The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible
Elkanah and His Wives
1 Samuel 1:1–8 — Elkanah and His Wives. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.
1Now there was a man named Elkanah who was from Ramathaim-zophim in the hill country of Ephraim. He was the son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zuph, an Ephraimite.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·hî ’e·ḥāḏ ’îš ū·šə·mōw ’el·qā·nāh min- hā·rā·mā·ṯa·yim ṣō·w·p̄îm mê·har ’ep̄·rā·yim ben- yə·rō·ḥām ben- ’ĕ·lî·hū ben- tō·ḥū ḇen- ṣūp̄ ’ep̄·rā·ṯî
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-it-was a-man, one, from-the-Ramathaim-Zophim, from-the-hill-country-of Ephraim, and-his-name Elkanah, son-of Jeroham, son-of Elihu, son-of Tohu, son-of Zuph, an-Ephrathite.
Where the English smooths the original
The conjunction implies that the book of Samuel is a continuation of the history contained in the book of Judges which it immediately follows in the order of the Hebrew Bible, Ruth being placed among the Hagiographa.
These introductory words do not signify that this history is the continuation of the Book of Judges or of any preceding writing. It is a common historical introductory formula.Set deliberately against Cambridge above: the two authorities read the same waw in opposite directions, and the Hebrew alone cannot adjudicate between them.
Though Samuel belonged to the tribe of Levi, yet no special mention is made of the fact, because he owed his importance and rank as a judge not to his Levitical origin, but to the gift of prophecy, which was independent of the accidents of birth and station.
2He had two wives, one named Hannah and the other Peninnah. And Peninnah had children, but Hannah had none.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
wə·lōw šə·tê nā·šîm ’a·ḥaṯ šêm ḥan·nāh wə·šêm haš·šê·nîṯ pə·nin·nāh lip̄·nin·nāh way·hî yə·lā·ḏîm ū·lə·ḥan·nāh ’ên yə·lā·ḏîm
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-to-him two wives: name-of the-one Hannah, and-name-of the-second Peninnah. And-there-were to-Peninnah children, and-to-Hannah no-thing — children.
Where the English smooths the original
The frequent recurrence of the mention of barrenness in those women who were afterward famous through their progeny (as Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel) coupled with the prophetic language of Hannah's song in 1 Samuel 2 , justifies us in seeking a mystical sense.Barnes is stating a method, not a proof: he moves from a repeated narrative pattern to a typological claim. Our christ section leans on this and marks where it goes beyond him.
In this Divine code it is noticeable that while polygamy is accepted as a custom everywhere prevailing, it is never approved.
Very likely Hannah was his first wife, and having no children by her, he took Peninnah, who proved to be a rough diamondGill is punning on Peninnah's name (a gem) and her conduct; it is a preacher's turn of phrase, not a lexical argument.
3Year after year Elkanah would go up from his city to worship and sacrifice to the LORD of Hosts at Shiloh, where Eli’s two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, were priests to the LORD.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
mî·yā·mîm yā·mî·māh ha·hū hā·’îš wə·‘ā·lāh mê·‘î·rōw lə·hiš·ta·ḥă·wōṯ wə·liz·bō·aḥ Yah·weh ṣə·ḇā·’ō·wṯ bə·ši·lōh wə·šām ‘ê·lî šə·nê ḇə·nê- ḥā·p̄ə·nî ū·p̄in·ḥās kō·hă·nîm Yah·weh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-he-would-go-up the-man the-that from-his-city from-days to-days-ward, to-bow-himself-down and-to-sacrifice to-YHWH of-Hosts at-Shiloh. And-there the-two sons-of Eli, Hophni and-Phinehas — priests to-YHWH.
Where the English smooths the original
This is the first time in Scripture that God is called the Lord of hosts or armies. Probably Samuel was the first who used this title of God, for the comfort of Israel, at the time when their armies were few and feeble, and those of their enemies many and mighty.Benson's guess that Samuel himself coined the title is a conjecture, not a datum; the sourced fact is only that this is the title's first occurrence.
It is simply applied to Jehovah as the God of the universe, who governs all the powers of heaven, both visible and invisible, as He rules in heaven and on earth.
It was the solemn protest of Samuel and his school against any eclipsing of the mighty but invisible sovereignty of the Eternal by the passing splendours and the outward pomp of an earthly monarchy set up over the people.
his piety in maintaining a regular attendance on the divine ordinances is the more worthy of notice because the character of the two priests who administered them was notoriously bad.
