This book, and that which follows it, bear the name of Samuel in the title, not because he was the penman of them (except of so much of them as fell within his own time, to the twenty-fifth chapter of the first book, in which we have an account of his death), but because the first book begins with…

We have here an account of the state of the family into which Samuel the prophet was born. His father’s name was Elkanah, a Levite, and of the family of the Kohathites (the most honourable house of that tribe) as appears, 1 Chron. 6:33–34.

Elkanah had gently reproved Hannah for her inordinate grief, and here we find the good effect of the reproof. I. It brought her to her meat. She ate and drank, 1 Sam. 1:9.

Here is, I. The return of Elkanah and his family to their own habitation, when the days appointed for the feast were over, 1 Sam. 1:19. Observe how they improved their time at the tabernacle.