(Part 1)

JBTM Robert D. Bergen
29
Elkanah, being the good man that he was, tried his best to do some damage control.
Using typical male logic, he did his best to help Hannah “get over” the unending humiliation
associated with being a married woman endlessly failing to do the single most important
thing a married woman could ever do.
⁸“Hannah, why are you crying?” her husband Elkanah asked. “Why won’t you eat? Why are you
troubled? Am I not better to you than 10 sons?” (1 Sam 1:8)
Clearly, Elkanah’s efforts came up short. It is obvious that, like most men in all of human
history, Elkanah was virtually clueless when it came to understanding women!
Hannah, however, could not tell her husband that he was a failure as a comforter, for in
ancient Asian culture women would not have had the right to criticize their husbands, any
more than slaves would had the right to criticize their masters. Marriage counselors who
could have guided the couple through this crisis did not exist in the ancient world. And as far
as we know, Hannah had no female confidant who would lend her a sympathetic ear—only
a merciless, all-too-fertile rival! It would seem, therefore, that Hannah was living in solitary
cell for one in the inner recesses of a benighted prison of pain. Hannah endured her annual
torture session, and then immediately,
got up after they ate and drank at Shiloh. (1 Sam 1:9a)
She got up, but where could she go? She couldn’t return home; there were no malls, museums,
or coffee shops where she could hang out. She could have made the most desperate of all
choices and ended her life, but she didn’t.
Impressively, she went to the one place in the universe where she could find genuine
help; she went to the Lord. There she would find One who would listen with infinite care to
each of her tear-stained words. There she would find One who had the power to change her
deepest hurt into her greatest joy.
Eli the priest was sitting on a chair by the doorpost of the Lord’s tabernacle. 10 Deeply hurt, Hannah
prayed to the Lord with many tears. 11 Making a vow, she pleaded, “Lord of Hosts, if you will take
notice of Your servant’s affliction, remember and not forget me, and give Your servant a son, I will
give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and his hair will never be cut.” (1 Sam 1:9b–11)
Hannah prayed to the Lord with an intensity and focus that was possible only for a person
who was living with unending agony within her soul. What we hear in Hannah’s incredible
prayer is something truly striking. We hear the words of one who has not been destroyed,
but deepened; not shattered, but sculpted, and transformed by the most dreaded tool in the
divine Sculptor’s hand, the tool of pain.
Indeed, the Lord had given Hannah the priceless but never requested gift of pain. By living
in ancient Israel as a married woman denied the gift of motherhood, Hannah experienced