4And whenever the day came for Elkanah to present his sacrifice, he would give portions to his wife Peninnah and to all her sons and daughters.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
hay·yō·wm way·hî ’el·qā·nāh way·yiz·baḥ wə·nā·ṯan mā·nō·wṯ ’iš·tōw lip̄·nin·nāh ū·lə·ḵāl- bā·ne·hā ū·ḇə·nō·w·ṯe·hā
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-it-was the-day, and-he-sacrificed Elkanah — and-he-would-give to-Peninnah his-wife and-to-all-of her-sons and-her-daughters portions.
Where the English smooths the original
The tenses in 1 Samuel 1:4-7 express repeated action: “he used to give: her adversary used to provoke her.
out of the sacrifice of his peace-offerings, the greatest part whereof fell to the offerer, and was eaten by him and his friends or guests before the Lord
And they ate all before the Lord, and hereby were supposed to have communion with him, by partaking with him of his sacrifices, which had been offered to him at his altar.
5But to Hannah he would give a double portion, for he loved her even though the LORD had closed her womb.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
ū·lə·ḥan·nāh yit·tên ’a·ḥaṯ ’ap·pā·yim mā·nāh kî ’eṯ- ’ā·hêḇ ḥan·nāh Yah·weh sā·ḡar raḥ·māh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-to-Hannah he-would-give one portion-of-two-faces, for Hannah he-loved — and-YHWH had-shut her-womb.
Where the English smooths the original
he gave it as an expression of his love to her, to indicate by a sign, "thou art as dear to me as if thou hadst born me a childK&D is quoting O. v. Gerlach, and is arguing for one reading of a disputed word; Pulpit, quoted below, rejects it.
The Septuagint has a different reading, epes for apaim , and though the words look different in our writing, they are nearly identical in Hebrew.A textual-critical claim, not a devotional one: Pulpit prefers the Septuagint's reading over the Masoretic consonants here, which would reverse the verse's sense from a double portion to a single one.
Hannah’s faith might have been strengthened by the recollection that Sarah ( Genesis 16:1 ), Rachel ( Genesis 30:1 ), Manoah’s wife ( Jdg 13:2 ), all had to bear the reproach of childlessness for a time, and all eventually bore illustrious sons.
6Because the LORD had closed Hannah’s womb, her rival would provoke her viciously to taunt her.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
kî- Yah·weh sā·ḡar bə·‘aḏ raḥ·māh ṣā·rā·ṯāh gam- ba·‘ă·ḇūr har·rə·‘i·māh ka·‘as wə·ḵi·‘ă·sat·tāh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-she-provoked-her, her-rival, provocation also, for-the-sake-of thundering-against-her — because had-shut YHWH behind her-womb.
Where the English smooths the original
The one sin of polygamy poisons the whole home life of the family, in all other respects apparently a quiet, Godfearing, orderly household.
(Hiphil), to excite, put into (inward) commotion, not exactly to make angry.A deliberately narrow lexical ruling on râʻam, quoted here to hold back BSB's stronger adverb.
The cognate verb is used in Leviticus 18:18 , “Thou shalt not take a wife to her sister to vex her
for the joy of motherhood is quite distinct from that of conjugal affection, and especially to a Hebrew woman, who had special hopes from which she was cut off by barrenness.Pulpit's comment heads verses 6, 7 and 8 together, so this sentence is his judgement on Elkanah's question in v. 8, read from within the note on v. 6.
7And this went on year after year. Whenever Hannah went up to the house of the LORD, her rival taunted her until she wept and would not eat.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
wə·ḵên ya·‘ă·śeh šā·nāh ḇə·šā·nāh mid·dê ‘ă·lō·ṯāh bə·ḇêṯ Yah·weh kên taḵ·‘i·sen·nāh wat·tiḇ·keh wə·lō ṯō·ḵal
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-thus he-would-do year by-year: as-often-as her-going-up in-the-house-of-YHWH, thus she-would-provoke-her — and-she-wept and-would-not eat.
Where the English smooths the original
Though the verb is masculine, Peninnah must be the subject, because as often as SHE went up follows.A grammatical argument about the subject of the verse's first verb; K&D and Gill read the same verb of Elkanah instead.
