Welcome to I Samuel! If you are new to our group, this is a great place to jump in and join us. Don't worry that you are behind and need to catch up. God's Word is living and active, and has a way of speaking to your life and circumstance. Spending time in Scripture is never wasted time, because God promises that when His Word leaves His mouth, it will never return to Him empty. Any time you spend in the Bible will change your life for the better. I hope you'll consider joining us in this "book club-style" study. I want to hear how these chapters have impacted you (comment below), and how He has made His Word relevant to your life through them.
Verse 2 The Intro to Hannah. She is one of two wives. The other bore children, while she remained barren.
Verse 5 He loved her.
V. 6-7 Her rival. There is a reason that God ordained the one-man, one-woman system. Two wives will always be rivals.
Verse 8 "Am I not better to you than sons?" This is almost a joke to me. In the past, I have felt sorry that Elkanah had to live with a depressed and bitter woman, and I guess I still do, but since he has another wife and all of her children, Elkanah really isn't Hannah's, is he? He isn't even 1/2 hers, because she has to share him with this other wife, and even more her children. His question would not have been a comfort to me, and apparently it was not a comfort to Hannah, either.
Verse 11 Just a side note...I try really hard to avoid making deals with God.
Verse 15 She is a woman with so much pain, oppressed in spirit.
Verse 18 Look at the change in Hannah here. Has anything in her life changed at this point? Not really. She is still sharing her husband's love. She still has no children. But her face is no longer sad. What did that? She went to the temple as a bitter woman, oppressed in spirit, and she poured out her soul to the Lord.
As long as we hold on to something that causes distress and bitterness, there can be no change in us. Until this moment, Hannah has been focused on the sorrow of her empty womb. There can be no healing when our whole focus is on our own suffering! But at this moment, seemingly for the first time, she lets go. Her focus changes to the Lord and to pleasing Him. She empties her soul to Him. And He fills her soul with peace. It is almost beside the point that God chose to grant her wish. (v 19) But he did.
Verse 22 It must have been so hard even to speak these words aloud.
Verse 23 She doesn't seem to have much spiritual leadership in Elkanah. (For that matter, she probably should have looked to him before she offered their child back to the Lord.)
Verse 24-28 There is so much to say about these verses.
1. When I read this story before, I remember thinking, "What's the point, Hannah?" Why go to the trouble of praying for a baby that you are just going to give up? Is the joy worth the heartache? But this time I remembered her life before. No children to raise. A husband who didn't need her, because he had someone else to serve him. What was the point there? What was the purpose of her life? She seemed to have no identity. And somehow, though she thought she would find her purpose in motherhood, she seemed to find an even greater fulfillment in serving the Lord.
Her testimony of holding nothing back from God has been told for thousands of years. She had a reason to live now: To see what the Lord would do in Samuel's life, and a new intimacy with the Lord that would sustain her.
2. This sacrifice (giving up a child) is similar to Abraham's willingness to give up his son, Isaac, but from a woman's perspective. I have heard men say that the story of Abraham's obedience has helped them understand the pain and sorrow that God must have felt in giving up His Son for us, and how much more they understood His love for us through it. Now with Hannah we have the mother's side of the story. All of Scripture points to the cross, and this story grabs my "mother's heart" the way that Abraham's does for fathers. Do you love God enough to give up your child for Him? It is almost unthinkable! But that's how much He loves you.
3. I am amazed at what this action says about Hannah's trust in the Lord. As parents we trust God, but we still feel the ultimate responsibility for them. We trust God to guide us in parenting them. But Hannah was trusting God to keep Samuel safe, provide, nurture, teach--everything! Because she wasn't going to be a part of it. Do you trust God that much? It's a very difficult question. Ask the Lord how we can demonstrate our complete faith in Him on a regular basis.
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I'm going to stop here today, because there is so much to absorb in chapter 1 alone! Come back tomorrow and we'll discuss chapters 2 and 3.
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