What Does 1 Samuel 1:5 Mean?
But to Hannah he gave a double portion, for he loved Hannah, yet the LORD had shut her womb.
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
But unto Hannah he gave a worthy portion; for he loved Hannah: but the LORD had shut up her womb.THE KEY
Hannah is loved and given a portion, yet the Hebrew word for her closed womb shares its root with compassion, a tension the verse leaves unresolved.
THE MEANING
You can be loved and still live with a place that remains painfully closed; affection and provision do not make the pain disappear. The verse names the LORD as the one who shuts Hannah’s womb, and leaves that agency unexplained.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A painful closure does not cancel every sign of love or care.
THE ROOT
רַחְמָהּ
raḥmah
GROWS FROM
ר־ח־ם
r-ḥ-m
The root carries the sense of tender compassion; the word for womb belongs to this same consonantal family.
The word for womb and the words for compassion share a Hebrew root. That echo does not explain the closure as compassionate: the verse leaves Hannah’s pain and the LORD’s agency plain.
ALSO GROWS
racham: Show compassion; have mercy.
רָחַם
It shares the root of the word translated “womb,” linking compassion to a word English treats as unrelated.
rachamim: Compassion; tender mercy.
רַחֲמִים
This familiar word for compassion carries the same consonants as “womb,” making the verse’s word-family echo visible.
חַנָּה
Ḥannah
GROWS FROM
ח־נ־ן
ḥ-n-n
To show favor or act graciously.
Hannah’s name is commonly derived from ḥanan, “to show favor.” Her name, her husband’s love, and the portion he gives resonate with favor, but none of them erases the closed womb named in the same verse.
ALSO GROWS
ḥen: Favor; graciousness.
חֵן
This noun shares the root associated with Hannah’s name, giving the name its sense of favor.
ḥanun: Gracious; showing favor.
חָנוּן
This related form keeps the language of favor present without turning it into a promise of an untroubled life.
THE PATTERN
Visible hardship does not map cleanly onto who is loved: scripture can place affection, suffering, and delay side by side.
And when the LORD saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren.Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. So when he heard that he was weak, he remained two days still in the same place where he was.Who will separate us from the love of the Anointed One? Will pressure, or the narrow place, or pursuit, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?THE THREAD
And when the LORD saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren.The Hebrew word for womb, רֶחֶם (rechem), is the same in both passages: Hannah’s is shut while Leah’s is opened. That reversal breaks any easy equation between a woman’s reproductive state and whether she is loved or favored.
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