The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible
The Birth of Samuel
1 Samuel 1:19–28 — The Birth of Samuel. 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.
19The next morning they got up early to bow in worship before the LORD, and then they returned home to Ramah. And Elkanah had relations with his wife Hannah, and the LORD remembered her.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
ḇab·bō·qer way·yaš·ki·mū way·yiš·ta·ḥă·wū lip̄·nê Yah·weh way·yā·šu·ḇū way·yā·ḇō·’ū ’el- bê·ṯām hā·rā·mā·ṯāh ’el·qā·nāh ’eṯ- way·yê·ḏa‘ ’iš·tōw ḥan·nāh Yah·weh way·yiz·kə·re·hā
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-they-rose-early in-the-morning and-they-bowed-themselves-down before-the-face-of YHWH, and-they-returned and-they-came unto their-house, to-the-Ramah. And-Elkanah knew Hannah his-wife — and-YHWH remembered-her.
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They rose up in the morning early; partly for their journey, and partly for prayer, as it follows, for which this was a very fit and usual time, Psalm 5:3 119:147 . Remembered her, i.e. manifested his remembrance of her by the effect.
This is a striking picture of one of the many holy homes in Israel, even in the wild, disorderly days of the Judges, and of the deep degradation of the priests of the sanctuary.Ellicott's contrast is the unit's frame: a devout home and a corrupt priesthood standing in the same sanctuary on the same morning.
and is observed to show that the conception and birth of Samuel were not in a supernatural way, but in the ordinary way and manner of generation: and the Lord remembered her; the prayer she had made to him, opened her womb, as he had before shut it, and gave her power to conceive.
20So in the course of time, Hannah conceived and gave birth to a son. She named him Samuel, saying, “Because I have asked for him from the LORD.”
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·hî liṯ·qu·p̄ō·wṯ hay·yā·mîm ḥan·nāh wat·ta·har wat·tê·leḏ bên wat·tiq·rā ’eṯ- šə·mōw šə·mū·’êl kî šə·’il·tîw Yah·weh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-it-came-to-pass at-the-revolutions of-the-days, and-Hannah conceived and-bore a-son; and-she-called his-name Shemuel — “for from-YHWH I-asked-him.”
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and the words "because I have asked him of the Lord" are not an etymological explanation of the name, but an exposition founded upon the facts. Because Hannah had asked him of Jehovah, she gave him the name, "the God-heard," as a memorial of the hearing of her prayer.
She calls him Samuel, lit. Shemuel ( Numbers 34:20 ; 1 Chronicles 7:2 ), which was an ordinary Hebrew name, and means "heard of God," not "asked of God," as in the margin of the A.V.
Samuel - i. e. heard of God, because given in answer to prayer. The names "Ishmael" and "Elishama" have the same etymology.
one would think rather his name should have been Saul, for the reason given; but, as Ben Gersom observes, givers of names are not always grammatically strict and critical in themGill relays Ben Gersom's concession that name-givers are not grammarians; the observation is sharper than he knew, since Saul is the name the book will later spend itself on.
21Then Elkanah and all his house went up to make the annual sacrifice to the LORD and to fulfill his vow,
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
’el·qā·nāh wə·ḵāl bê·ṯōw way·ya·‘al hā·’îš liz·bō·aḥ hay·yā·mîm ze·ḇaḥ Yah·weh wə·’eṯ- niḏ·rōw ’eṯ-
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-went-up the-man Elkanah and-all his-house to-slaughter to-YHWH the-sacrifice-of-the-days and his-vow.
Where the English smooths the original
The solemn expression of his concurrence in Hannah's vow was necessary to make it obligatory.
It has been remarked that vows are characteristic of that particular age of the Judges; for instance, we have detailed accounts of Samson and Jephthan’s vows, the oath in the Benjamite vow, &c.
It follows from the expression "and his vow," that Elkanah had also vowed a vow to the Lord, in case the beloved Hannah should have a son.
This assumes that Elkanah as well as Hannah had made a vow. The Sept. reads “his vows and all the tithes of his land.”Cambridge reports the Septuagint's longer reading without adopting it; K&D argues at length that the addition is secondary. The Hebrew singular “his vow” is the text before us.
