The Prayers of Mary and Hannah
Christmas is all about gifts – right? The Bible records a young woman getting the “gift of her life” on the first Christmas! Mary certainly shows us what our attitude should be when we receive something we hadn’t expected and she draws on the experiences of those whose stories she had heard and read for herself, so she tries to turn what she is feeling into prayer.
So, as we are moving now through the Christmas season – traditionally called Advent, or the coming of the Lord as a Human Being – this is a wonderful time to revisit Mary’s response to Gabriel’s announcement that she was God’s chosen vessel to bring his Messiah – his Christ or anointed one – into the world. In her spontaneous response to Elizabeth (Luke 1:41-45), Mary reaches back into the scriptures to find a handle for her own expression of thanksgiving.
When she prays in Luke 1:46-55, she is recalling and echoing in her own prayer, the prayer of Hannah, Samuel’s mother (1 Samuel 2:1-10). These two women, and their prayers, share many common features from their structure to their content. Both women were rejoicing in the muscles of their conceptions, both of which have come about from the promise of God.
“My heart rejoices in the LORD; my horn is lifted up by the LORD” (1 Samuel 2:1a)[1]
“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Luke 1:46).
Both women begin their prayers with their beings leaping toward God. He has surprised them and they acknowledge just how overwhelmingly good he has been. It is good for us too to seek the Lord and allow him to overwhelm us with his goodness; He is a passionate God, and he wants passionate followers. However, if this is all we are seeking, then our faith will be like the seed that fell on shallow soil (Matthew 13:5-6); we will not have the depth of root to sustain us when the heat of daily life beats down on us and the challenges of the storms of life beat against us and our faith.
“My mouth boasts over my enemies, because I rejoice in your salvation” (1 Samuel 2:1b)
“Because he has looked with favour on the humble condition of his servant. Surely, from now on, all generations will call me blessed” (Luke 1:48).
Both Hannah and Mary continue their prayers after the surge of their hearts towards a good God by declaring themselves to be the Lord’s. They recognise just how terrifying and profound what He has done for them is. For Mary, it is the socially unacceptable reality that she is now divinely pregnant with the promised Messiah. While, for Hannah, it is the reality of the fulfilment of the Lord’s promise to her through the affirmation of Eli (1 Samuel 1:17) that He would overcome her barrenness and give her a son.
Hannah boasts of God’s victory over those who have humiliated her because of her infertility, while Mary declares her humiliation under the promise of God. Both are declaring the same truth from different perspectives. Hannah is delighted that the Lord has stopped the mouth of her husband’s other wife, who had set herself up as Hanna’s rival because she already had children. But it is the Lord’s victory that she is revelling in and boasting about. While Mary is feeling the weight of the reality of the Lord’s promise. It is likely that she would be feeling the fear of social criticism for being pregnant before being married; a truth that we can see in Joseph’s intention to break off the engagement secretly so as not to expose her to public humiliation (Matthew 1:19–21). However, the Lord declares him to be a good man, and speaks to him, telling him what is going on.
Sometimes we need to seek the Lord even before doing other obvious things (Cf. David and the Balsam trees, 2 Samuel 5:22–25)! Because what seems obvious to us does not always reflect the whole truth. Joseph was this kind of man. A man who was prepared to hear the Lord even when it was obvious what to do.
There is a kind of boasting that puts all the emphasis on the Lord (1 Corinthians 1:31 & Jeremiah 9:24) rather than on us, and this is the only boasting that is ever appropriate for a believer.
Both women continue their prayers of thanksgiving with a long list of illustrations about the goodness of God they have experienced (1 Samuel 2:2-9 & Luke 1:49-53). What they say and how they say it are reflected again and again in the Psalms and elsewhere in the scripture. Other authors want the listener to get a handle on just how great God is. We too should not be embarrassed by feelings of inability to express the fullness of what we have experienced of the Lord in our own words, or to find ourselves lacking in the ability to express it somehow in song; whether our own or one we have “borrowed” from those who have gone before us. So, let it out! Even if it is only in the car on the way to work or in the shower!
“Those who oppose the LORD will be shattered; He will thunder in the heavens against them. The LORD will judge the ends of the earth. He will give power to his king; he will lift up the horn of his anointed” (1 Samuel 2:10).
“He has helped his servant Israel, remembering his mercy. To Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he spoke to our ancestors” (Luke 1:54-55).
Both prayers end with a recognition of the lasting impact of what the Lord has done. For Hannah, her son Samuel was to be the last of the Judges and the one to anoint the first two kings of Israel. (She prays this before the people have even asked for a king!) While for Mary, it was the announcement that she would be the mother of the Messiah – a divinely human Messiah, a God-Man. When the Lord speaks and we hear his promises, mixing them with faith we can expect their effects to continue and reverberate throughout our lives and even to future generations.
“So my word that comes from my mouth
will not return to me empty,
but it will accomplish what I please
and will prosper in what I send it to do” (Isaiah 55:11)
As we have seen, the prayers of Mary and Hannah in Luke 1:46-55 and 1 Samuel 2:1-10 have many similarities. Similarities that shouldn’t surprise us because they are the responses to the same God who always remains the same (Malachi 3:6) – always good. As we continue towards Christmas, let us reflect on what the Lord has been working on, in and through our lives, and allow him to turn the times when we recognise him being at work in our lives into the kinds of prayer and praise of Hannah and Mary.
– Francis Judge
[1] All scripture is taken from the Christian Standard Bible. 2020. Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.