after Hannah in his Psalm 30:3 Yahweh, you brought my soul up from Sheol; you revived me from going down the drain.” (NAW)

• And in Revelation 1:18, Jesus says, “...I have the keys to Death and Hell!” This after dying and rising from the dead Himself, and in Hannah’s song we have an incipient prophecy of what would happen to Jesus.

• This Hebrew verb “rise up” is used in the Old Testament to indicate just about anything that goes upward literally or figuratively, but when placed opposite “going down to Sheol” the figurative meanings of hell¹⁴ and heaven seem to be intended.

  • In the Old Testament, when God or an angel would visit someone and then depart, he would leave by “going up.” (Gen. 17:22, 28:12, 35:13, Judges 13:20, etc.)

  • When anyone wanted to worship God, they would go up on a hill as a symbolic way of stepping closer to God, (Gen. 35:1-3, Judges 20:18&26: 21:5-8)

  • and when the burnt sacrifice was offered to appease God, the smoke would go up to Him, (Gen. 8:20, 22:7, Judges 6:21, 21:4, etc.)

• so Hannah says, whether you live or die, God is in control of that, and whether you spend eternity apart from God or up in heaven with God after death, God is in control of that too!

  • Some people might say that’s Fatalism, where you believe, “It doesn’t matter what I do because I am just a puppet that God is manipulating,” but Fatalism is not the application the Bible applies to the doctrine of God’s sovereignty over death and hell:

  • Remember, these sovereignty statements in Hannah’s Song are couched in worship, “My heart has been exuberant in Yahweh, my ‘horn’ has risen up in Yahweh; my mouth has gone wide over my enemies; I have become happy in Your salvation.” Our response to the doctrine of God’s sovereignty should be eagerness to press in to a closer relationship with this awesome God who controlls the gates of life and heaven!

• Four more actions are ascribed to God’s causation in...

v.7 It is Yahweh who causes dispossession and who causes wealthiness, who causes lowliness, moreover who causes exaltation.

1. Causing to dispossess/become poor

• Proverbs 23:5 observes the tendency of riches to “take wing” and “leave those miserable who, when they had them, placed their happiness in them... This is not to be ascribed to fortune, nor merely to men's wisdom or folly... (Eccl. 9:11)... it is God's doing." (M. Henry) And if God is the one behind your economic situation (Prov. 22:2), you're barking up the wrong tree to hound after the wealthy to fix your problem, instead you should hound after God and let Him set things right.

• The context of this Hebrew word yarash is rooted in God’s promise to the Hebrew slaves from Egypt that He would give them the Promised Land. Exodus 34:24 "...I will cast out the nations before you…” (NKJV) - even nations stronger than you. And the books of Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, and Samuel all detail the incremental conquering of the Canaanite tribes and possession of the Promised Land by the children of Israel.

• Later Jews also looked back on this process of gaining ownership of the Promised Land as God’s work: Psalm 44:1-3 “...our fathers recounted for us the accomplishment You accomplished in their days – in the early days. It was You – Your hand – that disinherited nations. Instead You planted them [our fathers]. You caused calamity to the peoples but them [our fathers] You released. So it was not by their own sword that they inherited the land, and their arm-strength is not what brought deliverance to them, for it was Your right hand and Your arm-strength and the light of Your face by which you favored them.” (NAW)

• This dispossession of the wealthy is not to be determined by the whims of violent mobs a la Marxism; it is to be determined by God. The reversals God orchestrates don’t usually happen as fast as we want them to, but they are more fair and just than we could ever pull off.

2. He also causes to be rich/wealthy

• Proverbs 10:22 “The blessing of the LORD makes one rich, And He adds no sorrow with it.” (NKJV)

• Years ago, I was flying to a conference somewhere, and the airline assigned me a seat on the plane next to an Arab man. He struck up a conversation with me, and we got to talking about our families. At the time I had four sons, and when I told him that, his eyes got wide and he said, “You are a rich man!”

• In Hannah’s immediate context, if she had no children, she would be considered poor, and there would be no descendants of hers to inherit and possess the Promised Land after her.

• In the larger context, we know that wealth ebbs and flows.

  • Israel lost its possession of of the Promised Land when it went into exile in 586BC, then got it back, then lost it again in 70AD, and now 1,900 years later they’re making a comeback again and are about to take over more of the West Bank.

