Read the passage and its setting
1 Samuel 1:24–1:28, King James Version
Italic words were supplied in the English translation for clarity.
1 Samuel 1:24–1:28
Hannah brings Samuel to Shiloh and fulfills her vow
The Main Point
After weaning, Hannah brings Samuel with offerings, identifies herself to Eli, recounts the answered petition, and gives the child to lifelong service before worship.
What Is Happening Here?
After weaning, Hannah brings Samuel with offerings, identifies herself to Eli, recounts the answered petition, and gives the child to lifelong service before worship.
What Came Before—and What Comes Next?
1 Samuel 1:19–1:23 has just established this movement: After worship and return to Ramah, Hannah conceives, names Samuel in connection with her petition, and tells Elkanah she will remain with the child until he is weaned.
1 Samuel 2:1–2:10 next develops the story this way: Hannah's prayer celebrates God's holiness, knowledge, reversals of strength and hunger, care for the lowly, judgment, and future strength for a king and anointed one.
Follow the Transition to Kingship
See why this section appears here and how the author's scene leads to its meaning.
Why Is This Passage Here?
After weaning, Hannah brings Samuel with offerings, identifies herself to Eli, recounts the answered petition, and gives the child to lifelong service before worship. It carries the book's leadership transition forward while keeping affected people in view.
Follow the Scene
After weaning, Hannah brings Samuel with offerings, identifies herself to Eli, recounts the answered petition, and gives the child to lifelong service before worship.
The scene's speech, action, or evaluation sets up the next movement without making every narrated choice exemplary.
What Is the Author Saying?
Why This Interpretation Fits
Narrative movement
After weaning, Hannah brings Samuel with offerings, identifies herself to Eli, recounts the answered petition, and gives the child to lifelong service before worship.
Language control
The KJV renders wordplay about Samuel being asked for and given over; it does not reduce him to property.
Ethical boundary
This dedication does not authorize parents, leaders, or institutions to coerce children, romanticize separation, or treat vows as overriding a child's safety and personhood.
Understand the Meaning and Its Boundaries
Clarify the words that matter and keep the conclusion no broader than the passage allows.
Words That Matter
lent him to the LORD
See the cited Masoretic Hebrew record ·
The KJV renders wordplay about Samuel being asked for and given over; it does not reduce him to property.
What the Passage Is Not Saying
Reading 1 Samuel 1:24–1:28 within the complete received narrative rules out these uses:
This dedication does not authorize parents, leaders, or institutions to coerce children, romanticize separation, or treat vows as overriding a child's safety and personhood.
Context check: After weaning, Hannah brings Samuel with offerings, identifies herself to Eli, recounts the answered petition, and gives the child to lifelong service before worship. The scene's contribution lies in this full progression, with its affected people and unresolved questions still in view.
What Remains True Today
This unit calls for truthfulness about what happened, humility about what remains uncertain, and refusal of the misuse it names: This dedication does not authorize parents, leaders, or institutions to coerce children, romanticize separation, or treat vows as overriding a child's safety and personhood.
Respond and Remember
Let the meaning shape life carefully, then practice explaining the section in context.
How This Should Shape Us
Why these applications follow
After weaning, Hannah brings Samuel with offerings, identifies herself to Eli, recounts the answered petition, and gives the child to lifelong service before worship.
After weaning, Hannah brings Samuel with offerings, identifies herself to Eli, recounts the answered petition, and gives the child to lifelong service before worship. The scene's contribution lies in this full progression, with its affected people and unresolved questions still in view.
This unit calls for truthfulness about what happened, humility about what remains uncertain, and refusal of the misuse it names: This dedication does not authorize parents, leaders, or institutions to coerce children, romanticize separation, or treat vows as overriding a child's safety and personhood.
What accountable response follows?
Retell the whole movement—including this sequence: After weaning, Hannah brings Samuel with offerings, identifies herself to Eli, recounts the answered petition, and gives the child to lifelong service before worship.—before proposing an analogy, and reject this misuse: This dedication does not authorize parents, leaders, or institutions to coerce children, romanticize separation, or treat vows as overriding a child's safety and personhood.
A Concrete Example
A teacher can begin with this movement: After weaning, Hannah brings Samuel with offerings, identifies herself to Eli, recounts the answered petition, and gives the child to lifelong service before worship. Then ask which modern conclusion the evidence does and does not support.
Teach It Back
Explain 1 Samuel 1:24–1:28 in your own words, including its movement, one source-controlled detail, one uncertainty, one affected person, and one misuse the context rules out.
Your explanation stays in this browser. It is not sent or saved.
Go Deeper
The main explanation above stands on its own. Open these optional sections for fuller language, history, disagreements, and source locations.
Read it sentence by sentenceEach line inside the larger movement
Narrative movement
After weaning, Hannah brings Samuel with offerings, identifies herself to Eli, recounts the answered petition, and gives the child to lifelong service before worship.
