1 Samuelchapter 2
36 verses · Samuel, Nathan and Gad, by tradition · 10th century BC · History
And Hannah prayed, and said, My heart rejoiceth in the Lord, mine horn is exalted in the Lord: my mouth is enlarged over mine enemies; because I rejoice in thy salvation.
Introduction
Samuel, Nathan and Gad, by tradition, History, 1 Samuel Overview.
This chapter sets a song beside a scandal. The song is Hannah's, and later singers in Israel took up its themes of the mighty brought low and the poor lifted up. The scandal belongs to the priests at Shiloh, and the first hearers paid for the sacrifices those priests handled. Tradition gives the book to Samuel, who grows up in the background of this chapter. Listen for the reversals in the song, and then watch them happen in the story. Notice the short reports on the boy that break into the account of Eli's house.
Context
- Who
- Israelites who paid for those sacrifices out of their own flocks and had watched priests take more than the law allowed
- What
- Hannah praises the LORD who reverses fortunes, while Eli's sons abuse the offerings and a man of God pronounces judgment on Eli's house.
- Where
- The sanctuary at Shiloh, with its altar, its cooking pots and the entrance to the Tent of Meeting.
- When
- About 1105 to 1090 BC, the years between Samuel's weaning and his call.
- Why
- To set the LORD who raises the humble against a priesthood that has despised Him, and to announce its replacement.
Historical context
The chapter belongs to two households at once. Hannah sings, and her song is the first of them. Eli's sons Hophni and Phinehas are the second, and they hold the priesthood at the one sanctuary the nation came to.
Show the rest of the historical context, 4 more paragraphs
The priests' income was fixed by law and it was generous. From a fellowship offering they received the breast and the right thigh, and the fat was burned to God before anyone ate. Eli's sons broke both rules. They sent a servant with a three-pronged fork to stab into the boiling pot and take whatever it lifted. They also demanded raw meat before the fat was burned, with the threat of force behind the demand.
The result is stated in verse 17, that men came to despise the offering of the LORD. When the priesthood took by force, ordinary people stopped bringing, and the whole nation's worship collapsed from the inside.
The sons also lay with the women who served at the entrance to the tent of meeting. The law mentions that organised service without describing it, and a first hearer knew what it was. Eli's answer is a mild question rather than a removal from office, and the man of God at verse 29 names the failure as honouring his sons above God.
The song at the opening of the chapter is the theological key to both books of Samuel. Its reversals run through the whole account: the bows of the mighty broken, the barren bearing seven, the poor lifted from the ash heap to sit with princes. Verse 10 speaks of a king and of his anointed at a moment when Israel had neither. It is the strangest line in the chapter for a reader who does not know where the book is going.
Significance
The man of God names the penalty precisely: both sons dead on one day, the line cut off, and a faithful priest raised in their place. A first hearer living under the priesthood of Zadok, established in Solomon's day once Eli's line was set aside, knew exactly how that sentence ended.
Show the rest of the significance, 1 more paragraph
Hannah's last line asks God to give strength to His king and to exalt the horn of His anointed. It was sung when Israel had no king at all, and it tells the hearer where the book is going before anyone has asked for a throne.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
How it is read
The song at the head of the chapter is read by the commentators as a statement about how God orders the world. Rashi is quoted here from the Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J., under CC-BY, and Radak from the Sefaria Community Translation, CC0. On the opening line Rashi reads the enlarged mouth as spoken against Peninnah (Rashi on I Samuel 2:1:1). On the second verse he takes the Hebrew word usually rendered rock as artist instead (Rashi on I Samuel 2:2:1). There is none, he says, "like our God Who fashions a form within a form", and he cites Maseches Berachos 10a (same ref). On the warning against proud speech he gives the plain sense as a word to Peninnah, and the drash, following Targum Yonoson, as a word about Nebuchadnezzar (Rashi on I Samuel 2:3:1). On the broken bows he states the rule the song turns on, that God "weakens the mighty and strengthens the weak, He sates the hungry and starves the sated" (Rashi on I Samuel 2:4:1). Radak works the line on killing and giving life as a question about order. He observes that the killing is stated first and the giving of life after, which reverses the course of a living being (Radak on I Samuel 2:6:1). He offers the reading that the verse speaks "in the way of prophecy or in the way of tradition about the revival of the dead in the future to come" (same ref). On the next line he explains the added word for raising up, since "ascent [requires] more power and strength than descent" (Radak on I Samuel 2:7:1). On the dunghill of the eighth verse he works the grammar of the noun and its plural (Radak on I Samuel 2:8:1). At the ninth verse Rashi sets the written form against the spoken one, and says the sense holds whether one or many (Rashi on I Samuel 2:9:1). On the boy serving before Eli he hands on a ruling about service before a Torah scholar (Rashi on I Samuel 2:11:1). Whoever serves so "is considered as though he had served before the Divine Presence", and he cites Talmud Yerushalmi Eruvin 5:1 (same ref). On the practice of Eli's sons he says plainly that "They established this law for themselves", since the priests had a right to the breast and the thigh alone (Rashi on I Samuel 2:13:1). On the robe his mother brought and on the blessing Eli gave, he reads both verbs as habits rather than single acts (Rashi on I Samuel 2:19:1 and 2:20:1). On the charge against the sons at the entrance he gives the plain sense first, then the reading of the Rabbis in Maseches Yoma 9a-b (Rashi on I Samuel 2:22:1). On that reading the sons delayed the offerings of the women, and Scripture charges them "as though they had lain with them" (same ref). On the rumour Eli had heard he reads the verb as the spreading of a report through the people (Rashi on I Samuel 2:24:1). Radak's comments at five more verses stand as citations, since the corpus holds no English version of them: Radak on I Samuel 2:12:1, 2:15:1, 2:16:1, 2:21:1 and 2:23:1.
