1 Samuel 2:20 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
1 Samuel 2:20
And Eli blessed Elkanah and his wife, and said, The LORD give thee seed of this woman for the loan which is lent to the LORD. And they went unto their own home.
to kneel · conjunction + verb, piel sequential perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
Elkanah
אֶלְקָנָ֣ה'el.ka.Nah
H511
Elkanah · proper noun, a man's name
wife
אִשְׁתּ֗וֹ'ish.To
H802
a woman · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
said
וְאָמַר֙ve.'a.Mar
H559
to say (used with great latitude) · conjunction + verb, qal sequential perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
LORD
יְהוָ֨הYah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · proper noun, a title
give
יָשֵׂם֩ya.Sem
H7760
to put (used in a great variety of applications · verb, qal jussive, 3rd person masculine singular
seed
זֶ֙רַע֙ze.ra'
H2233
seed · noun, common masculine singular absolute
woman
הָאִשָּׁ֣הha.'i.Shah
H802
a woman · definite article + noun, common feminine singular absolute
loan
הַשְּׁאֵלָ֔הha.she.'e.Lah
H7596
a petition · definite article + noun, common feminine singular absolute
lent
שָׁאַ֖לsha.'Al
H7592
to inquire · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
LORD
לַֽיהוָ֑הla.Yah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · preposition + proper noun, a title
went
וְהָלְכ֖וּve.ha.le.Khu
H1980
to walk (in a great variety of applications · conjunction + verb, qal sequential perfect, 3rd person common plural
home
לִמְקֹמֽוֹlim.ko.Mo
H4725
properly · preposition + noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine 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 1:27-28 For this child I prayed; and the LORD hath given me my petition which I asked of him:
Luke 2:34 And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his mother, Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a…
Genesis 14:19 And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth:
Genesis 27:27-29 And he came near, and kissed him: and he smelled the smell of his raiment, and blessed him, and said, See, the smell of my son is as the sme…
Numbers 6:23-27 Speak unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying, On this wise ye shall bless the children of Israel, saying unto them,
Ruth 2:12 The LORD recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust.
Ruth 4:11 And all the people that were in the gate, and the elders, said, We are witnesses. The LORD make the woman that is come into thine house like…
1 Samuel 1:11 And she vowed a vow, and said, O LORD of hosts, if thou wilt indeed look on the affliction of thine handmaid, and remember me, and not forge…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on 1 Samuel 2:11-26
In these verses we have the good character and posture of Elkanah's family, and the bad character and posture of Eli's family. The account of these two is observably interwoven throughout this whole paragraph, as if the historian intended to set the one over against the other, that they might set off one another. The devotion and good order of Elkanah's family aggravated the iniquity of Eli's house; while the wickedness of Eli's sons made Samuel's early piety appear the more bright and illustrious.
I. Let us see how well things went in Elkanah's family and how much better than formerly. 1. Eli dismissed them from the house of the Lord, when they had entered their little son there, with a ble…
Eli blessed Elkanah and his wife--This blessing, like that which he had formerly pronounced, had a prophetic virtue; which, before long, appeared in the increase of Hannah's family (Sa1 2:21), and the growing qualifications of Samuel for the service of the sanctuary.
Adam Clarke on 1 Samuel 2:20
Eli blessed Elkanah - The natural place of this verse seems to be before the 11th; after which the 21st should come in; after the 21st, perhaps the 26th should come in. The subjects in this chapter seem very much entangled and confused by the wrong position of the verses.
John Gill on 1 Samuel 2:20
And Eli blessed Elkanah and his wife,.... Not only the first time they brought Samuel to him, and left him with him; but every year they came to worship, as the Jewish commentators mostly interpret it:
and said, the Lord give thee seed of this woman; children by her, year after year:
for the loan which is lent to the Lord; instead of Samuel, who was asked of the Lord and given to him again; and as they were thereby in some measure deprived of him, and could not always enjoy him, and be delighted with him, Eli prayed for them, and gave them his benediction as a priest, that they might be favoured with other children, who might be of delight and service to them when in old age:
and they wen…
The Church Fathers
And because God multiplies for the preacher the gains of converts through the discerning zeal of pastoral care, Anna is said to have been visited by the Lord, and through the grace of the divine gift to have merited the grace of fruitfulness in sons and daughters. She bears sons when she gains through the word those through whom she bestows the seeds of preaching to others. She bears daughters when she calls back to the service of almighty God those minds which, although they are not suited for preaching, nevertheless diligently nurture the seed of the word of God received from preachers, which, as if giving birth, the daughters afterwards bring forth through good works as an example to their neighbors.