As the aggravation of her sin, that when she came to worship God, and to offer sacrifices, when she should have been reconciled even to her enemies, Matthew 5:23 ,24 , she did quarrel with so near a relation.
to which she was stirred up by seeing her husband on these festivals take so much notice of her, and show so much love and respect for her, as always to give her the best portion.
8“Hannah, why are you crying?” her husband Elkanah asked. “Why won’t you eat? Why is your heart so grieved? Am I not better to you than ten sons?”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
ḥan·nāh lā·meh ṯiḇ·kî ’î·šāh ’el·qā·nāh way·yō·mer lāh wə·lā·meh lō ṯō·ḵə·lî wə·lā·meh lə·ḇā·ḇêḵ yê·ra‘ ’ā·nō·ḵî hă·lō·w ṭō·wḇ lāḵ mê·‘ă·śā·rāh bā·nîm
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-said to-her Elkanah her-man: “Hannah, why weepest-thou? and-why eatest-thou-not? and-why is-evil thy-heart? Am-not I-myself better to-thee than-ten sons?”
Where the English smooths the original
Let this comfort you, that I love you no less than if you had many children.
In Elkanah here we have an example of a most excellent husband; who patiently bore with the insolent humour of Peninnah, and comforted dejected Hannah with words full of tender affection.Benson reads Elkanah at his best; Pulpit (quoted at v. 6) reads the same speech as well-meant and beside the point. We have kept both.
The simple narration evidently came from Hannah, who, no doubt, in after years loved to dwell on her past sorrowful life, contrasted with her present strange blessedness as mother of the Restorer of the people.Ellicott's claim about the narrative's source is a conjecture about composition, not a datum from the text.
It is evidence of a base disposition, to delight in grieving those who are of a sorrowful spirit, and in putting those out of humour who are apt to fret and be uneasy. We ought to bear one another's burdens, not add to them.Matthew Henry's Concise commentary treats 1:1-8 as a single block, so this sentence is his verdict on the whole unit rather than on v. 8 alone.
The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.
AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.
The book opens with a bare וַיְהִי֩ and a full address: a man, a town of two heights, a hill country, five generations. Cambridge hears in that conjunction a seam — “the book of Samuel is a continuation of the history contained in the book of Judges” — while Ellicott flatly denies it and calls the phrase “a common historical introductory formula.” Neither can prove the other wrong from the Hebrew, and the FSSB records the disagreement rather than settling it. On the town they converge: Ramathaim is a dual, “the two heights,” with Zophim, watchers. Ellicott prefers hills that watch each other; Benson and Poole want watch-towers; Barnes, Pulpit and K&D trace the name to Zuph, Elkanah's remote ancestor, whose rare name (the Verifier finds צוּף, H6689, in four verses only) also labels “the land of Zuph” at 1 Samuel 9:5. Pulpit draws the conclusion the genealogy is for: Zuph was “a person of sufficient power and energy to give his name to the whole district,” so Elkanah “would be a man of wealth and influence.” Then the same Pulpit note removes the prop the reader is reaching for: “Though Samuel belonged to the tribe of Levi, yet no special mention is made of the fact, because he owed his importance and rank as a judge not to his Levitical origin, but to the gift of prophecy.” ⚙ The narrator has given us the whole apparatus of a man's standing, and has been careful that none of it will matter. Verse 2 empties it in one particle: אֵ֥ין (ʼayin, H369), which Strong's glosses “a non-entity.” Gill, punning on the gem-name, says Peninnah “proved to be a rough diamond”; Ellicott, of the polygamy itself, says the Law “simply seek[s] to restrict and limit it” and that in the Mosaic code the practice “is never approved.”
