Two wives in one house is trouble enough, but when one bears children and the other can’t—fireworks!
When you turn to the first page of 1 Samuel, you see why a brief overview of the historical setting was necessary. There is no formal introduction here. The book starts off by including us in a private family situation. We find ourselves in “the mountains of Ephraim” (1 Sam 1:1), which have featured prominently in the stories at the end of Judges. The men of Ephraim picked fights with Gideon and Jephthah, and both the righteous judge Tola and the idolatrous Micah lived there, whom the Danites visited to steal his idols. Both the Levite and his host, in the garish story of the murdered concubine, came from the mountains of Ephraim, too. All that to say, this region had its fill of characters, many of them from the more sordid side, and so we are encouraged to read that the first man introduced to us, Elkanah by name, “went up from his city yearly to worship and sacrifice to the Lord of hosts in Shiloh” (v 3). But before that, we discover a family crisis: “He had two wives: the name of one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children” (v 2). Oh no, not this again! Remember the ongoing battle between Leah and Rachel in the household of Jacob? There was constant rivalry between the women in the child-bearing department. It could have been the same in Elkanah’s home, and especially because he inflamed the situation. “Whenever the time came for Elkanah to make an offering, he would give portions to Peninnah his wife and to all her sons and daughters. But to Hannah he would give a double portion, for he loved Hannah” (vv 4-5). This is like handing out live grenades as presents! But Hannah had a different solution; happily she went to God about it!