perhaps properly · verb, piel perfect, 1st person common singular
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
1 Samuel 2:12 Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial; they knew not the LORD.
Deuteronomy 13:13 Certain men, the children of Belial, are gone out from among you, and have withdrawn the inhabitants of their city, saying, Let us go and se…
Job 6:2-3 Oh that my grief were throughly weighed, and my calamity laid in the balances together!
Job 10:1-2 My soul is weary of my life; I will leave my complaint upon myself; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.
Matthew 12:34-35 O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.
1 Samuel 10:27 But the children of Belial said, How shall this man save us? And they despised him, and brought him no presents. But he held his peace.
1 Samuel 25:25 Let not my lord, I pray thee, regard this man of Belial, even Nabal: for as his name is, so is he; Nabal is his name, and folly is with him:…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on 1 Samuel 1:9-18
Elkanah had gently reproved Hannah for her inordinate grief, and here we find the good effect of the reproof.
I. It brought her to her meat. She ate and drank, Sa1 1:9. She did not harden herself in sorrow, nor grow sullen when she was reproved for it; but, when she perceived her husband uneasy that she did not come and eat with them, she cheered up her own spirits as well as she could, and came to table. it is as great a piece of self-denial to control our passions as it is to control our appetites.
II. It brought her to her prayers. It put her upon considering, "Do I well to be angry? Do I well to fret? What good does it do me? Instead of binding the burden thus upon my shoulders, had I no…
Eli marked her mouth--The suspicion of the aged priest seems to indicate that the vice of intemperance was neither uncommon nor confined to one sex in those times of disorder. This mistaken impression was immediately removed, and, in the words, "God grant," or rather, "will grant," was followed by an invocation which, as Hannah regarded it in the light of a prophecy pointing to the accomplishment of her earnest desire, dispelled her sadness, and filled her with confident hope [Sa1 1:18]. The character and services of the expected child were sufficiently important to make his birth a fit subject for prophecy.
Adam Clarke on 1 Samuel 1:16
Count not thine handmaid for a daughter of Belial - אל תתן את אמתך לפני בת בליעל al titten eth amathecha liphney bath Beliyael; 'Put not thy handmaiden before the faces of a daughter of Belial." "If I am a drunkard, and strive by the most execrable hypocrisy (praying in the house of God) to cover my iniquity, then I am the chief of the daughters of Belial." Or, "Give not thy handmaid (to reproach) before the faces of the daughters of Belial." Several of these probably attended there for the purposes of prostitution and gain; for it is said, Sa1 2:22, that Eli's sons lay with the women at the door of the tabernacle, though this may refer to the women who kept the door.
John Gill
The Church Fathers
Do not consider your servant as one of the daughters of Belial, etc. Do not compare me to souls deceived by diabolical fraud; for I, doing penance from the heart for my sins, have renounced Satan and all his works and pomps: moreover, I have willingly accepted the very sweet yoke of Christ, which the proud one long ago cast off from his neck, for which he also deserved to be called Belial, meaning without yoke.
Responding Anna, No, my lord, she said, etc. The Church from the gentiles, responding, said, No, O priest of Judea, consider not burdened by sins she who has already been purified by the font of baptism and the participation of the sacred body and blood, having become the inner temple of Christ. For I delight in the law of God according to the inner man (Romans VII); nor am I any longer sinful, but yet I am your exceedingly unhappy servant; whom I justly call Lord, for you preceded me in a time of such ancient election. Who has delivered me from this body of death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ (Ibid.); at whose sacred feet I lay prostrate, pouring out my soul, melted by the fire of love, in the sight of His piety through tears.