  • I’m told that lottery-winners tend to spend their millions quickly and return to poverty.

  • Others, like Joseph and Mordecai in the Bible have rags-to-riches stories.

• I don’t doubt that there are Marxist-style conspiracies and human jockeying for power, but ultimately it is all in the hands of God, who wisely decides which direction the wealth and power and ownership will flow among people. So He can be trusted and worshipped – and that not only with temporal riches but also with eternal riches, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.” (2 Cor. 8:9, NKJV).

3. Causing to be humble/low

• Once again, I believe Hannah’s theology is informed by Scripture, for it had been written in Job 40:6-12 "Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, "...Have you an arm like God? Or can you thunder with a voice like His? ... [Can you] Look on everyone who is proud, and humble him..." (NKJV)

• Hannah saw God take Peninnah down a notch, but this prayer isn’t about a personal rivalry; it is about the universal sovereignty of the one, true God and the revolutions of justice and righteousness which He brings about in this world.

• David affirmed the same thing in his lifetime, speaking of God: Psalm 18:27 "For You Yourself will cause to save a lowly people, but haughty eyes You will bring low." (NAW)

• Isaiah prophecied of how the Messiah would do this on a grand scale: "Every valley will be raised And every mountain and hill will be lowered And it will be that the crooked becomes even And the ridges become a cleft, And the glory of Yahweh will be revealed..." (Isaiah 40:4-5, NAW)

• And emperors throughout history from Pharoah to Nebuchadnezzar to Hitler to President Nixon have been humbled before the King of Kings while others like Moses, David, and Cyrus – and the current powers-that-be, have been raised up by God into national and international leadership.

4. and causing to raise/lift up

• Like the others, this theme was carried by Job before Hannah and by David after her:

  • Concerning “mockers” Job said, “...You have hidden their heart from understanding; Therefore You will not exalt them." (Job 17:4, NKJV)

  • But faithful David said to God in Psalm 18:48 “...You exalt me apart from the one who rises up [against] me. You cause me to escape from a man of violence." (NAW)

  • Psalm 37:32-40 "Raring to put him to death, the wicked person keeps watch on the righteous person. As for Yahweh, He will not abandon him into his hand and will not make him out to be wicked during His judgment. So wait for Yahweh and keep His way, and He will exalt you to possess the land; when wicked men are cut off you will see. There was a wicked man I saw, formidable and coming out like a new normal, but then he passed on, and look, he wasn't [there]. I even searched for him, but he was not to be found! Use care regarding a man of integrity and observe a righteous man, because there will be an "after" for the man of peace, but transgressors will be altogether destroyed; the "after" of wicked men will be cut off. Truly the salvation of righteous men is from Yahweh; He is their strength in a time of crisis. Yahweh will also help them and deliver them. He delivers them from wicked men and saves them because they have taken refuge in Him." (NAW)

• So when you see good guys down and bad guys up, the solution is not “revolution now!”, the solution is active trust in God – it may include removing bad leaders in a lawful way, but it will be done with eyes on God, waiting on His timing.

• 1 Peter 5:5-6 "...'God arrays Himself against proud men, but to humble men He gives grace.' Therefore let yourselves start being humbled under the mighty hand of God, in order that He may exalt y'all in [His] appointed time..." (NAW, cf. Mt. 23:12, Jas. 4:10)

• As regards humble, godly Hannah, I cannot think of a greater honor than for her story of faith and answered prayer to be enshrined forever in God’s word!

• Hannah continues in v8 with four more sovereign actions God does in regard to social standing and political power, but I’m going to have to save that for another sermon!

Conclusion:

• Clearly, God is concerned about political and social and economic justice. Hannah helps us see that God is actively engaged in turning injustice upside down and justice rightside up and that He has the power to pull off what no human can do.

• Christians can reflect God’s character by seeking peace and justice for everyone without prejudice.

• However, we realize that human agencies are not the place to start, nor are they the ultimate end when it comes to pursuing social justice. If you want an effective revolution, start with prayer and worship toward God like Hannah did, humbling ourselves and asking Jesus to make things right because it is those who trust in Him to deliver from oppression and who take refuge in Him that He undertakes for.

