Seder 29: Genesis 30, 1 Samuel 1-2---Rachel and Hannah

 After about seven years of infertility, Jacob's wife Rachel gave birth to a son, Joseph.  We are not told what use she might have made of the mandrakes she obtained from her sister.  The implication is that this detail is irrelevant.  Genesis emphasizes that it was God who "opened her womb" (Ge 30:22).  

Joseph is one of a series of special sons, miraculously given to couples struggling with infertility, who have important roles to play in salvation history.  Others include Isaac, Jacob and Esau, Samson, Samuel, and John the Baptist.  

These sons were answers to prayer.  Genesis 30:22 notes that God "listened to" Rachel.  In the case of Samuel's mother Hannah, we are given some details about one of those prayers.  Hannah vowed to God that she would dedicate a son to his service "if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me..." (1 Sa 1:11).  Her language is very similar to that of Exodus 3;7, where God states, "I have surely seen the affliction of my people."  Hannah asked God to deliver her from infertility as he had always delivered his people.

When Hannah brought young Samuel to the tabernacle, she gave a beautiful prayer of thanksgiving (1 Sa 2:1-10).  Walter Kaiser, in his book on great prayers in the Hebrew Scriptures, divides the prayer into three parts:

• In verses 1-3, Hannah expresses her great joy and praises God's greatness and incomparability.  In verse 3, when she says, "Talk no more so very proudly..," we can imagine that she has her personal tormentor Peninnah in mind, but the word for "your" in this verse is in plural form. 
• In verses 4-8, Hannah describes how God watches out for those in need, stepping in to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.  "The barren has borne seven," she declares in verse 5, and she would go on to have at least six children in all (verse 21).  
• In verses 9-10, Hannah looks ahead to the culmination of God's plan, when God will judge the world and send his Messiah.  Samuel would later anoint the first two kings of Israel, contributing to the fulfillment of this prophecy.

Her prayer expressed the thanksgiving of all the barren women who had been granted children.  It also became a template for future songs of praise.  Mary's prayer in Luke 1:46-55 has similiar structure and content.  A psalm of David recorded in both 2 Samuel 2 and Psalm 18 has several parallels with Hannah's prayer:

• In verse 1, Hannah says that God exalts her "horn"---that is, lifts her up and gives her strength---as does David in Psalm 18:2.
• In verse 2, Hannah refers to God as her "rock," as does David in Psalm 18:2.
• In verse 10 Hannah pictures God "thundering," as David does in Psalm 18:13.  In Hannah's case God answers the taunts of Peninnah.  In 1:6, the verb for thundering is used to describe Peninnah "irritating" Hannah.  
• Hannah ends her prayer with an assertion of God's faithfulness to his anointed king, as does David in Psalm 18:50.