Hannah, Who Received a Double Portion

Israel rejected God, their King, and wanted a man they could see to rule over them. So God gave them what they asked for and made Saul king. But just as God had warned, the king they wanted became the source of their suffering. Choices like this, born of human greed and made in defiance of God’s will, lead to foolish ends.

Just as Adam, the first man, sought in the garden of Eden to make himself like God, Israel abandoned God for its own advantage. The spiritual line that runs from the sin of Adam, the father of the human race, through Peninnah and Hannah, Eli and Samuel, Saul and David, shows that human history is one unbroken conflict between good and evil. That conflict goes on even now, and we can walk in the way of truth only if we know what kind of person God chooses as good. I want to look for that way in the teaching of Samuel.

Samuel, born in BC 1105, was the prophet who took up the weighty task of opening the age of the kings as the age of the judges declined. He anointed Saul as Israel’s first king, but Saul betrayed the God who had chosen him. So God rejected Saul and anointed David king in his place. All of this shows that human history is not made by what human beings weigh and decide. It is the working out of God’s own leading. For now evil may seem to be winning. But God is present even there, upholding and establishing what is good, so his people can go on in faith. By setting Samuel before Eli, a corrupt priest, God made his word stand even in the midst of sin and showed that he is the one who directs history. In a world filled with sin, God set up Noah’s ark. Among the people of Israel who had come out of Egypt, he set up the tabernacle. Among the fiery serpents he set up a bronze serpent, and among sinners he sent Jesus. Here we glimpse something precious: the heart of a God who longs to give life to sinners who have done evil and have nothing before them but death.

But the good that gives life always looks feeble beside evil. When the Lord came into the world in the flesh, he grew up like a tender plant, like a root out of dry ground, with no beauty or majesty. The world saw nothing in him to desire and so despised and rejected him, and that rejection brought him many sorrows and much grief. That suffering was persecution, and it came on him because he would not compromise with the world. In the world, honor goes to those who bear an abundance of the fruit of greed and lust. The more worldly fruit people have, the more respect and power they gain, which drives them to strive with all their might to obtain it. But God is the one who tells his people to conceive no fruit at all except the fruit of the Spirit.

Hannah, who appears in today’s passage, is the one whom God, by sheer grace, kept from bearing the fruit of evil. Her name means “mercy and favor.” True to her name, she was greatly loved by God and by her husband, Elkanah. Sadly, though, she had no children, the fruit of this world she truly longed for. As 1 Samuel 1:5 tells us, she could not conceive because Yahweh had shut up her womb. Weak in the world’s terms, Hannah suffered bitterly under the persecution of Peninnah, Elkanah’s other wife. Peninnah’s name means “coral and jewels.” By the world’s standard she was a woman who shone with beauty. She was a mother who held her head high in the world, for she had borne children, the fruit of this world that people so desire.

Peninnah always resented that her husband loved Hannah more than her. So she seized on Hannah’s weakness, her childlessness, as an excuse to torment her and cause her pain. This is the world: a place where those who have power rule over those who have none. In the world, those who lack are bound to be mocked by those who have. Whether it is wealth, health, or children, in the world power goes to those who possess.

Galatians 4:23-24

23However, the son by the servant was born according to the flesh, but the son by the free woman was born through promise. 24These things contain an allegory, for these are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children to bondage, which is Hagar.

Abraham had two wives, Sarah and Hagar. Here too, Sarah was loved more by her husband than Hagar was, yet she had no child, while Hagar bore Ishmael, the fruit of this world. Hagar mocked the childless Sarah, but God granted Isaac, the fruit of the Spirit, to Sarah, who held fast to her faith. The apostle Paul, however, calls Sarah and Hagar, the mothers of Isaac and Ishmael, “two covenants.” He likens Sarah to grace, the promise of God, and Hagar to the law, under which one must live according to the flesh. Isaac, Sarah’s son, he describes as the freedom Christians receive under God’s promise. Hagar, on the other hand, bore Ishmael, a son of the world, according to the flesh; but because he was not the son of the promise, Paul says, he had no share in God’s inheritance.

