A sermon on 1 Samuel 1:1-20 by Rev Richard Keith on Sunday, 8 March 2026
Our passage today is one of my favourite stories in the Bible. It’s the story of a woman of genuine faith, trapped in misery beyond her control, pouring out her heart to God in prayer. Her name is Hannah. Her story is a great inclusion in our current series on Women in the Bible. But it begins with a man, her husband Elkanah, because Hannah lived in a man’s world.
As verse 1 says, There was a certain man from Ramathaim whose name was Elkanah, son of Jeroham. He had two wives; one was called Hannah and the other Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah had none. It tells us his name, his father’s name, where he was from, and how many wives he had, one of whom was Hannah. And if we had any doubt that Hannah lived in a man’s world, her husband Elkanah wasn’t satisfied with one wife — he insisted on having a double helping of domestic bliss. We don’t know why Elkanah thought he needed two wives, but one good guess is because Hannah had no children. Another man might have been content to share her childlessness, but Elkanah wanted offspring. And his desires were fulfilled by his second wife, Peninnah, who gave him sons and daughters. Elkanah now had everything a man could want: a wife he loved and an ongoing legacy.
Elkanah was happy, but Hannah was miserable. 1 Samuel chapter 1 tells us that each year the family would travel to the Lord’s temple to worship him and to offer sacrifices. Whenever the day came for Elkanah to sacrifice, he would give portions of the meat to his wife Peninnah and to all her sons and daughters. But to Hannah he gave a double portion because he loved her. Elkanah loved Hannah and felt sorry for her — there is no doubt about it. But he showed it by letting everyone know that she was his favourite. Instead of making things better, it made them worse. In fact the passage says, Because Hannah had no children, Peninnah, her rival, kept provoking her in order to irritate her. And this didn’t happen just once. This happened year after year. Whenever Hannah went up to the house of the Lord, her rival provoked her till she wept and would not eat. Elkanah had two wives and everything his heart could desire. But Hannah had one husband and a rival who goaded her for her childlessness year after year, until Hannah couldn’t eat because of her weeping.
Elkanah could see how Hannah felt, but he couldn’t understand it. He tried to comfort her, but his words only came across as thoughtlessly cruel. Hannah, he said, why are you weeping? Why don’t you eat? Why are you downhearted? Don’t I mean more to you than ten sons? Why, why, why — he asks, demanding reasons for all her drama. He means well. He loves her. But his question reveals everything about the world Hannah lives in. He cannot see that his love, as real as it is, cannot fill the emptiness that she carries. He cannot see that his own choices created the rivalry that torments her. He cannot see that asking Hannah to measure his love against ten sons is asking her to be grateful for a world she didn’t choose and cannot escape.
Sadly, we do this too. We say, Cheer up. He had a good innings. At least he didn’t suffer. We say, I’m sorry things didn’t work out. God must have something better planned for you. We mean well. We love the people we say these things to. But the easy comfort we offer is really about our own discomfort with other people’s pain. We want to fix what we cannot fix, so we reframe it instead. And the person who was already alone in their misery ends up feeling more alone still.
Hannah didn’t argue with Elkanah. She got up from the table and went to the temple. Her husband couldn’t carry the burden she bore, so she went to one who could. In bitterness of soul she wept much and prayed to the Lord. She didn’t wait till she felt better. She wasn’t afraid of who was watching or what they would think. She cried until she had nothing left and poured out her heart to God. And she made a vow, giving her solemn promise in return for what she wanted most: O Lord Almighty, if you will only look upon your servant’s misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life.
Think about what Hannah is asking for. She is asking God to give her a child, a son — to give her what every woman in her world was measured by. And she is asking for it so that she can give it back. In her heart, the son she doesn’t yet have she has already given to God, before she has held him or named him or counted his fingers. This is not bargaining with God. This is trust so complete that she can offer back the gift before it has been given. She is not abandoning him. She is holding him with open hands before God, instead of clutching him to herself.
Hannah knew something that is hard for any parent to learn: our children do not belong to us. We love them. We worry about them when they are small, and we never really stop worrying about them when they are grown. We lie awake wondering if they are happy, if they are safe, if they know how loved they are. Whether they are our own children or children we have taken into our hearts — stepchildren, foster children, children we have loved as our own — the love is real and the worry is real and the longing for their flourishing never leaves us. But they do not belong to us. They belong to themselves and to the God who made them, who knew them before we did, who sent his own Son to give his life for them.
Hannah also teaches us what real prayer is. Prayer is not a performance. It’s not showing off our piety in front of others. It’s not telling God how wonderful he is to make him give us what we want. Prayer is pouring out our hearts before God, standing before him transparent and unashamed — bringing the full weight of what we carry and laying it before the one who already knows and does not need us to tidy it up first. Elkanah needed Hannah to feel better. But God needed nothing from Hannah except herself, raw and unadorned. She came in bitterness of soul. She wept until she had nothing left. She made a vow that cost her everything.
And she left the temple with her face no longer downcast. Not because anything had changed, but because she had been truly heard by the one who truly hears. That is what real prayer does. It doesn’t always change our circumstances, but it changes us — because we have been in the presence of the one who carries what no one else can carry. As the Scripture says, Cast all your cares on him because he cares for you.
