Hannah the Mother of Samson
One of the OT's most famous women meets one without a name
I.
Hannah, from the opening chapters of 1 Samuel, is one of my favourite characters in the Bible (from both T’s, O and N). Most well known as the woman who provided the template for Mary’s ‘Magnificat’, she is the mother of Samuel the prophet, wife to Elkanah, rival wife of Penninah, and something of a poetic wit. The opening scenes of 1 Samuel describe Hannah’s divinely-caused barrenness, the mockery she receives from the fertile Penninah as a result, her eloquent request to God for a son, and the confused response by Eli to what he perceives as a drunken woman cluttering up his temple. More on that in a minute.
A mere ten or so chapters before this story, we meet one of the less remembered women of the OT, the mother of Samson. She too is barren, and she too will miraculously bear a son whose life is full of significance for Israel, but in her case we are not given a name. We certainly know her husband, Manoah of Zorah, from the tribe of Dan. The story of Judges 13 tells us with delicious sarcasm the story of an angel appearing to this woman when she is alone, telling her that she will bear a son who will be dedicated to God, specifying certain things about alcohol abstinence, haircuts, and unclean food. When the woman tells Manoah, he goes around in a flurry declaring that they must urgently inquire of the angel what they must do with the child who is to be born. Having been summoned a second time, Manoah puts the question to the angel, asking what they must do with the child, and what his mission will be. The angel (I always imagine him raising an eyebrow and glancing at the woman here) replies, “As I said to your wife here, the child will be dedicated to God, hence there are certain restrictions regarding alcohol and haircuts etc.” Manoah becomes set on learning the angel’s name, something the angel has no interest in telling him, instructing Manoah instead to offer a sacrifice to the Lord. When Manoah complies, the flame leaps up from the altar to the heavens and the angel disappears amongst the flames. Manoah’s eyes widen, he flings himself to the ground and cries out in fear, “we shall surely die, for we have seen God!” His wife, presumably still standing, points out that if God had intended to kill them, he probably would not have accepted their sacrifice, or indeed given them a message in the first place.
The story commends Samson’s mother for her obedience, ridicules Manoah for his puffed up attitude and mistrust of his wife, and sets the scene for a child dedicated to God who will lead the people out of danger. Whether or not Samson meets these expectations is for another time. The key thing to notice is the structure of the story and the central features of it: The angel speaks to a woman, commanding her to abstain from wine and strong drinks, because she will bear a son who will be dedicated as a Nazirite. Her husband is confused and seeks further information, before finally demonstrating that he is totally clueless about the ways of God, and the woman stands alone in expectation of her miraculous birth.
II.
Hannah is in Shiloh with her husband, co-wife and entourage, and they are eating the sacrificial meal. Upset by Penninah’s words, Hannah excuses herself from the meal and goes to the doorway of the temple to bare her heart to the Lord. “Look on your maidservant!” she implores him, “Give to me a son and I will dedicate him to you all of his life,” that’s interesting, “no razor will touch his head”, very interesting. Enter the divine representative, the priest Eli. Sitting on his seat at the temple doorway, Eli perceives a woman whose lips move without sound, who wanders and sways alarmingly, and draws the natural conclusion that she must be a drunk. “How long will you keep boozing?” he asks, “Get rid of your wine, for heaven’s sake, this is a temple.”
“No, my lord”, Hannah replied, “I am a woman with a broken spirit, and no wine or strong drink have I drunk, but I pour out my spirit before Yahweh”.
Note the beauty of her phrasing, pairing “I have not drunk” with “but I pour out”, elegantly and eloquently upending Eli’s accusations with her piety
That phrase about wine and strong drink seems familiar, doesn’t it?
Judges 13:4-5, “Therefore be careful and drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean, for behold you shall conceive and bear a son. No razor shall come upon his head for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb.”
