Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Samuel 2

And Hannah prayed, and said. —“Prayed,” not quite in the sense in which we generally understand prayer. Her prayer here asks for nothing; it is rather a song of thanksgiving for the past, a song which passes into expressions of sure confidence for the future.

She had been an unhappy woman; her life had been, she thought, a failure. Her dearest hopes had been baffled; vexed, tormented, and utterly cast down, she had fled to the Rock of Israel for help. In the eternal pity of the Divine Friend of her people, she had found rest and then joy.

Out of her own individual experience, the Spirit of the Lord taught her to discern the general laws of the Divine economy. She had personal experience of the gracious government of the kind, all-pitiful God.

Her own mercies were a pledge to her of the gracious way in which the nation itself was led by Jehovah. They were a sign by which she discerned how the Eternal not only always delivered the individual sufferer who turned to Him, but would also at all times be ever ready to help and deliver His people.

The Spirit of the Lord first planted these true, beautiful thoughts in Hannah’s heart and then gave her lips grace and power to utter them in the sublime language of her hymn. This hymn became one of the loved songs of the people and, as such, was handed down from father to son, from generation to generation, in Israel, in the very words that first fell from the blessed mother of the child-prophet in her quiet home of “Ramah of the Watchers.”

My heart rejoiceth. —The first verse of four lines is the introduction to the Divine song. She would give utterance to her holy joy. Had she not received the blessing at last which all mothers in Israel so longed for?

Mine horn is exalted. —She does not mean by this, “I am proud,” but “I am strong”—mighty now in the gift I have received from the Lord: glorious in the consciousness “I have a God-Friend who hears me.” The image “horn” is taken from oxen and those animals whose strength lies in their horns. It is a favorite Hebrew symbol, one that had become familiar to them from their long experience—dating from far-back patriarchal times—as a shepherd-people.

Neither is there any rock. —This was a favorite simile among the inspired songwriters of Israel. The image, no doubt, is a memory of the long desert wandering. The steep precipices and the strange fantastic rocks of Sinai, standing up in the midst of the shifting desert sands, supplied an ever-present picture of unchangeableness, of majesty, and of security. The term rock, as applied to God, is first found in the Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 32:4; Deuteronomy 32:15; Deuteronomy 32:18; Deuteronomy 32:30–31; Deuteronomy 32:37), where the juxtaposition of rock and salvation in Deuteronomy 32:15 — he lightly esteemed the rock of his salvation —seems to indicate that Hannah was acquainted with this song or national hymn of Moses. The same phrase is frequent in the Psalms.

That the term was commonly applied to God as early as the time of Moses we may conclude from the name Zurishaddai: “My rock is the Almighty” (Numbers 1:6); and Zuriel: “My rock is God” (Numbers 3:35). — Speaker’s Commentary.

A God of knowledge. —The Hebrew words are placed as follows: A God of knowledge is the Lord, The Talmud quaintly comments here as follows: Rabbi Ami says, “Knowledge is highly valued, for it is placed between two Divine names; as it is written (1 Samuel 2:3), ‘A God of knowledge is the Lord,’ and therefore mercy will be denied to anyone who has no knowledge; for it is written (Isaiah 27:11), ‘It is a people of no understanding, therefore He that made them will not have mercy on them.’”—Treatise Berachoth, fol. 33,Colossians 1:0.

And by him actions are weighed. —This is one of the fifteen places counted by the Masorites where, in the original Hebrew text, instead of “lo” with an aleph, signifying not, “lo” with a vav, signifying to, or by him, must be substituted. The amended reading has been followed by the English Version. The meaning is that all human actions are weighed by God according to their essential worth. All the motives which led to them are taken into account by Him, the All-knowing, before He weighs them.

The bows of the mighty men are broken. —God reverses human conditions, bringing low the wicked, and raising up the righteous.

Von Gerlach writes of these verses that “Every power which will be something in itself is destroyed by the Lord: every weakness which despairs of itself is transformed into power.” “The bows of the heroes,” that is to say, the heroes of the bow, the symbol of human power being poetically put first instead of the bearer of the symbol. The next line contains the antithesis: while the heroes rejoicing in their strength are shattered, the tottering, powerless ones are by Him made strong for battle.

They that were full.—Another image to illustrate the vicissitudes of human affairs is sketched, one very familiar to the dwellers among the cornfields and vineyards of Canaan.

The barren hath born seven.—Here the thought of the inspired singer reverts to herself, and the imagery is drawn from the story of her own life. Seven children are mentioned as the full number of the Divine blessing in children (Jeremiah 15:9). There is a curious Jewish legend which relates how for each boy child that was born to Hannah, two of Peninnah’s died.