Verse 3 is built on repetition: מִיָּמִ֣ים יָמִ֔ימָה, “from days to days-ward,” with a conjunctive perfect (wə·‘ā·lāh) that Cambridge identifies as the tense of habit for this whole paragraph — “he used to give: her adversary used to provoke her.” Into that annual routine the canon drops a title it has never used before. Barnes, Ellicott, Benson, Gill and Pulpit all note the same fact independently: YHWH of Hosts occurs here for the first time in the Old Testament, and some 260 times thereafter. They then disagree about what the hosts are. Barnes takes them of the angels and reads the title as a protest against star-worship; Pulpit insists the word “does not mean armies, inasmuch as it refers to numbers, and not to order and arrangement”; K&D declines to narrow it at all: “It is simply applied to Jehovah as the God of the universe, who governs all the powers of heaven, both visible and invisible, as He rules in heaven and on earth.” Ellicott reads it politically, as “the solemn protest of Samuel and his school against any eclipsing of the mighty but invisible sovereignty of the Eternal by the passing splendours… of an earthly monarchy.” Immediately the verse names Hophni and Phinehas, and JFB says the quiet thing plainly: Elkanah's regularity “is the more worthy of notice because the character of the two priests who administered them was notoriously bad.” ⚙ The first naming of the LORD of armies in Scripture is placed one clause away from the two priests whose names 1 Samuel 4 will attach to a national catastrophe. Verse 4 then drops from cosmos to carving-board: מָנֽוֹת (mânâh, H4490), portions “weighed out,” which Poole locates precisely — “out of the sacrifice of his peace-offerings… eaten by him and his friends or guests before the Lord” — and Benson reads sacramentally: “they ate all before the Lord, and hereby were supposed to have communion with him.”
Everything tender in this unit concentrates in a phrase nobody can translate with confidence: אַחַ֖ת אַפָּ֑יִם מָנָ֥ה, “one portion of two nostrils / faces.” K&D, with Ellicott and von Gerlach, reads a double portion meaning “thou art as dear to me as if thou hadst born me a child”; Pulpit rejects the grammar and prefers the Septuagint's different consonants, which would make it a single portion given because she had no child; the Vulgate, Luther and Abarbanel take the dual as anger, which K&D dismantles with a single sentence — “he gave her a portion unwillingly, because he loved her!”; Geneva's margin offers a fourth, “a portion with a hearty cheer.” Four traditions, one four-letter word. ⚙ We under-claim deliberately: the FSSB does not adjudicate, and the reader should know that the warmest gesture in the chapter rests on a disputed text. What is not disputed is the clause that follows it, twice: סָגַ֥ר (çâgar, H5462, “to shut up”), with YHWH as its subject in v. 5 and again in v. 6, the second time with בְּעַ֥ד (bᵉʻad) added — shut behind. Gill says why: “not because she was naturally barren, but because the Lord had shut up her womb… to put her upon praying for one.” Against that stands the rival, whom the Hebrew names צָֽרָתָהּ (tsârâh, H6869) — Strong's root sense “tightness,” so that the rival wife is literally her distress. Cambridge supplies the law behind the word (Leviticus 18:18, “to vex her”), and K&D holds the violent verb râʻam down to size: “to excite, put into (inward) commotion, not exactly to make angry.” Ellicott lays the blame on the arrangement rather than the woman: “The one sin of polygamy poisons the whole home life of the family.”
Verse 7 is two adverbs holding each other up. K&D: “The two כּן correspond to one another. Just as Elkanah showed his love to Hannah at every sacrificial festival, so did Peninnah repeat her provocation.” The kindness and the cruelty run on the same calendar and at the same volume. Who performs the first verb is genuinely unsettled: Barnes argues “Though the verb is masculine, Peninnah must be the subject”; Pulpit blames the Masoretic pointing and cites the Septuagint, Syriac and Vulgate for “so she did year by year,” while noting that the vowels “are human, and form no part of Holy Scripture”; Gill and K&D keep Elkanah. Poole names the aggravation that all of them feel: the quarrel happens “when she came to worship God, and to offer sacrifices.” Then Hannah weeps and will not eat, and her husband asks three questions and makes one argument. The third question is the deepest and uses the unit's rarest word: יֵרַ֣ע (yâraʻ, H3415), which Strong's defines as “to be broken up (with any violent action)” — not sadness but fracture — with לְבָבֵ֑ךְ, the heart “as the most interior organ,” as its subject. His answer to it is אָֽנֹכִי֙, the emphatic I myself, set against ten sons, which Ellicott and K&D agree is “a round number to express many.” Geneva glosses him kindly: “Let this comfort you, that I love you no less than if you had many children.” Benson calls him “an example of a most excellent husband.” Pulpit will not have it: “the joy of motherhood is quite distinct from that of conjugal affection, and especially to a Hebrew woman, who had special hopes from which she was cut off by barrenness.” ⚙ We think Pulpit has the better of it, and that the text agrees with him by silence: Elkanah asks three times why, and in these eight verses Hannah never answers.
