Hannah's Magnificent Messianic Prayer

¹ And Hannah prayed and said,

      

“My heart exults in the Lord;

my horn is exalted in the Lord.

       My mouth derides my enemies,

because I rejoice in your salvation.

  ²    “There is none holy like the Lord:

for there is none besides you;

there is no rock like our God.

  ³    Talk no more so very proudly,

let not arrogance come from your mouth;

       for the Lord is a God of knowledge,

and by him actions are weighed.

  ⁴    The bows of the mighty are broken,

but the feeble bind on strength.

  ⁵    Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread,

but those who were hungry have ceased to hunger.

       The barren has borne seven,

but she who has many children is forlorn.

  

⁶  The Lord kills and brings to life;

he brings down to Sheol and raises up.

  ⁷    The Lord makes poor and makes rich;

he brings low and he exalts.

  ⁸    He raises up the poor from the dust;

he lifts the needy from the ash heap

       to make them sit with princes

and inherit a seat of honor.

       For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s,

and on them he has set the world.

  ⁹    “He will guard the feet of his faithful ones,

but the wicked shall be cut off in darkness,

for not by might shall a man prevail.

¹⁰    The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces;

against them he will thunder in heaven.

       The Lord will judge the ends of the earth;

he will give strength to his king

and exalt the horn of his anointed.”

¹¹ Then Elkanah went home to Ramah. And the boy was ministering to the Lord in the presence of Eli the priest.

1 Samuel 2:1-11

The prayer of Hannah is often compared with the Magnificat by Mary the mother of Jesus.  Its prophetic nature towards the end of the prayer makes it a prayer beyond Hannah’s personal experience.  There is something else going on in this marvelous prayer.  Some theologians said that this prayer is too much if Hannah merely prayed based on her personal experience.  Words like “My mouth derides my enemies” in verse 1 feel a bit too much to be applied to her personal situation.  Even if there were many people insulted her because of her inability to bear a child, they could not be considered enemies.  Peninnah for sure could not be considered her enemy.  Hannah’s language here sounds more like a war victory.  It is true that she started out from her own personal experience in which she could not bear a child, so she became an object of ridicule even by her own family.  The Lord indeed answered her passionate prayer which she uttered before the temple of the Lord.  He gave her a child, Samuel.  The name Samuel itself is a reflection of Hannah’s personal experience about God.  Samuel means “God hears” and so his name was fitting to the whole situation, for God heard Hannah’s prayer.  But even with such miraculous experience, the language of her prayer sounds too much of an exaggeration of her situation, if it were merely about her personal life.  Her reason “because I rejoice in your salvation” went above and beyond bearing a child.  It resembled more of the joy of the Israelites when they were saved by the Lord from the hands of the Egyptians at the edge of the red sea.

The invocation of God’s holiness and His utter uniqueness in verse 2 reminded us of the God who spoke on Mount Sinai and all the events recorded in the Pentateuch.  The acknowledgment of God’s wisdom, might, justice, and sovereignty in verses 3-8 gave Hannah’s prayer power that far surpassed her localized trouble.  Verses 9-10 spelled out a prophetic message about God’s King who was also His Messiah (anointed).  All these clues could not be contained merely in anyone’s personal situation.  There had to be something more going on in this editorial of the Book of 1 Samuel that overshadows the entire book.

Why was Hannah’s prayer significant?  Hannah was important because she was the mother of Samuel.  But there was more to Hannah than just being Samuel’s mother.  Hannah’s troubled soul in the beginning of the book is a reflection of Israel’s trouble as a nation.  The event of Samuel’s birth preceded by the turmoil in the end of the book of Judges.  Judges 21:25 concludes:

“In those days there was no king in Israel.  Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

This conclusion was to show how chaotic Israel was.  The last incident that the Benjaminites did in the Promised Land was a repeat of the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah in the days of Lot.  Some young men wanted to do the sin of Sodom to a Levite who happened to pass by Gibeah with his concubine.  They did not get what they wanted, so they took the man’s concubine and did a terrible thing to her.  She died.  Then all Israel were gathered to fight the Benjaminites.  The first civil war broke out in Israel.  It nearly destroyed the entire tribe of Benjamin.  This is but a reflection of the chaos in the Promised Land.  The chaotic situation continued until the time of Hannah.  And so, Hannah’s struggle was a miniature struggle of Israel.  As Hannah cried to the Lord for a son, Israel cried to the Lord for a savior.  Hannah needed a child to be born through her, Israel needed a righteous king to rule the nation.

            If we continue to read the book of Samuel we will quickly find out how terrible the rule of Eli was.  He delegated some of the responsibilities to his sons, yet his sons defiled God’s altar and temple.  Eli did not do anything necessary to stop all the defilement his sons committed.  So the people were groaning for deliverance.  Hannah would have felt the terrible national situation as well.  It’s very likely that she too hoped for a better situation for the entire Israel.  The whole situation was indeed very bad that in 1 Samuel 3:1b it is written: “And the word of the LORD was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision.”  The high priest was alive and well.  The temple of the Lord was functioning like usual.  Yet the summary of the situation was bleak.  No word of the Lord.  No vision from God.  No wonder the nation was in chaos.  Israel became the scorn of all nations.

