1 Samuel 2:8-10 – Praying With The Big Picture in Mind

Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ The Redeemer Church, Manhattan, KS, 12 July 2020

Omiting greyed-out text should bring delivery time down around 45 minutes.

Introduction

• In previous sermons, we have looked at the first seven verses of Hannah’s prayer-song of triumphant worship in 1 Samuel chapter 2, speaking of

  • the results of faith and the greatness of God,

  • as well as His revolutionary power to turn things rightside up militarily, economically, medically, and socially.

  • Now, I want to look at the end of her prayer and consider her prophetic outlook on the big picture of God’s kingdom and on Jesus Himself.

• “[Hannah] is by the Jews (T. Megillah, fol. 14. 1) reckoned one of the seven prophetesses; and indeed in this song she not only relates the gracious experiences of divine goodness [with which] she had been favoured... but prophesies of things that should be done hereafter in Israel, and particularly of the Messiah and of his kingdom.” ~John Gill

• In this final look at Hannah’s prayer, I want to apply her example of looking beyond our present circumstances to the future triumphs of Jesus Christ in our prayers as well.

v.8 He who causes the poor to get up from the dust lifts up the needy from the dumps to reside among noblemen. He bequeaths to them a throne of glory, because the substructures of the earth belong to Yahweh, and He sets the world upon them.

• The context of Hannah’s statement that God “raises up the poor from the dust” seems to be in the promise God made to the children of Israel to establish them as a nation in their own land after they had been slaves in the dust of Egypt.¹

  • Hannah broadens that statement from its original context to apply to any believer, and David followed that example² with his own testimony in Psalm 40:2 “Then He brought me up from the pit of chaos – from the slimy mud – and He got my feet up on a rock-mountain; He steadied my steps." (NAW)

  • Isaiah then applied this concept to the Messiah, broadening its application to the raising up of us Gentiles too! Isaiah 49:6 "Your being for me a servant to establish the tribes of Jacob and to cause to turn back the preserved of Israel is insubstantial, I will also give you for a light of nations, to be my salvation unto the end of the earth." (NAW)

  • Jesus said, “Blessed are the ones who are lowly in spirit, because the kingdom of heaven is theirs... Blessed are the meek, because it is they who will inherit the earth.” (Matt. 5:3-12, NAW) This is our God. This is what He does.

• He will lift up the needy from the dumps/dunghill/ash-heap to reside among princes/noblemen

  • This reminds me of Job (who literally sat on an ash-heap in his misery superintended by God, but later became one of the most influential men in the Middle-East³),

  • as well as Joseph (who suffered for years as a slave and a prisoner before being raised to prime minister of the Egyptian empire, and who said of all, “God intended it for good.”). God was in charge of their fall and rise.

  • Jesus taught in His parable of “The Rich Man & Lazarus” that this reversal doesn’t al­ways come in this life, but it is certain in the afterlife. “Dives” ends up “tormented in the flame” in hell while the sickly beggarman Lazarus reclines “in the bosom of Abraham” in heaven.

  • “Promotion comes not by chance, but from the counsel of God.” ~M. Henry

  • But wait, Hannah was not a poor woman. Hannah did not live out of a trash dump. She was already living the life of a noble woman. I thought this was supposed to be the testi­mony of a barren woman to whom God had given a child. Why is she talking about poor people being lifted up to noble status? Because this is prophecy. She’s not talking about herself; she’s looking past her own life and talking about the coming priest who will re­vive the worship of God, she’s talking about the coming King who will rise from farm­hand and outlaw to King of Israel, and even beyond that to the coming Messiah Jesus:

• “He bequeaths/causes them to inherit a throne of glory”

  • Jeremiah 17:12 tells us that the sanctuary was “a throne of glory,”⁴ and, indeed, Hannah’s son Samuel received that “seat of honor,” as we’ll see later on in 1 Samuel.

  • This song is a harbinger of the priestly revolution that is about to happen when Eli and his sons are ousted and Samuel installed as the nation’s high priest.

  • “The ‘proud and lofty,’ whom God humbles and casts down, are not the heathen or the national foes of Israel, and the “poor and wretched” whom He exalts and makes rich are not the Israelites as such; but the former are the ungodly, and the latter the pious, in Israel itself.” ~Keil & Delitzsch

  • The next passages in the Bible⁵ about a “throne of glory” are the ones about Jesus’s throne of judgment when He returns:

    • Matthew 25:31-32 "So, whenever the Son of Man shall come in His glory and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit upon His throne of glory, and all the nations will be gathered before Him..." (NAW, cf. Mt. 19:28)

    • Revelation 5:13 "...Blessing and honor and glory and power Be to Him who sits on the throne, And to the Lamb, forever and ever!" (NKJV)

    • Sure, God gave David the throne of Israel, but God promised David that one of his descendants would reign forever over the whole world. That’s why the Gospel of Matthew starts with a genealogy proving that Jesus was a descendant of David.