⚙ This is the tool's own fallible reading, offered to be tested against the Word and against the named voices above. Count the verbs. In eight verses Elkanah goes up, sacrifices, gives, loves and speaks; Peninnah provokes, thunders and vexes; Hannah goes up, weeps and refuses to eat. The LORD of Hosts — the title the canon uses here for the very first time, ruler of every army visible and invisible — is the subject of exactly one verb in the entire unit, and he does it twice: סָגַ֥ר, he shut (1 Samuel 1:5), and again he shut behind (1 Samuel 1:6). That is the whole of God's recorded activity in the opening of the book of the kingdom. It is not an absence; it is a closure, deliberate and named. And the narrator has arranged the surrounding facts so that no other cause is available: the man is wealthy (Pulpit), devout (JFB), loving (Poole, Benson), and Levite (Ellicott, JFB, Gill); the priests are corrupt but the pilgrim still goes; the rival is cruel but the rival did not do this. Everything a household could supply has been supplied, and the house has no builder — bên, H1121, the son “as a builder of the family name,” is the unit's last word and Hannah's missing one. ⚙ Our reading is this: 1 Samuel begins by shutting a door so that when Israel later demands a king, the reader will already have been taught where openings come from. The line that follows is our sentence, not Scripture.
The LORD of Hosts is given one verb in these eight verses, and it is to shut.
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
The last name in Elkanah's ladder is צוּף (Tsûwph, H6689), and the Verifier finds that lexeme in only four verses of the canon — two of them the Chronicler's Kohathite registers, the third the passage where Saul's search for lost donkeys brings him into “the land of Zuph” and to Samuel's door. Cambridge, Barnes, Pulpit and K&D all read the genealogy as stopping deliberately at the first settler, who “gave his name to ‘the land of Zuph’” (Cambridge). Gill and Pulpit both note that 1 Chronicles 6 gives the same line with variant spellings — Elihu/Eliab/Eliel, Tohu/Nahath/Toah — which Pulpit attributes to “family documents, in which… there was much diversity of spelling.” ⚙ The link is onomastic, not a quotation: the same rare name standing in a genealogy and in a place-name.
1 Chronicles 6:26 · 1 Chronicles 6:35 · 1 Samuel 9:5
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H6689 Tsûwph (RARE — in 4 vv) and H511 ʼElqânâh (in 20 vv) at 1 Chronicles 6:26 and 6:35; H6689 alone at 1 Samuel 9:5. The verbal identity is of proper names in a shared genealogy, not of a cited text — no quotation is claimed
1 Samuel 1:3 ends by posting Hophni and Phinehas at Shiloh in a clause with no verb. חָפְנִי (Chophnîy, H2652) is rare — the Verifier finds it in five verses, and Cambridge confirms that “the name Hophni occurs nowhere else in the O. T.” Every one of those verses belongs to this arc: the pair carry the ark into battle (4:4) and die on the same day (4:11). Cambridge adds the bitterness of the second name: Phinehas here “sull[ies] the honour of one of the most illustrious names in Israel,” the zealot of Psalm 106:30-31. Poole says the clause exists to show that Elkanah “did not run into that vulgar error, of neglecting his duty of offering to God for the wickedness of the priests”; JFB says the same. ⚙ The narrator's economy is the point: two names, no verb, and the reader who reaches chapter 4 learns what the silence in chapter 1 was holding.
1 Samuel 4:4 · 1 Samuel 4:11
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H2652 Chophnîy (RARE — in 5 vv) plus H5941 ʻÊlîy (in 30 vv) and H7887 Shîylôh (in 30 vv) at 1 Samuel 4:4; H2652 with H6372 Pîynᵉchâç (in 24 vv) at 1 Samuel 4:11. Same-book narrative recurrence of a rare name, not a citation
The unit's two divine verbs are both çâgar (H5462). The Verifier's candidate list is dominated by חַנָּה (Channâh, H2584, in 11 verses), and that lexeme traces the whole reversal: she goes up and is remembered (1:19), conceives and bears (1:20), and then sings (2:1) — after which the same name is met with further children (2:21). Barnes reads the pattern rather than the single case: the barrenness of “Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel,” “coupled with the prophetic language of Hannah's song in 1 Samuel 2, justifies us in seeking a mystical sense.” ⚙ We claim only a motif here, traced by a shared name. No quotation is involved and none is asserted.
