“Then the woman went her way and ate,
and her face was no longer sad.”
Hannah, who would become Samuel’s mother, is
deeply grieved that she is unable to conceive. She has gone up with her husband
to the house of God in Shiloh, and she has prayed for a son, vowing that if her
prayer is answered, she will raise him as a Nazirite and give him wholly to the
service of God. Then she gets up, relieved of her distress, and goes her
way — not yet having received an answer to her prayer.
Seems a bit counterintuitive, doesn’t it?