22but Hannah did not go. “After the boy is weaned,” she said to her husband, “I will take him to appear before the LORD and to stay there permanently.”
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
wə·ḥan·nāh lō ‘ā·lā·ṯāh kî- ‘aḏ han·na·‘ar yig·gā·mêl ’ā·mə·rāh lə·’î·šāh wa·hă·ḇi·’ō·ṯîw wə·nir·’āh ’eṯ- pə·nê Yah·weh wə·yā·šaḇ šām ‘aḏ- ‘ō·w·lām
Literal — word-for-word from the original
But-Hannah did-not go-up, for she-said to-her-husband: “Until is-weaned the-lad, then-I-will-bring-him and-he-shall-be-seen before-the-face-of YHWH, and-he-shall-dwell there unto-forever.”
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But Hannah, like other pious women, was in the habit of going, only she deemed it more prudent and becoming to defer her next journey till her son's age would enable her to fulfill her vow.
The house of God was to be the only home he knew; the earliest impressions of his boyhood were to be those of the sanctuary.
Comestor (d) observes, there was a three fold weaning of children in old times; the first from their mother's milk, when three years old; the second from their tender age, and care of a dry nurse, when seven years old; the third from childish manners, when at twelve years of ageGill reports Comestor's threefold weaning (three, seven, twelve years) as one option and then rejects the twelve-year reading for this verse. The age of Samuel at his presentation is genuinely unsettled in the sources.
23“Do what you think is best,” her husband Elkanah replied, “and stay here until you have weaned him. Only may the LORD confirm His word.” So Hannah stayed and nursed her son until she had weaned him.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
‘ă·śî bə·‘ê·na·yiḵ haṭ·ṭō·wḇ ’î·šāh ’el·qā·nāh way·yō·mer lāh šə·ḇî ‘aḏ- gā·mə·lêḵ ’ō·ṯōw ’aḵ Yah·weh ’eṯ- yā·qêm də·ḇā·rōw hā·’iš·šāh wat·tê·šeḇ wat·tê·neq ’eṯ- bə·nāh ‘aḏ- ḡā·mə·lāh ’ō·ṯōw
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-said to-her Elkanah her-husband: “Do the-good in-thine-eyes; sit until thy-weaning him. Only — may-YHWH cause-to-stand his-word.” And-the-woman sat, and-she-gave-suck-to her-son until her-weaning him.
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The Hebrew, however, may be rendered with equal propriety, The Lord establish his work; that is, may he perfect what he hath begun
No special word or promise of the Eternal in the case of the infant Samuel is recorded in this history; but there was an ancient Rabbinical tradition that a direct revelation respecting the future destiny of Samuel was made.Ellicott is reporting, not endorsing; the Bath-kol story he goes on to quote comes from Rashi, is extra-biblical, and is flatly rejected by K&D.
we are not to understand some direct revelation from God respecting the birth and destination of Samuel, as the Rabbins suppose, but in all probability the word of Eli the high priest to Hannah
Because her prayer took effect, therefore it was called the Lord's promise.The Geneva gloss reasons backward from the answer to the promise — an honest statement of how these parents came to treat Eli's blessing as God's own word.
24Once she had weaned him, Hannah took the boy with her, along with a three-year-old bull, an ephah of flour, and a skin of wine. Though the boy was still young, she brought him to the house of the LORD at Shiloh.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
ka·’ă·šer gə·mā·lat·tū wat·ta·‘ă·lê·hū ‘im·māh šə·lō·šāh bə·p̄ā·rîm wə·’ê·p̄āh ’a·ḥaṯ qe·maḥ wə·nê·ḇel ya·yin wə·han·na·‘ar nā·‘ar wat·tə·ḇi·’ê·hū ḇêṯ- Yah·weh ši·lōw
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-when she-had-weaned-him, she-brought-him-up with-her — with three bulls and one ephah of-flour and a-skin of-wine — and-she-brought-him to-the-house-of YHWH at-Shiloh; and-the-lad was-a-lad.