Into Hannah’s story came Eli the priest. He was old now, half blind. He sat on a chair by the doorpost of the temple because that was all he could do. Once he served the Lord here — once he offered the sacrifices and led God’s people in praise. But now his sons did that: Hophni and Phinehas. And Eli knew what kind of men they were. He knew they were using their position to take what did not belong to them. He knew they were sleeping with the women who served at the temple. He knew they were gluttons and drunkards who wore the robes of priests but did not fear the Lord. He had told them that what they were doing was wrong, but he hadn’t stopped them. They were his sons and he loved them more than he feared God. So Eli sat by the doorpost and watched the corruption he had allowed play out in front of him day after day.
This is the man who looked up and saw Hannah praying in her heart, her lips moving, with no sound coming out. And what Eli said tells us everything about what the temple of the Lord had become under his watch: How long will you keep on getting drunk? Get rid of your wine. What kind of priest sees a woman praying in a house of prayer and thinks she is drunk? A priest who has seen so much drunkenness in the temple that he no longer recognises worship when he sees it. A priest whose sons have so corrupted the house of God that genuine devotion has become unrecognisable to him. A priest who has watched the holy become ordinary and the ordinary become corrupt for so long that he has lost the ability to tell the difference. Eli has not sinned like his sons, but he has allowed their sin. And the rot has reached all the way to his half-blind eyes. He couldn’t see Hannah — not really. He looked at a woman pouring out her soul before God in desperate, costly, genuine faith, and saw a drunk. This temple and its priests needed more than a makeover. They needed a lesson they’d never forget — a lesson taught not by a prophet or philosopher, but by a woman on her knees.
Hannah said to the disapproving Eli, Not so, my lord, I am a woman who is deeply troubled. I have not been drinking wine or beer; I was pouring out my soul to the Lord. Do not take your servant for a wicked woman; I have been praying here out of my great anguish and grief. The old priest had been corrected by the woman he accused, and to his credit he was wise enough to hear it. Eli said to her, Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him. He didn’t know what she had asked for. He didn’t know what he was blessing. But God did.
Hannah went on her way, had something to eat, and was no longer sad. Nothing had changed. Peninnah was still at home with her sons and daughters. The temple and its priests were still corrupt. Eli was still sitting by the doorpost. And Hannah still did not have the child that she wanted. But she had been heard by the one who matters, and that was enough to get up from her knees and eat. That is faith — not the faith that demands a sign before it will trust, but the faith that trusts before the sign comes.
Then a couple of verses of Scripture do what years could not. They went back to their home at Ramah. Elkanah lay with Hannah his wife, and the Lord remembered her. The Lord remembered her. In the Bible, when God remembers it is not because he has forgotten, but because he has chosen to do something new. When the Lord remembered Noah, he hadn’t forgotten him in the ark — he chose to stop the rain. When the Lord remembered the Israelites in Egypt, he hadn’t forgotten their slavery — he chose to raise up Moses to lead them out. And when the Lord remembered Hannah, she conceived when she could not before. She became pregnant and gave birth to a son. And she named him Samuel, which means: God hears.
She had been childless, taunted by her rival, misunderstood by her husband, rebuked by the priest. But God heard her. God remembered her. God gave her the child she had asked for. This is the great reversal. And it is not just Hannah’s story — it is the shape of how God works across the whole of Scripture and across the whole of history. Because it is tempting to assume that success means God’s approval, that the powerful are powerful because God made them so, that institutions are blessed because they’ve always been there, that the way things are is the way they are meant to be. But God is not found in this story blessing the temple of Eli and the corrupt priesthood of his sons. He is found listening to a childless woman weeping in the corner that nobody else is watching. God looks past the disapproving old priest who wrings his hands while his sons exploit those they are meant to serve. God looks past him and sees Hannah on her knees, pouring out her heart. He is not the God who blesses whoever is in charge. He is the God who asks hard questions of those in charge, and he does his deepest work through whoever they ignored.
And if we needed proof of that, we need look no further than Jesus himself. When Jesus came, he did not spend his time in the courts of the powerful or the halls of the religious establishment. He went to Galilee, to the fringes of society, to the people that the establishment had written off. He ate with tax collectors who everybody despised. He touched lepers who nobody would go near. He spoke to a Samaritan woman at a well when no respectable rabbi would have given her the time of day. He welcomed children when his own disciples thought they were wasting his time. He noticed a widow dropping two small coins in the temple treasury when everyone else was watching the rich make their impressive donations. And when he did go to the powerful, it was not to bless them. He looked at the moneychangers in the temple and turned their tables over. He looked at the scribes and Pharisees and called them whitewashed tombs — clean on the outside, full of dead men’s bones. Jesus was not the Messiah the powerful were expecting or the one they wanted. He was the kind of Messiah that Hannah needed.
She was a childless woman living in a man’s world, misunderstood and unfairly rebuked. But God heard her and remembered her. And the child he brought forth from her grew up to change the history of his people. This is the God we worship — not the God who rubber-stamps the existing order and calls it his will, not the God who is most at home in the grand homes of the privileged, but the God who sees the woman weeping in the corner. The God who hears the silent prayer of the heart. The God who remembers when the moment comes to act.
And he is still that God. Whatever darkness we live in. Whatever institutions have failed us. Whatever rivals have tormented us. Whatever well-meaning people have offered us their thoughtless comfort and left us more alone. God sees. He hears. He remembers. God sees you. Go and pour out your heart to him. Hannah did. And it changed everything.