What the rabbis say
The corpus records forty rabbinic locators on this chapter, thirty-one of them Midrash and nine Talmud, each a locator without text. The opening of the song and the God without compare draw Berakhot 29a:11, Eikhah Rabbah 2:6, Berakhot 10a:21 and Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Berakhot 1:51. The warning against proud speech draws Berakhot 33a:19 and Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Berakhot 5:10. The reversals of the song, the broken bows, the sated hiring themselves out and the killing and giving of life, draw five locators. They are Midrash Sekhel Tov, Bereshit 28:9:23, Bereshit Rabbah 72:1, Ein Yaakov, Megillah 1:42, Avot DeRabbi Natan 36:2 and Bamidbar Rabbah 12:11. The raising of the poor from the dunghill draws Bamidbar Rabbah 3:6, Midrash Shmuel 5:13, Aggadat Bereshit 18:1 and Bamidbar Rabbah 11:1. The close of the song draws Aggadat Bereshit 46:3 and Aggadat Bereshit 83:1. Eli's sons and the custom they made for themselves draw Aggadat Bereshit 41:1, Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 110:11, Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Yoma 1:5, Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Sanhedrin 7:5 and Aggadat Bereshit 41:2. The boy in the linen robe and the robe brought each year draw Midrash Lekach Tov, Exodus 28:6:1, Bereshit Rabbah 95:1, Midrash Shmuel 6:3 and Aggadat Bereshit 29:1. The charge at the entrance and Eli's rebuke draw Aggadat Bereshit 41:4, Midrash Shmuel 7:5, Jerusalem Talmud Horayot 3:1:2, Bamidbar Rabbah 11:7 and Avot DeRabbi Natan 2:5. The word spoken against the house of Eli draws Aggadat Bereshit 50:2, Avot DeRabbi Natan, Recension B 43:19, Avot DeRabbi Natan 27:1 and Bava Batra 137b:7. The closing verses of the chapter draw Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Sanhedrin 1:20, Bereshit Rabbah 59:1, Midrash Lekach Tov, Genesis 3:3:1, Midrash Tehillim 18:7 and Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Sotah 1:12. The rabbis teach in these places, and this site reports them as their teaching rather than as a rule of the text.
Sources: Rashi, Rashi on I Samuel 2:1:1, 2:2:1, 2:3:1, 2:4:1, 2:9:1, 2:11:1, 2:13:1, 2:19:1, 2:20:1, 2:22:1 and 2:24:1, the Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J., CC-BY; Radak, Radak on I Samuel 2:6:1, 2:7:1 and 2:8:1, the Sefaria Community Translation, CC0; Radak, Radak on I Samuel 2:12:1, 2:15:1, 2:16:1, 2:21:1 and 2:23:1, cited only, no English version in the corpus.
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
Hannah's song: the bows of the mighty are broken
Hannah opens her song with “my horn is exalted”, strength lifted in praise. The horn returns at verse 10 for a king before Israel has one, then at 2 Samuel 22:3 and at Luke 1:69 in the house of David. Henry and Edersheim draw a likeness between this song and Mary's song in Luke 1, a parallel theirs to name, since Luke never quotes Hannah.
1 Samuel 2:1
“This beautiful song was her tribute of thanks for the divine goodness in answering her petition. mine horn is exalted in the Lord--Allusion is here made to a peculiarity in the dress of Eastern women about Lebanon, which seems to have obtained anciently among the Israelite women, that of wearing a tin or silver horn on the forehead, on which their veil is suspended.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
2 more voices on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
1 Samuel 2:1
“The mercy she had received was an answer to prayer, and therefore she thought herself especially obliged to give thanks for it. What we win by prayer we may wear with comfort, and must wear with praise. Her thanksgiving is here called a prayer: Hannah prayed; for thanksgiving is an essential part of prayer.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 Samuel 2:1
“The song of Hannah is a prophetic Psalm. It is poetry. and it is prophecy. It takes its place by the side of the songs of Miriam, Deborah, and the Virgin Mary, as well as those of Moses, David, Hezekiah, and other Psalmists and prophets whose inspired odes have been preserved in the Bible.”