34. As if to say: She who speaks to you of the goods of eternal life does not deserve to be despised as an idolater. She also asserts that she is His handmaid, so that he might recognize from the name of her ministry that she desires to serve him for eternal gains. It follows: "Because out of the multitude of my grief and sorrow I have spoken until now." As if she spoke more openly and said: Recognize from this that I have nothing from an evil spirit, because I come to speak out of much pain of persecution, and I do not abandon the urgency of preaching, conquered by no sufferings. The sorrow of Anna can also be referred to the affection of holy Church, and her grief to her passion. Indeed, she spoke out of the multitude of sorrow, she who brought forth the word of preaching to the perishing Jewish people out of the feeling of compassion. As Paul implies, saying: "I speak the truth in Christ Jesus, I do not lie, my conscience bearing witness to me in the Holy Spirit, that there is great sadness in me, and continual sorrow in my heart: I wished that I myself might be anathema from Christ for my brethren, who are my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites" (Rom. 9:1-2 ff.). But let him who implies that he speaks out of the multitude of sorrow say whether he speaks out of multitude: "From the Jews five times I received forty lashes minus one, three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned" (2 Cor. 11:24). But holy Church, patiently enduring adversities, humbly manifesting the virtue of her innocence and her truth, persuaded certain priests of Judea by speaking the good of her preaching. Therefore it is also added: ...
Dictionary and topics
Belial — Worthlessness, frequently used in the Old Testament as a proper name. It is first used in Deut. 13:13. In the New Testament it is found only in 2 Cor. 6:15, where it is used as a name of Satan, the…
Hannah — Favour, grace, one of the wives of Elkanah the Levite, and the mother of Samuel (1 Sam. 1; 2). Her home was at Ramathaim-zophim, whence she was wont every year to go to Shiloh, where the tabernacle…
Barrenness · .Hannah — .Hannah
Children · .Hannah — .Hannah
Drunkenness · .Hannah — .Hannah
Hannah · Her trials and prayer, and promise — Her trials and prayer, and promise
Meekness · .Hannah — .Hannah
Misjudgment · .Of Hannah — .Of Hannah
Samuel · Miraculous birth of — Miraculous birth of
Uncharitableness · .Of Eli toward Hannah — .Of Eli toward Hannah
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
on 1 Samuel 1:16
Count not thine handmaid for a daughter of Belial,.... A yokeless, a lawless, impudent, and abandoned creature; one of the most wicked, vilest, and most profligate wretches; as she must be to come drunk into the sanctuary of God; see 1 Samuel 25:17. Drunkenness in man is au abominable crime, but much more in a woman. The Romans (a) forbad wine to women, and drunkenness in them was a capital crime, as adultery, or any other; and indeed a drunken woman is liable to all manner of sin:
for out of the abundance of my complaint and grief have I spoken hitherto; out of the abundance of the heart the mouth will speak, whether it is matter of trouble or of joy; the heart of Hannah was full of grief,…
Hannah answered: "No, my lord, I am a woman of an oppressed spirit. I have not drunk wine and strong drink, but have poured out my soul before the Lord (see Psa 42:5). Do not count thine handmaid for a worthless woman, for I have spoken hitherto out of great sighing and grief." לפני נתן, to set or lay before a person, i.e., generally to give a person up to another; here to place him in thought in the position of another, i.e., to take him for another. שׂיה, meditation, inward movement of the heart, sighing.
Tyndale Open Study Notes on 1 Samuel 1:16
wicked woman (Hebrew a daughter of Belial): An expression used to describe a worthless person. Belial (“worthlessness”) is later used as a name for Satan (2 Cor 6:15). In Hebrew, a son of or daughter of a quality is a person who exemplifies that quality.
Rashi on 1 Samuel 1:16
Do not deliver your maidservant. Because she had spoken harshly to him, she tried to appease him, so that he deliver her not, unprotected and disgraced, to her rival, the wicked woman.
For it is out of much grievance. That I have spoken harshly to you.
Grievance. In some instances, it [שִֹיחִי] is an expression of heartache. Another explanation of מֵרֹב שִֹיחִי, according to Targum, "because of much provocation and anger, I have prolonged my prayer until now."
And anger. My rival angers me.
Do not deliver. An expression of giving over, as in, "'Do not deliver me to the will of my tormentors."27Tehillim 27:12.
