“Her rival taunted her and made her feel bad, because Adonai had kept her from having children. He did the same every year; and each time she went up to the house of Adonai, she taunted her so much that she would cry and not eat.”-1 Samuel 1:6-7
Whenever bad things happen in your life, there are 2 ways you can respond.
You can react with bitterness thinking there’s nothing you can do about it…
Or you can take it to the Lord in prayer.
We’re actually given perfect examples of each of these responses in the form of Hannah and how she dealt with her barren situation.
Notice in the beginning how bitter she was.
We’re told she was so bitter she couldn’t even eat her meals or enjoy the extra portions her husband had given her.
Instead she just wept and wept.
And of course, P’ninah with all of her taunting didn’t help out one bit.
In fact, it seems P’ninah took a perverse delight in seeing Hannah suffer.
We’re told this was because they were “rivals”.
That’s an interesting word to describe Elkanah’s 2 wives, don’t you think?
The Hebrew word for this is SARA.
According to both the Talmud and recent understanding of the Ugarit language (a semitic tongue related to Hebrew), this was a technical term for a “second wife” or “co-wife”.
However, I think it’s misleading to say SARA means “2nd wife”.
Because it’s not like P’ninah was above Hannah in status or vice versa.
In Hebrew, it’s more like saying “the other wife”.
Of course it’s natural they became rivals because they were equally vying for their husband’s attention and affection.
And in this case, it appears Hannah was winning in this department because we’re told Elkanah greatly loved Hannah and not so much P’ninah.
Elkanah was doing his darnedest to get Hannah to see the bright side of things by telling her he treated her like a wife who had given him 10 sons.
But Hannah wasn’t having any of it.
Finally, after her frustration had reached the boiling point, Hannah finally decided she had no choice but to seek out the only One who could do anything about her situation.
Alrighty, let’s transition to the takeaway…
So what’s the big lesson to be learned here?
Well, what I’m getting from all of this is when you feel stuck in a bad situation, I think it’s natural to feel depressed and want to vent your true feelings.
In fact, it can be unhealthy to keep all of your anger pent up inside of you without releasing it.
However, after you’ve released all of your frustration, I think the lesson is not to stay there.
The next step is to take it to God in prayer…
Which is exactly what Hannah did.
We’ll see the results of that the next time we meet.
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