(19) And they rose up.--Another notice of the pious customs of the house of Elkanah. This is a striking picture of one of the many holy homes in Israel, even in the wild, disorderly days of the Judges, and of the deep degradation of the priests of the sanctuary.

"The house at Ramah," the usual short name by which the city, "The Ramahs of the Watchers," Ramathaim-zophim, was known.

Verses 19, 20. - They rose up. After solemn worship early the next morning Elkanah returned to his home at Ramah, and God answered Hannah's prayer, and gave her the wished for son. She calls him Samuel, lit. Shemuel (Numbers 34:20; 1 Chronicles 7:2), which was an ordinary Hebrew name, and means "heard of God," not "asked of God," as in the margin of the A.V. It seems to have been the mother's right to give names to her children (Luke 1:60), and Hannah saw in Samuel, whom she had asked of God, a living proof that she had been heard by him. The name, therefore, is of fuller significance than the reason given for it. Ishmael has virtually the same meaning, signifying "God heareth." THE VOW FULFILLED (vers. 21-28).

1:19-28 Elkanah and his family had a journey before them, and a family of children to take with them, yet they would not move till they had worshipped God together. Prayer and provender do not hinder a journey. When men are in such haste to set out upon journeys, or to engage in business, that they have not time to worship God, they are likely to proceed without his presence and blessing. Hannah, though she felt a warm regard for the courts of God's house, begged to stay at home. God will have mercy, and not sacrifice. Those who are detained from public ordinances, by the nursing and tending of little children, may take comfort from this instance, and believe, that if they do that duty in a right spirit, God will graciously accept them therein. Hannah presented her child to the Lord with a grateful acknowledgment of his goodness in answer to prayer. Whatever we give to God, it is what we have first asked and received from him. All our gifts to him were first his gifts to us. The child Samuel early showed true piety. Little children should be taught to worship God when very young. Their parents should teach them in it, bring them to it, and put them on doing it as well as they can; God will graciously accept them, and will teach them to do better.And they rose up in the morning early,.... Partly for devotion, and partly for the sake of their journey:

and worshipped before the Lord; went up to the tabernacle, and prayed with their faces towards that part of it, the western part, where stood the ark of the Lord, the symbol of the divine Presence; and when they no doubt gave thanks for all the favours they had received there, and prayed for a safe and prosperous journey home, committing themselves to the care of divine Providence:

and returned, and came to their house to Ramah; or "Ramatha", the same with Ramathaim, 1 Samuel 1:1. Abarbinel thinks that Elkanah had two houses, one at Ramah for Peninnah, and another at Ramatha for Hannah; and that this was Hannah's house, to which they returned and came:

and Elkanah knew Hannah his wife: cohabited with her as a man with his wife; it is a modest expression of the conjugal act; see Genesis 4:1 and is observed to show that the conception and birth of Samuel were not in a supernatural way, but in the ordinary way and manner of generation:

and the Lord remembered her; the prayer she had made to him, opened her womb, as he had before shut it, and gave her power to conceive.