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 2:2
“None holy - Holiness is peculiar to the God of Israel; no false god ever pretended to holiness; it was no attribute of heathenism, nor of any religion ever professed in the world before or since the true revelation of the true God. There is none beside thee - There can be but one unoriginated, infinite, and eternal Being; that Being is Jehovah. Any rock like our God - Rabbi Maimon has observed that the word צור tsur, which we translate rock, signifies, when applied to Jehovah, fountain, source, spring.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Matthew Henry hears the warning aimed past Peninnah at the proud enemies of God and Israel, such as the Philistines. The LORD knows, and He weighs what people do; Adam Clarke adds that by His counsel alone any work is begun and ended. The scales are His.
1 Samuel 2:3
“A God of knowledge - He is the most wise, teaching all good, and knowing all things. Actions are weighed - נתכנו nithkenu, they are directed; it is by his counsel alone that we can successfully begin, continue, or end, any work.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
1 Samuel 2:3
No sensible person, then, will be proud of his wisdom … but will follow the excellent advice of blessed Hannah and of the prophet Jeremiah, "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom and let not the strong man glory in his strength and let not the rich man glory in his riches." But what is true glory and what makes one great? "In this," says the prophet, "let him that glories, glory, that he understands and knows that I am the Lord."
Basil of Caesarea · written before 379 · ON HUMILITYpatristic
1 Samuel 2:4-5
The line “The bows of the mighty are broken” pictures the reversal Hannah has lived, and verse 5 states it as a rule of Israel's God: “The barren woman gives birth to seven”. Seven is the number of fullness. Hannah stands in a line of barren women opened by the LORD's own hand, Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Manoah's wife and now Hannah.
1 Samuel 2:4
“The bows of the mighty - The Targum considers the first verse as including a prophecy against the Philistines; the second verse, against Sennacherib and his army; the third, against Nebuchadnezzar and the Chaldeans; the fourth, against the Greeks; the fifth, against Haman and his posterity; and the tenth, against Magog, and the enemies of the Messiah.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Albert Barnes finds the first line fulfilled in this very chapter, where Eli's descendants beg for a morsel of bread at verse 36. The barren woman is Hannah, and Matthew Henry counts her one son as good as seven, or hears her faith speaking. Verse 21 gives her five more.
1 Samuel 2:5
See an instance in 1Sa 2:36. See, too, in Eze 13:19, another example of hire paid in bread. Ceased - i. e. were at rest, did no work. The general sense is expressed by the translation of the Latin Version, “they were filled.”
1 Samuel 2:6-8
Hannah's God “brings death and gives life”, and the hand that “raises the poor from the dust” also seats them “among princes”, language the rest of the book acts out in Israel's own king. Verse 8 closes on “the foundations of the earth are the LORD’s”, grounding the reversals to come in the power that holds up creation.
1 Samuel 2:6
“The Lord killeth - God is the arbiter of life and death; he only can give life, and he only has a right to take it away. He bringeth down to the grave - The Hebrew word שאול sheol, which we translate grave, seems to have the same meaning in the Old Testament with ἁδης, hades in the New, which is the word generally used by the Septuagint for the other. It means the grave, the state of the dead, and the invisible place, or place of separate spirits.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
1 Samuel 2:6
“Certainly his making alive is to take place after he has killed. As, therefore, it is by death that he kills, it is by the resurrection that he will make alive. Now it is the flesh which is killed by death; the flesh, therefore, will be revived by the resurrection. Surely if killing means taking away life from the flesh, and its opposite, reviving, amounts to restoring life to the flesh, it must needs be that the flesh rise again, to which the life, which has been taken away by killing, has to be restored by vivification.”
Tertullian · written before 220 · ON THE RESURRECTION OF THE FLESH 28patristic
John Gill sees both halves in one life in Job, and in two lives in the rich man and Lazarus. Adam Clarke explains the poverty as mercy to those who could never bear wealth, and the wealth as a stewardship for those God can trust. The same hand does both.
1 Samuel 2:7
“This is the instance that comes close to the occasion of the thanksgiving: The barren hath borne seven, meaning herself, for, though at present she had but one son, yet that one being a Nazarite, devoted to God and employed in his immediate service, he was to her as good as seven. Or it is the language of her faith.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Adam Clarke sets Joseph beside this line, a prisoner raised to sit among princes. John Wesley ties the two halves together: the LORD who holds up the foundations of the earth may seat whom He wills. Hannah had just been lifted in the same way.
