1And Hannah prayed and said: My heart has exulted in Jehovah; my horn has been high in Jehovah. My mouth has been large over my enemies; for I have rejoiced in Your salvation. 2None is holy like Jehovah, for there is none except You; yea, there is no rock like our God. 3Do not multiply your haughty words; let not arrogance go out from your mouth; for Jehovah is a God of knowledge, and by Him actions are weighed. 4Bows of the mighty are broken; and they that stumble gird on strength. 5 They that were full have hired themselves out for bread; and the hungry have ceased, while the barren has borne seven; yea, she who had many sons has languished. 6Jehovah kills and keeps alive; He brings down and causes to go to Sheol. 7Jehovah brings down, and He gives riches; He brings low; yea, He lifts up high. 8He raises the poor from the dust; He lifts up the needy from the dunghill, to cause them to sit with nobles; yea, He causes them to inherit a throne of honor; for to Jehovah are the pillars of the earth; and He sets the habitable world on them. 9He keeps the feet of His saints, and the wicked are silenced in darkness; for man does not become mighty by power. 10They who strive with Jehovah will be smashed; He thunders in the heavens against him. Jehovah judges the ends of the earth and gives strength to His king; and He exalts the horn of His anointed. 11And Elkanah went to Ramah, to his house. And the child served Jehovah before Eli the priest. 12And the sons of Eli were sons of worthlessness; they did not know Jehovah. 13And the custom of the priests with the people was: any man offering a sacrifice and the priest's young man came when the flesh was boiling with the three-toothed hook in his hand, 14even he stuck it into the pan, or kettle, or caldron, or pot; all that the hook brought up, the priest took for himself. So they did to all Israel who came in there to Shiloh. 15Yea, before they made the fat to smoke, then the priest's young man came in. And he said to the man who was sacrificing, Give meat to roast for the priest; and he will not take boiled meat from you, but raw. 16And if the man said to him, Let the fat be made to smoke as the day, and then take as much as your soul desires; then he would say, No, but you shall give now. And if not, I will take it by force. 17And the sin of the young men was very great before Jehovah, for the men had despised the offering of Jehovah. 18And Samuel was serving before Jehovah, a boy girded with an ephod of linen. 19And his mother made a small coat for him, and she brought it up to him from year to year, as she came up with her husband to offer the sacrifice of the days. 20And Eli blessed Elkanah and his wife, and said, Jehovah shall give you seed of this woman, because of the petition she prayed to Jehovah. And they went away to their place. 21So Jehovah visited Hannah, and she conceived and bore three sons and two daughters. And the boy Samuel grew up with Jehovah. 22And Eli was very old and had heard all that his sons did to Israel, and how they lay with the women who served at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. 23And he said to them, Why do you do things like these? For I am hearing of your evil doings from all these people. 24No my sons, for the report which I am hearing is not good, causing the people of Jehovah to transgress. 25If a man sins against a man, then God shall judge him. But if a man sins against Jehovah, who shall pray for him? But they did not listen to the voice of their father because Jehovah desired to put them to death. 26And the boy Samuel went on, growing both in stature and in goodness, both with Jehovah and also with men. 27And a man of God came to Eli, and said to him, So says Jehovah: Did I reveal Myself plainly to the house of your father when they were in Egypt, at the house of Pharaoh, 28even to choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be priest to Me, to go up on My altar, to cause incense to smoke, to bear an ephod before Me? And did I give to your father's house all the fire offerings of the sons of Israel? 29Why do you kick at My sacrifice and at My offering which I commanded in My habitation? And why do you honor your sons above Me, to make yourselves fat with the best of all the offerings of My people? 30So says Jehovah the God of Israel, I said indeed that your house and your father's house should walk before Me until forever. But now Jehovah says, Be it far from Me! For those who honor Me I will honor; and those despising Me will be despicable. 31Behold, days come when I shall cut off your arm, and the arm of your father's house, that no old man shall be in your house. 32And you shall see an adversary in My habitation, in all the good that he does with Israel. And there shall not be an old man in your house all the days. 33And the man of yours that I shall not cut off from My altar shall be to cause your eyes to fail, and to grieve your soul. And all the increase of your house shall die young men. 34And this shall be the sign to you, that which shall come on your two sons, on Hophni and Phinehas: in one day the both of them shall die. 35And I shall raise up for Myself a faithful priest. He shall do all that is in My heart and in My soul. And I shall build for him a sure house; and he shall walk before My anointed all the days. 36And it shall be, everyone who is left in your house shall come in to bow to him for a wage of silver and a loaf of bread. And they shall say, please admit me into one of the priest's offices to eat a bit of bread.
Jamieson Fausset Brown Bible Commentary 1 HANNAH'S SONG IN THANKFULNESS TO GOD. (
1Sam 2:1-11)
Hannah prayed, and said--Praise and prayer are inseparably conjoined in Scripture (
Col 4:2;
1Tim 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. Wives, who have no children, wear it projecting in an oblique direction, while those who become mothers forthwith raise it a few inches higher, inclining towards the perpendicular, and by this slight but observable change in their headdress, make known, wherever they go, the maternal character which they now bear.
5 they that were hungry ceased--that is, to hunger.
the barren hath born seven--that is, many children.