Comparison Chart of Hannah’s Song, Magnificat, and Beatitudes

1

1 Samuel 2:8-10 – Praying With The Big Picture in Mind

Introduction

• In previous sermons, we have looked at the first seven verses of Hannah’s prayer-song of triumphant worship in 1 Samuel chapter 2, speaking of

  • the results of faith and the greatness of God,

  • as well as His revolutionary power to turn things rightside up militarily, economically, medically, and socially.

  • Now, I want to look at the end of her prayer and consider her prophetic outlook on the big picture of God’s kingdom and on Jesus Himself.

• “[Hannah] is by the Jews (T. Megillah, fol. 14. 1) reckoned one of the seven prophetesses; and indeed in this song she not only relates the gracious experiences of divine goodness [with which] she had been favoured... but prophesies of things that should be done hereafter in Israel, and particularly of the Messiah and of his kingdom.” ~John Gill

• In this final look at Hannah’s prayer, I want to apply her example of looking beyond our present circumstances to the future triumphs of Jesus Christ in our prayers as well.

v.8 He who causes the poor to get up from the dust lifts up the needy from the dumps to reside among noblemen. He bequeaths to them a throne of glory, because the substructures of the earth belong to Yahweh, and He sets the world upon them.

• The context of Hannah’s statement that God “raises up the poor from the dust” seems to be in the promise God made to the children of Israel to establish them as a nation in their own land after they had been slaves in the dust of Egypt.¹⁵

  • Hannah broadens that statement from its original context to apply to any believer, and David followed that example¹⁶ with his own testimony in Psalm 40:2 “Then He brought me up from the pit of chaos – from the slimy mud – and He got my feet up on a rock-mountain; He steadied my steps." (NAW)

  • Isaiah then applied this concept to the Messiah, broadening its application to the raising up of us Gentiles too! Isaiah 49:6 "Your being for me a servant to establish the tribes of Jacob and to cause to turn back the preserved of Israel is insubstantial, I will also give you for a light of nations, to be my salvation unto the end of the earth." (NAW)

  • Jesus said, “Blessed are the ones who are lowly in spirit, because the kingdom of heaven is theirs... Blessed are the meek, because it is they who will inherit the earth.” (Matt. 5:3-12, NAW) This is our God. This is what He does.

• He will lift up the needy from the dumps/dunghill/ash-heap to reside among princes/noblemen

  • This reminds me of Job (who literally sat on an ash-heap in his misery superintended by God, but later became one of the most influential men in the Middle-East¹⁷),

  • as well as Joseph (who suffered for years as a slave and a prisoner before being raised to prime minister of the Egyptian empire, and who said of all, “God intended it for good.”). God was in charge of their fall and rise.

  • Jesus taught in His parable of “The Rich Man & Lazarus” that this reversal doesn’t al­ways come in this life, but it is certain in the afterlife. “Dives” ends up “tormented in the flame” in hell while the sickly beggarman Lazarus reclines “in the bosom of Abraham” in heaven.

  • “Promotion comes not by chance, but from the counsel of God.” ~M. Henry

  • But wait, Hannah was not a poor woman. Hannah did not live out of a trash dump. She was already living the life of a noble woman. I thought this was supposed to be the testi­mony of a barren woman to whom God had given a child. Why is she talking about poor people being lifted up to noble status? Because this is prophecy. She’s not talking about herself; she’s looking past her own life and talking about the coming priest who will re­vive the worship of God, she’s talking about the coming King who will rise from farm­hand and outlaw to King of Israel, and even beyond that to the coming Messiah Jesus:

• “He bequeaths/causes them to inherit a throne of glory”

  • Jeremiah 17:12 tells us that the sanctuary was “a throne of glory,”¹⁸ and, indeed, Hannah’s son Samuel received that “seat of honor,” as we’ll see later on in 1 Samuel.

  • This song is a harbinger of the priestly revolution that is about to happen when Eli and his sons are ousted and Samuel installed as the nation’s high priest.