And Eli blessed Elkanah and his wife, etc. The priests of the Jews, having converted to faith, blessed Christ and the Church, of whom it is written: "A great number of the priests were obedient to the faith." The old priesthood often signifies in its types the Church to be blessed in Christ, and to be multiplied by the seed of the word among the nations of the Gentiles, and it speaks metaphorically to Christ: "May God the Father grant you believers from the Gentiles"; for they are the seed whom the Lord has blessed. For the return you lent to the Lord, that is, for that uniquely holy man, whom you chose to have taken from a virgin, sharing with you the person of Christ, that is, the name of God. For if a holy loan had not been received by the Lord, no one would have thought it hopeful to expect a seed from a barren woman. This means, if a man seized by God had not been glorified and seated at the right hand of the Father, the miserable gentility, and aware of its transgression, could not have reached the multiplication of the seed of Abraham at all. But while Christ, the firstfruits of the human race, was loaned to God the Father, hope is given to the faithful by His example to be saved through Him, to live in Him, to die for Him, to be resurrected by Him, and to reign eternally with Him. It can also be said that the Church, for the loan it lent to the Lord, earned seed from Him, when, by offering to the Lord a faithful and devoted people, it received greater gifts of faith and devotion, through preachers sent throughout the world; which in whatever nations, neglecting to obey the word of God when heard, failed to receive the multiplication of the holy seed for the unpaid loan of the word to the Lord by rejecting the teachers from itself.
Dictionary and topics
Bless — (1.) God blesses his people when he bestows on them some gift temporal or spiritual (Gen. 1:22; 24:35; Job 42:12; Ps. 45:2; 104:24, 35). (2.) We bless God when we thank him for his mercies (Ps.…
Elkanah, Or Elkonah — (God-provided).
Fast — The sole fast required by the law of Moses was that of the great Day of Atonement (q.v.), Lev. 23:26-32. It is called “the fast” (Acts 27:9). The only other mention of a periodical fast in the Old…
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…
Poetry — Has been well defined as “the measured language of emotion.” Hebrew poetry deals almost exclusively with the great question of man’s relation to God. “Guilt, condemnation, punishment, pardon,…
Songs — Of Moses (Ex. 15; Num. 21:17; Deut. 32; Rev. 15:3), Deborah (Judg. 5), Hannah (1 Sam. 2), David (2 Sam. 22, and Psalms), Mary (Luke 1:46-55), Zacharias (Luke 1:68-79), the angels (Luke 2:13), Simeon…
Benedictions · .By Eli, upon Elkanah — .By Eli, upon Elkanah
Eli · His benediction upon Hannah — His benediction upon Hannah
Elkanah · 2. Father of Samuel; a — 2. Father of Samuel; a
Hannah · Children of — Children of
Hophni · Sin of — Sin of
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).
Samuel's service before the Lord. - Sa1 2:18. Samuel served as a boy before the Lord by the side of the worthless sons of Eli, girt with an ephod of white material (בּד, see at Exo 28:42). The ephod was a shoulder-dress, no doubt resembling the high priest's in shape (see Exo 28:6.), but altogether different in the material of which it was made, viz., simple white cloth, like the other articles of clothing that were worn by the priests. At that time, according to Sa1 22:18, all the priests wore clothing of this kind; and, according to Sa2 6:14, David did the same on the occasion of a religious festival. Samuel received a dress of this kind even when a boy, because he was set apart to a lifel…
Eli would bless: Blessing was one of the functions of a priest (Num 6:23-27; Deut 10:8; 1 Chr 23:13). See study note on 1 Sam 1:17-18.
Rashi on 1 Samuel 2:20
Eili would then bless them. This is the present tense, i.e., he would bless him every year.
Because of the request that he had made. For himself a son. [Eili] would say to him, "May השם grant you seed, etc., i.e., may it be the Divine Will that all the children that you will have, will be from this righteous woman. This is an inverted sentence.
11. Because in the person of Eli the priest the good teachers of the ancient people are also signified, he is known to have blessed Elkanah and his wife, since indeed the order of those same ancient teachers foresaw the spiritual union of Christ and the holy Church, and preached with devotion that the future offspring of those elect ones would be worthy of heaven. Although this was done long before, nevertheless it then became known that he had thus blessed them, when, with the grace of our redemption now revealed, each faithful person was able to believe that our ancient fathers proclaimed so many good things about this renewal. And so that the order in which this happened may be recognized, it is added: (Verse 20.) And they went to their own place. 12. For her to go away to her own place with her husband is for the holy Church to flee at times from the troubles of the active life and to devote herself through contemplation to the joys of the heavenly life. For that mother had left her child for a time, she who said: "I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ" (Phil. 1:23). Was she with the child when the force of love had carried that distinguished teacher up to the third heaven (2 Cor. 12:2–4)? Was she then with the child when, received into paradise, she heard words that it is not permitted for man to speak, and was caught up to her own place, because he showed this, saying: "We have not here a lasting city, but we seek one that is to come" (Heb. 13:14)? But maternal affection compelled her, who was going away to her own place with her husband, to return to her son. For she spoke and said: "To remain in the flesh is necessary for me on your account" (Phil. 1:24). There follows: (Verse 21.) Therefore the Lord visited Anna, and she conceived and bore three sons and two daughters.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
