1Samuel 1:28, “Therefore also I have lent him to the LORD; as long as he liveth he shall be lent to the LORD. And he worshipped the LORD there.”
1Samuel 2:11, “And Elkanah went to Ramah to his house. And the child did minister unto the LORD before Eli the priest.”
Let’s say, for whatever reason, a mother takes her three old child, puts her a car with her twin sister and drives her to a strange town, a strange house and a strange foster parent comes out and hugs the child and takes her into her home and the mother and twin sister drive off. Even at three years of age that child will be traumatized, that child will also be looking out the window of her foster home waiting for her mother and sister to come and rescue her. Even after fifty years that child, now an adult, will still suffer from that trauma of separation from her mother. Also, what must that mother think or feel. Obviously, she is giving up her child because she believes she cannot properly care for the child. What must the child’s siblings be feeling?
Maybe times and cultural changes but emotions do not. Travel back three thousand years and you will find a mother’s love and the bond between siblings to be just as strong then as today. Yet, here we have a mother who begs and pleads with God for a child and then when one is given to her, she must give him up to the Lord after three years of nurturing and bonding with that child. Samuel’s family lived in Ramah and the tabernacle was in Shiloh, you are talking a distance of fifteen miles and without cars or modern translations, well fifteen miles may just as well be like Queens, New York to San Francisco. We are talking fifteen miles of desert travel, roads filled with bandits, you did not travel alone, and definitely a woman did not travel alone. Perhaps once a year on the high holidays Hannah may have had the opportunity to visit with her child, but that was it. Verse 2:11 says that Elkanah, Samuel’s father, returned to Ramah. In a Semitic expression when the father’s name is used it means that the whole family returned to Ramah, which included his other wife and his other children. Samuel surely bonded with his father and siblings even if they were just half siblings, a three year old little guy doesn’t know the difference, and all he knows is that he will never see his mother, father, and his playmates again. Not only that he is being left to be raised by a grumpy old high priest and two spoiled steps brothers. I mean this high priest was not noted for his compassion. As Hannah wept her heart out before God because she was barren, this fat slob of a High Priest accused her of being drunk. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, he became obese from eating the fat of the sacrificial lamb and downing it down with a few too many cups of holy wine. I often wonder if this served as the muse for the Brothers Grimm story of Cinderella. How many lonely nights did that little child spend crying for his mother, I can’t imagine a little three year old terrified in the middle of the night, calling for his mother simply chocking back his tears saying: “Come now, we shan’t be sorrowful, we will be a prophet someday, so we must learn to keep a stiff upper lip, pip, pip and all that.”
Yet, let’s take a look at Hannah, she spent the next ten verses singing a song of praise to God before all the people in the tabernacle. Can you dig this, her only child being given away and she is singing a song of praise. What gives? I will tell you what gives and it is found in I Samuel 1:28, an expression of just how deeply one can learn to love God. The KJV says, “I have lent him to the Lord.” Some modern translation say give rather than lent, some say dedicate or grant but that does not express the true nature of the Hebrew word used which is hishhilteehoo which is in a Hiphal form indicating a voluntary act on the part of Hannah and comes from the root word sha’al which means to ask. Actually, if you trace this word to its Semitic root, it has the idea of loaning. It is both asking and loaning in the same word. In ancient times when a Sumerian or other Semitic king needed to raise an army he would send his captains out to meet with the mothers of sons who were of military age and they would sha’al the mothers, to ask them to willingly loan their sons to the king. In World War II Hitler called upon young women to sha’al a son for the Reich. Many gladly did and after the child was born they willingly gave the child to the state to be raised by the state while singing a praise song to Hitler, not unlike Hannah’s song of praise. Yet, I read an account written by one these mothers and she admitted it was the hardest thing she ever did in giving her child up to be raised by the state. Do we have an English word for such a sacrifice, such as expression of sacrificial love as hishhilteehoo? The word used by the KJV is, lent, I believe that comes closest to the heart of sha’al for even though the mother gives up her child up for service to the king, she sees it as a loan, that is still her little boy dog gone it. The mothers would even tattoo the name of their son on the palm of their hand, the part of the body you see the most and where the ancients believed your heart was located. This would declare to everyone that she had a son that was sha’al, on loan, to the king but he was still her son.
We learn further in this verse that Samuel worshipped the Lord. The word worshipped here is shachah which means to enter into an intimacy. Can a three year old child worship God? I attended a worship service where I saw a little three year old child run out into the aisle and spin around in a circle, out of pure joy, the joy of the Lord. Yeah, a three old child can worship the Lord. Hannah knew this, she knew it first hand from what we learn in the following ten verses. She knew if she could find such joy and comfort in her God her child would get an equal or greater joy serving God in the very tabernacle of God before His holy Ark. I think she also knew that that pompous old goat who dared to call her drunk as she poured her heart out to God wasn’t much company for God and he stood the closest to God as the high priest. Well, her boy was going to also stand before the veil of the Holy Ark and he was going to minister (Hebrew, masharath – to bring joy and comfort) to the Lord.
You see Hannah felt what she wanted most was to have a child, yet she realized what she really wanted was to bring joy and comfort to the God she loved so here were two things she wanted most, to have a child and to bring joy and comfort to God. She got both, a child that she shared sha’al with God. Now God did not have to depend upon some gluttonous old coot to bring him comfort and joy by following a bunch of rules, now he had a little three year old child that He could fill with His joy and watch him spin around out of pure joy in His presence and the fact that her boy was doing this brought her comfort in her lonely nights.
Perhaps, like Hannah, you have wept and wailed before God for something you wanted or needed so bad, such that the pastor told you keep quiet. Perhaps God is whispering in your ear, “Hey, I’ll tell you what, we both can benefit here, I will give you your healing, financial miracle, restored relationship, etc., but will you sha’al it with me so I can also rejoice in your gift?”
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