Hannah: a persistent woman

Hannah means 'God has favored me' (with a child)
Penin'nah means 'a precious stone', something like coral or pearl - in other words, beautiful but hard and cold
Elkanah means 'bought/owned by God'
Samuel means 'God heard' (Hannah's prayer)

• Don't give up hope. God is listening. Remember that there is purpose in everything God does, even if we don't see what it is.
• Kindness or malice? It's our choice. The main story is about the special nature of Samuel's birth, but it's also about the way women can be cruel to one another. Hannah has no child. She desperately wants one. Penin'nah has many children. Does she sympathize with Hannah and pity her pain? No. She enjoys rubbing salt into Hannah's wounded heart.

The story of Hannah has three episodes:
1 She is childless and unhappy (1 Samuel 1-8) Unhappy because she has no children and plagued by Peninn'nah, her husband's other wife, Hannah waits for God to hear the prayer of a barren woman.
2 Hannah's vow (1 Samuel 9-19) On a visit to God's shrine at Shiloh Hannah promises that, if God gives her a son, she will dedicate him as a Nazirite, a holy man of God. Watching her anguished prayer, Eli the priest at the shrine thinks she is drunk, but she convinces him she is sincere. He prays for her, that God will grant her wish.
3 Hannah fulfils her vow (1 Samuel 19-28, 2:1-10, 18-21) Hannah has a son, Samuel. Even though it must have caused her immeasurable pain, she honors her promise to God and takes her little son to be raised by the priests at Shiloh. She visits him every year, taking a linen garment called an 'ephod' which marks her son as having priestly status.

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Hannah was a young woman married to a man called Elkanah. He loved her tenderly and she loved him. But he had another wife, Penin'nah, not loved so much but remarkably fertile (this story is set between the lawless period of the Judges and the more settled time of King David; it was still common for a man to have several wives, as it had been in the time of the Genesis stories). While Hannah had never had a child, Penin'nah was surrounded by both sons and daughters.
Penin'nah saw her numerous children as her glory, and indeed they were. She thought they should have made her the apple of her husband's eye. They did not. Elkanah was deeply in love with the barren wife Hannah, instead of the fertile Penin'nah.
One can sympathize with her pain. But jealousy can make a woman cruel, and Penin'nah was no exception. She tormented Hannah about her lack of children. The Bible text says she provoked Hannah severely, irritating her constantly by mocking Hannah's lack of children. This went on for years, especially at those time that Hannah prayed for children at the holy shrine at Shiloh, about twenty miles north of Jerusalem.
One year when these three people were at Shiloh, Elkanah tried clumsily to comfort Hannah: 'aren't I more to you than ten sons?' he asked. Hannah's response is not recorded. But once again she presented herself at the shrine and began her prayer. 
The shrine/temple had seats beside the door, and on one of these sat Eli, the shrine's priest. When Hannah began to pray he saw her deep distress, but she prayed silently so that he did not hear her prayer.

The vow at Shiloh  
1 Samuel 9-19
Why did she pray silently? Because she was making a vow to God. At that time a husband could rescind any vow his wife made if he did so within a day of the vow being made. Hannah, desperate, did not want this to happen, so she mouthed the words without actually speaking them aloud.
What was this vow to which Elkanah might have objected? That if God gave her a son, she would give this son back to God by dedicated him as a Nazirite, a holy man sworn to serve God all his life. 'He shall drink neither wine nor intoxicants, and no razor shall touch his head.' Verse 11.
If Elkanah had heard this vow, he would surely have objected. The boy after all would be his son as well as hers. So she mouthed the words silently. (It is worth noting that at that time a clever deception was admired.)
Eli the priest, watching her, assumed she was drunk  (there was a fair amount of feasting at festival time). He was outraged that she would approach the shrine intoxicated, and said so, telling her she was making a drunken spectacle of herself. Not so, she replied. She was deeply unhappy but certainly not drunk.
Mollified, Eli blessed her and prayed that her request might be granted. His words seemed to have a profound effect on her. She was convinced she would conceive at last. And indeed she did. In due time she bore a son.
Only then did she tell her husband Elkanah about her vow. As well she might, because according to the words of the vow she was obliged to hand over this newborn baby to the priests at the shrine.

She honors her promise  1 Samuel 19-28, 2:1-10, 18-21
Elkanah's reaction can only be imagined.
It cannot have been favorable. Perhaps to mollify him, she made a compromise. She would keep the baby until he was weaned at about three years. This would give him a better chance of surviving the separation from his family. Only then would she take him to be given to the priests at Shiloh.
This she did. When the time came that the little boy was weaned, she took him to Shiloh, just as she had promised, and dedicated the boy to God's service in a special ceremony. Even at this stage she could have redeemed her vow by paying a sum of money to the priests at Shiloh, but she did not choose to do this. She was a woman who knew her own mind, and so she stuck to her original intention.
At the time, Hannah made a special prayer of thanksgiving to God. This prayer (song) has special significance for Christians: the Magnificat, spoken by Mary the mother of Jesus and recorded in Luke's gospel, is modeled on the Song of Hannah.
That was not the end of the story. The Bible records that Hannah used to visit her son at Shiloh every year, taking a special gift she had made herself: a little linen ephod for the boy, presumably in a bigger size each year. Wearing this garment marked Samuel as being of a priestly status. And she was blessed with more children: three sons and two daughters, no less. There is no further mention of Penin'nah.