1 Samuel 2:8
“Throne - That is, a glorious throne or kingdom. Pillars - The foundations of the earth, which God created, and upholds, and wherewith he sustains the earth, and all its inhabitants, as a house is supported with pillars; and therefore it is not strange if he disposeth of persons and things therein as he pleaseth.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 Samuel 2:9-10
Verse 10 gives the first occurrence in Scripture of “His anointed”, naming a king before Israel has one, and the rest of both books explains it, down to David's last words at 2 Samuel 23:1. Verse 9 sets the frame the anointed king will be measured by: the LORD “guards the steps of His faithful ones, but the wicked perish in darkness”.
1 Samuel 2:9
“He will keep the feet of his saints - He will order and direct all their goings, and keep them from every evil way. The wicked shall be silent in darkness - The Targum understands this of their being sent to the darkness of hell; they shall be slain. By strength shall no man prevail - Because God is omnipotent, and no power can be successfully exerted against him.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Israel had no king when Hannah sang of the LORD's king and His anointed. Jamieson, Fausset & Brown and Albert Barnes read the line as a prophecy of Christ, and Mary's song in Luke 1 takes up the same notes. The song ends on a king.
1 Samuel 2:10
“The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken - Those who contend with him, מריביו meribaiu, by sinning against his laws, opposing the progress of his word, or persecuting his people.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
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 2:11
“The word “minister” is used in three senses in Scripture: (1) of the service or ministration of both priests and Levites rendered unto the Lord Exo 28:35, Exo 28:43: (2) of the ministrations of the Levites as rendered to the priests, to aid them in divine Service Num 3:6: (3) of any service or ministration, especially one rendered to a man of God, as that of Joshua to Moses Num 11:28. The application of it to Samuel as ministering to the Lord before Eli the priest accords “most exactly” with Samuel’s condition as a Levite.”
Eli's sons and the flesh-hook in the pot
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 2:12
“The sons of Eli were sons of Belial - They were perverse, wicked, profligate men; devil’s children. They knew not the Lord. “They know! nor would an angel show Him; They would not know, nor choose to know Him.” These men were the principal cause of all the ungodliness of Israel. Their most execrable conduct, described 1Sa 2:13-17, caused the people to abhor the Lord’s offering. An impious priesthood is the grand cause of the transgressions and ruin of any nation; witness France, Germany, Spain, Ac., from 1792 to 1814.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
1 Samuel 2:12
“Though professionally engaged in sacred duties, they were not only strangers to the power of religion in the heart, but they had thrown off its restraints, and even ran, as is sometimes done in similar cases by the sons of eminent ministers, to the opposite extreme of reckless and open profligacy.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
The law of Leviticus 7:31 to 35 fixed the priest's share of a peace offering, and Adam Clarke notes that the rest of the meat belonged to the worshipper. Eli's sons sent a servant with a fork to take whatever it brought up. Albert Barnes calls this lawlessness.
1 Samuel 2:13
“The Law of Moses defined exactly what was to be the priest’s portion of every peace offering Lev 7:31-35, as it also gave express directions about the burning of the fat Lev 7:23-25, Lev 7:31. It was therefore a gross act of disobedience and lawlessness on the part of Hophni and Phinehas to take more than the Law gave them. Incidental evidence is afforded by this passage to the existence of the Levitical law at this time.”
Adam Clarke admits no one knows what the four vessels were, and the fork reached into the worshipper's own boiling portion. Matthew Henry notes that the people let this wrong grow into a custom until it was pleaded as a right. Every family like Elkanah's met that fork.
1 Samuel 2:14
“Kettle - caldron, or pot - We know not what these were, nor of what capacity; nor is it of any consequence.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 Samuel 2:15-17
The priest's servant demands raw meat before the fat is burned, taking for the priest's table what belonged to the altar first. Verse 17 names it: “the sin of these young men was severe in the sight of the LORD, for they were treating the LORD’s offering with contempt”.
1 Samuel 2:15
“Before they burnt the fat - They would serve themselves before God was served! This was iniquity and arrogance of the first magnitude. He will not have sodden flesh - He chooses roast meat, not boiled; and if they had it in the pot before the servant came, he took it out that it might be roasted.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
1 Samuel 2:15
“He was a fat heavy man ( ch. iv. 18 ), and therefore it is charged upon the whole family (though Hophni and Phinehas were principally guilty), You make yourselves fat with the chief of all the offerings. God gave them sufficient to feed them, but that would not suffice; they made themselves fat, and served their lusts with that which God was to be served with.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
The worshipper asks only that the fat be burned first, as the law of Leviticus 7 directed. The servant threatens force. Matthew Henry says the priests stepped in before God himself and took His right along with the worshipper's.
The young men are Hophni and Phinehas, named at 1:3. Adam Clarke and Matthew Henry trace the harm outward, as worshippers who watched such priests came to despise the offerings as well. Matthew Henry counts the priests' sin the greater.
