Eli Watched Her Mouth

After they finished eating and drinking in Shiloh, Hannah stood up. Eli the priest was sitting on a chair beside the doorpost of the temple of the LORD. The meal, with its portions and its questions, was behind her. She began to pray, weeping many tears in her bitter distress.

She addressed the LORD of Hosts, the one Elkanah had come to Shiloh to worship. Her prayer named her affliction and asked that she be remembered. Then she made a vow: the son she asked to receive would be dedicated to the LORD for his whole life. Her request and her promise belonged to the same sentence.

“O LORD of Hosts, if only You will look upon the affliction of Your maidservant and remember me, not forgetting Your maidservant but giving her a son, then I will dedicate him to the LORD all the days of his life, and no razor shall ever come over his head.” Hannah kept on praying before the LORD. Eli watched her mouth.

Her lips moved, but he could hear no voice. Hannah was praying in her heart, and the priest who could see her could not hear what she was saying. He saw the movement of her mouth and decided she was drunk. The vow she had made was unknown to him.

“How long will you be drunk? Put away your wine!” Eli’s first words to Hannah were an accusation. She had come with a grief that had already kept her from eating, and now she had to explain herself to the priest beside the door.

“No, my lord,” Hannah replied. “I am a woman oppressed in spirit. I have not had any wine or strong drink, but I have poured out my soul before the LORD. Do not take your servant for a wicked woman; for all this time I have been praying out of the depth of my anguish and grief.”

She told him what he had been looking at. The moving lips, the silence, the length of time she had remained in prayer — all of it belonged to her anguish. She had drunk neither wine nor strong drink. What she had poured out was her soul.

Eli had spoken as though she needed to put something away. Hannah answered by telling him what she had brought before the LORD. She did not repeat the vow to him or explain the rivalry in her household. She named the distress from which she had been praying and asked him not to mistake her for a wicked woman.

“Go in peace,” Eli replied, “and may the God of Israel grant the petition you have asked of Him.” His answer left the petition where Hannah had placed it. He did not name a child or appoint a day. The priest who had accused her now wished that her prayer might be granted.

“May your maidservant find favor with you,” said Hannah. Then she went on her way and began eating again. Her face was no longer downcast. The account records the change in the same plain terms in which it had recorded her weeping and her refusal to eat.

The meal could be taken now, though no birth had yet been announced. Hannah had spoken her request and bound it to a promise reaching across a son’s whole life. Soon she and Elkanah would leave Shiloh for Ramah. She would go home carrying the vow she had made beside Eli’s chair.