• The end of verse 8 gives a reason for why God can bring about such amazing reversals of fortune: the pillars/foundations/substructures of the earth belong to Him.

  • This Hebrew word matzuqay seems to have a root meaning of “extruding” something so that it is “straight” and “narrow.”

  • It pictures a metal stand that you put stuff on top of⁶,

    • whether that’s the bronze pillars which held up the roof of Solomon’s temple,

    • or the N.T. church which is “the pillar and pedestal of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15),

    • or even a stand that we use today to mount our P.A. speakers on.

  • The logic is that if God owns the substructure, He can control what goes on top of it. Like, if you own the stage, you can choose who you want to be on that stage.

  • Indeed, Jesus said, "To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne." (Rev. 3:21, NKJV) Christ decides who gets to sit on the throne!

  • Hannah seems to have deduced this from Elihu’s remark about God in the book of Job (which I think she is quoting here) “Who on earth holds accountability over Him, and Who sets up the whole world? (Job 34:13, NAW) God is the one who set up everything on planet earth⁷.

• Hannah continues on this theme in...

v.9 It is the way of His godly one that He keeps, while He silences the wicked ones in the darkness. {He granted the thing vowed to the one who vowed, and He blessed the years of the righteous,} because it is not through manpower that a man prevails.

• God’s attitude and actions toward the chesed/godly/faithful vs. the rasha’iym/wicked are contrasted:

  • God keeps/guards the way/feet of His godly saint so that she/he can keep walking forward.

    • The DSS reads “the way of” instead of “the feet of,” and this would echo God’s promise through Moses⁸ in Psalm 91:11 “...He shall give His angels charge over you, To keep you in all your ways.” (NKJV)

    • Also, if the original wording of Hannah’s song is preserved in the oldest manuscript, then Solomon quoted her a few generations later in Proverbs 2:8b "...He keeps the way of His godly ones." (NAW)

    • Alternately, if the Masoretic text is the one that preserved the original wording of Hannah’s song, then Solomon quoted it that way too in Proverbs 3:26 “For the LORD will be your confidence, And will keep your foot from being caught.” (NKJV)

  • Meanwhile, God “stills/stops/silences the wicked in darkness” so they can’t move.

    • “God withdraws the light of His grace, so that they fall into distress and calamity.” ~Keil & Delitzsch

    • This “silencing/stopping” of the wicked can be seen in the song of Moses in Exodus 15:15-16 “Then the chiefs of Edom will be dismayed; The mighty men of Moab, Trembling will take hold of them; All the inhabitants of Canaan will melt away. Fear and dread will fall on them; By the greatness of Your arm They will be as still as a stone, Till Your people pass over, O LORD, Till the people pass over Whom You have purchased.” (NKJV)

    • And David picks up on the same theme after Hannah in Psalm 31:14-19 ..."I will not be ashamed, Yahweh, because I called out to You. Evil men will be ashamed; they will be silent in hell. Lips that speak falsehood against the righteous – licentious-speech with haughtiness and scorn will be shut up.” (NAW, cf. Isa. 23:2)

    • Jesus also taught this in His parable of the wedding feast: “Now when the king came... he saw there a man who had not clothed himself with wedding clothes, and he says to him, ‘Hey, how did you get in here without having wedding clothes?’ And he was silenced. Then the King said to the waiters, ‘After you have tied him hand and foot, remove him and throw him out into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth...’” (Matt. 22:11-13, NAW)

  • God kept Hanna in the path of faith – the path of waiting on the Lord, and God brought Peninnah to a point where she stopped making fun of Hannah. But, Hanna wasn’t just talking about herself. God’s ways are bigger than just one person; these trends hold true in all our lives.

  • I recently got the following report from a Christian in China: “A few brothers and sisters got together to do door-to-door evangelism. During the pandemic, it was a very good opportunity to share the Word of God with people because everybody was ordered to shelter in place. We put on our P[ersonal]P[rotective]E[quipment], wearing gowns and masks to knock at doors. Some opened and some refused to let us in. One of the house owners opened the door, asking us what we wanted to do. We told them that we wanted to share the good news with them. One of the owners asked us, “Do you know who I am? I was a director of the Religious Affairs Bureau of the city government and I could send you to jail!” We were shocked. But to our surprise, his two children asked us to go ahead to share the story of God. We did. After we talked about the death and resurrection of Jesus, they said they would accept Jesus. We didn’t understand how their minds were changed. The old man then told us that he had studied the Bible for many years for his job. Finally, he said he had protected Christians, and only sent the heresy people to jail.”

