What Does 1 Samuel 1:9 Mean?
So Hannah rose after they had eaten and drunk in Shiloh. Now Eli the priest was settled upon a seat by the doorpost of the temple of 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
So Hannah rose up after they had eaten in Shiloh, and after they had drunk. Now Eli the priest sat upon a seat by a post of the temple of the LORD.THE KEY
At the temple threshold, Hannah rises while Eli remains seated; the scene’s first movement belongs to her.
THE MEANING
The verse gives you a threshold moment: the meal is over, and Hannah rises while Eli remains seated at the entrance to the LORD’s house. It names the instant when movement toward an encounter begins before the prayer is spoken; sometimes the first change is a rising while the words are still forming.
THE ROOT
וַתָּקָם
wattāqām
GROWS FROM
קום
q-w-m
Rise, stand, come into standing.
“rose” in this verse is wattāqām. The verb for Hannah’s rising belongs to a root that also forms words for raising and establishing. Her movement is more than a transition between activities: it carries the sound of coming to stand.
ALSO GROWS
heqim: Raise, establish, set upright.
הֵקִים
This causative form shows the same root moving from coming to stand to making something stand.
maqom: Place, standing place.
מָקוֹם
This word for place grows from the same root, linking rising with the place where one stands.
חַנָּה
Ḥannāh
GROWS FROM
חנן
ḥ-n-n
Show favor, act graciously.
Hannah’s name carries the meaning of favor. That meaning sits quietly inside the scene as she rises; the verse holds her name and her movement together without spelling out what she will ask.
ALSO GROWS
ḥen: Favor, graciousness.
חֵן
This related noun makes the favor carried in Hannah’s name audible in Hebrew.
ḥannūn: Gracious, one who shows favor.
חָנוּן
This form names the quality of showing favor, extending the root’s meaning beyond a name.
יֹשֵׁב
yōshēv
GROWS FROM
ישב
y-sh-b
Sit, dwell, remain settled.
“was settled” in this verse is yōshēv. The word translated “sat” also belongs to the language of dwelling and remaining settled. Beside Hannah’s verb for rising, Eli’s word gives the scene a counter-posture: movement beside settled presence.
ALSO GROWS
yāshav: Sit, dwell, remain.
יָשַׁב
The verb’s wider sense shows that Eli is described with a word of both posture and settled presence.
mōshāv: Dwelling, settlement, place of residence.
מוֹשָׁב
This noun from the same root extends sitting into the idea of a settled dwelling place.
THE PATTERN
Rising marks movement from a fixed condition into the next act, whether a person rises to return or God raises someone brought low.
He raises the bowed one from the dust, and lifts the one in want from the ash heap;I will rise and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have missed the mark against the heavens and before your face,And the Lord said to him, Stand up, and go to the lane called Straight, and seek in the house of Judas one named Saul, from Tarsus, for behold, he prays.THE THREAD
He raises the bowed one from the dust, and lifts the one in want from the ash heap;Hannah’s וַתָּקָם (wattāqām, she rose) and the LORD’s מְקִימִי (məqîmî, he raises) share קום (q-w-m, rise or stand). One names her own movement; the other names the LORD bringing the lowly upright, so a human rising and divine lifting sound related without becoming the same act.
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