1 Samuel 2:17
“Secondly, That religion suffered by it: Men abhorred the offerings of the Lord. All good men abhorred their management of the offerings, and too many insensibly fell into a contempt of the offerings themselves for their sakes. It was the people's sin to think the worse of God's institutions, but it was the much greater sin of the priests that gave them occasion to do so.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 more voice on this verse
1 Samuel 2:17
“The offering of the Lord - Minchah, here in the general sense of “gift or offering” to God (compare Mal 1:10-11; Mal 3:3). In its restricted sense, it is used of the meat offerings, the unbloody sacrifices, and is then coupled with bloody sacrifices, sacrifices of slain beasts. (See 1Sa 2:29.)”
A little robe brought up year by year
1 Samuel 2:18-21
Samuel serves “wearing a linen ephod”, priestly dress on a child, and his mother's yearly “little robe” measures her love in cloth and years. Eli asks the LORD to repay Hannah for the child she gave, and verse 21 answers at once: “she conceived and gave birth to three sons and two daughters”. The barren woman of verse 5 now bears in fact as well as in song.
1 Samuel 2:18
“Ministered - That is, performed his ministration carefully and faithfully. Before the Lord - In God's tabernacle. Ephod - A garment used in God's service, and allowed not only to the inferior priests and Levites but also to eminent persons of the people, and therefore to Samuel, who, though no Levite, was a Nazarite, from his birth.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
1 Samuel 2:18
“Girded with a linen ephod - This the Targum translates אסיר כרדוט דבוץ asir cardut debuts, “Girded with a cardit of byssus, or fine linen.” The word cardut they seem to have borrowed from the Greek χειριδωτος, a tunic, having χειριδας, i.e., sleeves that came down to, or covered, the hands. This was esteemed an effeminate garment among the Romans. See Buxtorf’s Talmudic Lexicon.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Adam Clarke takes the little robe as an upper garment to keep the boy warm, made new each year. Albert Barnes notes that the same word names the robe of the ephod worn by the high priest in Exodus 28:31. Hannah kept clothing the son she had given.
1 Samuel 2:19
“A little coat - The robe of the ephod was also one of the garments worn by the High Priest (see Exo 28:31 note).”
Eli's blessing asks the LORD to repay Hannah for the son she gave up. Matthew Henry compares Abraham, who received the promise of many descendants after he offered Isaac at Genesis 22. Verse 21 records the answer.
1 Samuel 2:20
“Eli blessed Elkanah - The natural place of this verse seems to be before the 11th; after which the 21st should come in; after the 21st, perhaps the 26th should come in. The subjects in this chapter seem very much entangled and confused by the wrong position of the verses.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
1 Samuel 2:20
“As when Abraham had offered Isaac he received the promise of a numerous issue ( Gen. xxii. 16, 17 ), so did Hannah, when she had presented Samuel unto the Lord a living sacrifice. Note, What is lent to the Lord will certainly be repaid with interest, to our unspeakable advantage, and oftentimes in kind.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
With Samuel, Hannah's three sons and two daughters make six children, and John Gill hears her song of verse 5 coming true. Scripture never names the five. Albert Barnes notes that growing up in the presence of the LORD means living at the tabernacle.
1 Samuel 2:21
“And the Lord visited Hannah,.... In a way of mercy, approving and confirming the blessing of Eli; or rather granting the blessing he prayed for, by giving her power to conceive, bear, and bring forth children, as the following words explain it: so that she conceived and bare three sons and two daughters; whereby the prophecy of Hannah was fulfilled, 1Sa 2:5, and was no doubt matter of great joy to her, though of these children we nowhere else read, nor even of their names.”
2 more voices on this verse
1 Samuel 2:21
“When Hannah had once offered in the tabernacle the son whom she had vowed to God, she never took him back: for she thought it unbecoming that one who was to be a prophet should grow up in the same house with her who still desired to have other sons.”
Jerome · written before 420 · LETTER 107.13patristic
1 Samuel 2:21
“Peninnah is now mortified and crest-fallen. The tradition of the Jews is that when Hannah bore one child Peninnah buried two. There are many instances both of the increase of families that were inconsiderable and the extinguishing of families that made a figure, Job xxii.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 Samuel 2:22-25
Now Eli was very old: Eli hears that his sons “were sleeping with the women who served at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting”. He rebukes them in words and takes no other step, and his own question, “who can intercede for him”, states the law's limit for a sin against the LORD. The narrator closes with the verdict, “the LORD intended to put them to death”, judgment settled before it falls.
1 Samuel 2:22
“They lay with the women that assembled - It is probable that these were persons who had some employment about the tabernacle. See the note on Exo 38:8, where the Hebrew text is similar to that in this place.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
1 Samuel 2:22
“Because their father [Eli] did not chastise them with enough severity … he moved the forbearance of God to wrath so great that foreign peoples rose up against them and killed those sons of his in war in one day. His entire nation, furthermore, was vanquished, and a considerable number of his people fell.”
Basil of Caesarea · written before 379 · PREFACE ON THE JUDGMENT OF GODpatristic
Eli asks a question where he held the power to act. Adam Clarke calls him a fond and easy father, and John Wesley notes that as judge and high priest he could have punished what he only rebuked. His words cost his sons nothing.