            Some of us might have been or are now experiencing the pain that Hannah went through.  It was very personal for Hannah as a woman and a wife, unable to be pregnant.  The feeling of failure haunted her during her barren days.  The failure of being a barren woman and wife.  One of the most painful the world has ever known.  At the personal level, some of us might have the same struggle.  And we cry out to God to help us to have a child born through us.  Some might experience a different kind of pain, a different kind of failure.  The failure of being a man or a father.  Perhaps the inability to get pregnant is not the wife’s genetic failure.  Perhaps it is the dad’s genetic failure or other health condition that prevents the couple from having a baby.  Some other might have failed in their career.  They have tried so hard, being diligent in their course, yet their career goes nowhere.  They are stuck at the low level management.  Or perhaps their many business startup attempts failed miserably every single time.  Or perhaps, some of us can’t even materialize our grand ideas that people around us look down at us.  And perhaps our failure is spiritual.  That we continue to fail the Lord as we continue to promise to serve and obey Him better.  Whatever the situation and condition is, we feel hopeless and thus we pray to the Lord for help.

            At the same time perhaps we also groan because our nation have gone awry.  Bad things continue to happen because the Law is not followed, ethical rules are bypassed, common decency is abandoned, those who break the law can get away easy, the officers of the law bow to money and threats, compromises and corruptions run amok, and people do whatever is right in their own eyes.  Our livelihood is affected at the international, national, social, communal, and even personal level.  We feel as if we are forced to seek our own self-interest.  There is no justice.  The good are being imprisoned, the bad walk freely on the street.  The good leaders are forced to resign.  The bad leaders rule ruthlessly.

            What is worse?  The church is filled with unethical conducts.  The leaders misuse the name of the Lord to legitimize their sins.  Some of them claimed that the Holy Spirit ordered them to divorce their spouse and marry someone else.  Some of them abuse their spiritual authority and squeeze money out of their congregation.  The offering the congregation give does not go to the Lord’s treasury, but to enrich themselves so they may live like multi-billionaires.  Some of the leaders enslave the evangelists and pastors by working them so hard and giving them a very low salary.  The evangelists and pastors work as if under a communist regime, and not in the church of God.  If they request for a salary increase, the slave masters accuse them of doing ministry for money.  Then they go home to their mansion in their new Mercedes CLS excusing their behavior saying that the Lord can take care of the poor evangelists and pastors.

Many churches have even abandoned the Scripture.  They adopt the way of the world.  Those in the position of authority run the church of God like it is their business company.  Profit is the goal.  Their church grows so big financially and asset wise.  They gain many followers through the grand marketing of the promise of prestige, more blessings (more riches), and more success.  The will of the market becomes their command.  So they support the LGBT movement when the world is moving toward that direction, regardless of what the Scriptures say against it.  They even move to change the church to accept that LGBT is normal and sinless.  In the name of God they destroy God’s church.  This chaos is what we witness now in the 21^st century.  A similar chaos to that which happened during the time of the judges in Israel.

            So we groaned, just like Hannah groaned, just like the people of Israel groaned.  They wanted a change.  We too want a change.  Hannah asked for help for her personal trouble.  We too pray for God’s help for our personal troubles.  They wanted a true king to rule.  They wanted the kingdom of God to come.  We too ask for the same thing.

            God answered Hannah.  The barren woman became pregnant and gave birth to a son.  A son that would change the fate of the nation forever.  A son that was faithful to the Lord.  In the midst of the unfaithfulness and disobedience of the priests, Samuel obeyed the Lord wholeheartedly.  Hannah’s promise that she would give the son to the Lord was fulfilled.  Samuel was the last judge of Israel, but he was the first to anoint kings.  He ruled Israel according to the word of the Lord.  Yes, Hannah’s prayer was eventually about this.  The magnificent prayer was meant to do more than just a praise and thanksgiving to the God who solved Hannah’s personal problem.  No, the magnificent prayer was prophetic and spoke a powerful message of the coming True King and Messiah of God.  Her prayer did not stop with Samuel.  It started with Samuel, then David, then ends with Christ Jesus the true King.  God’s gracious answer to Hannah’s passionate prayer resulted not only in the solution to her personal problem, but much more importantly also resulted in the answer to the main problem of sin and eternal death.

            This prayer of confidence, praise, and thanksgiving by Hannah is teaching us today to wait on the Lord.  Our groaning is connected to the cosmic struggle.  All God’s children will continue to struggle in this world until the second coming of Jesus Christ in all His glory.  Hannah got her immediate answer through Samuel.  But even she did not see the glory of the Messiah until the day she died.  We might not get the immediate answer like what Hannah received that day.  Yet we have lived in the time after Christ.  The greater privilege than any other people who lived prior to the birth of the Messiah.  We no longer wait in anticipation the coming of the Lord’s salvation in the Lamb of God, for it has been done 2,000 years ago.  Hannah’s prayer becomes our prayer but a bit differently.  That we know for sure that the salvation is not in the future, but it is with us now.  We no longer pray just for our personal problem, but we lift up praise and thanksgiving for God’s majesty, love, and grace in solving the greatest problem of humankind.  The enemies of God’s children, Satan and death are crushed under the Messiah’s feet.  God’s True King is now ruling the entire world.  His anointed has the authority of heaven and earth in His hands.  Yes the kingdoms of man might still wreak havoc in the life of the children of God.  And yes even the visible churches might also mislead God’s people.  But God is just.  He is the judge of all the world.  God’s final judgment will come to all who abuse the authorities given them.  But as for us, His salvation is for us, and it is already here, for Christ has died for us.  In our groaning and pain, know that through our suffering because of His name, God counted us with Christ.  In 1 Peter 4:13 Peter said: “But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.”  Thus we shall remain faithful to the Lord.  Amen.