I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

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Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Samuel 1-3.

Once again we have a story of a man with two wives where that fact led to problems.  Since that is such a minor part of the story I am going to no more than mention it.  The main player in today’s story is Hannah, who desperately wanted to have children.  We could make the mistake of thinking that Hannah wanted to have children because of her society’s pressure on her to have them, but that seems somewhat backward.  Hannah felt the pressure to have children so desperately because she so bad;y wanted to have them.  Peninnah’s taunts would have had little bite if Hannah had not wanted children so badly. 

I do not think we can overestimate what a wonderful mother Hannah was.  Eli raised three boys to manhood.  Two of them turned out to be selfish, evil men.  One of them became a great man of God.  Perhaps Eli learned from his first two sons, but I think we need to look to Hannah, the mother of that great man of God to understand what was different.  The germ of why Samuel was different from Eli’s sons lies in Hannah’s song of praise.  Eli’s sons felt entitled to get what they wanted because they were born into the priesthood.  Hannah taught Samuel something different.

 

The Lord makes some poor and others rich;
he brings some down and lifts others up.
He lifts the poor from the dust
and the needy from the garbage dump.
He sets them among princes,
placing them in seats of honor.
For all the earth is the Lord’s,
and he has set the world in order.

 

It is worth reading Hannah’s song in its entirety, but this portion gives us a window into what made Samuel different from Eli’s sons.