Eli names the bad report among the LORD's people and goes no further. John Chrysostom sets this beside 3:13, where the LORD says Eli did not restrain them, and concludes that a mild rebuke without threat counted as none. The gentleness was the failure.
1 Samuel 2:24
“Indeed, Eli did admonish them and say, "Nay, my sons, do not so; evil is the report that I hear of you." But subsequently the Scripture saith, that he did not admonish his sons: since he did not admonish them severely, or with threats. For is it not strange indeed, that in the synagogues of the Jews the laws are in such force, and whatever the teacher enjoins is performed; while here we are thus despised and rejected?”
John Chrysostom · written before 407 · Homily on Acts 8patristic
Albert Barnes explains the first case as a wrong between two men that a judge can settle, and the second as a sin with no higher arbiter to plead it. Hophni and Phinehas sinned at the LORD's own altar. Jamieson, Fausset & Brown hold that their stubborn disobedience brought the death the verse names.
1 Samuel 2:25
“The law prohibits priests in the case of certain sins from offering a sacrifice to gain people forgiveness for the transgressions for which sacrifices are made. For though the priest has authority to make an offering for certain inadvertent sins or transgressions, nevertheless he does not offer a burnt offering and a sin offering for adultery, deliberate murder, or any other graver fault.”
Origen of Alexandria · written before 253 · ON PRAYER 28.9patristic
1 more voice on this verse
1 Samuel 2:25
“Who shall compound that difference? None can or dare do it, and therefore he must be left to the dreadful, but righteous judgment of God. They had now sinned away their day of grace.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
The verse closes the contrast the chapter has built: Eli's grown sons despise the LORD's offering while the boy under Eli's roof grows “in favor with the LORD and with man”. Barnes notes the same shape of words at Luke 2:52 for the child Jesus, a likeness of language rather than a citation. Samuel stands as the book's first answer to the corruption just described.
1 Samuel 2:26
And the child Samuel ... - The account of our Lord’s growth Luk 2:52 is very similar; “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” The literal version of the passage before us is, “The child Samuel advanced and grew and was good (or acceptable), both with the Lord, and also with men.”
A man of God: I will raise me up a faithful priest
1 Samuel 2:27-30
An unnamed man of God reminds Eli that his father's house was chosen “to be My priest”. The charge follows, “You have honored your sons more than Me”, with the priests fattened on offerings meant for the altar. Verse 30 states the rule the book will test on king after king: “I will honor those who honor Me, but those who despise Me will be disdained”.
1 Samuel 2:27
“A man of God - See Jdg 13:6 note. The sudden appearance of the only prophet of whom mention is made since Deborah, without name, or any notice of his country, is remarkable.”
1 more voice on this verse
1 Samuel 2:27
“The message is sent to Eli himself, because God would bring him to repentance and save him; not to his sons, whom he had determined to destroy. And it might have been a means of awakening him to do his duty at last, and so to have prevented the judgment, but we do not find it had any great effect upon him. The message this prophet delivers from God is very close.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
God lists what He gave the house of Eli's father: the altar, the incense, the ephod and a share of every offering made by fire. Albert Barnes notes that this generous provision made the greed of Eli's sons worse, as Nathan lists God's gifts to David at 2 Samuel 12. Much was given, and much was taken.
1 Samuel 2:28
“He advanced him to the priesthood, entailed it upon his family, and thereby dignified it above any of the families of Israel. He entrusted him with honourable work, to offer on God's altar, to burn incense, and to wear that ephod in which was the breast-plate of judgment.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 more voice on this verse
1 Samuel 2:28
“And I gave to the house of your father all things, etc. All things from the sacrifices of the people, whatever the priests ought to receive, to the sons of Aaron your father, because I chose them into the priesthood, I provided.”
Bede · written before 735 · Commentary on Samuelpatristic
John Gill takes kick from well-fed cattle that turn on the owner who feeds them. The charge falls on Eli himself, and Matthew Henry fears that he ate from what his sons seized, as fattening yourselves suggests. Adam Clarke calls his leniency connivance.
1 Samuel 2:29
“Wherefore kick ye at my sacrifice, and at mine offering, which I have commanded in my habitation,.... To be offered in the tabernacle, where the Lord had his dwelling; which they might be said to kick and spurn at, despising them, as if there were not enough of them, nor the best of them given to them for their maintenance; a metaphor taken from cattle well fed and fat, which kick and spurn with their feet at even the owners and feeders of them.”
Adam Clarke points to Exodus 29:9 and Numbers 25, where the LORD promised the priesthood to the house of Aaron forever, and he reads the promise as carrying a condition. Matthew Henry puts it as a condition: the house would walk before the LORD as long as it served Him faithfully. Eli's house despised Him and lost it.
