The Prayer Hannah Couldn't Say Out Loud

The judges were still leading Israel, and up in the hill country, north of Ruth's barley fields, lived a man named Elkanah who had two wives. (Some men did then. God made marriage for one husband and one wife, and two wives nearly always meant trouble.) Peninnah had sons and daughters. Hannah had no children at all.

Every year the family walked up to Shiloh, where God's house stood, to worship and eat a feast. Elkanah gave Hannah a double share of the meat, because he loved her.

Peninnah noticed. "Still no baby, Hannah?" she would say, with her children crowding round her. Year after year she said it, until Hannah cried and pushed her food away.

"Why are you crying?" said Elkanah. "Aren't I better to you than ten sons?"

(Elkanah meant well. It did not help.)

After the meal Hannah went to the doorway of God's house, where old Eli the priest sat by the doorpost. She wept and silently made God a promise. "LORD of armies, if you will look at me and give me a son, I will give him back to you for his whole life."

Her lips moved, but no sound came out. (Most people prayed aloud in those days, so lips moving in silence looked very odd.) Eli decided she was drunk.

"How long are you going to keep this up?" he said. "Put your wine away!"

"No, my lord!" said Hannah. "I haven't had any wine. I am in deep trouble, and I have been pouring out my heart to the LORD."

"Go in peace," said Eli. "May the God of Israel give you what you asked him for."

Hannah went back and ate, and her face was not sad anymore. Nothing had happened yet, but she had told God everything and left it with him.

At home, the LORD remembered Hannah, and she had a baby boy. She named him Samuel, which sounds like "heard by God" in Hebrew. "I asked the LORD for him," she said.

When Samuel was about three and could eat ordinary food, Hannah walked up to Shiloh again with a bull, a sack of flour, a skin of wine, and a boy holding her hand. (A three-year-old bull is a big present. Samuel was about three himself, and a good deal shorter.)

She brought her son to Eli. "My lord, I am the woman who stood here praying. I prayed for this child, and the LORD gave me what I asked. Now I am giving him to the LORD for as long as he lives."

Then Hannah sang a song of joy about a God who lifts the poor out of the dust, and she went home. Samuel stayed, a boy serving the LORD, with old Eli to teach him.

Hannah kept her promise, and Samuel served God until his hair was white. But even a boy given to God grows old, and one day Samuel died, and all Israel cried for him.

Priests came and went at God's house. People kept praying, some with words and some with only tears.

Then in Bethlehem another boy was born. When he was twelve, his parents searched Jerusalem and found him in God's house, sitting with the teachers. "Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?" he asked.

Hannah had given her son to God. Now God was giving his own Son to us. He grew up to be the priest who never mistakes a prayer, who hears even the ones that make no sound, and who prays for his people still. His name is Jesus.