1 Samuel 2 Bible study: Those who honor me

The chapter opens, "Hannah prayed, and said" (2:1). She is the woman who had said, "I poured out my soul before the LORD" (1:15), and she has just left her son at "the LORD’s house in Shiloh" (1:24). Her prayer begins with her own heart: "My heart exults in the LORD! My horn is exalted in the LORD" (2:1) (tap horn). Then it widens to everyone: the mighty and the stumbling (2:4), the full and the hungry, the barren and the mother of many (2:5), the poor raised "out of the dust" (2:8), and "the ends of the earth" (2:10). It ends, "He will give strength to his king, and exalt the horn of his anointed" (2:10) (tap anointed). There is no king in Israel yet. Judges ended, "In those days there was no king in Israel" (Judges 21:25), and in 1 Samuel the people don't ask for one until 8:5. In the WEB, 2:10 is the first time 1 Samuel says "king". In Hebrew, anointed is mashiach, and 1 Samuel doesn't name the king Hannah prays about.

1 Samuel 2:7→leads toLuke 1:52

Hannah prayed, "He brings low, he also lifts up" (2:7), and "He raises up the poor out of the dust" (2:8). In Luke, after the angel tells Mary she will "give birth to a son" (Luke 1:31), Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord" (Luke 1:46), and she says of God, "He has put down princes from their thrones, and has exalted the lowly" (Luke 1:52). Luke doesn't quote Hannah or name her, so setting the two side by side is a reading. Some read Mary's words as echoing Hannah's prayer, since both are a mother's praise to God over the son he gave or promised her (1:27; Luke 1:31), and both turn the high low and the low high. Others read Mary's words on their own terms, as her praise for what God has done for her, "for he has looked at the humble state of his servant" (Luke 1:48), with no link to Hannah intended.

מָשִׁיחַmashiachsay ma-SHEE-akh

Strong's: "anointed; usually a consecrated person (as a king, priest, or saint); specifically, the Messiah". Brown-Driver-Briggs: "anointed". Before this chapter, the Hebrew Bible uses it only in Leviticus, of "the anointed priest" (Leviticus 4:3), there and in 4:5, 4:16 and 6:22. Here, for the first time, it stands beside the word king: "He will give strength to his king, and exalt the horn of his anointed" (2:10). It comes again at the end of the chapter, in the LORD's words to Eli: "He will walk before my anointed forever" (2:35). 1 Samuel uses it twelve times, and it doesn't name the king of Hannah's prayer. In John's Gospel, Andrew tells his brother Simon, "We have found the Messiah!" (John 1:41), and John adds, "which is, being interpreted, Christ" (John 1:41).