Hannah's Threefold Blow

Every year the same journey, and every year the same wound. Elkanah took his household up to Shiloh to sacrifice at the house of YHWH, and at the table he portioned out the meat: for Peninnah a share, and a share for each of her children, one after another, a whole row of plates. For Hannah one share, a double one, because her husband loved her; but there was one mouth to feed. The love in that double portion only made the emptiness louder. Beside her sat the other woman, who could do what she could not and who made her feel it, year after year, until Hannah's throat closed and her plate stayed untouched. From the inside, barrenness is a grief that comes to collect its due again at every meal, every feast day, every pregnant neighbor.

Hannah, why do you weep, said Elkanah, and why don't you eat, and why is your heart sad? Am I not worth more to you than 10 sons? It was kindly meant and it missed the mark entirely, the way comfort so often misses, for he offered himself where she was mourning a child, and a lack cannot be reasoned away with another good. So after the meal she rose, went alone to the sanctuary, and there poured out what no human being could carry. She prayed in her heart; her lips moved, but no sound came out. Eli, the old priest, sitting by the doorpost watching, saw a woman with moving lips and no voice, and thought: drunk. How long will you go on being drunk? Put away your wine. Even in the house of God, her deepest prayer was mistaken for drunkenness. No, my lord, she said, I have drunk no wine; I am a woman deeply troubled in spirit, and I have poured out my soul before YHWH.

There in the silence she had made a vow that would cost her everything. YHWH of hosts, she had prayed, if You will truly see the misery of Your servant, and remember me, and not forget Your servant, and give me a son, then I will give him back, and his whole life he will be Yours. To see, to remember, not to forget: that was really all she asked. Eli saw a drunk woman. God saw Hannah. He had seen her all those years, at every table where her plate stayed untouched, and He had heard every word her lips formed without a sound. When she came home, YHWH remembered her. It is the same verb as with Noah, bobbing in a box on a world of water, and with Rachel, sitting childless beside her sister (Gen 8:1; 30:22). She conceived, she gave birth, and she named him Samuel, for, she said, I have asked him of YHWH. Whoever called the boy by his name spoke the answered prayer aloud. For a few years he was hers: the first steps, the first words, the child she had cried for her whole life, at last on her lap.

She kept her word. As soon as the child was weaned, hardly more than a toddler, she brought him back to Shiloh, to the same doorpost, to the same old priest, and said: for this child I prayed, and YHWH has given me what I asked of Him; now I give him back to YHWH for as long as he lives. For years she had begged God for this one thing, and now, with the answer finally in her arms, she lays the answer down at the altar and walks away. The woman who had nothing gives back to the Giver the only thing she was ever given. On the way back from the altar she begins to sing.

A shout of joy rings out that makes the rafters tremble, and her first words are about her God, not yet about the child. My heart leaps up in YHWH, she sings, my horn is lifted high in YHWH. Three times she strikes the same nail, each blow deeper: there is no one holy as YHWH; there is no one besides You; there is no rock like our God. Each of the three comes out of her own life. Holy, for this God is unlike the neighbors' gods, which you can trade in, bribe, and steer; He is the wholly Other, who does what no human being could foresee. No one besides You, for in her darkest years there had been no one else to turn to. Peninnah's scorn she could not bear, Elkanah's comfort did not help, only before Him had she been able to pour out her soul. No rock like our God, for her life had for years been quicksand, sinking in shame at every meal, and beneath all that sand she had found one stone that did not give way. Whoever comes to stand on solid ground after years of sinking knows better than anyone what a rock is.

Then she sings of the God she has come to know, the God who overturns everything. The bows of the mighty are broken, and those who stumbled are girded with strength. The well-fed hire themselves out for bread, and the hungry are hungry no more. The barren woman bears seven, and the mother of many withers away. YHWH kills and makes alive, He brings down to the grave and raises up; He makes poor and makes rich, He humbles and exalts. He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap, to seat them among nobles, on a throne of honor. She is singing her own story, enlarged to the measure of the world. The woman who was humbled and then exalted recognizes, in her own reversed fortune, the signature of a God who delights in rearranging the seating chart, who topples the proud from their throne and gives the forgotten a place of honor. That is what she calls incomparable: not that He is high, but that He is high and stoops to the ash heap. No god that human beings ever invented would have dreamed of becoming great by taking the way down.

Right at the end, her song looks further than she can see. YHWH will judge the ends of the earth, she sings, and He will give strength to His king and lift high the horn of His anointed. Israel had no king yet; it was the time of the judges. Yet a woman with a womb only just emptied again sings, the first in Scripture to do so, of the King who will come and of His Anointed, His MashiachMashiach(משיח). Anointed One; the Messiah. Numerical value (gematria) 358 — the raw consonantal letter count of Daniel 9:24–27.. The hope of the Messiah is born in the throat of a woman who has just given away her only child, far from any palace. Centuries later a girl from Nazareth reaches for this song when she hears that she will carry a Son: He has thrown down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly, filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty (Luke 1:52–53).

Every year after that Hannah made a robe for the boy, a little one, and brought it along when she went up to Shiloh with her husband for the yearly sacrifice. You can see her at work all year, measuring for a child she does not see growing up, the robe a little longer each year. And YHWH visited Hannah. She conceived and bore three sons and two daughters. It is the word with which God once visited Sarah (Gen 21:1). He had not lost sight of her on the day she handed over her child; He had watched her go as she walked home with empty arms. A few years later she sits at that same table in Shiloh, and once again there is a row of plates. This time they are hers.

A note on the source text. Hannah, from 1 Samuel 1–2. The yearly humiliation and the double portion: 1:1–8; the silent prayer and Eli's misunderstanding: 1:9–18; Samuel's birth and name: 1:19–20; the vow "if You will truly see the misery of Your servant": 1:11; "YHWH remembered her": 1:19; cf. Genesis 8:1; 30:22; the giving back of the child: 1:24–28. The song of praise: 2:1–10; the threefold blow "none holy [...] none besides You [...] no rock like our God": 2:2; the reversal: 2:4–8; "the horn of His anointed": 2:10. The little robe: 2:19; "YHWH visited Hannah" and her five children: 2:21; cf. Genesis 21:1. The rock (צוּר), cf. Deuteronomy 32:4,31. The Magnificat: Luke 1:46–55 (1:52–53). The divine Name as YHWH.