Five-minute study · Day 143 · 1 Samuel 2
1 Samuel 2:10
A word worth stopping on: anointed מָשִׁיחַ mashiach
Hannah has just given her son Samuel to the LORD. She stands in the tabernacle at Shiloh, having surrendered the child she begged for, and she prays. The prayer is fierce. It is not a soft lullaby of gratitude. She speaks of broken bows, reversed fortunes, a God who kills and makes alive. Then, at the climax, she says something no one in Israel has said before: 'He shall give strength unto his king, and exalt the horn of his mashiach.' His anointed. Israel does not have a king yet. Hannah is the first person in the Bible to use mashiach as a title for a coming ruler.
Word study: anointed
- Hebrew
- מָשִׁיחַ
- Pronounced
- mashiach
- Strong's
- H4899
- Definition
- Anointed one. From the verb mashach, to smear, to anoint. One who has been consecrated by the pouring or smearing of oil for a sacred office: priest, prophet, or king.
Mashiach appears thirty-nine times in the Hebrew Bible. The verb behind it, mashach, means to smear or to spread, originally describing the physical act of rubbing oil on a surface. Anointing in the ancient world was practical before it was sacred: oil protected skin from the sun, sealed wounds, and conditioned leather. The step from practical to ceremonial was short. Anointing a person with oil marked them as set apart, designated, consecrated for a role.
In Israelite practice, three offices received anointing: priests (Exodus 29:7, Aaron's anointing), kings (1 Samuel 10:1, Saul's anointing; 1 Samuel 16:13, David's anointing), and occasionally prophets (1 Kings 19:16, Elisha's commissioning). The oil was olive oil, and for the high priest, it was a specific blend of spices described in Exodus 30:22-25: myrrh, cinnamon, calamus, and cassia in olive oil. This formula was restricted to sacred use. Making it for personal use was a criminal offense (Exodus 30:33).
Hannah's use of mashiach in 1 Samuel 2:10 is remarkable for its timing. There is no king in Israel. Saul has not been born. David is generations away. Hannah prays about a future king, an anointed one whose horn (military strength) God will exalt. Her prayer is prophetic in the technical sense: it speaks of something that does not yet exist as though it is certain.
The Amarna Letters (fourteenth century BC) document Egyptian anointing practices in Canaan. When Egypt installed vassal kings over Canaanite city-states, the Pharaoh's representative anointed them, marking them as authorized rulers under Egyptian authority. Letter EA 51 from the king of Byblos says he was 'placed' by the king of Egypt, using language that parallels the biblical installation formula. Hesse's TDNT article on chrio (the Greek equivalent) traces how the concept of anointing traveled from Egyptian political practice into Israelite theology, where it was transformed. In Israel, God does the anointing. The king serves under divine, not imperial, authority. By the post-exilic period, mashiach had become a title for the expected deliverer, the one God would anoint to restore Israel. Hannah's prayer, spoken at the threshold of the monarchy, contains the seed of that hope.
Historical context · Eleventh century BC
Hannah's Prophecy at Shiloh
Shiloh was the central sanctuary of Israel before Jerusalem. Located in the tribal territory of Ephraim, approximately 30 kilometers north of Jerusalem, it housed the tabernacle and the ark of the covenant from the time of Joshua (Joshua 18:1) through the period of the judges. The site (Khirbet Seilun) has been excavated by Israel Finkelstein and others, revealing significant Iron Age I occupation with public buildings that may have served cultic functions.
Hannah's prayer in 1 Samuel 2:1-10 is one of the great poems in the Hebrew Bible. Its structure is a thanksgiving psalm that moves from personal deliverance (barrenness resolved) to cosmic themes (God overturning the world's power structures) to a prophetic declaration about kingship. The movement from personal to national to eschatological is deliberate. Hannah's own reversal, from barren woman mocked by her rival Peninnah to joyful mother, becomes a template for how God operates on every scale. He lifts the poor from the dust. He sets them among princes. He guards the feet of his saints.
The mention of 'his king' in verse 10 has generated extensive scholarly discussion. The most likely reading is that Hannah's prayer, composed at the dawn of the monarchical period, either anticipates the monarchy or was edited to include a reference to it after Saul and David's reigns. Walter Brueggemann argues that the prayer functions as a theological prologue to the entire books of Samuel, setting the interpretive framework: God is the one who raises and brings low. Every king who follows, from Saul to David to Solomon to the fractured line of Judah, will be measured against this theology.
The anointing of kings was performed by prophets or priests using a flask (pak) or horn (keren) of oil. Samuel anointed Saul privately with a flask (1 Samuel 10:1). He anointed David with a horn of oil in the presence of his brothers (1 Samuel 16:13). The horn, made from an animal's horn, was the more prestigious container. Hannah's prayer uses the word 'horn' for the strength of the mashiach: 'exalt the horn of his anointed.' The oil poured from the horn onto the king's head connected the vessel of anointing with the strength it symbolized.
For reflection
Hannah prayed about a king before Israel had one. She spoke into empty space and called it certain. Her personal experience of God reversing her barrenness gave her the confidence to declare that God reverses everything: poverty, weakness, death itself. When has your own small experience of God's faithfulness given you language for something larger? The specific mercy you received last month may contain the vocabulary for the prayer you need to pray today.
Hannah gave Samuel to the LORD after begging for him. The prayer came after the surrender. She was not clutching the gift when she prophesied. She was standing with open hands.
Sources: BDB Lexicon; Hesse, 'chrio' (TDNT); Brueggemann, 'First and Second Samuel' (Interpretation)