Where the English smooths the original
The true explanation, however, is that the one bullock alluded to in 1Samuel 1:25 was the burnt offering by which the child was consecrated to the Lord.
three bullocks—The Septuagint renders it "a bullock of three years old"; which is probably the true rendering.JFB sides with the Greek against the Hebrew consonants here; Ellicott, Poole, Cambridge and K&D all defend the Hebrew plural. The unit follows the Hebrew and records the dissent.
According to Josephus, the ephah contained about 8½ gallons, according to Jewish authorities about 4½ gallons.
As soon as the boy was weaned, Hannah brought him, although still a נער, i.e., a tender boy, to Shiloh
25And when they had slaughtered the bull, they brought the boy to Eli.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·yiš·ḥă·ṭū ’eṯ- hap·pār way·yā·ḇî·’ū ’eṯ- han·na·‘ar ’el- ‘ê·lî
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-they-slaughtered the-bull, and-they-brought the-lad unto Eli.
Where the English smooths the original
Hannah brings her child, and lays his hand on the head of the victim in token that it is his representative; at that moment Elkanah or one of the priests slays it ( Leviticus 1:5 ). Its blood is sprinkled and its limbs burnt upon the altar, as an emblem of the complete dedication of the child to Jehovah.Cambridge is reconstructing the ritual from Leviticus 1:5, not reporting details the text supplies; the laying-on of the child's hand is inference, and a good one.
The three bullocks mentioned 1 Samuel 1:24 , to which the article here added, in the Hebrew, seems manifestly to relate
and brought the child to Eli: to be under his care, to he instructed and trained up by him in the service of the tabernacle; from hence it appears that Elkanah the husband of Hannah came along with her at this time.
26“Please, my lord,” said Hannah, “as surely as you live, my lord, I am the woman who stood here beside you praying to the LORD.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
bî ’ă·ḏō·nî wat·tō·mer nap̄·šə·ḵā ḥê ’ă·ḏō·nî ’ă·nî hā·’iš·šāh han·niṣ·ṣe·ḇeṯ bā·zeh ‘im·mə·ḵāh lə·hiṯ·pal·lêl ’el- Yah·weh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-she-said: “Oh, my-lord! By-the-life of-thy-soul, my-lord — I am the-woman the-one-stationed with-thee in-this-place, to-pray unto YHWH.”
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This oath is peculiar to the Books of Samuel, in which it occurs six times, and to the Books of Kings, in which, however, it is found only once. The similar oath, as Pharaoh liveth (by the life of Pharaoh), occurs in Genesis 42:15 ; and as the Lord liveth is found almost exclusively in the books of which Judges is the first and 2 Kings the last, being especially frequent in the Books of Samuel. This accords with the fact of the age of the Judges and Saul being characteristically the age of vows.Ellicott is quoting the Speaker's Commentary, not writing in his own voice; the observation about the age of vows is theirs.
As thy soul liveth; the usual form of an oath, as Genesis 42:15 1 Samuel 17:55 20:3 ; as surely as thou livest
but as it was forbidden to swear by any but by the living God, by his life, it cannot be thought so good a woman as Hannah would be guilty of such a sinful and Heathenish practiceGill reasons from Hannah's piety to the meaning of her words, which reverses the usual direction of exegesis; the formula is in fact the standard oath, as Poole and Cambridge both note.
27I prayed for this boy, and since the LORD has granted me what I asked of Him,
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
hiṯ·pal·lā·lə·tî ’el- haz·zeh han·na·‘ar Yah·weh way·yit·tên lî ’eṯ- šə·’ê·lā·ṯî ’ă·šer šā·’al·tî mê·‘im·mōw
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“Unto this the-lad I-prayed, and-YHWH gave to-me my-asking which I-asked from-with-Him.”
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For this child I prayed; and the Lord hath granted me my request which I asked of Him: therefore I also make him one asked of the Lord all the days that he liveth; he is asked of the Lord.K&D's rendering carries vv. 27 and 28 together, which is how the Hebrew wordplay works; the unit treats them as one sentence for that reason.
and which he also desired might be granted her, or foretold that it would be, 1 Samuel 1:17 though perhaps he knew not then particularly what it was she asked
Hannah presented her child to the Lord with a grateful acknowledgment of his goodness in answer to prayer. Whatever we give to God, it is what we have first asked and received from him.