• The oldest manuscripts of 1 Samuel 2 include an additional statement paralleling Hannah’s testimony at the end of chapter 1: “He granted the thing vowed^DSS/requested^LXX to the one who vowed/requested, and He blessed the years of the righteous.”

  • In Genesis 28:20 Jacob made a vow, saying, "If God will be with me, and keep me in this way that I am going, and give me bread to eat and clothing to put on... I will surely give a tithe..." And God granted that request and blessed his years.

  • In 1 Sam. 1:11, Hannah “vowed a vow… Yahweh of Hosts, if you will... give to your maid a male descendant, then I will give him to You...” God granted that request and blessed her.

  • And whether the statement about God “blessing the years of the righteous” was in Hannah’s original song or not, we do know from Deuteronomy 2:7 that “the Lord... God blessed [righteous Hebrews] in their trudging through the great wilderness those forty years. The Lord... God was with [them and they] lacked nothing.” (NKJV)

  • And we know from Revelation 20:6 that the righteous in Christ will be “blessed and holy… [O]ver such, the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.” (NKJV) Talk about the “years of the righteous” being “blessed”!

• The end of v.9 gives the reason why the righteous are preserved while the wicked are stopped in their tracks – and why the righteous get what they ask for and enjoy blessing throughout the years. It’s not because they are stronger, healthier, richer, or more powerful. It’s not due to man-power; it’s due to God’s power! God is the one who “lifted them up...”

  • Hannah said in v.4, “The bow of prevailing/mighty-men came undone/was shattered”… Contrast that with Genesis 49:24 “But his [Jacob's] bow remained in strength [אֵיתָן], And the arms of his hands were made strong [יָּפֹזּוּ] By the hands of the Mighty God of Jacob... The blessings of your father Have excelled the blessings of my ancestors...” (NKJV)

  • Hannah’s explanation that “it is not through manpower that a man prevails” could well be a reflection on the way Israel obtained its military victories over the years,

    • from the parting of the Red Sea and deliverance from slavery in Egypt, which Moses attributed – not to human might but – to God’s “power” in Exodus 15:6 – and throughout the rest of the Pentateuch,

    • to Joshua’s victory in the battle of Rephidim in which he “prevailed” only as long as Moses held up his hands in prayer, clearly attributing the victory to God’s power.⁹

    • For these reasons, Moses had warned the people of Israel, “[Beware lest] …. you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might [‎עֹצֶם] of my hand have gained me this wealth.’ ...[R]emember the LORD your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth...” (Deut. 8:17-18, NKJV)

  • The book of Job was probably also available to Hannah, and it says, “The Almighty is beyond our reach and exalted in power; in his justice and great righteousness, he does not oppress.” (Job 37:23, NIV)

  • True to the pattern of Scripture, David picked up on this same theme in Psalm 33:16-19 “The king does not exist who is secured by a lot of power [‎חָיִל]; a champion does not deliver himself by a lot of strength. A disappointment is the horse when it comes to security; even with a lot of power, it will not escape. Look, the eye of Yahweh is on those who respect Him (because they are hoping for His lovingkindness) in order to deliver their soul from death and to keep them alive...” (NAW)

  • And who can forget the Prophet Zechariah’s words to those in the New Covenant: “‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ Says the LORD of hosts.” (Zech. 4:6, NKJV)

• And not only does God have the power to preserve the godly and punish the ungodly, He also has the desire to do it.

v.10 His rival against him will be undone by Yahweh {Yahweh Himself is holy. Let not the wise boast in his wisdom, and let not the strong boast in his strength, and let not the rich boast in his riches, for in this let the boaster boast: in understanding and knowing Yahweh and doing justice and righteousness in the midst of the earth.} Yahweh will rumble [against] them in the heavens. He will judge the ends of the earth and give strength to His king and lift up the horn of His Anointed One.

• This doesn’t sound like a do-nothing God who just sits back in heaven and watches! Our God is active in the affairs of men, deposing the wise, the strong, and the rich who are ungodly, and exalting those who know and obey Him.

