What Does 1 Samuel 1:2 Mean?
And he had two wives, one named Hannah and the other Peninnah. Peninnah bore children, but Hannah bore no children.
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 he had two wives; the name of the one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah: and Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children.THE KEY
Hannah carries a name rooted in favor even as the verse says she has no children, so visible fruit is not the whole of a person.
THE MEANING
You can have less visible fruit than someone beside you without that difference exhausting who you are. Hannah’s name carries favor, while the verse plainly names her lack of children. Peninnah’s children and Hannah’s absence stand together in the same sentence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that childlessness proves a person is less favored: Hannah’s name carries favor even as the verse says she has no children.
THE ROOT
חַנָּה
ḥannāh
GROWS FROM
חנן
ḥ-n-n
To show favor; to act graciously.
Hannah’s name grows from the root of favor. The verse places that name beside childlessness, holding both together without making visible fruit the measure of a person’s nature.
ALSO GROWS
ḥēn: Favor.
חֵן
This related word makes the meaning carried by Hannah’s name visible: favor is present in the verse even alongside the stated absence.
ḥannûn: Gracious.
חַנּוּן
This branch from the same root adds the quality of graciousness to the favor echoed in Hannah’s name.
יְלָדִים
yeladim
GROWS FROM
ילד
y-l-d
To bear or beget; to bring forth.
“bore children / bore no children” in this verse is yeladim. The Hebrew uses the same word for Peninnah’s children and Hannah’s lack of children. Its root reaches from the child to the act of bearing, keeping both women within the same language of birth even as their circumstances differ.
ALSO GROWS
yalad: To bear or beget.
יָלַד
This verb is the seed behind “children,” joining the ones born to the act of bringing forth.
toledot: Generations or descendants.
תּוֹלְדוֹת
This word from the same root extends birth into a continuing line, showing how the root can name both a birth and what follows from it.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names childlessness plainly while keeping the woman in view as a person addressed.
But Sarai was uprooted; she had no child.Ring out, O unrooted one who did not bring forth; burst open into a ringing cry, and lift your voice, you who did not writhe in labor, for many are the children of the emptied one, more than the children of the mastered wife, says the LORD.And they had no child, because Elisabeth was unyielding, and they were both advanced in their days.THE THREAD
When the days had come around, Hannah conceived and bore a son, and called his name Samuel, the asked-for one, saying, Because I have asked him of the LORD.The verb translated “bare” is יָלַד (yalad), from the same ילד root carried by “children” here. One root holds both the child and the act of bearing, so the verse’s absence and the later birth share a linguistic seed.
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