1 Samuel 1:3 Commentary and Bible Study

Elkanah was undoubtedly a Levite, and Samuel in due course would be a Levite boy. Although Elkanah had two wives – and that was entirely wrong – it probably came about in the following way. Under Moses the law provided sympathetically for proper and due treatment to those who had more than one wife. The law didn't approve people having more than one wife, but where marriage had already been abused and people had married a second time, it made certain provisions for both wives so that they were equitably and properly treated. This, it seems, had been abused. This rule that at least looked after the dependents was taken to mean, ‘You can have more than one wife’, particularly in the period of the judges and at other times too, and it would seem that this could happen, even among the professing godly. So Elkanah, though he seems otherwise to have been a godly man and to have gone to worship as he should, had nevertheless allowed this evil to come into his life to the disruption of his family. As a Levite he doesn't seem to have had a regular duty, but he comes across as a pious earnest man who goes to the house of God annually, makes his sacrifices, honours the Lord, takes vows and so on, but there was a lot of waywardness in those days, and so he has a very unhappy home because there are two wives. The high priest in Shiloh was Eli, and his two sons served in the temple there and are named. The scene is being set for what will take place later, by telling us of the two wayward sons of Eli who, as we will discover, he failed to discipline. Elkanah goes at least annually to worship in the feast at Shiloh where a house of God clearly stood. It would seem that the tabernacle of earlier years was worn out by this time and had been replaced – the Scripture doesn't specifically say so – by a building, sometimes called the temple (verse 9), sometimes called the tabernacle or tent, probably in memory of how it had originated. It seems the tabernacle had come indoors at Shiloh. Elkanah goes there. He is a pious man,, and he seems to treat Hannah his wife in a civil and understanding and kindly way. ‘When the time was that Elkanah offered [went to Shiloh to worship and sacrifice], he gave to Peninnah his wife, and to all her sons and her daughters, portions:’ – he made peace offerings for them, and they each had their portions, ‘But unto Hannah he gave a worthy portion.’ If you have a general reference it will tell you the Hebrew says ‘a double portion’. She had special honour, ‘for he loved Hannah’ and he made up to her the fact that she was childless as well as he could, because ‘the Lord had shut up her womb.’Nothing is said against Elkanah, apart from the fact that he had taken two wives. Perhaps he regretted doing so, but he certainly would have regretted the result of it, because his having two wives caused great trouble in his household. One imagines – but you can't be sure – that Hannah was the first wife. She gets the double portion when he gives gifts to his wives, and he loved her deeply, but she was childless, and so he resorted to the strategy of taking a second wife in order to have children and that was wrong, and the one wife scorned the other. But aside from that, he seems to have lived a straightforward life.