What Does 1 Samuel 1:19 Mean?
And they rose early in the morning and bowed down before the LORD, then turned back and came to their house in Ramah. And Elkanah knew Hannah his wife, and the LORD remembered her.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And they rose up in the morning early, and worshipped before the LORD, and returned, and came to their house to Ramah: and Elkanah knew Hannah his wife; and the LORD remembered her.THE KEY
The LORD’s remembrance of Hannah stands beside her intimate, embodied life.
THE MEANING
Your body and private longing remain within the reach of divine attention; this verse places Elkanah’s intimate knowing beside the LORD’s remembering of Hannah. Remembering here is more than keeping a fact: it is attention directed toward a person.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what happens in private, or what you wait for in private, falls beyond divine regard. Hannah herself is the one remembered.
THE ROOT
וַיִּזְכְּרֶהָ
wayyizkerēhā
GROWS FROM
ז־כ־ר
Remember, call to mind, mention.
“remembered” in this verse is wayyizkerēhā. The root appears in words for both remembering and mentioning, linking memory with bringing someone into regard. Here Hannah herself is the object of remembrance, and the verse places that attention beside the intimate knowing between spouses.
ALSO GROWS
zikkaron: A memorial or reminder.
זִכָּרוֹן
A memorial keeps someone or something present to remembrance, echoing the attention directed toward Hannah.
hizkir: To mention or bring to mind.
הִזְכִּיר
This form makes the root’s link between remembering and bringing into notice explicit.
וַיֵּדַע
wayyēdaʿ
GROWS FROM
י־ד־ע
Know, recognize, perceive.
“knew” in this verse is wayyēdaʿ. Yada can describe knowing through encounter, and it also names sexual intimacy, as it does here. The word gives the verse an embodied closeness: human intimacy and divine remembrance occupy the same scene without one being made the cause of the other.
ALSO GROWS
daʿat: Knowledge or understanding.
דַּעַת
This noun carries the same root from intimate knowing into knowledge and understanding.
hôdîaʿ: To make known or declare.
הוֹדִיעַ
The causative form shows the root extending from knowing to making something known.
THE PATTERN
Divine remembering is attention that moves toward response.
And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark, and God caused a breath to cross over the earth, and the waters settled.And God heard and responded to their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.To make faithful love with our fathers, and to remember his set-apart covenant;THE THREAD
And God remembered Rachel, and God heard and responded to her, and opened her womb.The same Hebrew root for “remembered” appears here, now beside hearing and opening. That echo lets remembrance read as attention reaching into a person’s life.
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