Hannah (biblical figure)
biblical character mentioned in the Books of Samuel
Hannah (; Biblical Hebrew: חַנָּה, romanized: Ḥannā, lit. 'favor' or 'grace') is one of the wives of Elkanah mentioned in the First Book of Samuel. According to the Hebrew Bible, she was the mother of Samuel.
Biblical narrative
The narrative about Hannah can be found in 1 Samuel 1:2–2:21. Outside of the first two chapters of 1 Samuel, she is not otherwise mentioned in the Bible.
In the biblical narrative, Hannah is one of two wives of Elkanah. The other, Peninnah, had given birth to Elkanah's children, but Hannah remained childless. Nevertheless, Elkanah preferred Hannah. According to Lillian Klein, the use of this chiasmus underscores the standing of the women: Hannah is the primary wife, yet Peninnah has succeeded in bearing children. Hannah's status as primary wife and her barrenness recall Sarah and Rebecca in Genesis 17 and Genesis 25 respectively. Klein suggests that Elkanah took Peninnah as a second wife because of Hannah's barrenness.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2346367. VIAF identifies the subject as 25404650. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hannah (biblical figure)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.