6 he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up--that is, He reduces to the lowest state of degradation and misery, and restores to prosperity and happiness.
8 He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill--The dunghill, a pile of horse, cow, or camel offal, heaped up to dry in the sun, and used as fuel, was, and is, one of the common haunts of the poorest mendicants; and the change that had been made in the social position of Hannah, appeared to her grateful heart as auspicious and as great as the elevation of a poor despised beggar to the highest and most dignified rank.
inherit the throne of glory--that is, possesses seats of honor.
10 the Lord shall judge the ends of the earth . . . exalt the horn of his anointed--This is the first place in Scripture where the word "anointed," or Messiah, occurs; and as there was no king in Israel at the time, it seems the best interpretation to refer it to Christ. There is, indeed, a remarkable resemblance between the song of Hannah and that of Mary (
Luke 1:46).
11 the child did minister unto the Lord before Eli the priest--He must have been engaged in some occupation suited to his tender age, as in playing upon the cymbals, or other instruments of music; in lighting the lamps, or similar easy and interesting services.
12 THE SIN OF ELl'S SONS. (
1Sam 2:12-17)
Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial--not only careless and irreligious, but men loose in their actions, and vicious and scandalous in their habits. 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.
13 the priests' custom with the people--When persons wished to present a sacrifice of peace offering on the altar, the offering was brought in the first instance to the priest, and as the Lord's part was burnt, the parts appropriated respectively to the priests and offerers were to be sodden. But Eli's sons, unsatisfied with the breast and shoulder, which were the perquisites appointed to them by the divine law (
Exod 29:27;
Lev 7:31-
Lev 7:32), not only claimed part of the offerer's share, but rapaciously seized them previous to the sacred ceremony of heaving or waving (see on
Lev 7:29); and moreover they committed the additional injustice of taking up with their fork those portions which they preferred, while still raw. Pious people revolted at such rapacious and profane encroachments on the dues of the altar, as well as what should have gone to constitute the family and social feast of the offerer. The truth is, the priests having become haughty and unwilling in many instances to accept invitations to those feasts, presents of meat were sent to them; and this, though done in courtesy at first, being, in course of time, established into a right, gave rise to all the rapacious keenness of Eli's sons.
18 SAMUEL'S MINISTRY. (
1Sam 2:18-26)
But Samuel ministered before the Lord, being a child--This notice of his early services in the outer courts of the tabernacle was made to pave the way for the remarkable prophecy regarding the high priest's family.
girded with a linen ephod--A small shoulder-garment or apron, used in the sacred service by the inferior priests and Levites; sometimes also by judges or eminent persons, and hence allowed to Samuel, who, though not a Levite, was devoted to God from his birth.
19 his mother made him a little coat, and brought it to him from year to year--Aware that he could not yet render any useful service to the tabernacle, she undertook the expense of supplying him with wearing apparel. All weaving stuffs, manufacture of cloth, and making of suits were anciently the employment of women.
20 Eli blessed Elkanah and his wife--This blessing, like that which he had formerly pronounced, had a prophetic virtue; which, before long, appeared in the increase of Hannah's family (
1Sam 2:21), and the growing qualifications of Samuel for the service of the sanctuary.
22 the women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle--This was an institution of holy women of a strictly ascetic order, who had relinquished worldly cares and devoted themselves to the Lord; an institution which continued down to the time of Christ (
Luke 2:37). Eli was, on the whole, a good man, but lacking in the moral and religious training of his family. He erred on the side of parental indulgence; and though he reprimanded them (see on
Deut 21:18), yet, from fear or indolence, he shrank from laying on them the restraints, or subjecting them to the discipline, their gross delinquencies called for. In his judicial capacity, he winked at their flagrant acts of maladministration and suffered them to make reckless encroachments on the constitution, by which the most serious injuries were inflicted both on the rights of the people and the laws of God.
25 they hearkened not unto the voice of their father, because--it should be therefore.
the Lord would slay them--It was not God's preordination, but their own wilful and impenitent disobedience which was the cause of their destruction.
27 A PROPHECY AGAINST ELI'S HOUSE. (
1Sam 2:27-35)
there came a man of God unto Eli, and said . . . that there shall not be an old man in thine house--So much importance has always, in the East, been attached to old age, that it would be felt to be a great calamity, and sensibly to lower the respectability of any family which could boast of few or no old men. The prediction of this prophet was fully confirmed by the afflictions, degradation, poverty, and many untimely deaths with which the house of Eli was visited after its announcement (see
1Sam 4:11;
1Sam 14:3;
1Sam 22:18-23;
1Kgs 2:27).
31 I will cut off thine arm, and the arm of thy father's house--By the withdrawal of the high priesthood from Eleazar, the elder of Aaron's two sons (after Nadab and Abihu were destroyed, [
Num 3:4]), that dignity had been conferred on the family of Ithamar, to which Eli belonged, and now that his descendants had forfeited the honor, it was to be taken from them and restored to the elder branch.
32 thou shalt see an enemy in my habitation--A successful rival for the office of high priest shall rise out of another family (
2Sam 15:35;
1Chr 24:3;
1Chr 29:22). But the marginal reading, "thou shalt see the affliction of the tabernacle," seems to be a preferable translation.