28I now dedicate the boy to the LORD. For as long as he lives, he is dedicated to the LORD.” So they worshiped the LORD there.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
’ā·nō·ḵî wə·ḡam hiš·’il·ti·hū Yah·weh kāl- hay·yā·mîm ’ă·šer hā·yāh hū šā·’ūl Yah·weh way·yiš·ta·ḥū Yah·weh šām
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-also I — I-have-caused-him-to-be-asked for-YHWH; all the-days which he-is, he-is an-asked-one for-YHWH.” And-he-bowed-himself-down there to-YHWH.
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The word lent spoils the meaning: Hannah really in these two verses uses the same verb four times, though in different conjugations, and the same sense must be maintained throughout.
Render, And I on my part have given him to Jehovah as long as he liveth: because he was one asked for Jehovah.
that is, the boy Samuel: thus putting his own child-seal to his mother’s gift of himself to God.Ellicott takes the unnamed singular subject to be Samuel; Cambridge and K&D take it to be Elkanah, and Geneva takes it to be Eli. The Hebrew does not say, and the unit does not pretend to settle it.
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 unit opens on a household shouldering its packs in the dark. וַיַּשְׁכִּ֣מוּ (shâkam, H7925) means, at root, to load up on the back of man or beast; Poole reads the hour as double-purposed, “partly for their journey, and partly for prayer,” and Gill fills in the posture — faces turned toward the western part of the tabernacle where the ark stood. Ellicott sees the whole tableau at once and refuses to sentimentalise it: this is “a striking picture of one of the many holy homes in Israel, even in the wild, disorderly days of the Judges, and of the deep degradation of the priests of the sanctuary.” Both halves of that sentence matter. Then comes the verse's pivot, וַיִּֽזְכְּרֶ֖הָ (zâkar, H2142). Poole and Benson, writing a century apart, land on the identical gloss — God “manifested his remembrance of her by the effect.” Cambridge adds a single cross-reference and nothing else: “Cp. Genesis 30:22.” Gill insists on the ordinariness of the means, noting that the writer records Elkanah knowing his wife precisely “to show that the conception and birth of Samuel were not in a supernatural way.” ⚙ The remembering is the miracle; the conceiving is not.
לִתְקֻפ֣וֹת (tᵉqûwphâh, H8622) is a noun the Verifier finds in only four verses of the Hebrew Bible; K&D render it literally, “In the revolution of the days.” Then Hannah names the child, and the commentators immediately notice a seam. Pulpit: Shemuel “means ‘heard of God,’ not ‘asked of God,’ as in the margin of the A.V.” Barnes agrees — “heard of God, because given in answer to prayer” — and files Ishmael and Elishama alongside. Cambridge lists three candidate etymologies and prefers “Heard of God.” K&D derives it from shâmûaʻ ʼêl with elision of the ע and states the principle plainly: Hannah's clause is “not an etymological explanation of the name, but an exposition founded upon the facts.” Gill, following Ben Gersom, puts the tension at its sharpest — by Hannah's own reason the boy “should have been Saul.” ⚙ Hold that. The root shâʼal (H7592) whose passive participle is Saul will be struck four more times in vv. 27–28, and this book's long tragedy will be about a king who was asked for and a prophet who was asked for, and the difference between them.
“The man Elkanah” — הָאִ֥ישׁ, an apposition BSB drops — goes up with “the sacrifice of the days” (K&D's literal rendering) and with נִדְרֽוֹ, his vow. JFB explains why that word had to appear: “The solemn expression of his concurrence in Hannah's vow was necessary to make it obligatory,” citing Numbers 30. Benson infers Elkanah had added a vow of his own, and Ellicott situates the whole practice: vows “are characteristic of that particular age of the Judges.” Hannah then declines the pilgrimage, and no one in the sources calls it disobedience — JFB notes she “deemed it more prudent and becoming to defer her next journey,” and Poole grounds the liberty in Exodus 23:17. Her condition is a passive verb, יִגָּמֵ֤ל (gâmal, Nifal): until the boy is weaned. Cambridge sees exactly what the delay is for: “The house of God was to be the only home he knew; the earliest impressions of his boyhood were to be those of the sanctuary.” Elkanah's answer is a masterpiece of restraint — do the good in your eyes, אַ֛ךְ only, may the LORD cause his word to stand. Which word? Benson admits “we do not read of any thing the Lord had spoken about this child.” Ellicott reports the Rabbinic Bath-kol legend from Rashi; K&D rejects it and points to Eli's blessing in v. 17; Geneva reasons from the answer back to the promise — “Because her prayer took effect, therefore it was called the Lord's promise.” ⚙ The father prays for the standing-up of a word he cannot quite cite. That is most people's faith, described exactly.