Language control
The KJV renders wordplay about Samuel being asked for and given over; it does not reduce him to property.
Ethical boundary
This dedication does not authorize parents, leaders, or institutions to coerce children, romanticize separation, or treat vows as overriding a child's safety and personhood.
Original-language wording and grammarTechnical detail appears only where it helps
lent him to the LORD
The KJV renders wordplay about Samuel being asked for and given over; it does not reduce him to property.
How certain? probableWhat the first readers would have understoodRelevant history and culture
Ancient setting and recoverable limits
After weaning, Hannah brings Samuel with offerings, identifies herself to Eli, recounts the answered petition, and gives the child to lifelong service before worship. Historical and social reconstruction remains limited by the received narrative, textual plurality, and selective comparative evidence; no source proves every speech, motive, number, miracle, or theological explanation.
How certain? probableWhy translations sometimes differMaterial translation choices
KJV language and material alternatives
The KJV expression “lent him to the LORD” is read with the Masoretic wording and the inspected NET notes. The KJV renders wordplay about Samuel being asked for and given over; it does not reduce him to property. Material textual differences remain visible where they affect the unit.
How certain? probableEarlier Scripture and inherited backgroundSupported quotations, allusions, and inherited ideas
Torah, Judges, Samuel-Kings, and Jewish reading
Judges, Torah, and the continuing Samuel-Kings narrative provide the nearest literary and theological horizon; their ancient peoples and conflicts must not be flattened into modern labels.
How certain? strongHow this connects with the rest of ScriptureThe passage's own meaning remains primary
Responsible canonical connections
Later biblical reception may compare monarchy, anointing, lament, covenant, and kingship only after this unit's own ancient setting and literary work are established.
How certain? probableTextual variantsManuscript differences only when they affect meaning
Textual and reconstruction limits
Sacrificial numbers, the sense of ‘lent,’ and the relation to Nazirite traditions vary across witnesses and interpretations; the text stresses Hannah's fulfilled vow without narrating Samuel's consent.
How certain? probableWhere careful interpreters disagreeThe strongest options and their difficulties
Where do careful readers disagree?
Best judgment: Sacrificial numbers, the sense of ‘lent,’ and the relation to Nazirite traditions vary across witnesses and interpretations; the text stresses Hannah's fulfilled vow without narrating Samuel's consent.
How certain? probableTheology that emerges from this passageConclusions drawn after reading the complete section
Theological contribution
The received narrative joins divine judgment or mercy with accountable human action: After weaning, Hannah brings Samuel with offerings, identifies herself to Eli, recounts the answered petition, and gives the child to lifelong service before worship.
How certain? strongTheological contribution
Within 1 Samuel's received movement from Shiloh through contested monarchy to Gilboa, After weaning, Hannah brings Samuel with offerings, identifies herself to Eli, recounts the answered petition, and gives the child to lifelong service before worship.
How certain? strongCommon ways this passage gets misusedFair explanation, context check, and stronger reading
This dedication does not authorize parents, leaders, or institutions to coerce children, romanticize separation, or treat vows as overriding a child's safety and personhood.
A vivid line from 1 Samuel 1:24–1:28 can be detached from its speaker, literary form, ancient power, affected people, material uncertainty, and later qualification.
After weaning, Hannah brings Samuel with offerings, identifies herself to Eli, recounts the answered petition, and gives the child to lifelong service before worship. The scene's contribution lies in this full progression, with its affected people and unresolved questions still in view.
This unit calls for truthfulness about what happened, humility about what remains uncertain, and refusal of the misuse it names: This dedication does not authorize parents, leaders, or institutions to coerce children, romanticize separation, or treat vows as overriding a child's safety and personhood.
The text-supported movement remains: After weaning, Hannah brings Samuel with offerings, identifies herself to Eli, recounts the answered petition, and gives the child to lifelong service before worship.
Research trail and exact locationsThe source record behind this section
Supports: Exact displayed KJV words, verse order, paragraph metadata, supplied-word markup, and complete unit coverage.
1 Samuel 1:24–1:28, pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM-derived repository corpus
Supports: Masoretic Hebrew wording and morphology, with the two KJV-Hebrew versification shifts stated rather than silently offset.
Open Scriptures MorphHB v2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/1Sam.xml, OSIS 1:24–1:28; KJV 20:42 spans Hebrew 20:42–21:1, KJV 21:1–15 maps to Hebrew 21:2–16, KJV 23:29 maps to Hebrew 24:1, and KJV 24:1–22 maps to Hebrew 24:2–23
Supports: Only the translator notes actually printed for these verses, used for lexical, grammatical, textual, historical, and older-English controls.
NET Bible First Edition Notes, 1 Samuel PDF, printed pp. 504–543, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 1:24–1:28
Supports: Abstract-supported importance of the Septuagint for 1 Samuel and methodological caution about textual plurality; no unchecked verse reconstruction.