  • “The ‘proud and lofty,’ whom God humbles and casts down, are not the heathen or the national foes of Israel, and the “poor and wretched” whom He exalts and makes rich are not the Israelites as such; but the former are the ungodly, and the latter the pious, in Israel itself.” ~Keil & Delitzsch

  • The next passages in the Bible¹⁹ about a “throne of glory” are the ones about Jesus’s throne of judgment when He returns:

    • Matthew 25:31-32 "So, whenever the Son of Man shall come in His glory and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit upon His throne of glory, and all the nations will be gathered before Him..." (NAW, cf. Mt. 19:28)

    • Revelation 5:13 "...Blessing and honor and glory and power Be to Him who sits on the throne, And to the Lamb, forever and ever!" (NKJV)

    • Sure, God gave David the throne of Israel, but God promised David that one of his descendants would reign forever over the whole world. That’s why the Gospel of Matthew starts with a genealogy proving that Jesus was a descendant of David.

• The end of verse 8 gives a reason for why God can bring about such amazing reversals of fortune: the pillars/foundations/substructures of the earth belong to Him.

  • This Hebrew word matzuqay seems to have a root meaning of “extruding” something so that it is “straight” and “narrow.”

  • It pictures a metal stand that you put stuff on top of²⁰,

    • whether that’s the bronze pillars which held up the roof of Solomon’s temple,

    • or the N.T. church which is “the pillar and pedestal of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15),

    • or even a stand that we use today to mount our P.A. speakers on.

  • The logic is that if God owns the substructure, He can control what goes on top of it. Like, if you own the stage, you can choose who you want to be on that stage.

  • Indeed, Jesus said, "To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne." (Rev. 3:21, NKJV) Christ decides who gets to sit on the throne!

  • Hannah seems to have deduced this from Elihu’s remark about God in the book of Job (which I think she is quoting here) “Who on earth holds accountability over Him, and Who sets up the whole world? (Job 34:13, NAW) God is the one who set up everything on planet earth²¹.

• Hannah continues on this theme in...

v.9 It is the way of His godly one that He keeps, while He silences the wicked ones in the darkness. {He granted the thing vowed to the one who vowed, and He blessed the years of the righteous,} because it is not through manpower that a man prevails.

• God’s attitude and actions toward the chesed/godly/faithful vs. the rasha’iym/wicked are contrasted:

  • God keeps/guards the way/feet of His godly saint so that she/he can keep walking forward.

    • The DSS reads “the way of” instead of “the feet of,” and this would echo God’s promise through Moses²² in Psalm 91:11 “...He shall give His angels charge over you, To keep you in all your ways.” (NKJV)

    • Also, if the original wording of Hannah’s song is preserved in the oldest manuscript, then Solomon quoted her a few generations later in Proverbs 2:8b "...He keeps the way of His godly ones." (NAW)

    • Alternately, if the Masoretic text is the one that preserved the original wording of Hannah’s song, then Solomon quoted it that way too in Proverbs 3:26 “For the LORD will be your confidence, And will keep your foot from being caught.” (NKJV)

  • Meanwhile, God “stills/stops/silences the wicked in darkness” so they can’t move.

    • “God withdraws the light of His grace, so that they fall into distress and calamity.” ~Keil & Delitzsch

    • This “silencing/stopping” of the wicked can be seen in the song of Moses in Exodus 15:15-16 “Then the chiefs of Edom will be dismayed; The mighty men of Moab, Trembling will take hold of them; All the inhabitants of Canaan will melt away. Fear and dread will fall on them; By the greatness of Your arm They will be as still as a stone, Till Your people pass over, O LORD, Till the people pass over Whom You have purchased.” (NKJV)

    • And David picks up on the same theme after Hannah in Psalm 31:14-19 ..."I will not be ashamed, Yahweh, because I called out to You. Evil men will be ashamed; they will be silent in hell. Lips that speak falsehood against the righteous – licentious-speech with haughtiness and scorn will be shut up.” (NAW, cf. Isa. 23:2)

    • Jesus also taught this in His parable of the wedding feast: “Now when the king came... he saw there a man who had not clothed himself with wedding clothes, and he says to him, ‘Hey, how did you get in here without having wedding clothes?’ And he was silenced. Then the King said to the waiters, ‘After you have tied him hand and foot, remove him and throw him out into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth...’” (Matt. 22:11-13, NAW)

  • God kept Hanna in the path of faith – the path of waiting on the Lord, and God brought Peninnah to a point where she stopped making fun of Hannah. But, Hanna wasn’t just talking about herself. God’s ways are bigger than just one person; these trends hold true in all our lives.

