What Does 1 Samuel 1:28 Mean?
Therefore also I have asked him for the LORD. As long as he lives, he is asked for the LORD. And he bowed down there to the LORD.
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
Therefore also I have lent him to the LORD; as long as he liveth he shall be lent to the LORD. And he worshipped the LORD there.THE KEY
The Hebrew root behind “lent” is also the root of Hannah’s asking: the life she receives as an answer becomes a life entrusted to the LORD.
THE MEANING
What you receive through longing can remain precious without becoming yours to possess completely. The word translated “lent” shares its root with “asked for,” holding the request and the entrusting together. The verse ends with that entrusting expressed in worship.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that receiving what you asked for makes it yours to possess completely.
THE ROOT
הִשְׁאִלְתִּהוּ
hishʾiltihu
GROWS FROM
שאל
shaʾal
To ask or request; in this verb form, to lend.
“asked” in this verse is hishʾiltihu. The Hebrew repeats the root of asking in the words KJV renders “lent” and “be lent.” The request Hannah received and the life she entrusts are held together in one word-family.
ALSO GROWS
shaʾal: To ask or request.
שָׁאַל
This is the root of Hannah’s asking for a child in the surrounding passage.
sheʾelah: A request or petition.
שְׁאֵלָה
The same root names the request that has been answered in this verse.
shaʾul: Asked for; also used with the sense of lent or borrowed.
שָׁאוּל
It shows how the root can hold both a requested life and one entrusted to another.
THE PATTERN
A life received as a gift can be entrusted to the One from whom it comes.
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.Look, children are the LORD's portion; and the fruit of the womb is a wage.And when the days of her cleansing according to the instruction of Moses were filled, they brought him up to Jerusalem, to stand him beside the Lord.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.Hannah says she “asked” for him from the LORD; here, the same שאל root appears in the words KJV renders “lent.” The request and the entrusting meet in one word-family: the life asked for is also placed in the LORD’s keeping.
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