The Prophet Samuel

Hannah, childless and taunted for it, prayed at the sanctuary at Shiloh so intently that the priest Eli took her for drunk, and vowed that if she were given a son she would give him to the Lord for his whole life. Samuel was born, and she kept the vow and brought him to Shiloh when he was weaned, and her song of thanksgiving is the model the Church hears again in the Magnificat.

The boy slept in the temple where the ark of God was, and the word of the Lord was rare in those days. He was called three times in the night and three times went to Eli, until Eli understood, and told him what to say. The word he was given was against Eli's own house.

He judged Israel from Ramah and rode a circuit of the towns, and he was the last man to hold the country together without a king. When the people demanded a king so that they might be like the other nations, he warned them exactly what a king would take from them, and then anointed the one God chose, Saul the son of Kish.

When Saul spared what he had been told to destroy and made an offering of it, Samuel gave him the answer that has been quoted against religious display ever since: that to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. He anointed David at Bethlehem while Saul still reigned, and he died at Ramah and all Israel mourned him.

The books of Kingdoms that carry his story are in this app in full in the Brenton Septuagint. His relics were translated to Constantinople in 406. The Church keeps his memory on the twentieth of August.