1 Samuel 1 - Walter Brueggemann

"Every assertion of chs 1-3 ... witnesses to the decisive role of Yahweh in Israel's new beginning. Every actor in the entire Samuel narrative ... are all creatures of God's sovereignty and agents of God's intended future." (p.10)

As 1 Samuel begins, Israel is a "troubled ... waiting ... marginal community", facing the external threat from the Philistines, but "politically weak and economically disadvantaged ... a community in moral chaos, engaged in brutality (Judges 19-21) and betrayed by undisciplined religion (chs. 17-18). Israel does not seem to have the capacity or the will to extricate itself from its troubles." (p.10)

And yet, the narrative doesn't rush to David: "There is a long waiting", which is bitter bcs of Israel's "troubled social, political, and economic situation" and confused bcs Israel doesn't know where future lies, how to get there, or "how to wait faithfully for it... As in every good story, we are not told too much too soon." (p.11)

The story doesn't begin with David, Saul, or even with Samuel. "The origin of Israel's future" is located "in the story of a bereft, barren woman named Hannah ... The story of Israel's waiting ... begins neither in grand theory nor in palace splendour nor in doxological celebration. It begins, rather, in a single Ephraimite family, whose father has a solid family pedigee (1:1) but whose mother is barren - without children and without prospect of children. Our story of waiting begins in barrenness wherein there is no hint of a future. Israel's waiting ... begins as Hannah's waiting begins, in hopelessness." (p.11)

The narrative of Elkanah-Hannah-Samuel of ch.1 "functions as a paradigm for the entire drama of Israel's faithful waiting... The problem is barrenness: no child, no son, no heir, no future, no historical possibility. The resolution is worship, with a son given and a future opened... The first chapter is a narrative of Yahweh's power and will to begin again, to create a newness in history precisely out of despair." (p.12)