1 Samuel 1:19 · 1 Samuel 1:20 · 1 Samuel 2:1 · 1 Samuel 2:21
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H2584 Channâh (in 11 vv) at 1 Samuel 1:19, 1:20, 2:1 and 2:21 (1:19 also shares H511 ʼElqânâh, in 20 vv, and H7812 shâchâh, in 166 vv). The shared lexeme is a proper name; the link asserted is the narrative motif of closure and reversal, not a verbal quotation
Cambridge attaches Hannah to a canonical company — “Sarah (Genesis 16:1), Rachel (Genesis 30:1), Manoah's wife (Judges 13:2), all had to bear the reproach of childlessness for a time, and all eventually bore illustrious sons” — and Barnes builds his typology on the same list. ⚙ We record this thread as commentator-attested rather than Verifier-computed: these references do not appear in the Verifier's candidate output for this unit, and we have not run a lexeme comparison on them. The basis is therefore the named judgement of Cambridge and Barnes plus an evident narrative pattern, and the tier is set accordingly.
Genesis 16:1 · Genesis 30:1 · Judges 13:2
basis: Not a Verifier-computed pair: no shared-lexeme calculation was run for these references. Basis is the explicit citation of all three by Cambridge at 1 Samuel 1:5 and by Barnes at 1 Samuel 1:2, plus the shared narrative pattern of a barren woman bearing a deliverer. No verbal or quotation claim
Ellicott, Barnes, Cambridge and Pulpit all record, independently, that חַנָּה (“grace,” H2584) is the Anna of Luke 2:36, the prophetess in the temple; Ellicott, looking forward, calls Hannah “mother of the Restorer of the people,” and Barnes finds in her song the ground for “seeking a mystical sense.” ⚙ The correspondence between Hannah's song and the Magnificat — a low woman, a reversal, a God who scatters the proud and fills the hungry — is a structural reading, and we mark its limit honestly: a Greek text and a Hebrew text cannot share a Strong's number, so no verbal tier is available here and none is claimed. What can be said is that the shapes rhyme, and that Luke sets his song in the same temple where Hannah's name reappears.
Luke 1:46-55 · Luke 2:36
basis: Cross-Testament (Greek ↔ Hebrew): shared Strong's numbers are impossible by definition, so a verbal tier is excluded on principle. Basis is (a) the name-identity Channâh/Anna, recorded by Ellicott, Barnes, Cambridge and Pulpit at 1 Samuel 1:2, and (b) a shared song-of-reversal structure. No quotation claimed
Gill reports Jerome verbatim: “Armatha Sophim, the city of Helcanah and Samuel… from whence was Joseph, who in the Gospels is said to be of Arimathaea” — and then immediately reports Reland's objection “that it cannot be the same,” since Jerome's site near Lydda “was all a champaign country; whereas this was in the mountains of Ephraim.” Pulpit asserts the identification outright (“the Arimathsea of the Gospels”); Cambridge hedges to “possibly,” with the Septuagint's Armathaim as “the link of connexion between the names”; K&D, arguing for er-Râm in Benjamin, rules Ramleh near Joppa out altogether. ⚙ Flagged, not asserted: the provenance is disputed inside our own source set, and Cambridge calls the site of Ramah itself “the most disputed problem of sacred topography.”
Matthew 27:57
basis: Contested provenance within the brief's own sources: Gill cites Jerome for the identification and Reland against it; Pulpit asserts it, Cambridge only allows it as possible via the LXX form Armathaim, K&D locates Ramah elsewhere. Cross-Testament in any case, so no shared-lexeme basis exists. Verify before relying on it
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
Barnes states the reading and its warrant in one sentence: the repeated barrenness of the mothers, “coupled with the prophetic language of Hannah's song in 1 Samuel 2, justifies us in seeking a mystical sense,” and he names what he finds — “the weakness and comparative barrenness of the Church of God, to be followed at the set time by her glorious triumph and immense increase.” ⚙ We extend Barnes one step, and label the step: Paul makes exactly this move canonically when he takes Isaiah's word to the barren woman — “Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear” — and applies it to the people of promise (Galatians 4:27, citing Isaiah 54:1). That is a real, explicit New Testament citation of an Old Testament text about barrenness turned to song; it is not a citation of 1 Samuel. So the pattern is apostolic and the application to Hannah is the commentators' and ours. The LORD of Hosts shuts the womb in 1:5-6 precisely so that what comes out of it will be unmistakably his gift and not the house's achievement — and Hannah's own song will say so before Mary's does.
