The Twenty-sixth Sunday after Pentecost
1 Samuel 1:4-20, 2:1-10
The text this morning from 1 Samuel is not an easy one. On first reading, it seems fairly straightforward. It follows one of the bible’s familiar storylines: the storyline of the childless woman. Sarah, Abraham’s wife, was infertile until she was 90 years old, when she gave birth to Isaac. Isaac’s wife, Rebekah, was childless for the first 20 years of their marriage before she gave birth to twins: Jacob and Esau. Samson’s mother was childless for years before God granted her prayer to have a son. Elizabeth, Zechariah’s wife, was also infertile for years before she gave birth to John the Baptist. The barren woman who becomes pregnant in old age is a common trope in the bible, and no less here in the story of Hannah.
Just before the passage we heard this morning, 1 Samuel says: “Elkanah had two wives, one named Hannah and the other named Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah didn’t. Every year this man would leave his town to worship and sacrifice to the Lord of heavenly forces in Shiloh, where Eli’s two sons Hophni and Phinehas were the Lord’s priests.”
Every year Elkanah would travel with his family to the shrine at Shiloh, where the Ark of the Covenant was. This was before there was a king in Israel, before the temple had been built in Jerusalem. As was the custom, Elkanah would give his sacrifice over to the priests, and they would offer some of it to God, keep some for themselves, and return the rest to the person making the offering. Sacrifice wasn’t just about offering something to God, it was about sharing in a feast with God. It’s unclear how to translate the passage that says what Elkanah does with the sacrifice. It can either read that Elkanah gives Hannah a special portion because he loves her though God has closed her womb, as in the NRSV, or it can read that Elkanah gives Hannah only the regular portion though he loves her because God has closed her womb, as in the CEB. Whether Elkanah is giving Hannah special treatment or not, we know for sure that her sister-wife, Peninnah, is taunting her mercilessly, so much so that Hannah would cry and refuse to eat. Elkanah makes a rather feeble attempt to comfort her, saying, “Am I not worth more to you than ten sons?” If he were really trying to comfort her, he should have said, “Are you not worth more to me than…?”
On one of these visits to the shrine, Hannah goes up to where the Ark of the Covenant is, and she begins to pray. She is very upset, and she’s showing lots of emotion. The head priest, Eli, sees her there, being all emotional, moving her lips without producing any audible words, and he accuses her of being drunk. This is the first time that Hannah speaks out loud. Her first word is, “No!” Eli changes course and says, “May the God of Israel give you what you’ve asked from him.” Hannah had been asking God to give her a son. She had promised God that if she could have a son, then she would dedicate her son to serve God for his whole life.
And that’s precisely what happens. Hannah has a son. Once he is weaned, she brings him back to Shiloh, where he enters God’s service, to be raised by the very man who had tried to humiliate Hannah before: Eli the priest. Her son will become Samuel, one of the most powerful and influential prophets in Israel, and the prophet who will anoint Israel’s first two kings: both King Saul and King David.
So Hannah get’s her request. She was childless, and she prayed to God to give her a son, and became pregnant with Samuel. A simple enough message. God provides.
But there are a few problems with Hannah’s story. The most important is, what is it, exactly, that Hannah wants? She wants a son, but not to raise him. She hands him over to Eli as soon as he is weaned, and she never sees him more than once a year for the rest of her life. She doesn’t want to have a son for her husband, Elkanah, either, because she doesn’t allow him to act as father for the boy. What is it that Hannah wants? Is it just that she wants to avoid the shame of being childless? Is it just that she wants to prove to Peninnah that she can bear a child? That’s possible, but if so, it’s not a particularly hopeful message. If the best we can learn from this story is that women are not worth anything except insofar as they can produce children, then that is certainly not a message that I am interested in learning from.
But there is another possibility, and I’m taking this interpretation from a scholar named David Jobling. After Hannah brings her son and presents him at the shrine at Shiloh, she breaks into an ecstatic song. It’s the same kind of prophetic song that Miriam sings after the Israelites escape the armies of Egypt after passing through the Red Sea. It’s the kind of prophetic song that Deborah sings when God leads the Israelites to victory over King Jabin and the Canaanites. It’s the same kind of song that Mary sings after she is told that she will become the mother of Jesus. And Hannah’s song gives us a clue about what it is that she wants from a son.
