1 Samuel2chapter 2

1 Samuel 2:1

Hannah opens both books with a word that has no referent yet: mine horn is exalted names strength lifted in praise, and the same horn returns at 2:10 to name a king's anointed before Israel has either, at 2 Samuel 22:3 as the horn of my salvation, and at Luke 1:69 as an horn of salvation in the house of David. Henry and Edersheim draw a likeness between this song and Mary's Magnificat, though Luke never quotes Hannah directly, and the parallel is theirs to name, not a claim the text makes itself.

1 Samuel 2:2-3

Hannah's praise turns from her own reversal to God's character: none holy as the Lord, no rock like him, a God who weighs actions rather than boasts. The warning against arrogant talk in verse 3 sets up the whole song's argument, for the reversals that follow, the full made hungry and the poor lifted to a throne, are how a God who weighs actions answers proud mouths.

1 Samuel 2:4-5

The bows of the mighty men are broken pictures the reversal Hannah has already lived, and verse 5 states it as a proverb of Israel's God: the barren hath born seven, seven marking fullness rather than a literal count. Hannah stands in a chain of barren women whose sons carry the story forward, Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Manoah's wife and now Hannah, each opened by the Lord's own hand rather than by nature's course.

1 Samuel 2:6-8

Hannah's God kills and makes alive, brings down to the grave and raises up, and the same hand that raises the poor out of the dust sets him among princes to inherit a throne of glory, language the song does not explain but the rest of the book acts out in Israel's own king. Verse 8 closes on the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, grounding the political reversals to come in the same power that holds up creation.

1 Samuel 2:9-10

Verse 10 gives Scripture's first occurrence of the phrase his anointed, naming a king and his anointed before Israel has either, and nothing in the chapter explains it; the rest of both books does, down to the last words of David at 2 Samuel 23:1, the anointed of the God of Jacob. Verse 9's promise that the Lord will keep the feet of his saints while the wicked are silent in darkness sets the moral frame the anointed king will be measured by, obedience rewarded and rebellion silenced.

1 Samuel 2:11

Elkanah goes home to Ramah while the child stays, and the sentence did minister unto the Lord before Eli the priest sets him against the sons who open the next verse: one child ministers, two priests' sons do not know the Lord. The verse is a hinge the narrator built on purpose, moving from Hannah's song straight into Eli's house.

1 Samuel 2:12-14

Eli's sons are named sons of Belial, worthless men, and the phrase they knew not the Lord is damning precisely because their father is the Lord's own priest. Their corruption is not doctrine but appetite: a servant thrusts a three toothed hook into the boiling pot and claims by force whatever it lifts, a theft dressed as custom and practiced on every worshiper who came to Shiloh.

1 Samuel 2:15-17

The priest's servant now demands raw flesh before the fat is burned for the Lord, taking meat meant for the altar for the priest's own table ahead of God's portion. Verse 17 names it plainly, the sin of the young men was very great before the Lord, for men abhorred the offering of the Lord, so that Eli's sons had turned the one place Israel came to worship into a place worshipers learned to dread.

1 Samuel 2:18-21

Samuel ministers before the Lord girded with a linen ephod, priestly dress worn by a child, and his mother's yearly gift of a little coat measures a mother's love in the one unit she has, cloth and years. Eli's blessing asks the Lord to repay Hannah for the child lent to him, and verse 21 answers it at once: the Lord visited Hannah, and she bare three more sons and two daughters, the barren hath born seven of verse 5 now filled out in fact as well as figure.

1 Samuel 2:22-25

Eli hears of a sin worse than theft: his sons lay with the women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, turning the entrance to worship into a place of abuse. Eli rebukes them in words but takes no other action, and his own question states the law's limit: if one man sin against another a judge may intercede, but who shall entreat for a man who sins against the Lord. The Lord would slay them closes the section as the narrator's own verdict, judgment already settled before it falls.

1 Samuel 2:26

The child Samuel grew on, and was in favour both with the Lord, and also with men closes the contrast the chapter has built verse by verse, Eli's grown sons despising the Lord's offering while the child under Eli's own roof grows in favor with him. Barnes notes the same shape of words at Luke 2:52 for the child Jesus, a likeness of language rather than a citation, and it marks Samuel as the book's first working answer to the corruption just described.

1 Samuel 2:27-30

A man of God comes to Eli unnamed, and the oracle opens by reminding him that his priesthood is a gift from Egypt, not an entitlement: did I choose him to be my priest, to burn incense, to wear an ephod before me. Verse 29 turns from gift to complaint, Eli has honoured his sons above God and grown fat on offerings meant for the altar, and verse 30 states the principle the rest of the book will test on king after king, for them that honour me I will honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed.

1 Samuel 2:31-33

The oracle turns to sentence: I will cut off thine arm names the loss of strength and posterity together, for the same clause closes the verse, that there shall not be an old man in thine house, no natural death by age left to Eli's line. Verses 32 and 33 add what will unfold across the rest of the book, an enemy seen in the habitation God gives Israel and a house grieved by every man left alive, judgment stretched over generations rather than spent in one stroke.

1 Samuel 2:34

The sign given is a date, not a symbol: Hophni and Phinehas will die in one day, and the reader carries the sentence forward into chapter 4, where both fall at Aphek and the ark is lost in the same battle. A single verse in this chapter answers itself thirty verses later, the surest kind of proof the man of God could have offered Eli.

1 Samuel 2:35-36

I will build him a sure house names a phrase Scripture uses only three times: here of the priesthood promised to replace Eli's line, at 25:28 when Abigail speaks it over David a decade before God speaks it of David's house, and at 1 Kings 11:38 when it is offered to Jeroboam and forfeited. The promise is fulfilled by name at 1 Kings 2:27, when Solomon puts out Abiathar that the word spoken concerning the house of Eli in Shiloh might be fulfilled, and walk before mine anointed for ever closes on the very title Hannah sang before any king stood to wear it. Verse 36 answers Eli's fattening on Israel's offerings with a house begging bread piece by piece, the same reversal Hannah sang in verse 8.