  • I recently got the following report from a Christian in China: “A few brothers and sisters got together to do door-to-door evangelism. During the pandemic, it was a very good opportunity to share the Word of God with people because everybody was ordered to shelter in place. We put on our P[ersonal]P[rotective]E[quipment], wearing gowns and masks to knock at doors. Some opened and some refused to let us in. One of the house owners opened the door, asking us what we wanted to do. We told them that we wanted to share the good news with them. One of the owners asked us, “Do you know who I am? I was a director of the Religious Affairs Bureau of the city government and I could send you to jail!” We were shocked. But to our surprise, his two children asked us to go ahead to share the story of God. We did. After we talked about the death and resurrection of Jesus, they said they would accept Jesus. We didn’t understand how their minds were changed. The old man then told us that he had studied the Bible for many years for his job. Finally, he said he had protected Christians, and only sent the heresy people to jail.”

• The oldest manuscripts of 1 Samuel 2 include an additional statement paralleling Hannah’s testimony at the end of chapter 1: “He granted the thing vowed^DSS/requested^LXX to the one who vowed/requested, and He blessed the years of the righteous.”

  • In Genesis 28:20 Jacob made a vow, saying, "If God will be with me, and keep me in this way that I am going, and give me bread to eat and clothing to put on... I will surely give a tithe..." And God granted that request and blessed his years.

  • In 1 Sam. 1:11, Hannah “vowed a vow… Yahweh of Hosts, if you will... give to your maid a male descendant, then I will give him to You...” God granted that request and blessed her.

  • And whether the statement about God “blessing the years of the righteous” was in Hannah’s original song or not, we do know from Deuteronomy 2:7 that “the Lord... God blessed [righteous Hebrews] in their trudging through the great wilderness those forty years. The Lord... God was with [them and they] lacked nothing.” (NKJV)

  • And we know from Revelation 20:6 that the righteous in Christ will be “blessed and holy… [O]ver such, the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.” (NKJV) Talk about the “years of the righteous” being “blessed”!

• The end of v.9 gives the reason why the righteous are preserved while the wicked are stopped in their tracks – and why the righteous get what they ask for and enjoy blessing throughout the years. It’s not because they are stronger, healthier, richer, or more powerful. It’s not due to man-power; it’s due to God’s power! God is the one who “lifted them up...”

  • Hannah said in v.4, “The bow of prevailing/mighty-men came undone/was shattered”… Contrast that with Genesis 49:24 “But his [Jacob's] bow remained in strength [אֵיתָן], And the arms of his hands were made strong [יָּפֹזּוּ] By the hands of the Mighty God of Jacob... The blessings of your father Have excelled the blessings of my ancestors...” (NKJV)

  • Hannah’s explanation that “it is not through manpower that a man prevails” could well be a reflection on the way Israel obtained its military victories over the years,

    • from the parting of the Red Sea and deliverance from slavery in Egypt, which Moses attributed – not to human might but – to God’s “power” in Exodus 15:6 – and throughout the rest of the Pentateuch,

    • to Joshua’s victory in the battle of Rephidim in which he “prevailed” only as long as Moses held up his hands in prayer, clearly attributing the victory to God’s power.²³

    • For these reasons, Moses had warned the people of Israel, “[Beware lest] …. you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might [‎עֹצֶם] of my hand have gained me this wealth.’ ...[R]emember the LORD your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth...” (Deut. 8:17-18, NKJV)

  • The book of Job was probably also available to Hannah, and it says, “The Almighty is beyond our reach and exalted in power; in his justice and great righteousness, he does not oppress.” (Job 37:23, NIV)

  • True to the pattern of Scripture, David picked up on this same theme in Psalm 33:16-19 “The king does not exist who is secured by a lot of power [‎חָיִל]; a champion does not deliver himself by a lot of strength. A disappointment is the horse when it comes to security; even with a lot of power, it will not escape. Look, the eye of Yahweh is on those who respect Him (because they are hoping for His lovingkindness) in order to deliver their soul from death and to keep them alive...” (NAW)

  • And who can forget the Prophet Zechariah’s words to those in the New Covenant: “‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ Says the LORD of hosts.” (Zech. 4:6, NKJV)

• And not only does God have the power to preserve the godly and punish the ungodly, He also has the desire to do it.