Hannah does sing about a childless woman being raised above her rival. She sings: “The woman who was barren has birthed seven children, but the mother with many sons has lost them all!” And that does point toward her rivalry with Peninnah. But the rest of Hannah’s song covers much more territory than that. She praises God` for lifting up the lowly and tearing down the mighty. She sings:
“The bows of mighty warriors are shattered,
but those who were stumbling now dress themselves in power!Those who were filled full now sell themselves for bread,
but the ones who were starving are now fat from food!…The Lord! He brings death, gives life,
takes down to the grave, and raises up!The Lord! He makes poor, gives wealth,
brings low, but also lifts up high!God raises the poor from the dust,
lifts up the needy from the garbage pile.God sits them with officials,
gives them the seat of honor!The pillars of the earth belong to the Lord;
he set the world on top of them!God guards the feet of his faithful ones,
but the wicked die in darkness because no one succeeds by strength alone.The Lord! His enemies are terrified!
God thunders against them from heaven!
The Lord! He judges the far corners of the earth!May God give strength to his king
and raise high the strength of his anointed one.”
If Hannah is only concerned about being shamed by Peninnah, then why does she sing about geo-politics? Why does she sing about the rich and the poor, about the powerful and the oppressed? And why on earth does she ask God to give strength to the king? This is at least a generation before Israel ever gets its first king. Surely Hannah must be concerned with more than just getting even with her mean-spirited sister-wife.
The narrator gives us a few other clues, but they are in sections of the story that were neatly avoided by the lectionary this morning. Inserted into Hannah’s story at three different points, we hear the story of Eli’s two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, who are also priests at Shiloh. And there is nothing good to say about these brothers. Whenever anyone comes to make a sacrifice, they take more of it than they are supposed to. They steal both from the portion that is supposed to go to God and from the portion that is supposed to go back to the worshippers. If the worshippers refuse to give them extra meat, they have thugs who will take it from them by force. We’re told that they do this to everyone who comes to the shrine; they cheat everyone, including, we must assume, Hannah and her family. In addition, we are told that Hophni and Phinehas are known to sexually assault the women who serve at the shrine. Eli knows that his sons are brutalizing the people, but he seems powerless to make them stop.
It is in this context of rampant corruption at God’s shrine that Hannah makes her deal with God. It is in the context of she and her family being cheated every year when they come to worship God that she makes her emotional plea: “Lord of heavenly forces, just look at your servant’s pain and remember me! Don’t forget your servant! Give her a boy! Then I’ll give him to the Lord for his entire life.”
Hannah wants a son who will serve God. She wants a son who will serve God in the shrine. She wants a son who will serve God in the very shrine where worshippers are cheated and women are assaulted. And as it turns out, her son Samuel is the one who will put an end to the abuses at God’s shrine. Her son Samuel is the one who will judge over Israel with justice. Her son Samuel is the one who will anoint Israel’s king.
Hannah doesn’t sing her song of praise when she gets pregnant. She doesn’t sing when her son is born. No, she only sings her song of praise when she hands her son over to Eli the priest. Is it just coincidence that Hannah asks for a son and ends up restoring justice to Israel? Or does Hannah know exactly what she is doing when she asks God for a son who will serve in the shrine where Eli allows his sons to brutalize the people? Does she know what she is doing when she hands her son over to Eli and says: “As surely as you live, I am the woman who stood here next to you, praying to the Lord. I prayed for this boy, and the Lord gave me what I asked from him. So now I give this boy back to the Lord. As long as he lives, he is given to the Lord.”? Does she make an incredible sacrifice, handing over her long awaited son, in order to bring about God’s justice, in order to end the abuse at Shiloh?
Recently we’ve heard about Ruth, and this week we hear about Hannah. In a few weeks we’ll hear similar stories about Elizabeth and Mary. They often get dismissed as pawns in their own stories. They seem helpless, pushed around by powers beyond their control or comprehension, important mostly because they happen to be mothers of famous men. But I’m not convinced that that is the case. If we read closely, these women seem to be in control of their own stories. They have agency, they make choices for themselves, they make sacrifices. And those choices, those sacrifices, lead to God’s justice. They may have seemed powerless and insignificant by the standards of their culture. They are certainly looked down upon and shamed by others. But it is through these women that God’s Kingdom moves forward. It is because they step out of their place, because they offend the sensibilities of men like Eli, that God’s movement in the world is advanced. These are not helpless women whom God has pity on. These are courageous women who push the limits and become God’s agents. They are our mothers in faith. And they stand as examples to us of how people the world finds insignificant are indispensable to God.