Aejmelaeus, Oxford Handbook of Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (2025), pp. 191–212, official abstract and §10.4 publisher metadata on 1 Samuel
Supports: Abstract-supported textual and interpretive alternatives around Hannah's vow and Elkanah's words; no settled solution is claimed.
Fidler, 'A Wife's Vow—The Husband's Woe?,' ZAW 118.3 (2006), pp. 374–388, official abstract and the discussion of 1 Samuel 1:21, 23
Supports: One literary, ethical, and political account of divine and human violence; publisher-visible scope does not establish consensus.
Gilmour, Divine Violence in the Book of Samuel (2021/2022), official abstract and TOC: relevant discussion for 1 Samuel 1:24–1:28, including 1 Samuel 12 pp. 71–81, Saul's rejection pp. 90–139, Eli's house pp. 140–150, or ark violence pp. 154–185 as applicable
Supports: One relatively early integrated/two-edition account of composition, structure, and historiographic value, retained as a contested model.
Garsiel, JHS 10.5 (2010), pp. 1–42, named structural or composition discussion covering the movement that includes 1 Samuel 1:24–1:28
Sources for This Section
These records identify the source, the claim it supports, and the exact location used. A source remains evidence to evaluate; it does not replace the biblical text.
Biblical text
King James (Authorized) Version — eng-kjv2006
eBible.org and CrossWire Bible Society
USFM archive eng-kjv2006_usfm.zip; source files dated 2026-08-19; downloaded 2026-08-24; archive SHA-256 aec1b3b26c622fd3d963d2bbac963016b9513246ffbfa20da00bb100372ea007; normalized corpus SHA-256 09aef51d90488aa7b9722b3fd9a93f4b25f6bf2064c5fd798fb39673c300ddf2.
Supports: Exact displayed KJV words, verse order, paragraph metadata, supplied-word markup, and complete unit coverage.
Exact location: 1 Samuel 1:24–1:28, pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM-derived repository corpus
Open source ↗hebrew text and morphology
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible: 1 Samuel
Open Scriptures
Open Scriptures, release 2.2
Supports: Masoretic Hebrew wording and morphology, with the two KJV-Hebrew versification shifts stated rather than silently offset.
Exact location: Open Scriptures MorphHB v2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/1Sam.xml, OSIS 1:24–1:28; KJV 20:42 spans Hebrew 20:42–21:1, KJV 21:1–15 maps to Hebrew 21:2–16, KJV 23:29 maps to Hebrew 24:1, and KJV 24:1–22 maps to Hebrew 24:2–23
Open source ↗translation and translator notes
NET Bible First Edition Notes: 1 Samuel
Biblical Studies Press
Biblical Studies Press, 2006
Supports: Only the translator notes actually printed for these verses, used for lexical, grammatical, textual, historical, and older-English controls.
Exact location: NET Bible First Edition Notes, 1 Samuel PDF, printed pp. 504–543, exact tc/tn/sn entries attached to 1:24–1:28
Open source ↗scholarly handbook chapter abstract and metadata
The Significance of the Septuagint in the Textual Study of the Hebrew Bible
Anneli Aejmelaeus
The Oxford Handbook of Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 2025
Supports: Abstract-supported importance of the Septuagint for 1 Samuel and methodological caution about textual plurality; no unchecked verse reconstruction.
Exact location: Aejmelaeus, Oxford Handbook of Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (2025), pp. 191–212, official abstract and §10.4 publisher metadata on 1 Samuel
Open source ↗peer reviewed scholarly article abstract
A Wife's Vow—The Husband's Woe?
Ruth Fidler
Zeitschrift fur die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 118.3, 2006
Supports: Abstract-supported textual and interpretive alternatives around Hannah's vow and Elkanah's words; no settled solution is claimed.
Exact location: Fidler, 'A Wife's Vow—The Husband's Woe?,' ZAW 118.3 (2006), pp. 374–388, official abstract and the discussion of 1 Samuel 1:21, 23
Open source ↗scholarly monograph abstract and contents
Divine Violence in the Book of Samuel
Rachelle Gilmour
Oxford University Press, 2021 online; 2022 print
Supports: One literary, ethical, and political account of divine and human violence; publisher-visible scope does not establish consensus.
Exact location: Gilmour, Divine Violence in the Book of Samuel (2021/2022), official abstract and TOC: relevant discussion for 1 Samuel 1:24–1:28, including 1 Samuel 12 pp. 71–81, Saul's rejection pp. 90–139, Eli's house pp. 140–150, or ark violence pp. 154–185 as applicable
Open source ↗peer reviewed open access scholarly article
The Book of Samuel: Its Composition, Structure and Significance as a Historiographical Source
Moshe Garsiel
The Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 10.5, 2010
Supports: One relatively early integrated/two-edition account of composition, structure, and historiographic value, retained as a contested model.
Exact location: Garsiel, JHS 10.5 (2010), pp. 1–42, named structural or composition discussion covering the movement that includes 1 Samuel 1:24–1:28
Open source ↗