What Does 1 Samuel 1:7 Mean?
And so it was, year by year, when she went up to the house of the LORD, that Peninnah chafed her, so Hannah wept and did not eat.
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 as he did so year by year, when she went up to the house of the LORD, so she provoked her; therefore she wept, and did not eat.THE KEY
The verse places Hannah’s yearly ascent to the LORD’s house beside the yearly return of provocation, letting sacred nearness and visible grief occupy the same scene.
THE MEANING
You can be moving toward the LORD and still meet a wound that has been pressed on you before. When provocation returns, grief reaches the body: tears come, and food is refused. The house of the LORD remains in the scene while the pain remains visible.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that approaching the LORD should make the wound disappear. Hannah’s yearly ascent and yearly grief stand side by side.
THE ROOT
תַּכְעִסֶנָּה
takʿîsennāh
GROWS FROM
כעס
To vex, provoke, or stir anger and distress.
“chafed” in this verse is takʿîsennāh. The verb translated “provoked” comes from the same root as the noun for vexation or anger: the word holds both the stirring of distress and the distress it stirs. Its yearly return makes the hurt a repeated pressure, not a single passing sting.
ALSO GROWS
kaʿas: Vexation, anger, or distress.
כַּעַס
The noun names the turmoil carried in the same root as the act of provoking Hannah.
hikʿis: To provoke or vex.
הִכְעִיס
This verb form uses the root causatively, highlighting the act of stirring distress in another.
עֲלֹתָהּ
ʿalotah
GROWS FROM
עלה
To rise, ascend, or go up.
“went up” in this verse is ʿalotah. The Hebrew says “at her going up” to the house; the same root names the עֹלָה (ʿolah), the offering that rises. The language holds her ascent toward the house alongside her tears, without suggesting that the ascent has already lifted the pain.
ALSO GROWS
ʿolah: An ascending or burnt offering.
עֹלָה
Its name shares the root for rising, linking Hannah’s “going up” with what ascends.
maʿalah: An ascent or elevation.
מַעֲלָה
This noun preserves the root’s sense of rising and makes the verse’s movement an ascent in the language itself.
THE PATTERN
Taunts can follow a person into sacred life, and their pressure may become visible grief.
Her rival also pressed upon her to chafe her and to make her roar, because the LORD had closed her womb.My tears have been my bread day and night, while they say to me all day, Where is your God?Flourishing are you when they revile you, and pursue you, and speak every evil word against you, lying, for my sake.THE THREAD
Her rival also pressed upon her to chafe her and to make her roar, because the LORD had closed her womb.The same Hebrew root for “provoked” appears just before this verse. Verse 7 shows the yearly setting and the embodied result, tears and no food, so the hurt is revealed as a recurring pattern.
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