The Hebrew says three bulls; the Septuagint says one bull of three years, and JFB calls the Greek “probably the true rendering.” Against him stand Ellicott (“The true explanation, however, is that the one bullock alluded to in 1 Samuel 1:25 was the burnt offering by which the child was consecrated”), Poole, Pulpit, Cambridge and K&D, whose argument is arithmetical: Numbers 15:8–10 assigns three-tenths of an ephah of meal per bullock, so a whole ephah presupposes three. Cambridge supplies the measurements (an ephah at roughly 4½ gallons; half a hin, about three pints, of wine per bullock) and then does something the other commentators do not — it stages the scene. “Hannah brings her child, and lays his hand on the head of the victim in token that it is his representative; at that moment Elkanah or one of the priests slays it (Leviticus 1:5). Its blood is sprinkled and its limbs burnt upon the altar, as an emblem of the complete dedication of the child to Jehovah.” Poole's grammar backs the picture: the definite article on הַפָּ֑ר in v. 25 “seems manifestly to relate” to the bulls of v. 24. ⚙ And the narrator, having told us the child's hand was on a dying animal, will not tell us the child's age. וְהַנַּ֖עַר נָֽעַר — “the child was a child.”
Hannah's speech is built on one root struck four times. Pulpit counts them and protests the English: “The word lent spoils the meaning: Hannah really in these two verses uses the same verb four times, though in different conjugations, and the same sense must be maintained throughout.” K&D is blunter still — the meaning “to lend” for hishʼîl “has no other support than the false rendering of the lxx… Jehovah had not lent the son to Hannah, but had given him; still less could a man lend his son to the Lord.” Cambridge renders it and states the reason: “A loan may be reclaimed at the will of the lender. Hannah's surrender of Samuel was complete.” Around that root sit two smaller exactnesses. The oath נַפְשְׁךָ֖ חֵ֥י is, as Ellicott quotes the Speaker's Commentary, “peculiar to the Books of Samuel… and to the Books of Kings” — an idiom that marks “the age of the Judges and Saul being characteristically the age of vows.” And Gill worries at it devoutly, since swearing by a creature was forbidden: “it cannot be thought so good a woman as Hannah would be guilty of such a sinful and Heathenish practice.” The last clause is a genuine textual crux. Ellicott and Benson and Poole read the singular וַיִּשְׁתַּ֥חוּ of the boy — Ellicott's phrase is unforgettable, “thus putting his own child-seal to his mother's gift of himself to God.” Cambridge and K&D read it of Elkanah, Cambridge on the ground that Samuel “was too young.” Gill lists Elkanah, Eli, and Samuel as live options; Geneva picks Eli. ⚙ The Hebrew does not say. What it does say is that the verb is the same Hitpael of shâchâh with which the unit opened at v. 19 — the household went down at Ramah and someone goes down at Shiloh, and between the two prostrations a barren woman became a mother and gave the child away.