• In this last verse of her prayer, Hannah chiastically comes back to the word that she used in v.4: The adversary/contender/opposition/rival will be undone/shattered. (Most contemporary English versions make the subject plural, but it is not plural in any of the original manu­scripts, except in some editorial notes.)

• The oldest-known manuscripts of this passage have additional text that is not in modern English Bibles: “Yahweh Himself is holy. Let not the wise boast in his wisdom, and let not the strong boast in his strength, and let not the rich boast in his riches, for in this let the boaster boast: in understanding and knowing Yahweh and doing justice and righteousness in the midst of the earth.”

  • This happens to be almost word-for-word the same as Jeremiah 9:23-24, with no significant changes beyond using synonymous words, so some people think that some scribe zoned out while copying 1 Samuel and accidentally inserted text from the book of Jeremiah into here.

  • However, since it is in both the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the Septuagint, and since it is not word-for-word the same as either the Greek or Hebrew of Jeremiah 9, it couldn’t have been produced by a mere scribal error. It had to have been supported by multiple scribes over hundreds of years.

  • I suspect that this is not a passage copied from Jeremiah, after all, but rather that Jeremiah gave an approximate quote of Hannah. I don’t want to be dogmatic on that point, but I definitely want to ask Jeremiah about it when I get to heaven because it’s mighty curious. At any rate, whether you think these words are original to Hannah or to Jeremiah, they are in the Bible either way and can be taken seriously as God’s words.

• Once again, Hannah was not just praying about her circumstances; she was looking off into the future. The prophecy that the LORD would “rumble/thunder” against enemies from heaven was literally fulfilled a little later on in 1 Sam. 7:10 “Now as Samuel was offering up the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to battle against Israel. But the LORD thundered with a loud thunder upon the Philistines that day, and so confused them that they were overcome before Israel.” (NKJV, cf. Ps. 18:14) I can just imagine Samuel standing there in front of the altar saying, “Hey, my mom prophecied that God would do this! No really, she did!”

• The prophecy that God will “judge the ends of the earth” speaks of God’s total sovereignty both now and forever. Yahweh is not a local tribal deity with limited power; He claims jurisdiction over all nations, and He promises to come one day and judge them all at once.

• God already established his jurisdiction to judge the nation of Egypt in the Exodus. Genesis 15:14 "And also the nation whom they serve I will judge [Egypt]; afterward they [Israel] shall come out with great possessions." (NKJV)

• Job’s friend Elihu also spoke of God as a judge: Job 35:13-14 "Surely God will not listen to empty talk, Nor will the Almighty regard it. Although you say you do not see Him, Yet justice is before Him, and you must wait for Him." (NKJV)

• And in Deuteronomy 32:36, God promised that He would judge for His people: "For the LORD will judge His people And have compassion on His servants, When He sees that their power is gone..." (NKJV)

• David carried that theme forward in the Psalms:

  • Psalm 9:7-8 "But as for Yahweh, He will be in office forever; He has prepared His bench for the judgment. And He Himself will judge the world with righteousness; He will adjudicate for peoples with things that are right." (NAW)

  • Psalm 98:9 "For He is coming to judge [שׁפט] the earth. With righteousness He shall judge the world, And the peoples with equity." (NKJV)

• And then there’s the major prophets:

  • Jer. 25:30-31 “...The LORD will roar [ישׁאג] from on high, And utter His voice from His holy habitation... Against all the inhabitants of the earth. A noise will come to the ends of the earth—For the LORD has a controversy with the nations; He will plead His case with all flesh. He will give those who are wicked to the sword...” (NKJV)

  • Isaiah 11:4 "But with righteousness He shall judge [שׁפט] the poor, And decide with equity for the meek of the earth; He shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, And with the breath of His lips He shall slay the wicked." (NKJV)

• And don’t forget the Apostles!

  • Acts 17:31 "...[God] has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead." (NKJV)

  • 2 Tim. 4:1 "...the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing..." (NKJV)

  • Hebrews 10:30 "...THE LORD WILL JUDGE HIS PEOPLE.... 12:23 ...God the Judge of all..." (NKJV)

  • James 5:9 "...Behold, the Judge is standing at the door!" (NKJV)

  • 1 Peter 4:5 "They will render an account to the One who is preparing to judge the living and the dead..." (NAW)

• He will give strength to His king and lift up the horn of His Anointed One

  • But in Hannah’s day, there had never been a king in Israel before. The only person mentioned before 1 Samuel as being “anointed” was the priest in Leviticus. (It was only later in 1 Samuel that Saul – and then David – were anointed to become the first kings of Israel.) This is therefore a prophecy of the future. Hannah is looking beyond herself, beyond her son Samuel, and out to the future when God would raise up kings – and beyond that to the future when God would raise up the King of Kings, Jesus, whose title is “The Anointed One” which in Hebrew is “Messiah” and in Greek is “Christ.”