Paul goes on in Galatians 4:29: “But as then, he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now.” With these words he tells us that those who live under God’s grace cannot escape persecution from those who hold the world’s power. Hagar and Peninnah, who bore sons, the world’s strength and boast, sneered at Sarah and Hannah, who had none. In the same way, the world demands fruit it can see. God’s promise is the opposite of what the world demands. It cannot be seen right away, so we can live free in the truth only by receiving it in faith. But many people cannot wait for God’s eternal promise, because they want sons now, the visible fruit of this world.

Peninnah persecuted Hannah, who lacked the fruit of this world, and flaunted her own power. In truth, though, Hannah’s barrenness was a brief hardship that God permitted because he did not want her to embrace the world. There are times when we pray earnestly and God does not answer. His silence then comes from love, for he wants first to fill us with the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Knowing nothing of this, Peninnah mocked Hannah, a woman of God.

1 Samuel 1:11

11She vowed a vow, and said, “Yahweh 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 Yahweh all the days of his life, and no razor shall come on his head.”

Hannah fell down weeping bitterly and vowed that if God gave her a son, she would give him to God as a Nazirite, a servant who would serve him forever. When she promises to give her son to God, this is no rash vow made out of a craving to have a son at once. It is faith that acknowledges God as the Lord of life. It is the sincere resolve of a heart that says: if God gives me a wise son, full of his grace, I will give that son back to God to labor for him.

Now and then we see parents in the church who have misunderstood Hannah’s words. They vow to give a son to God if they have one, and once he is born they press him into the study of theology. Of course, if he is a servant whom God has called and set apart, he will go into ministry even if his parents never push him. But it is painful to watch parents who never rightly understood the truth make a vow out of a desire for a son and then, afraid that God will punish them if the child does not enter ministry, send him to seminary regardless of his gifts or dreams. It grieves me because such behavior springs from spiritual ignorance and is never a right expression of faith. To make a vow on one’s own and then claim the right to run a son’s life because he came through that vow is a sin that deceives God and a foolish act.

Hannah’s barrenness came from God’s own purpose. Wanting her faith to be willing and her own, God trained her through a brief physical trial so that she could grow into a mature faith. This was about more than giving her a son in the flesh. Samuel was the prophet who would have to serve as the vital bridge between the end of the age of the judges and the beginning of the age of the kings. He was to be a prophet used in God’s great plan, so his mother had to become good soil first. Only then could Samuel grow to full stature.

Just as God planned, Peninnah became the means by which Hannah slowly turned into good soil. Lacking the fruit of this world, Hannah had a heart like rocky ground, but Peninnah’s persecution changed it into good soil that relied on God alone. Watching Peninnah’s children, she came to see how weak and insignificant she was, and to understand that she was a frail creature who could have nothing at all unless God, the Lord of life, gave it. The longer her time of suffering went on, the more she felt the limits of being human and the limits of her own strength, and the more she trusted God and longed for his mercy and favor. Only when Hannah, like Mary who conceived Jesus, came to a faith that looked to God alone with all her life did God grant her Samuel. God still desires whole fruit like Samuel. What he wants is not the fruit of greed that everyone desires, like the sons Peninnah bore, but the fruit of the Spirit, conceived in mercy and favor, that can receive God’s inheritance as Samuel did.

People say they are blessed when they own more than others. When they have a great deal, some even feel superior, thinking they were blessed because they did something right in God’s eyes. But we must examine our own faith and ask whether we could still boast that we are blessed by God if our possessions were taken away. If we measure blessing and faith by what we own, we will fail to give thanks even when God pours out his grace, and for that we will be rebuked.

1 Samuel 1:4-5

4When the day came that Elkanah sacrificed, he gave to Peninnah his wife, and to all her sons and her daughters, portions; 5but to Hannah he gave a double portion, for he loved Hannah, but Yahweh had shut up her womb.

Under the law given to Moses, Hebrew men went up three times a year, at each of the feasts, to Shiloh, where the ark of the covenant was kept. The ark first passed through the wilderness and was kept at Gilgal in the land of Canaan; after Canaan was conquered, it was moved to Shiloh while the land was being divided. Later, after the ark was captured in the war with the Philistines, Shiloh was destroyed and vanished from history for good.