⚙ This is the tool's own fallible reading, offered to be tested against the text. Read the unit by its verbs and it is a chain of causatives: God remembered, Hannah caused him to go up, Hannah caused him to suck, Hannah caused him to be asked-for, the men caused him to come to Eli. Every one of those is a hand transferring something it did not originate. Hannah's own summary makes the direction explicit — she asked from the LORD (v. 20), the LORD gave her her asking (v. 27), and therefore she makes the child an asked-one for the LORD (v. 28). Matthew Henry reads exactly this and states it as a rule: “Whatever we give to God, it is what we have first asked and received from him. All our gifts to him were first his gifts to us.” What the grammar adds to Henry is the cost. The same verse that gives Hannah a son has a weaning in it, and weaning is what makes surrender possible; the same journey that carries the child up carries three bulls to be killed; the scene at Shiloh puts a child's hand on a dying animal, and Cambridge is right that the animal is “his representative.” The reading this unit resists is the sentimental one in which Hannah's generosity is the point. She is not generous. She is returning. And the book will make that theme national: Israel will one day ask for a king (the same root, shâʼal), receive one named Asked-For, and discover that a thing asked for out of the flesh and a thing asked for out of a poured-out soul are not the same transaction. ⚙ Hold this loosely; the commentators quoted here do not draw that last line, and it is mine.
⚙ Not a verse, a fallible reading offered to be tested: she did not give God a son; she handed back an answer.
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
The noun תְּקוּפָה (tᵉqûwphâh, H8622) that opens v. 20 is almost unused in the Hebrew Bible. The Verifier finds it in four verses in all: here, of Hannah's term; at Exodus 34:22, of the turning of the agricultural year at the feast of Ingathering; at Psalm 19:6, of the sun's circuit from one end of heaven to the other; and at 2 Chronicles 24:23, of the turn of the year that brings an army. K&D renders it literally — “In the revolution of the days” — and glosses it as “the period of her conception and pregnancy.” ⚙ The company the word keeps is the point: a rare term otherwise reserved for the great circuits of the created order is spent here on the months of one woman's body.
Exodus 34:22 · Psalm 19:6 · 2 Chronicles 24:23
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H8622 tᵉqûwphâh, attested in only 4 verses in the canon (1 Sam 1:20; Ex 34:22; Ps 19:6; 2 Chr 24:23). A rare-lexeme verbal link, not a quotation — none of these passages cites another.
Cambridge's whole note on v. 19 is one cross-reference: “Cp. Genesis 30:22.” The link is real and the Verifier confirms the shared root: זָכַר (zâkar, H2142), “God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her and opened her womb.” But zâkar is a common word — 223 verses — so the link is a shared motif with a real lexical spine, not a quotation. Poole and Benson both supply the operative gloss: the LORD “manifested his remembrance of her by the effect.” ⚙ In Hebrew narrative God's remembering is never the recovery of a lost thought; it is the moment when what He has held becomes visible in history.
Genesis 30:22
basis: Verifier pair check (1 Sam 1:19 ↔ Gen 30:22): shared Hebrew lexeme H2142 zâkar (in 223 vv) — common, so the tier is structural/thematic; the barren-womb-remembered motif, not a citation. Cambridge independently records the cross-reference.
shâʼal (H7592) is struck once at v. 20 and four times in vv. 27–28, ending in the Qal passive participle שָׁאוּל, “an asked-one.” Pulpit counts the repetitions and protests that “lent” destroys them; Cambridge notes “the remarkable play upon words in it is lost in translation.” The Verifier confirms the same lexeme carries into Eli's blessing at 1 Samuel 2:20 — “for the petition she asked of the LORD” — where Elkanah (H511) also recurs, so the two scenes are lexically as well as narratively tied. ⚙ Gill, relaying Ben Gersom, already noticed that by Hannah's own reason the child “should have been Saul.” That is the Hebrew hiding in plain sight: the participle šāʼûl is the name of the king Israel will later ask for, and this book will set the asked-for prophet against the asked-for king. The wordplay is sourced; the theological weight I put on it is mine.
1 Samuel 2:20
basis: Verifier (1 Sam 1:28 ↔ 1 Sam 2:20): shared Hebrew lexeme H7592 shâʼal (in 157 vv); the candidate list also shows H511 ʼElqânâh (in 20 vv) shared. Common lexeme, so structural rather than verbal; the Saul connection is a wordplay observation, not a computed link.
