Samuel's Birth and Dedication

The event

In the hill country of Ephraim, a woman named Hannah wept before the LORD at Shiloh, pleading for a son and vowing that if He answered her, she would give the boy back to His service for all his days. God heard her prayer, and Samuel was born — his very name recalling that he was 'asked of the LORD.' Once weaned, Hannah kept her vow and brought her son to Shiloh to serve under the aging priest Eli, and Samuel grew up sleeping within sound of the ark of the covenant itself.

Hannah's song of praise does something remarkable for a story about one family's answered prayer: it ends by looking ahead to 'his king... his anointed,' the first hint in Israel's Scriptures that God intends to raise up a monarchy. It is a fitting overture, because the boy she dedicates that day will grow up to anoint both of Israel's first two kings, Saul and David.

We aren't told exactly when Samuel was born — Scripture is far more interested in why than when. Working backward from Saul's anointing and forward from Eli's long priesthood, evangelical chronologies generally place his birth in the first half of the eleventh century BC, a generation before the monarchy begins. Samuel would go on to serve as the last of Israel's judges and the first in a long line of prophets, standing at the hinge point between two eras of Israel's story.

Dating

No date is given in the text itself. The approximate date is inferred by allowing time for Samuel to reach adulthood, judge Israel for many years, and grow old enough that his sons were also serving as judges (1 Samuel 8:1) before Israel's elders asked for a king. Estimates among evangelical scholars vary by a decade or two.

Scripture references

• 1 Samuel 1:1-28
• 1 Samuel 2:1-11