The feasts Israel kept were the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Passover), the Feast of Harvest (Pentecost, or the Feast of Weeks), and the Feast of Ingathering (the Feast of Tabernacles, or Booths). The whole family is going up together here, so we can suppose that it was the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Elkanah gave portions of the offering to Peninnah and her children as well, but to Hannah he gave a double portion. That is how much he loved his wife Hannah, more than anyone else. This alone lets us imagine how bitter Peninnah’s jealousy toward her must have been. Like Hannah, who had her husband’s whole love, those of us who lack the fruit of this world have the love of God, our husband.

Isaiah 54:5

5For your Maker is your husband; Yahweh of Armies is his name. The Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer. He will be called the God of the whole earth.

We are loved by God, who is our husband. Satan and the world know this better than we who are loved, and that is why they persecute us. Those who harass us are the Peninnahs. Just as Peninnah schemed over how to torment Hannah more, Satan ponders how to rob us of our faith. The Peninnahs of this world will labor to shame those of you who have little money, making you suffer the pains that poverty brings. Peninnah will also set hard circumstances before those of you whose health is failing, so that you lose heart. The Peninnahs hiding in every corner of the world will stop at nothing to attack us, if only they can provoke us to anger.

The Peninnahs of this world, then, are doing their utmost to take away our faith, yet we are not prepared for it. Under the world’s attack we lament our own helplessness, but it never occurs to us that we should depend on God. Only when we are driven, like Hannah, to the point where nothing can be done do we finally think of God and drop reluctantly to our knees in prayer. But even if we pray reluctantly, because no other way is left, we must pray.

Had there been no Peninnah, and had Hannah conceived easily, she would never have recognized her own helplessness, nor would she have relied on God. But once Hannah understands God’s heart, grows, and receives Samuel as the fruit of the Spirit, Peninnah will be broken, because she will have fulfilled her task as the rod that shaped Hannah. When David grew up, Saul was broken; when Israel stood upright, the Philistines were broken. So Hannah’s first task is not to weep over why Peninnah hounds her, but to look at herself and ask why God permitted Peninnah.

Though she went up to Shiloh and received a double portion to offer to God, Hannah did not give thanks; instead she grieved over the one thing she did not have. Hannah was childless; had she not been loved even by her husband Elkanah, she would have had no hope at all. But even without a son, if she thanked the husband who loved her and loved him all the more, there remained room for her husband’s love to give her a son.

When the passage says Hannah received a double portion, more than Peninnah, it means this: the people of the world live on one portion, the world, but God’s people live on the portion of the world and on a second portion besides, the Kingdom of God. The world’s portion vanishes when the life of the body ends, but the portion of heaven is eternal, so those who belong to God are richly blessed. Peninnah knew that her husband’s love was everything, and so she was jealous of Hannah; yet Hannah, for her part, shrank before the fruit of this world that Peninnah had. Failing to see rightly the grace she had been given, she lived in shame, even though she held the love of God, which is greater than the world.

We should live lives of thanksgiving for salvation alone. God has already blessed us and made us live on this earth as his children. On top of that, he has given us the right to live as citizens of heaven, a grace so immense that the bodily blessings of the people of the world cannot compare with it. How sad it is, then, when we, who have already received such abundant blessing, collapse helplessly at the sight of the world’s wealth and power. Such faith looks just like the shaky faith of Hannah, who wept and would not eat each time Peninnah provoked her. Look closely, and Hannah lacked only one thing: she had no child. When we, whom God loves so greatly, live in misery and without gratitude for the single reason that we lack money, we are no different from her.

But the passage says it was God who kept Hannah from conceiving. So if she had thrown away the old wineskin made of human thoughts and desires and prepared a new wineskin of whole faith, she would have conceived in the natural course of things. The question is when Hannah will come to realize this. God is preparing to supply what his children need. But we commit the folly of complaining constantly that he does not give us power and great wealth, while refusing even to eat the word, our spiritual food.

Seeing Peninnah, with all her children, still thirsting for her husband’s love, Hannah ought to have been content with her husband’s love alone. When we see the people of the world forever thirsting and grasping for more, however much they own, we realize that a soul not filled with God’s love can never be satisfied. In the end, even a child can be conceived only where a husband’s love is present. Hannah’s husband loved her, and if she was still not content with him, wanting only what her eyes desired, even he would leave her side. While Hannah still did not understand, God was at work to make her bear the fruit of the Spirit. All that was needed was the right time; if Hannah would only obey fully, the Father would help her live a life of which she need not be ashamed before the world.

