King Saul. John C. Holbert

could barely leave her house to perform the daily chores. Cooking on the outdoor fire was unbearable as the women would snigger behind their hands, and gesture to their bellies, miming flat and round. Washing at the stream was worse, since when she waded in to retrieve the clothes, the water accentuated her thin body, devoid of a child, and muffled laughs would rise behind bushes. Her life was made even more miserable by Peninnah, her fabulously fertile co-wife. With a haughtiness born of success at the birthing stones, Peninnah would ask Hannah to watch her expanding brood while she and Elkanah would slip quietly into the tent for what Hannah knew was a sweaty act that would result in still one more child for the woman. More than once Hannah thought of running away or wading far enough into the river to cover her flat body forever.

      One year, Hannah had had enough. Enough of nasty Peninnah’s children, enough of nasty Peninnah herself, enough of the pitiful attempts of Elkanah to coddle her, and mollify her, and cheer her up. She had had enough of the whole sort of life she was being forced to live. She decided on her own to go talk to her God at the sacred shrine of Shiloh. Shiloh was a holy place, the holiest spot in the area. The great Joshua, after he brought Israel into the land, had chosen the site of Shechem, near Shiloh, as the spot from which the rest of the land was to be viewed and finally won for YHWH. It was even rumored that those who lived in the land had worshipped their gods of field and stone here long before Israel had come. “Choose this day whom you will serve,” the great Joshua had demanded at Shechem, and the first generation of Israelites had readily enough responded, “We will serve YHWH!” Well, Hannah mused, they and we had not always done so, despite the General’s call. But so it is with those who claim allegiance to anything; constancy is at a premium. But Hannah was determined to have a child, so to Shiloh she went.

      There was a uniqueness to the place, a kind of hushed and hopeful mystery that made a desperate woman want to find communion with that deity who ruled here and everywhere. She walked early one morning in the direction of the central shrine, a low stone building of one room, lighted dimly by an oil lamp set in one wall. The priest of the place, Eli by name, was sitting in his seat near the entrance, but he barely noticed her as she rustled quietly by him into the innermost part of the dark sanctuary. Small puffs of incense added to the gloom and somewhere in the shadowy distance a holy voice was chanting words in some ancient dialect she could not understand. She stood in the center of the room, quite alone, unable at first to discover the words she needed to say. She desperately needed a child. She desperately wanted to shut the mouths of all those who had made her life an unspeakable horror. Tears coursed down her sunken cheeks. Finally she knew what she had to say to this hidden God.

      “O YHWH of the armies! If you will closely look at the misery of your servant, and not forget me, but remember your servant, and give to your servant male seed, then I vow that I will give him to you all the days of his life; no razor will ever touch his head!”

      She knew what she meant by this vow to the God of Shiloh. She had just promised to give her desired son to the shrine forever as a priest, to have him only for a few short years, and then to relinquish him to YHWH’s life-long service. He would never get a haircut, because the vow of a Nazirite, one fully given over to God, insisted that his hair was God’s alone and should thus be forever uncut. Nor would he ever drink wine and live and work around grapes or their vines. Nor would he ever touch or stand close to a dead body. The vow was strict and demanded courage and commitment and complete determination. It could be for a short time or for a whole life. Hannah was desperate; she vowed the service of her son-to-be for his entire life.

      Everyone knew the old story of the most famous of Nazirites, Samson, the bull-headed hero of old, who had killed many more people when he died than when he was alive. He may have been a hero in the story, but Hannah had always found the oversexed man nothing more than a brute. And besides, he had been a miserable example of a Nazirite. He had drunk barrels of wine at numerous parties, had touched and created more dead bodies than anyone before or since, and had received an infamous haircut from that brazen woman, Delilah. And though the hair had grown back, leading to that dramatic destruction of the Philistine temple of Dagon when Samson had pulled it down with his massive strength, Hannah had been horrified by the fantastic loss of life far more than she had been thrilled by the great hero’s actions. She had no intention of allowing her son to become such a wretched example of service. No. Her son would be a Nazirite beyond compare! But, of course, first she had to become pregnant. But somehow she felt, after the energy of her vow in the darkened sanctuary of Shiloh, that this time she would lose her flat belly at last.

      As she was concluding her prayer, and meditating on what she had vowed, the rough voice of the priest broke the silence of the moment.

      “How long will you make such a drunken mess of yourself! Throw away your wine, you filthy woman!”

      Hannah realized in an instant that she had prayed her prayers silently but had moved her lips all the while. The foolish priest had concluded that she was drunk! Did he not expect faithful and desperate people to come to his sanctuary for prayer and to commune with God? Would he not be open to the supplicant, offering words of support rather than shouts of condemnation based in ignorance and stupidity? Still, he was the priest no matter how poorly he understood the role. And it would probably be this wretched priest to whom she would have to entrust her future son. So she tried patiently to explain.

      “No, my lord. You are mistaken. I am a woman in great pain; I have been pouring out my life to the God who resides in Shiloh. I have drunk no wine this day nor any strong spirits. Do not treat me like some sort of foul creature, because I have been speaking to God out of extreme anxiety and frustration all this time. Can you not see my pain? You have been far too hasty in your conclusions about what you have witnessed.”

      But the priest did not apologize, nor did he feel chastened at all. He merely mumbled a rote blessing to Hannah, as she turned to leave.

      “Go in peace, and may YHWH grant whatever it was you asked YHWH.” He did not even ask Hannah what it was she wanted so desperately! She had thought a priest of all people would at least have asked that. Still, she responded appropriately and traditionally enough.

      “May your servant find favor with you,” and bowed courteously.

      But when she left the temple, she smiled sardonically, wondering to herself how such a fool could ever have thought he could serve the great YHWH at all. But no need to waste time with that. She had to find Elkanah now, because she just knew that a son of her own was going to be born in about nine moons!

      And so it had happened. Hannah and Elkanah had made such love as they had never made before, and she had gotten pregnant, much to her vast delight and relief, and much to the surprise and chagrin of her many detractors. He was a beautiful child, healthy and strong, and Hannah herself named him, although the custom was that the father had that right. But Hannah would have none of it. When the naming day came, she stood proudly, even defiantly, in the circle of her neighbors, among those who had laughed at her and scorned her, and joked about her, raised her son up to the sky, and shouted for all to hear.

      “This boy shall be called Samuel, because I asked YHWH for him!”

      Then she fiercely held Samuel to her breast, while he screamed his welcome to the world.

      But the community looked at one another in surprise and confusion. The naming had been decidedly odd. The name “Samuel” means “God listens,” and they expected Hannah to explain the name by announcing that YHWH had heard her cry for the child. But that had not been her explanation for the boy’s name. She had said that the reason for the name was that she had “asked” YHWH for him. But “asked” is from another verb altogether, as they all knew. The boy should have been named something more like Saul, since that is a possible name from that verb. Had Hannah made a mistake? Was she being deliberately mysterious or confusing? Was she somehow making fun of those in the community who had made fun of her? Whatever Hannah had meant by her peculiar naming rite, no one ever forgot what had happened that day, especially after the appearance of king Saul so many years later. Had Hannah known about Saul? But how? She was long dead by the time he was born. Was Hannah somehow privy to the workings of the wonderful YHWH? Everyone looked at her very differently after the birth of Samuel, and Hannah herself was a completely different woman. She held her head