had had no children, and thus did every year, and provoked her to wrath, but she wept for sorrow and ate no meat.  To whom Elkanah her husband said:  Hannah, why weepest thou? and wherefore eatest thou not?  Why is thine heart put to affliction?  Am I not better to thee than ten sons?  Then Hannah arose after she had eaten and drunk in Shilo and went to pray unto our Lord, making to him a vow if that she might have a son she should offer him to our Lord.  Eli that time sat tofore the posts of the house of our Lord.  And Hannah besought and prayed our Lord, making to him a vow, if that she might have a son she should offer him to our Lord.  And it was so that she prayed so heartily in her thought and mind, that her lips moved not, wherefore Eli bare her on hand that she was drunk.  And she said:  Nay, my lord, I am a sorrowful woman, I have drunken no wine ne drink that may cause me to be drunken, but I have made my prayers, and cast my soul in the sight of Almighty God.  Repute me not as one of the daughters of Belial, for the prayer that I have made and spoken yet is of the multitude of the heaviness and sorrow of my heart.  Then Eli the priest said to her:  Go in peace, the God of Israel give to thee the petition of thy heart for that thou hast prayed him.  And she said:  Would God that thy handservant might find grace in thy sight.  And so she departed, and on the morn they went home again in to Ramatha.

After this our Lord remembered her, and she bare a fair son and named him Samuel for so much as she asked him of our Lord.  Wherefore Elkanah, her husband, went and offered a solemn sacrifice and his vow accomplished, but Hannah ascended not with him.  She said to her husband that she would not go till her child were weaned and taken from the pap.  And after when Samuel was weaned, and was an infant, the mother took him, and three calves and three measures of meal, and a bottle of wine, and brought him unto the house of our Lord in Shilo and sacrificed that calf and offered the child to Eli, and told to Eli that she was the woman that prayed our Lord for that child.  And there Hannah worshipped our Lord and thanked him, and there made this psalm which is one of the canticles:  My heart hath rejoiced in the Lord, and so forth, all the remnant of that psalm.  And then Elkanah with his wife returned home to his house.  After this our Lord visited Hannah, and she conceived three sons, and two daughters, which she brought forth.  And Samuel abode in the house of our Lord and was minister in the sight of Eli.  But the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phineas, were children of Belial, not knowing our Lord, but did great sins against the commandments of God.  And our Lord sent a prophet to Eli because he corrected not his sons, and said he would take the office from him and from his house, and that there should not be an old man in his house and kindred, but should die ere they came to man’s estate, and that God should raise a priest that should be faithful and after his heart.