1 Samuel 2:31-33
The sentence falls in the words “I will cut off your strength”, the loss of strength and posterity together, so that “no older man will be left in your house”. Verses 32 and 33 add what the rest of the book unfolds, distress seen in the LORD's dwelling place and a house grieved by every man left alive. The judgment stretches over generations.
1 Samuel 2:31
“I will cut off thine arm ... - A strong phrase for breaking down the strength and power, of which the arm is the instrument in man (compare Zec 11:17). See 1Sa 2:33.”
1 more voice on this verse
1 Samuel 2:31
“Arm - That is, I will take away thy strength, or all that in which thou placest thy confidence, either, 1. the ark, which is called God's strength, Psalm lxxviii, 61, and was Eli's strength, who therefore was not able to bear the very tidings of the loss of it.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Adam Clarke takes the distress as the defeat of chapter 4, when the ark was captured and Eli's sons died. Albert Barnes links the good in Israel to Solomon's reign, when Abiathar of Eli's line was removed and Zadok took his place, at 1 Kings 2. Barnes calls the Hebrew obscure.
1 Samuel 2:32
“Thou shalt see an enemy in my habitation - Every version and almost every commentator understands this clause differently. The word צר tsar, which we translate an enemy, and the Vulgate aemulum, a rival, signifies calamity; and this is the best sense to understand it in here. The calamity which he saw was the defeat of the Israelites, the capture of the ark, the death of his wicked sons, and the triumph of the Philistines. All this he saw, that is, knew to have taken place, before he met with his own tragical death.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Albert Barnes reads this with verse 36: the descendants of Eli who are spared the sword will be worse off, left to beg for bread. John Wesley takes the eyes and heart as Eli's own, as though he were alive to see it. Eli's line lives on to grieve.
1 Samuel 2:33
“The meaning is explained by 1Sa 2:36. Those who are not cut off in the flower of their youth shall be worse off than those who are, for they shall have to beg their bread. (Compare Jer 22:10.) Thine eyes ... thine heart - For a similar personification of the tribe or family see Jdg 1:2-4.”
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 2:34
“This shall be a sign unto thee,.... A confirming one, that all which had been now said would be fulfilled: that shall come upon thy two sons, Hophni and Phinehas; which Eli would live to see fulfilled on them; and when it was, he might be assured the rest would be most certainly accomplished, and it was this: in one day they shall die both of them; as they did in battle with the Philistines, 1Sa 4:11.”
1 Samuel 2:35-36
The LORD promises a faithful priest to replace Eli's line: “I will build for him an enduring house”. First Kings 2:27 names the fulfilment when Solomon removes Abiathar, and “walk before My anointed one” closes on the title Hannah sang before any king stood. Verse 36 answers Eli's fattening with a house begging “a piece of bread”, the reversal of Hannah's song.
1 Samuel 2:35
“Zadok is meant rather than Samuel. The High Priesthood continued in the direct descendants of Zadok as long as the monarchy lasted (see 1Ch 6:8-15). Mine anointed - in its first sense obviously means the kings of Israel and Judah Psa 89:20; Zec 4:14. But doubtless the use of the term MESSIAH (Χριστὸς Christos) here and in 1Sa 2:10, is significant, and points to the Lord’s Christ, in whom the royal and priestly offices are united (Zec 6:11-15: see the marginal references).”
1 more voice on this verse
1 Samuel 2:35
“Raise a priest - Of another line, as it necessarily implied by the total removal of that office from Eli's line. The person designed is Zadok, one eminent for his faithfulness to God, and to the king, who, when Abiather, the last of Eli's line, was deposed by Solomon, was made high-priest in his stead.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Albert Barnes connects the piece of silver with the gerah, the smallest Hebrew coin, a twentieth of a shekel. The tiny sum shows the asker's poverty. The house that took the best of the offerings will beg for bread, as Hannah sang in verse 5.
1 Samuel 2:36
“Shall come and crouch to him - Shall prostrate himself before him in the most abject manner, begging to be employed even in the meanest offices about the tabernacle, in order to get even the most scanty means of support. A piece of silver - אגורת כסף agorath keseph, translated by the Septuagint, οβολου αργυριου, an obolus of silver. The Targum translates it מעא mea, which is the same as the Hebrew gerah, and weighed about sixteen grains of barley. A morsel of bread - A mouthful; what might be sufficient to keep body and soul together.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
How this psalm is built
The form: Narrative carrying one song, set against a prophetic oracle of judgment at its close, as guide classes it.
