Scripture Daily

Context No. 542 of 4322 · 1 Samuel

Context · Reflection

1 Samuel 1:9-14: in context

9So Hannah rose up after they had finished eating and drinking in Shiloh. Now Eli the priest was sitting on his seat by the doorpost of the LORD’s temple. 10She was in bitterness of soul, and prayed to the LORD, weeping bitterly. 11She vowed a vow, and said, “LORD of Armies, if you will indeed look at the affliction of your servant and remember me, and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a boy, then I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life, and no razor shall come on his head.” 12As she continued praying before the LORD, Eli saw her mouth. 13Now Hannah spoke in her heart. Only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard. Therefore Eli thought she was drunk. 14Eli said to her, “How long will you be drunk? Get rid of your wine!”

Hannah is in anguish. She is childless in a culture where that was a crushing shame, provoked and belittled year after year, and she comes to the sanctuary at Shiloh in bitterness of soul and pours it out to God. But look at how she prays. She spoke in her heart, the text says; only her lips moved, and her voice was not heard. Her prayer had no audible words. She was so deep in grief that all she could manage was to move her lips silently while the anguish went up to God wordlessly. And the old priest Eli, watching from his seat, completely misreads her. Seeing her lips move with no sound, he assumes she is drunk and rebukes her: how long will you go on being drunk? Put away your wine.

Two things sit close together here. One is a warning about how easily we misjudge, even those of us who ought to know better. Eli, the priest, looks at a woman in the depths of honest prayer and sees a drunk to be scolded. What looked like a mess was actually one of the most sincere prayers in Scripture. But the deeper comfort is what happens to that wordless prayer. Hannah could not form a single audible word, could barely pray at all in any way another person would recognize, and God heard her completely and answered her. Her prayer needed no eloquence, no volume, not even words; it needed only an honest heart poured out, and that God received.

That is worth holding when my own prayers fall apart. There are griefs too deep for words, times when all I can do is move my lips over an ache I cannot articulate, or sit in silence with tears and no sentences, and it can feel as though a prayer like that hardly counts. Hannah's story says otherwise: the wordless, inarticulate prayer of a bitter soul is heard as fully as any polished one. When my grief is too deep for words and my prayers come out as little more than silent, aching movements of the heart, can I trust that God hears them as clearly as he heard Hannah?

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