Twelve Extraordinary Women–Hannah

Chapter 5–Hannah: A Portrait of Feminine Grace

Laurie’s thoughts on this chapter can be found here: http://maybeillblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/twleve-extraordinary-women-hannah.html

Hannah has been an interesting character to me for most of my Christian life. The first time I heard of her was at a baby dedication. In the church I grew up in, it was customary for parents to bring children to the front of the church the first Sunday they brought them and dedicate them to the Lord a manner reminicent of Hannah.

Hannah is also another barren mother and so could be considered by women whom God has not blessed with children to be a role model. She’s also a role model for many other women and as I delineate my thoughts on Hannah from reading this chapter, I hope you see that my thoughts are what I feel has been laid upon my heart and not what I think everyone should do because of Hannah’s example.

Hannah was an ordinary woman in an ordinary town, living an ordinary life. She had a good husband who realized that he needed children so, probably in light of her barrenness, he took a second wife who had children for him.

Despite the reported view of polygamous cultures and subcultures (Muslim, FLDS Mormon, and African Tribesmen), it is not God’s plan that marriage include more than one man and one woman. People are selfish and want to be the only one. There is a need within us to be not just the most important person in someone else’s life but to be the ONLY person in someone else’s life. True that the tendancy can go to far and a man or woman is jealous can destroy the one thing he or she values most. But to have less than a total commitment to that marriage is just as bad.

Peninnah, the second wife, had that problem as had Hagar and Leah years and years before. Peninnah seems to have been nothing more than a “baby factory” to Elkanah and resented the love he had for Hannah. So, she goaded Hannah and flaunted the fact that she had the one and only thing Hannah didn’t have–Elkanah’s children.

Marriage made for reasons other than total commitment to each other are bound to end like this–with the two women at each other’s throats. Elkanah, for all his love for Hannah (and hopefully for his children) did nothing to stop it. He didn’t show Peninnah the love she needed nor did he exert his role as head of his household to make Peninnah stop tormenting Hannah. He merely gave Hannah more attention and more food. (I wonder if, since he gave her twice as much as Peninnah and her children, Hannah suffered from obesity.) This attention, of course, would make Peninnah even worse.

So, here we have a household in conflict–not the best place to raise children. Hannah lacks children and weeps for the ability to have a son to serve the Lord and Peninnah lacks a husband’s love and probably weeps for the right to be cherished the way she should have been.

We see Hannah go into the Tabernacle to pray one more time and there we meet Eli who is a disaster as a high priest before the Lord. His own home is in worse shape than Elkanah’s. He has two sons (no mention of a wife so we don’t know anything about the sons’ mother or mothers) and they are glutonous rabblerousers, stealing the Lord’s part of the sacrifice for themselves and “playing the field with fast women” in the Tabernacle.

In our society today, a church is scandalized when it comes out that the leaders have affairs. What would happen if it were happening right there in the church? That shows you, right there, that as far from God as our nation has fallen, it still hasn’t fallen to the depths of depravity that Israel had fallen to at this time.

Still, Hannah had faith. Lots of faith. Well placed faith. Hannah had faith in her Lord–not in her church or her high priest. And she and her son were going to need that in the years ahead.

Hannah prayed for a son. She prayed with moving lips but silent tongue, unlike the tradition of the time which was audible prayer. This caused Eli to show his true colors. He was short and belittling and callous to her. He saw only that she should be following tradition and assuming that she was waiting for one of his sons in a drunken state or at least would be taken advantage of by one of his sons. He was soon put in his place, however by her gentle words.

Hannah then went home, having left her burden at the feet of God. This is probably the hardest thing for all of us to do. But Hannah did it. She took her burden to the Lord and she left it there. No doubt with Peninnah the mother in the household and holder of an attitude, Hannah was much like Cinderella and did the lion’s share of the housework. She may even have doted a bit on the children of Elkanah, teaching the girls how to be housekeepers and smiling at the boys as they learned their lessons. We simply don’t know as we don’t know how many or how old the children of Peninnah and Elkanah were. I suspect that either they learned to resent Hannah like their mother or they thought of her as an aunt to whom they could go in times of trouble.

