1 Samuel 1:20

My Notes

What Does 1 Samuel 1:20 Mean?

Hannah names her son Samuel, and the text gives us her explanation: "Because I have asked him of the LORD." The name Samuel is traditionally connected to the Hebrew phrase shemu-el, which can mean "heard of God" or "name of God." Hannah's own etymology emphasizes the asking — she asked, and God answered. The child's very name is a testimony.

The phrase "when the time was come about" (literally "at the revolution of days") refers to the completion of a full-term pregnancy. The narrator marks the ordinary passage of time — nine months of waiting, growing, anticipating. Between "the LORD remembered her" and "she bare a son," an entire pregnancy unfolded. God's answer didn't arrive instantly. It arrived through a process that required patience, physical change, and the slow work of formation.

Samuel would become the last judge, the prophet who anointed both Saul and David, and the bridge between the era of judges and the monarchy. His significance to Israel's history is immense. And his mother named him not for what he would become, but for how he arrived: asked for, prayed for, given by God. Before Samuel was a prophet, he was an answered prayer.

Reflection Questions

• 1.What answered prayer in your life have you stopped recognizing as an answered prayer? How has familiarity dulled the gratitude?
• 2.Hannah named Samuel for how he arrived, not what he became. How do you 'name' the good things in your life — do you credit God or assume credit yourself?
• 3.Samuel's name was a permanent testimony. What testimony about God's faithfulness should your life be telling that you've gone quiet about?
• 4.Between 'the LORD remembered' and the birth, nine months of ordinary waiting passed. How do you stay faithful during the slow, unglamorous middle of God's answer?

Devotional

Hannah didn't name her son "Prophet" or "Judge" or "Anointer of Kings." She named him "Asked of God." His identity — the first thing anyone would know about him — was rooted not in his future accomplishments but in his origin story. He was a prayer answered. Everything else would follow from that.

There's something important about naming things according to how they arrived rather than what they became. It keeps the origin visible. Every time someone called Samuel's name, Hannah's prayer was invoked. Every time the prophet stood before Israel, his name testified: I exist because a barren woman asked God, and God said yes. Achievement can make you forget where you came from. A name like Samuel makes forgetting impossible.

If God has answered a prayer in your life — given you something you asked for, opened a door you pleaded for — how have you named it? Not literally, but in the way you talk about it, remember it, frame it? Do the people around you know that the good thing in your life was asked for? Or has time and familiarity turned the answered prayer into something you take credit for, something that feels like it was always going to happen? Samuel's name says otherwise. He was asked. He was given. And that origin story matters more than any title he would ever earn.

Commentary

Trusted original commentary from respected historical Bible scholars and theologians.

Cross References

Related passages throughout Scripture