1 Samuel 2:5

2:5 Those who are well-fed hire themselves out to earn food,

but the hungry no longer lack.

Even ¹  the barren woman gives birth to seven, ² 

but the one with many children withers away. ³ 

1 Samuel 2:21

2:21 So the Lord graciously attended to Hannah, and she was able to conceive and gave birth to three sons and two daughters. The boy Samuel grew up at the Lord’s sanctuary. ⁴ 

1 Samuel 1:8

1:8 Finally her husband Elkanah said to her, “Hannah, why do you weep and not eat? Why are you so sad? ⁵  Am I not better to you than ten ⁶  sons?”

1 Samuel 17:12

17:12 ⁷ Now David was the son of this Ephrathite named Jesse from Bethlehem ⁸  in Judah. He had eight sons, and in Saul’s days he was old and well advanced in years. ⁹ 

1 Samuel 30:19

30:19 There was nothing missing, whether small or great. He retrieved sons and daughters, the plunder, and everything else they had taken. ¹⁰  David brought everything back.

¹ tc Against BHS but with the MT, the preposition (עַד, ’ad) should be taken with what follows rather than with what precedes. For this sense of the preposition see Job 25:5.

² sn The number seven is used here in an ideal sense. Elsewhere in the OT having seven children is evidence of fertility as a result of God’s blessing on the family. See, for example, Jer 15:9, Ruth 4:15.

³ tn Or “languishes.”

⁴ tn Heb “with the Lord.” Cf. NAB, TEV “in the service of the Lord”; NIV, NRSV, NLT “in the presence of the Lord”; CEV “at the Lord’s house in Shiloh.”

⁷ tn Heb “why is your heart displeased?”

⁸ sn Like the number seven, the number ten is sometimes used in the OT as an ideal number (see, for example, Dan 1:20, Zech 8:23).

¹⁰ tc Some mss of the LXX lack vv. 12-31.

¹¹ map For location see Map5-B1; Map7-E2; Map8-E2; Map10-B4.

¹² tc The translation follows the Lucianic recension of the LXX and the Syriac Peshitta in reading “in years,” rather than MT “among men.”

¹³ tn Heb “there was nothing missing to them, from the small even unto the great, and unto sons and daughters, and from loot even unto all which they had taken for themselves.”