The Verifier's highest-scoring candidates for this unit are its own neighbours: 1 Samuel 1:2, 1:5, 1:9, 1:13, 1:15 and 2:1, each sharing חַנָּה (Channâh, H2584), and 2:21, which adds שְׁמוּאֵל (H8050) and reports that “the LORD attended to Hannah” so that she bore more children. K&D notes that after the handing-over “Hannah worshipped in the song of praise, which follows in 1 Samuel 2:1-10.” ⚙ The frame is deliberate: the woman introduced in 1:2 as the wife with no children is the woman of 2:21 with five more, and between the two stands the child she did not keep.
1 Samuel 1:5 · 1 Samuel 2:1 · 1 Samuel 2:21
basis: Verifier candidates: shared H2584 Channâh (in 11 vv) across 1 Sam 1:2, 1:5, 1:9, 1:13, 1:15, 2:1, 2:21, plus H8050 Shᵉmûwʼêl (in 120 vv) at 2:21. Deliberately NOT tiered verbal: although Channâh is rare, the recurrence of a proper name inside a single continuous narrative is not a quotation and proves nothing beyond shared subject matter.
Hannah causes the boy to go up (Hifil of ʻâlâh, v. 24), brings him to the house of the LORD, offers the sacrifice the law prescribes, and leaves him there; Luke 2:22–24 has parents carry a first-born to the temple “to present him to the Lord,” with the sacrifice the law prescribes, and ⚙ — this next observation is the tool's own, not the brief's — Luke 2:52 writes of that child a sentence closely parallel to what 1 Samuel 2:26 writes of Samuel. ⚙ This is a structural correspondence of scene and sequence, and that is all I will claim for it here. It cannot be a verbal link: 1 Samuel is Hebrew and Luke is Greek, so no shared Strong's number exists and none is alleged. Note also the difference that keeps the parallel honest — Samuel is left at the sanctuary, and the Child of Luke 2 goes home to Nazareth.
Luke 2:22-24 · Luke 2:52
basis: Cross-Testament (Hebrew ↔ Greek): shared Strong's numbers are impossible by definition, so no verbal tier is available. The recorded basis is a shared narrative pattern — vowed/first-born child brought up to the sanctuary, legally prescribed offering, presentation to the resident priest — visible in both texts on their own terms.
Elkanah prays that God would cause his word to stand (Hifil jussive of qûwm, v. 23), but the narrative has recorded no such word. Benson concedes it: “We do not read of any thing the Lord had spoken about this child.” Ellicott reports an ancient Rabbinic tradition, transmitted by Rashi, that a Bath-kol had announced a coming just one named Samuel — and K&D rejects that reading outright, identifying the word instead with Eli's blessing at 1 Samuel 1:17. Cambridge notes the Septuagint read a different text entirely (“that which is gone forth out of thy mouth”), and Benson offers a different vocalised sense, “establish his work.” ⚙ Four sources, four referents. The unit records the disagreement rather than resolving it, and flags the Bath-kol tradition specifically as extra-biblical material whose provenance is contested.
1 Samuel 1:17 · 1 Samuel 3:19
basis: Contested provenance. The supposed antecedent “word” is not recorded in the text. Ellicott transmits a Rabbinic Bath-kol tradition via Rashi (extra-biblical, undatable here); K&D explicitly denies it and substitutes Eli's blessing at 1 Sam 1:17; the LXX attests a different reading; Benson proposes re-glossing dâbâr as “work.” No shared-lexeme basis is claimed for the forward link to 1 Sam 3:19, which is offered as the narrative's own answer, not as a computed verbal tie.
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
Cambridge reconstructs the moment with care: Hannah “lays his hand on the head of the victim in token that it is his representative… Its blood is sprinkled and its limbs burnt upon the altar, as an emblem of the complete dedication of the child to Jehovah” (Leviticus 1:5). Ellicott and K&D agree on the function of the single bull of v. 25 — K&D calls it “the burnt-offering by virtue of which the boy was consecrated to the Lord as a spiritual sacrifice for a lifelong service at His sanctuary.” The reading of the whole burnt offering as figure of Christ's entire self-giving is ancient and widely held, and Hebrews 10:5–10 states it as the writer's own exegesis: the offerings God did not desire are set aside by a body prepared and a will surrendered — “Behold, I have come to do Your will.” ⚙ What is mine, and offered to be tested, is the specific application: here a boy is dedicated through a substitute that dies in his place, and at the temple centuries later the pattern inverts — the Son is not spared by a victim; He is the victim, and He is not brought by His mother's hands alone but comes by His own will.