Hannah’s life was about to change, however, as she soon found herself pregnant with a child whom she had vowed to dedicate to the Lord and never cut his hair.

This has always intrigued me in many ways.

First of all, Hannah knew what kind of life was being lived at the Tabernacle. She knew Eli was the high priest and that he was a disaster as a father. She knew that if she dedicated her son to the Lord and left him to serve in the Tabernacle that he would see thievery and wantonness on a daily basis and up close and personal.

I know homeschooling mothers who honestly think that if they allow their children to go to a public school for 7 hours a day, five days a week for 180ish days a year, they will become whoremongering, paganistic athiests. And yet, here we have Hannah who at probably 3 years of age, took her son to the Tabernacle and left him 24/7 with a man whose sons were known thieves, gluttons, and whoremongers. And her son became the greatest high priest in the history of Israel. Not perfect, but the greatest in history, nonetheless.

She also vowed to never cut his hair.

I have straight hair and it has not been cut significantly in about 15 years. It hangs to my knees and below with not a single curl to it. It’s thick but it is sooo incredibly fine that it’s not heavy. Many Jews have thick, coarse, curly hair. For it to not have been cut EVER must have presented some real issues for Samuel. For one, I wonder if he bound his hair in some way or braided it. The climate there is generally dry though they have distinguishable wet seasons. Most people walked everywhere they went so I wonder about how he maintained his hair. Combing curls is not something most people with curly hair want to do. Keeping tangles and “visitors” out of the hair would have been an incredible chore. And, yet, we have every indication that this vow was kept his entire life. Even in the times when the ends of the hair would become dry and brittle and more prone to tangle (which is why I had the last six inches cut off a couple of years ago) and in times when the mud would have caked in his hair, he didn’t cut it.

Nazarite vows were not something to be taken lightly. Not cutting hair presents issues. Not touching wine or other fruits of the vine or femented drink in a culture where the water wasn’t always drinkable required a strong constitution. Not touching a dead body which meant you couldn’t offer sacrifices (of sacrificial animals) or eat of the Passover (the pascal lamb) or other sacrifices made before the Lord.

Hannah didn’t dedicate Samuel as a Nazarite but she did vow not to cut his hair. Since he would be offering sacrifices, that, in my opinion, was a wise decision.

Hannah is the ideal pattern for a mother to follow. She dedicated her son to the Lord and, even though he was put in perverse situations at an extremely young age (right at weaning), she did not shirk from her vow. She watched over him when she went to the Tabernacle, taking him new clothes that she had made for him. She trusted him not to Eli but to God.

We should all be able to do that with our sons and daughters. We should so raise them when they are ours alone, that they will understand what God expects when they are without us, regardless of when that leaving of our home is. We are not, as mothers, to protect our little ones from the world but to prepare them for the world.

Another thing MacArthur brought out in this chapter that I believe we should all take to heart is that Hannah’s love for Elkanah and their home came before children. I have heard so many people say they are staying together “for the children” and that their “children come first” that this chapter should shake all of them up a bit.

In a home, first should come mutual devotion to God. Then, should come mutual devotion to each other. Then all other things will fall into place. The children are NOT first. They are following the example set by the parents.

I have a dear friend whose parents stayed together for the children. She confided that she would lay in bed at night and cry and pray that they would divorce. And this is not an isolated incident. These children understand that the parents are not devoted to each other. When parents are not a united couple, totally devoted to each other, there is no home for the children to grow up in.

Despite Peninnah and her children’s presence, Samuel had parents who were totally devoted to each other in a Godly way. And it showed in his devotion to Eli when he was left at the Tabernacle. He didn’t disobey Eli when he was asked to reveal what they Lord told him. He understood respect for the “parent” present in his life.

Samuel understood a lot as did Hannah. May all mothers strive to be more like Hannah–devoting their children to God, themselves to Godly service and their husbands, and making their home a place of peace and the presence of God.