Hannah: Learning to Be Someone

Lesson 3: Hannah: Learning to Be Someone - 10/16/2010

For all who believe “the most precious message” is the beginning of the Elijah message, Hannah’s story is a great encouragement of how God will gloriously display His character to the world. It’s a quiet little secret in the Bible, but women play a pivotal role in the vindication of God in the great controversy. When Satan is accusing God and His people most vigorously, saying that there is no one on earth who reflects back to God His self-sacrificing agape, that they are all into God for the “goodies” He dishes out, God points to some poor soul who is a witness for Him.

Hannah is just such a woman. The state of the church in her day was pathetic. The priests Eli and his sons were corrupt. It was so bad that women were molested at the temple.

The books of Samuel depict a time of transition between the judges and the monarchy. Samuel was the last divinely ordained prophet-priest-judge leader of Israel before the succession of kings ruled. Just how Samuel came to prominence during a time of vacuum in leadership among God’s people is the story of Hannah.

Elkanah was a priest-in-waiting who resided in Ramah, about fifteen miles from Shiloh. Bigamy is a departure from God’s original plan for marriage. It is the source of conflict in Elkanah’s family (vs. 2). Hannah is barren. Elkanah wants children. He takes Peninnah for the express purpose of continuing the family name.

The annual holy seasons were similar to campmeetings. They provided times of family unity in the worship of God. They were to be expressly times of refreshment and joy. There was feasting and drinking (vs. 4).

A high quality portion of meat was apportioned to Hannah, demonstrating his favoritism toward her (vs. 5). Hannah is faced with “the other woman” and her children. She shares a feast with a God who has persistently denied her children of her own. Here is a barren woman who is loved and a fertile woman who is not (vs. 6). Penninah “taunts” (“provoked”, “fret,” vs. 7 “provoked”) Hannah with the reproach that God has caused her barrenness.

Hagar similarly treated Sarah in her barrenness. She persecuted the free woman who was promised the seed (Gal. 4:22-31). The old covenant generates a spirit of persecution within family systems and, yes, even in the church. Since faith has an egocentric motivation in the old covenant, it tends to ridicule, marginalize, and satirize new covenant faith, which is motivated by God’s self-sacrificing agape.

Instead of venting her feelings on Penniah, Hannah turns inward and becomes silent. She hides herself in grief (vs. 8). Hannah experiences the pain of persistent childlessness. Elkanah knows the cause of her pain. Yet his crass insensitivity comes across as a reproach to her for not recognizing that he can fulfill Hannah’s void tenfold. Elkanah may love her but his arrogance reveals he thinks he is the center of her world.

Unable to get any help or sympathy from her husband she turns to the only one who can surely understand, and who can give her children (vs. 10). Hannah turns to God. She is the only woman, in the entire Bible to utter a formal prayer and have it recorded in the sacred text.

Hannah’s vow breaks her silence. She will now be given a “voice” throughout the rest of her story. Her prayer request is very specific in requesting a son; yet it is an extremely self-sacrificing vow. It reveals that she understands the very heart of God who “gave His only begotten Son” for the world. She most desires a son, not for herself but for the vindication of God. She will give the son to God forever (vs. 11).

Hannah’s prayer forever defines the genuine nature of a new covenant vow. She appreciates what it takes for God’s promise-covenant of salvation to be given forever to the world. It cost the life of God’s own darling Son. She offers her son to God as a mirror image of God giving His Son for her. She may or may not realize it, but she is a singular witness in a time of apostasy, when Satan is accusing God that there is no one among His people who serves God because they appreciate His character of agape.

God is silent. He was silent when His Son cried out, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” The rules of the great controversy do not permit God to jump right in and give lavish assurances to His faithful ones in the midst of trials (vs. 12). But Eli “answers” her vow in a manner far removed from the answer she wants.

Eli is seated on his chair at the entrance to the temple. He sees her lips moving as she prays silently. He thinks she is drunk (vs. 13). Pilgrims to ancient Israel’s feasts often drank to excess. Eli observes this woman’s distress, but displays no kindness at all (vs. 14). Eli takes more seriously the apparent drunkenness of a woman than the heinous crimes of his own sons.

Her protest is that she is not “a worthless woman” like Eli’s “scoundrels” (1 Sam. 2:12, “worthless men”) (vs. 16). This is a stinging rebuke to Eli, yet done most politely, in dissociating herself from the behavior of his sons. His moral authority is completely undermined.

Eli is so obtuse he doesn’t pick up on it. He doesn’t even know what she has prayed (vs. 17). But he blesses her in the blind. She will eventually place her little “cuckoo” in Eli’s nest, who will receive an epiphany in the night pronouncing the end of Eli’s family. This fool mistakes her distress for inebriation, fails to spot her veiled accusation, and unwittingly contributes to the blessing of her vow, which will contribute to his downfall.

Eli has demonstrated no genuine compassion. However, his blessing has broken her isolation, setting in motion her going back to family, assuaging her grief, restoring her appetite, setting up her restoration (vs. 18). With the brush of a wisp of hair, she departs saying, “May I find favor in your sight.” Hannah’s lowest ebb will now curve upward from this point on.

The deeper appreciation of God’s love has now paved the way for both Elkanah and Hannah to understand what it means to be “one flesh.” Something was missing in their love before. Now the Inspired writer portrays them as “one” worshipping the Lord and returning home (vs. 19). Because of “Elkanah’s choice” of Penninah his marriage is wounded. God comes in to bring healing. Now Hannah enjoys a greater intimacy with her husband. Her womb is healed with the words “the Lord remembered her”—the curing of Hannah’s barrenness. Genuine faith in God’s everlasting covenant does that. Here is God’s response to her vow in two words—“remembered her.” The course of church history could not be changed with a description of fewer words than that. It’s entirely appropriate then that Hannah should name her son because she knows that he is God’s answer to her prayer. Samuel means “asked of God.”

After weaning Samuel she comes to Shiloh with a bull that is sacrificed, representing God’s own Son “who should taste death for every man” (Heb. 2:9). And now she offers her son to God forever. This is Hannah’s pilgrimage to Shiloh. It is unprecedented in all the Bible for a woman to make such an offering. It is comparable to Abraham offering up Isaac to God. It’s hard to respond adequately to Hannah’s sacrifice.

Hannah is a type of all those poor, weak, ridiculed voices calling for revival and reformation in the midst of an ease-loving people who are steadily growing in favor with worldlings (vs. 27). God apparently is silent to the prayers of His people who are longing for the return of the Elijah message. However, prayers that are tuned into what God wants never fall on deaf ears. God may need you to stand “alone” in order to win His great controversy with Satan.

Did God “lend” His Son to the world or did He “give” His Son to the world? If God only “lent” His Son for a few short years, then we have no Saviour now. Rather, God has given His Son as a permanent gift, the divine-human High Priest who administers the benefits of the ever-present cross to us from the heavenly sanctuary. The ultimate meaning of the cross is the atonement. He is illuminating the cross in order to draw alienated hearts by His love revealed there so we might experience being at-one-with God’s heart.

Hannah’s word “lent” indicates that Samuel was a living sacrifice for her all the days of her life (vs. 28). She felt keenly the separation from her darling son; albeit, she could go up and visit him anytime she wished, being only fifteen miles away. But this should not diminish the value of “Hannah’s sacrifice.” She and Samuel are a type of the sacrifice given by the Father and the Son. In this her message speaks eloquently as no other woman in the Old Testament to the self-denial of God.

—Paul E. Penno