The Song of Hannah by Eva Etzioni-Halevy

Author:Eva Etzioni-Halevy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

When I reached home, Samuel’s prophecy still rang loud in my ears. Sitting with Elkanah on my bed, I told him all that had come to pass. He was pleased that my scroll would be deposited in the Temple, but when he learned about my talks with Samuel, he was deeply troubled, though not for the same reason I was.

“This is nothing but foolishness,” he objected. “You have put it into the boy’s mind that he is a great prophet, and this is the result.”

“I have never spoken a word to him about this,” I gasped.

“Then he has sensed it from the way you treated him,” he said with asperity.

Clasping both my hands in his, he continued: “Hear me, Hannah. I am a good Israelite. I keep the commandments as best as I can. I remember the sabbath to keep it holy, and I see to it that all the people who work for us, and even the animals, rest on this day. I let the poor, and the widows, and the orphans, and the strangers in our midst roam our fields after the harvest and collect all that the reapers have left behind. And if this is not sufficient, I open my hand to them and give them enough for their needs. I have never worshipped other gods, but only the Lord our God, and I offer him all the sacrifices that are required of me. But nothing will lead me to believe that God speaks to some as one man to another and apprises them of his plans for the future. Some people proclaim themselves as prophets, but they are false prophets.”

I resented the aspersion he had cast on our son. “Samuel is too little to have made up what he said to me.”

Elkanah continued holding my hands in his, but he remained firm in his objection to Samuel’s prophecy. “Wherever his words come from, I don’t want him to speak them. I want him to be like his brothers and sisters.”

“How can he be like his brothers and sisters when he is growing up at the Temple?” I asked reasonably.

“And whose fault is it that he is growing up at the Temple?” he replied indignantly.

This was the closest Elkanah and I had ever come to having a dispute. Of course I could not let a quarrel break out between us, and I had to cede to his greater wisdom and let his view prevail. In any case, I began to weigh the possibility that Elkanah might be right in his reproof. I did not doubt the truth of Samuel’s prophecy of disastrous wars, but what benefit could come of foretelling them, when he was still a young boy and nothing he could do would prevent them?

Like Elkanah, I now had dire misgivings about having brought Samuel to the Temple. I no longer feared that he would suffer maltreatment from the priests. Instead, I agonized over the possibility that, by bringing him there, I had condemned him to a life of dark forebodings in which he would never find rest for his soul.

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