Scripture Daily

Context No. 1593 of 4322 · 1 Samuel

Context · Reflection

1 Samuel 1:1-8: in context

1Now there was a certain man of Ramathaim Zophim, of the hill country of Ephraim, and his name was Elkanah, the son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zuph, an Ephraimite. 2He had two wives. The name of one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children. 3This man went up out of his city from year to year to worship and to sacrifice to the LORD of Armies in Shiloh. The two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, priests to the LORD, were there. 4When the day came that Elkanah sacrificed, he gave portions to Peninnah his wife and to all her sons and her daughters; 5but he gave a double portion to Hannah, for he loved Hannah, but the LORD had shut up her womb. 6Her rival provoked her severely, to irritate her, because the LORD had shut up her womb. 7So year by year, when she went up to the LORD’s house, her rival provoked her. Therefore she wept, and didn’t eat. 8Elkanah her husband said to her, “Hannah, why do you weep? Why don’t you eat? Why is your heart grieved? Am I not better to you than ten sons?”

Elkanah has two wives, Hannah and Peninnah. Peninnah has children; Hannah has none, for the LORD had closed her womb. Elkanah loves Hannah and gives her a double portion, but her childlessness is a constant grief, made sharper by her rival. Year after year, when they go up to worship, Peninnah provokes and taunts Hannah over her barrenness, until Hannah weeps and cannot eat. Elkanah, seeing her distress, asks: Hannah, why do you weep, why don't you eat, why is your heart grieved? Am I not more to you than ten sons?

Hannah's grief is the ache of an unfulfilled longing, and the passage shows how such an ache is deepened by two things. The first is the provocation of a rival who has what she lacks. Peninnah, who had children, taunted Hannah over her barrenness, year after year, rubbing salt in the wound. It is a particular cruelty, and a particular pain, to have our deepest lack thrown in our faces by someone who has what we long for. Comparison sharpens grief; the presence of one who has what we cannot have, and who reminds us of it, makes the ache harder to bear. The second thing is the limit of even loving human comfort. Elkanah loved Hannah genuinely, and his words, am I not more to you than ten sons, were meant kindly. But they could not fill the specific ache. His love was real, and it was not enough, because some longings are not soothed by being told to look at what we do have. There is honesty in the passage about this. Real love, real blessings, real reasons to be grateful do not always dissolve a particular grief; Hannah still wept, though she was loved. There is a gentle truth here for our own unfulfilled longings and for how we comfort others in theirs. Some aches are not met by counting other blessings, however real; and the well-meant comfort of am I not better than ten sons, however loving, may miss the specific wound. Hannah's grief would find its answer not in her husband's love, real as it was, but in pouring out her soul to God. When love and blessings cannot fill a longing, that ache is meant to be carried to God, who alone can meet it.

When I carry the ache of an unfulfilled longing, sharpened by others who have what I lack, do I recognize that even real love and real blessings may not dissolve it, and can I carry the specific ache to God, who alone can meet the longing that human comfort cannot fill?

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