1 Samuel 2:1 · Isaiah 54:1 · Galatians 4:27
Five of our voices agree that 1 Samuel 1:3 is the canon's first use of YHWH Tsebaoth, and that the New Testament uses the title once only (James 5:4 — Barnes, Ellicott, Gill). Ellicott sets its purpose against the coming monarchy: “the solemn protest of Samuel and his school against any eclipsing of the mighty but invisible sovereignty of the Eternal by the passing splendours and the outward pomp of an earthly monarchy set up over the people.” Ellicott also brings forward, in the same note, “the glorious Angel who allowed Joshua to worship him under the towers of Jericho,” who “speaks of himself as ‘captain or prince of the host of the Lord’” (Joshua 5:14). ⚙ The identification of that captain with the pre-incarnate Son is the long-standing reading of the church, though Ellicott himself says only “the glorious Angel” and does not name Christ; we mark the seam rather than hide it. The redemptive-historical point stands on the text either way: Israel is about to ask for a king, and the book opens by naming the King it already has — and by showing that his rule begins, in this household, with a closed door and not a throne.
Joshua 5:14 · James 5:4
Elkanah's last question weighs אָֽנֹכִי֙ — I myself — against ten sons, and Geneva takes it at face value: “Let this comfort you, that I love you no less than if you had many children.” Pulpit answers that he is simply wrong: “the joy of motherhood is quite distinct from that of conjugal affection.” ⚙ We read the question as true in a mouth that is not Elkanah's. The husband who can actually be better to a barren woman than ten sons is the one who tells the eunuch and the childless that he will give them, in his house, “a name better than sons and daughters,” and the one whose own house is built not by bên, the son as “builder of the family name,” but by his being that Son. ⚙ This is a figural reading, offered to be tested: none of our named voices makes it, and we mark it novel rather than dressing it in their authority.
Isaiah 56:5 · Ruth 4:15
The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.
Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:
Text. Two places in this unit are textually unsettled, and we have not smoothed either. At 1:5 the Masoretic אַפָּ֑יִם yields four incompatible renderings in our own sources (double portion — K&D, Ellicott, Barnes, Benson, Syriac; a single portion, on the Septuagint's different consonants — Pulpit, Cambridge; a portion given sadly or angrily — Vulgate, Luther, Abarbanel; “a portion with a hearty cheer” — Geneva's margin). At 1:7 the first verb יַעֲשֶׂ֜ה is masculine but the following clause has a feminine subject; Barnes makes Peninnah the subject anyway, Pulpit prefers a passive pointing and reminds the reader that the Masoretic vowels “are human, and form no part of Holy Scripture,” while Gill and K&D keep Elkanah. Our literal renderings follow the consonantal text and name the dispute rather than resolving it.
Sources. All commentary is verbatim public-domain material quoted by anchor and resolved by code; nothing in a ✦ block is paraphrase. Two limits are worth stating. First, Matthew Henry's Concise note covers 1:1-8 as one block, so the identical paragraph stands behind every verse of the unit; we have quoted it once, at 1:8, rather than eight times. Second, the Keil & Delitzsch entries at 1:1, 1:2 and 1:3, the Ellicott entry at 1:3, the Gill entry at 1:3 and the Pulpit entries at 1:1 and 1:3 are capped in our brief, so material beyond the cap was not consulted; no claim here rests on the unread remainder. The Pulpit comment quoted at 1:6 heads verses 6, 7 and 8 jointly, and its sentence about “ten sons” is a judgement on v. 8 read from that combined note.
Uncertain. The site of Ramah is, in Cambridge's own words, “the most disputed problem of sacred topography,” and its identification with Arimathea is contested inside our source set (Gill cites Jerome for and Reland against); we have badged that thread flagged. The sense of Ephrathite at 1:1 — Ephraimite (Ellicott, Pulpit) or Bethlehemite (Benson, Poole, JFB) — is genuinely open, and BSB has chosen one side. The barren-mothers thread is commentator-attested (Cambridge, Barnes) and was not run through the Verifier; we say so on its badge. We have deliberately declined one attractive link: the “Shiloh” of Genesis 49:10 is not the place-name H7887 that stands in 1 Samuel 1:3, and we make no connection between them. Finally, every ⚙ paragraph in this unit — including the sola reading's count of the divine verbs, which any reader can check against the interlinear above — is fallible synthesis and is offered to be tested, not received.
✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)