[as] he did so year by year, when she went up to the house of Yahweh, so she provoked her; therefore she wept, and did not eat.
Elkanah was careful to observe some of the statutes in the Mosaic Law, such as worshipping God yearly at Shiloh. However, he seems to have been somewhat insensitive to the depth of Hannah’s suffering as a barren woman (1 Samuel 1:8).