1 Samuel 1:11, 15, “She vowed and said ‘LORD of hosts, if you will look upon my suffering, your maidservant, and remember me and not forget your maidservant, and give to your maidservant a male seed, then I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life and no razor will come upon his head’… and she said, ‘no my lord, I am a woman of broken spirit, no wine or strong drink have I drunk but I have poured out my soul before the LORD.’”
Only in these two stories do the words for ‘wine and strong drink’ appear in narrative. Only in these two stories and the story of Delilah’s betrayal of Samson does the word ‘razor’ appear.
Is there anything else that ties these two tales together? Well, the figure of Eli is an interesting one. Readers who pick up on the connection between Hannah and Samson’s mother from the words in v11 will then be on the lookout for an angelic promise, a divine figure who meets Hannah’s request. Instead, the pious grief of Hannah is punctured by accusations of drunkenness from the old man on his seat in the doorway. Whereas the angel gave Samson’s mother specific promises, multiple reassurances, and a display of divine power, Eli misunderstands Hannah entirely. He accuses, tries to smooth things over later on, and eventually, without knowing what she has prayed for, blesses her, saying “Go in peace, and may God give you the thing for which you have asked from him.” In other words, “Get out of here, embarrassing woman, and whatever it is you want I hope God gives it to you so you don’t come back here and expose me again.” No such luck, brother.
Whereas Samson’s mother is visited by an angelic being, who promises a miraculous birth and a great man for a son, Hannah has to take the initiative herself, it is she who suggests Samuel’s dedication to the Lord rather than it being demanded of her, and in place of an angelic messenger she is met by a confused and short-sighted old man. Eli, by the way, has no idea that the vague blessing he gave was in fact a blessing of the child whom God would use to replace Eli’s entire family in Israel, and to be the messenger of doom to Eli himself.
III.
Why might our writers make the connection between Samson’s mother and Hannah? Is it just to make Eli look bad? Is it to give extra miraculous vibes to the birth of Samuel?
First, the analogy helps us to see the extent to which Samuel’s special status is the result not of divine selection but of his mother’s actions. Yes, God calls Samuel specially in chapter 3, and yes Samuel does enjoy God’s conversation throughout his life, but it is worth bearing in mind for a reading of 1 Samuel that Samuel is where he is, in part, because of human deal-making with God (“If you give me… I will dedicate him”).
Second, it tells us something about the state of relations between God and Israel. In Judges 13, God is the initiative-taker through his angel, he is the one who chooses the mother, promises the child, stipulates the requirements for his life, and declares his mission (“He will begin to liberate Israel from the Philistines.”). By contrast, a few generations later, following bloody civil war, internal ethnocide in Israel, and the complete breakdown of morality in some cases, God appears much less involved in Israel’s affairs. In the whole of 1 Samuel 1, as this new judge Samuel is promised, prepared for and established in the reader’s mind as a leader, the only thing we are told about God is that he sealed Hannah’s womb, then opened it. This is the beginning of what will become Israel’s monarchy, the united kingdom of Israel, the time of David and Solomon and Hezekiah, and it’s all started not by God but by a human. God takes up Samuel and uses him, but it is Hannah who takes the initiative, Hannah who names and prepares Samuel, Hannah to sings the great song in ch2 about what will come from this child’s life.
Third, it creates a set of expectations about the life and times of Samuel himself. Following the analogy to Judges 13, Samuel is being linked to Samson. Murderous, tricksy, violent, unforgiving, unruly and unrepentant Samson, the guy who abandoned his wife then burned down an entire village in anger when he discovered she had been remarried. Churchill apparently said that democracy was a bad form of government, but all the others were worse; Samson is a very bad judge, with the same caveat. If this is the model, or mirror-image for our new character Samuel, how does that shape his story? We have to be on the lookout for things not being quite as they seem. 1 Samuel is a curious book, full of stories in which God’s instructions and judgements are not always borne out by the actions of its characters, where the ‘good guys’ do questionable things, and it’s up to us to figure out whether they ought to have done so. For Samuel in particular, an introduction that pairs him with ‘Jawbone Bandit’ Samson is… troubling.