The patterns in this chapter
| Device | What it does | Where to see it |
|---|---|---|
| The reversals, named in pairs | Verses 4 to 8 run as a series of paired opposites. The bows of the mighty are broken and the stumbling are girded with strength. The full hire themselves out for bread and the hungry cease to hunger. The barren bears seven and the mother of many languishes. Each pair states one action of God twice, once from above and once from below.Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible, 1832, on 1 Samuel 2:4 to 8. | 1 Samuel 2:4, 1 Samuel 2:5, 1 Samuel 2:7, 1 Samuel 2:8 |
| The horn, lifted at the start and at the end | The song opens at verse 1 with mine horn is exalted in the LORD and closes at verse 10 with the LORD exalting the horn of His anointed. The first horn is a woman's and the second is a king's, and Israel has no king at the moment the song is sung. The same figure returns at 2 Samuel 22:3 and again at Luke 1:69.Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710, on 1 Samuel 2:10. | 1 Samuel 2:1, 1 Samuel 2:10 |
| The boy set against the sons, four times | Four short notices about Samuel are cut into the account of Eli's house. Verse 11 has him ministering to the LORD before Eli. Verse 18 has him girded with a linen ephod. Verse 21 has him growing before the LORD. Verse 26 has him growing in favour with the LORD and with men. Each one stands next to a paragraph about Hophni and Phinehas.Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710, on 1 Samuel 2:26. | 1 Samuel 2:11, 1 Samuel 2:18, 1 Samuel 2:21, 1 Samuel 2:26 |
| The priestly dues, itemised as theft | Verses 13 to 16 set out the custom of the priests with the household's own eye. A servant comes with a three-pronged fork. He stabs it into the pan or the kettle or the pot. Whatever the fork lifts, the priest takes. Then the demand for raw flesh before the fat is burned is added on top. The list is exact because a worshipper who had paid for the animal could check it.Albert Barnes, Notes on the Old Testament, 1834, on 1 Samuel 2:13. | 1 Samuel 2:13, 1 Samuel 2:14, 1 Samuel 2:15, 1 Samuel 2:16 |
| The word Belial, carried across the chapters | Eli calls Hannah a daughter of Belial at 1:16 without asking her anything. The narrator calls Eli's own sons sons of Belial at 2:12. The same term for worthlessness is thrown at the one true worshipper in chapter 1 and then fixed on the priests in chapter 2. The book leaves the distance between the two uses for the reader to measure.John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament, 1748 to 1763, on 1 Samuel 2:12. | 1 Samuel 1:16, 1 Samuel 2:12 |
The New Testament's use
11 more paragraphs on the patterns
The song is the chapter's link forward. Mary's Magnificat at Luke 1:46 to 55 runs the same reversals in the same order, the proud scattered, the mighty put down, the humble exalted, the hungry filled and the rich sent away empty. Luke does not quote Hannah and the likeness is drawn by the commentators rather than by the evangelist.
Matthew Henry and Alfred Edersheim both set the two songs side by side, and this book's dossier carries the pairing as an entry in its christIn section, titled Hannah's song and the Magnificat. Luke 1:69 also uses Hannah's own figure, an horn of salvation in the house of David.
The second link is the sentence on Eli's house. Verse 35 promises a faithful priest and a sure house. The fulfilment is reported by name at 1 Kings 2:27. Solomon puts out Abiathar so that the word spoken concerning the house of Eli in Shiloh might be fulfilled.
Albert Barnes notes that verse 26, on the child growing in favour with the LORD and with men, has the same shape of words as Luke 2:52 on the child Jesus. He reads it as a likeness of language rather than a citation, and the estate carries it on that footing.
The phrase used three times in Scripture
I will build him a sure house at verse 35 is used of only three houses in the Bible. Here it is the priesthood promised in place of Eli's line. At 25:28 Abigail speaks it over David, a decade before God speaks it of David's house. At 1 Kings 11:38 it is offered to Jeroboam on condition and then forfeited.
The reading the chapter has drawn argument over
The women who assembled at the door of the tent of meeting, named at verse 22, are described by the law without being explained by it. Exodus 38:8 records women serving at the entrance and gives no order of service.
Keil and Delitzsch read them as women in organised sanctuary service, so that the sin of Eli's sons is an abuse of people under their own care. Matthew Henry reads them as worshippers gathered at the door, which makes the sin one committed against pilgrims at the threshold of the sanctuary. The text gives the place and the act and settles nothing further.
The thing the chapter states before its time
Verse 10 speaks of the LORD judging the ends of the earth, giving strength to His king and exalting the horn of His anointed. Israel had no king, no monarchy and no anointing rite for one. The sentence stands in the mouth of a woman from a village in Ephraim, and the rest of the book acts it out.
Keep studying
Studies6
Words12
Subjects1
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The form and classifications
Alfred Edersheim, Bible History: Old Testament, 1876 to 1887, on Hannah's song; Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Books of Samuel, 1875, on 1 Samuel 2 and This site's published book guide, src/components/book/guides/1-samuel/Book1SamuelGuide.tsx, the keystone entry naming 2:8 as the prophecy and the book's grammar of reversal.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes; Alfred Edersheim, Bible History: Old Testament; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Chrysostom, Homily on Acts 8; John Gill; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament; Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Books of Samuel; Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible and W. G. Blaikie, The First Book of Samuel (Expositor's Bible).