Hannah was one of two wives of Elkanah, an Israelite man of the hill country of Ephraim. The other wife, Peninnah, had children; Hannah had none, and Peninnah taunted her cruelly. At the annual family pilgrimage to the Tabernacle at Shiloh — the central Israelite sanctuary of the period of the Judges — Hannah prayed silently at the entrance of the Tabernacle: 'O LORD of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me... I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life.'
The high priest Eli, watching from his seat, saw her lips moving without sound and accused her of being drunk. She answered: 'No, my lord; I am a woman afflicted in spirit. I have been pouring out my soul before the LORD.' Eli, ashamed, blessed her: 'Go in peace; the God of Israel grant your petition.' She conceived and bore Samuel ('asked of God'), whom she gave to the Tabernacle as a child. Samuel grew up under Eli, became the great prophet who anointed Israel's first two kings (Saul and David), and stood at the hinge between the period of the Judges and the monarchy. Hannah's song of thanksgiving (1 Samuel 2:1–10) is the direct model for the Magnificat of Mary in Luke 1.