Hannah answered, No, my lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit: I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I poured out my soul before Yahweh.
First, she now knew that the heart’s truest joy is not in children, nor even in mercies given in answer to prayer, for she began to sing, “My heart rejoiceth in the Lord”-not “in Samuel,” but in Jehovah her chief delight was found. “Mine horn is exalted in the Lord”-not “in that little one whom I have so gladly brought up to the sanctuary.” No. She says in the first verse, “I rejoice in thy salvation,” and it was even so. God was her exceeding joy, and his salvation her delight. Oh! it is a great thing to be taught to put earthly things in their proper places, and when they make you glad yet to feel, “My gladness is in God; not in corn and wine and oil, but in the Lord himself; all my fresh springs are in him.”