Leviticus 1:5 · Hebrews 10:5-10
The unit's governing root is shâʼal, and its final form is a passive participle: the child is an asked-one, all the days that he is. Pulpit insists the four occurrences be held together; K&D denies the word can mean “lend” at all, since “Jehovah had not lent the son to Hannah, but had given him”; Cambridge states the consequence — “A loan may be reclaimed at the will of the lender. Hannah's surrender of Samuel was complete.” Matthew Henry draws the general rule: “Whatever we give to God, it is what we have first asked and received from him.” ⚙ Read forward, the pattern turns and holds: what Hannah does with an answered prayer, God does with an only Son — gives what is most His own, irrevocably, into hands that will use Him. John 3:16 and Romans 8:32 (“He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all”) are the New Testament's own way of saying gave, not lent. I mark this as novel because none of the commentators quoted in this unit draws the line from Hannah's hishʼîl to the Father's giving; the lexical work behind it is theirs, the figure is mine.
John 3:16 · Romans 8:32
K&D closes his comment on the presentation by noting what comes next: “Hannah worshipped in the song of praise, which follows in 1 Samuel 2:1-10.” That song stands where Luke 1:46–55 stands — on the lips of an unlikely mother whose God has looked on low estate, thrown down the mighty and filled the hungry. ⚙ The resemblance in theme and placement is plain, and the ancient church has long heard Hannah behind Mary. I record it here at the lowest claim the evidence supports: the two songs occupy the same structural slot after the same kind of divine remembering, and the barren-womb-opened motif that runs from Sarah through Rachel to Hannah reaches its end in a womb opened without a man at all. No verbal link is asserted — 1 Samuel 2 is Hebrew, Luke 1 is Greek.
1 Samuel 2:1-10 · Luke 1:46-55
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:
⚙ Honesty notes for this unit. Text. Three places in these ten verses are genuinely unsettled, and the synthesis above follows the Hebrew consonantal text while recording the dissent. (1) v. 24, שְׁלֹשָׁה בְּפָרִים: the Hebrew has a plural, “three bulls”; the Septuagint reads “a bullock of three years old,” and JFB judges the Greek “probably the true rendering.” Ellicott, Poole, Pulpit, Cambridge and K&D defend the plural, K&D on the arithmetic of Numbers 15:8–10. (2) v. 21, “his vow”: the Septuagint has a plural plus “and all the tithes of his land”; Cambridge reports it, K&D argues at length that it is secondary and explains how Josephus came to repeat it. (3) v. 28, וַיִּשְׁתַּחוּ: the Masoretic Text has a singular with no stated subject. Ellicott, Benson and Poole read it of the boy Samuel; Cambridge and K&D read it of Elkanah (Cambridge: Samuel “was too young”); Gill lists all three candidates and Geneva picks Eli; the Vulgate, Syriac and Arabic render a plural and the Septuagint omits the clause. No reading is certain and the unit does not pretend otherwise. Age. Samuel's age at his presentation is unknown. The text says only וְהַנַּעַר נָעַר, “and the child was a child.” Barnes and Cambridge estimate two to three years on 2 Maccabees 7:27; Gill reports Comestor's threefold weaning and a reading that would make him twelve, then rejects it; Pulpit says naʻar “may mean anything up to fifteen years of age.” Any confident number here is invention. Sources. All Hebrew surface forms, transliterations, glosses, Strong's numbers and parse data are from the Berean interlinear as supplied in the brief; the English base text is the BSB (CC0). Every ✦ quotation is a verbatim contiguous substring of a public-domain commentary, machine-extracted from the source text rather than retyped. Extra-biblical material. Ellicott's Bath-kol legend at v. 23 is Rabbinic tradition relayed through Rashi, not Scripture, and K&D rejects it; it is flagged as such in the threads. What is mine. Everything marked ⚙ — including the shâʼal/Saul reading, the Luke 2 and Luke 1 correspondences, and the sola-reading — is fallible synthesis offered to be tested, not the report of a source.
✦ = 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)