1 Samuel 1:3

3This man went up out of his city from year to year to worship and to sacrifice to Yahweh of Armies in Shiloh. The two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, priests to Yahweh, were there.

When Hannah went up to Shiloh to offer sacrifice, the priests there were Eli and his two sons, Hophni and Phinehas. Eli, the high priest at the close of the age of the judges, succeeded in raising Samuel, who was entrusted to him, but failed to train his own sons in faith. After the ark of the covenant was captured in the war with the Philistines, he heard that both his sons had died in battle, fell from his seat, broke his neck, and died. His death shows how far he had fallen. For even with the nation at war, he was too dull in spirit to be found in the place of prayer. His sons, too, committed sins no priest should ever commit. A priest was to look into the people’s sins and offer the sacrifice of blood so that they might be forgiven by God, but these men used the priesthood to seize gain for the flesh.

In Leviticus 3:3-5, the priests lay hands on the head of the animal being offered and transfer to it the sin of the one who brought it. Then they sprinkle its blood around the altar, remove the fat that covers the innards and all the fat on them, and burn it on the altar of burnt offering. Yahweh receives the pleasant aroma of this burnt offering. So the law was that whenever an offering was made to God, the priests had to burn the fat on the altar before taking their own share.

Hophni and Phinehas were so corrupt that they took the meat raw for their own gain before it was offered to God, even during the precious sacrifice in which sinners transfer their sin to the offering in place of their own lives and gain new life. For priests who ought to be holy to covet the offerings the people had brought was contempt for God; it was like an abomination standing in the holy place. Their conduct went beyond human greed. It was a grievous sin that tore apart the covenant and the redemption God had made with Israel. But Eli, the high priest, did not rebuke his two sons; he left them as they were. He should have charged them with blaspheming God’s name, driven them from the priesthood, and put them to death, yet he could not hold them to account, because he loved his sons more than God.

Hannah is going up to Shiloh to worship God because the tabernacle was there, evil and corrupt as its priests were. In those days sacrifice was limited to one place, the tabernacle, but now the temple is within us, so we can worship anywhere. This, too, is a wonderful blessing we have received in our day. As sin spreads ever further through the world from here on, we will walk an ever darker road by night. For that very reason, the lamp we hold will shine all the brighter, and it may even become easier to lead out souls who have lost their way in the darkness. We no longer have time to show the weakness of Hannah, who wept and would not eat because she had none of the world’s fruit. Now is the time to ponder God’s will deeply, to find out what we must do as his people, and to act.

You have received from God the blessing and love of a double portion. Even if you have little of the world’s fruit, if you remember that you have received the portion of heaven and live with thanksgiving, God will entrust you with fruit as precious as Samuel.

May you have the wisdom to set your own lamp on its stand.

I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.

1 Samuel 2:1-11

1Hannah prayed, and said: “My heart exults in Yahweh! My horn is exalted in Yahweh. My mouth is enlarged over my enemies, because I rejoice in your salvation. 2There is no one as holy as Yahweh, For there is no one besides you, nor is there any rock like our God. 3“Don’t keep talking so exceedingly proudly. Don’t let arrogance come out of your mouth, For Yahweh is a God of knowledge. By him actions are weighed. 4“The bows of the mighty men are broken. Those who stumbled are armed with strength. 5Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread. Those who were hungry are satisfied. Yes, the barren has borne seven. She who has many children languishes. 6“Yahweh kills, and makes alive. He brings down to Sheol, and brings up. 7Yahweh makes poor, and makes rich. He brings low, he also lifts up. 8He raises up the poor out of the dust. He lifts up the needy from the dunghill, To make them sit with princes, and inherit the throne of glory. For the pillars of the earth are Yahweh’s. He has set the world on them. 9He will keep the feet of his holy ones, but the wicked shall be put to silence in darkness; for no man shall prevail by strength. 10Those who strive with Yahweh shall be broken to pieces. He will thunder against them in the sky. “Yahweh will judge the ends of the earth. He will give strength to his king, and exalt the horn of his anointed.” 11Elkanah went to Ramah to his house. The child served Yahweh before Eli the priest.