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Hannah and Her Children
By Ruth Kerr
If there was something really big that you wanted to do for God—a huge personal sacrifice—could you do it? Would you do it even though God provided no guarantee that He’d see you through it?
The Bible talks about a woman who made a sacrifice few of us would consider. It was a sacrifice that, in the end, blessed a family and a nation.
What Hannah Did
In 1 Samuel 1-2, we read about Hannah, a childless woman who was desperate to have a baby. Her husband, Elkanah, loved her deeply, but he had a second wife who was able to bear him several children. Of course, this other wife grew contemptuous of Hannah and rubbed it in her face as often as she could.
Hannah must have felt like a failure; a childless woman had very little value in that society. Sometimes she became so distressed she could not eat (1 Samuel 1:8).
But one year she had enough. When the family traveled to Shiloh for the yearly sacrifice, Hannah went to the temple and poured her heart out to God in prayer. She made a bargain with Him: if God gave her a son, she would dedicate him to the temple (1 Samuel 1:11).
Hannah didn’t know she would have other children. As far as she knew, she would only ever have one son. But she was determined to keep her word.
God heard her prayer, and in due time she gave birth to a son (1 Samuel 1:20). Finally, a son! She named him Samuel, meaning, “heard by God”. And when Samuel was three years old, Hannah took him to the temple to live and train full time under the high priest.
We might think Hannah was a little crazy. Here was a woman who wanted a child more than anything else, and when God answered her prayers, she gave the boy away. This precious boy for whom she wept and begged God—and here she was, relegated to seeing him only once a year (1 Samuel 2:19).
What was she thinking?
What Hannah Could Have Done
Hannah could have chosen differently. She could have “forgotten” her promise to God. She could have kept Samuel and used him to get back at Elkanah’s other wife. She could have fought to make Samuel the sole heir to the estate. She could have driven the other wife and her children from that house.
She could have done that. But she didn’t, because she knew God.
What Hannah Knew
As painful as it may have been to give up her beloved son, Hannah knew what she was doing. By dedicating Samuel to the temple, she also dedicated him to her nation. According to The New Bible Dictionary, Samuel was considered to be the last and greatest judge of Israel. Samuel anointed Israel’s first two kings and taught a nation about God. When he died, there was a tremendous outpouring of grief (1 Samuel 28:3).
Samuel was able to achieve all this because an ordinary woman had extraordinary faith. She did not attend a seminary, nor was she a member of the educated classes. But when you read Hannah’s prayer in 1 Samuel 2:1-10, a remarkable portrait of our Creator emerges. For example, Hannah knew God; resurrects the dead, is a creator, deliverer and provider, and avenges the poor and oppressed.
God blessed this remarkable and insightful woman by giving her three more sons and two daughters (I Samuel 2:21).
Could You?
Could any one of us make a really big sacrifice for God? No one is suggesting we give our firstborn child away, but could we make everyday sacrifices for God? Can we bite our tongues the next time someone lashes out at us? Could we give a favorite sweater to a needy person? Would we offer to help someone we don’t like?
Sometimes these small sacrifices seem pretty big. But they won’t go unnoticed by God, who sees in secret and rewards openly (Matthew 6:4). Like Hannah, we don’t know the good our sacrifices will produce—the results could be astounding.
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