  • Already-existing scripture could have informed Hannah’s theology on this, for God had promised Abraham that “kings would come from” him (Gen. 17:6), and the book of Deut. (17:14ff) contained laws concerning the future prospect of having kings. (Goldman)

  • “David's victories and dominions reached far, but the uttermost parts of the earth are promised to the Messiah for his possession (Psalm 2:8), to be either reduced to his golden sceptre or ruined by his iron rod.” ~Matthew Henry

  • “The exaltation of the horn of the anointed... goes on in the advancing spread of the kingdom of Christ, and will eventually attain to its eternal consummation in the judgment of the last day, through which all the enemies of Christ will be made His footstool.” ~Keil & Delitzsch

  • As I mentioned in an earlier sermon, I believe that the “lifting of the horn” is to sound a trumpet-blast of triumph. I just recently saw another correlation to this in a missionary newsletter from the Democratic Republic of Congo in central Africa. When the people of the Yansi tribe celebrate, they lift hollowed-out elephant tusks to their lips and blow through a hole in the side to make a musical sound.

  • Consider also the fulfilment of Hannah’s prophecy in the Judgment Day described in the book of Revelation: “Then the seventh angel[’s trumpet] sounded: And there were loud voices in heaven, saying, ‘The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!’ And the twenty-four elders who sat before God on their thrones fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying: ‘We give You thanks, O Lord God Almighty, The One who is and who was and who is to come, Because You have taken Your great power and reigned. The nations were angry, and Your wrath has come, And the time of the dead, that they should be judged, And that You should reward Your servants the prophets and the saints, And those who fear Your name, small and great, And should destroy those who destroy the earth.’ Then the temple of God was opened in heaven, and the ark of His covenant was seen in His temple. And there were lightnings, noises, thunderings, an earthquake, and great hail.” (Rev 11:15-19, NKJV)

Conclusion

• Hannah did not confine her prayers to her personal concerns; sure she thanked God for giving her a baby, but she didn’t stop there; she went on to a grand finale about the big picture of God’s kingdom.

• This is an example for us. When we pray, we should not stop once we’ve prayed for good weather and good health and good business for the day. We need to fit our requests into the grand scheme of what God is doing.

• Remember that Jesus taught us to pray, “let your kingdom come and your will be done on earth” first, before we pray, “give us this day our daily bread...” Jesus Himself calls us to have some sense of the big picture of God’s kingdom and of His will when we pray.

• But you don’t have to be a prophet to know this; we have the whole Bible which tells us all that we need for life and godliness (2 Pet. 1:3).

• We know what God is up to now in history because He wrote it down for us in the Bible: He is “sanctifying a people for Himself” as missionaries “go into all the world and preach the good news” about Jesus (Mark 16:15, Titus 2:14). He is putting “all things under [Jesus’] feet,” gradually subduing all evil (1 Cor. 15:25).

  • So, when you pray, “Oh God, please don’t let me get the Corona virus.” Can you fit that into God’s grand scheme? “Please don’t let me get the Corona virus so I can have the strength today to equip my children to someday be missionaries who will bring your Gospel to remote tribes like the Yansi. Thank you Lord, that even though godless men intended this virus for evil, You are working it out for good. I won’t be afraid because you are at work subduing all evil under the feet of Jesus. Please use the fears and stresses of this virus to bring the Chinese communist party leaders and the U.S. President... and even my neighbor humbly to their knees before you, asking for wisdom and salvation.”

• Hey, we even know what the future is: “The Gospel... will be preached as a witness to every nation,” Jesus will return from heaven, resurrect every dead body, send the ungodly to hell, welcome those who trust Him to save them, destroy this old earth, and make a new one in which only righteousness dwells (Matt. 24:14, 1 Thess. 4:16ff, 2 Pet. 3:1-13, Rev. 20:11-15).

  • You “understand and know the Lord” and the righteous things He is doing. So, when you pray, pray with triumphant boldness. “Jesus, break the arm of the wicked in Boko Haram. You have promised to shatter your rivals, so please do it! Please come soon Jesus and judge the ends of the earth and get rid of all the bad political leaders and show us how it’s done right! I will wait for you, but I’m still praying, ‘Come, Lord Jesus, Amen!’”

1 Samuel 2:1-10 - Side-by side comparison of versions^A