# The Boy Samuel

_Retold by Talerie (talerie.com) from King James Version_ · 8 min read · ages 6+

Hannah, who has no children, prays at Shiloh for a son, and when Samuel is born she brings the boy to serve God with old Eli the priest, whose sons are wicked. One night God calls Samuel by name and speaks against Eli’s family; Samuel tells Eli everything, and all Israel comes to know Samuel as a true prophet of God.

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In the hill country of Ephraim, in the town of Ramah, there lived a man named Elkanah. He had two wives, Hannah and Peninnah. Peninnah had sons and daughters, but Hannah had no children at all.

Every year Elkanah took his family up to Shiloh to worship God and offer a sacrifice. The priests there were Hophni and Phinehas, the sons of old Eli. When the meat of the sacrifice was shared out, Elkanah gave a portion to Peninnah and to each of her children, but he gave Hannah a double portion, because he loved her.

Peninnah never let Hannah forget that she had no child. Year after year, on the trip to Shiloh, she teased and needled her until Hannah wept and could not eat a bite.

“Hannah, why are you crying?” asked Elkanah. “Why won’t you eat? Why are you so sad? Don’t I mean more to you than ten sons?”

One year, after the meal, Hannah got up and went to the house of God. Eli the priest was sitting on a chair by the doorpost. Hannah stood and prayed, with tears running down her face.

“God,” she prayed, “if you will only look at my sorrow and remember me, and give me a son, I will give him back to you for all the days of his life. No razor will ever touch his head.”

She prayed silently, in her heart; only her lips moved. Eli watched her mouth and thought she was drunk.

“How long will you go on like this?” he said. “Put away your wine.”

“No, my lord,” Hannah answered. “I haven’t had any wine. My heart is heavy, and I have been pouring it out to God. Don’t take me for a wicked woman.”

“Then go in peace,” said Eli, “and may the God of Israel give you what you have asked of him.”

Hannah went back to her family and ate, and she no longer looked sad. The next morning they worshiped once more and went home to Ramah. And God remembered Hannah. Before long she had a baby boy, and she named him Samuel. “I asked God for him,” she said.

When the time came for the yearly trip, Hannah stayed behind. “Once he’s weaned, I’ll take him,” she told Elkanah, “and he will stay there with God forever.”

“Do what you think best,” said Elkanah.

So Hannah nursed her little son at home until he was weaned. Then she took him up to Shiloh with three young bulls, a sack of flour and a skin of wine, and brought him to Eli.

“My lord,” she said, “do you remember me? I am the woman who stood here beside you, praying. I prayed for this child, and God gave me what I asked. Now I am giving him back to God. For as long as he lives, he belongs to God.”

Then Hannah sang:

My heart is glad in God,  
and I can smile at my enemies.  
No one is holy like God;  
there is no rock like our God.  
The bows of the mighty are broken,  
and those who stumbled stand up strong.  
The woman with no children has seven,  
and the mother of many grows weak.  
God makes poor, and God makes rich;  
he brings low, and he lifts up.  
He raises the poor from the dust  
and seats them among princes.

Elkanah and Hannah went home to Ramah, and the little boy stayed at Shiloh to serve God with Eli the priest.

Eli’s two sons were wicked men who cared nothing for God. Whenever someone offered a sacrifice, their servant would come while the meat was boiling, holding a three-pronged meat fork. He jabbed it into the pot, and whatever the fork brought up, the priest kept. Sometimes the servant came before the fat had even been burned for God.

“Give me raw meat for the priest to roast,” he would say. “He won’t take it boiled.”

If anyone answered, “Let the fat be burned first, then take what you like,” the servant said, “No. Give it to me now, or I’ll take it by force.”

That was a great sin, because it taught the people to scorn the offerings they brought to God.

Samuel, meanwhile, was still a little boy, serving God in a linen ephod, which is a priest’s linen apron. His hair grew long, for no razor touched it. Every year his mother made him a little coat and brought it when she came up with Elkanah for the sacrifice.

Eli blessed them both, and God gave Hannah three more sons and two daughters. And the boy Samuel grew up at Shiloh.

Eli was very old now. He heard what his sons were doing to the people, and that they did shameful things with the women who served at the entrance of the sanctuary.

“My sons, why are you doing these things?” he said to them. “Everyone is talking about it. If one man wrongs another, someone can speak up for him. But if a man wrongs God, who will speak up for him then?”

His sons would not listen, and Eli did nothing more to stop them. Samuel kept growing, and both God and the people were pleased with him.

One day a man of God came to Eli with a message. “God chose your family to be his priests,” he said, “yet you honor your sons more than God. So this is what God says: no one in your family will live to be old. As a sign, both your sons, Hophni and Phinehas, will die on the same day. And God will raise up a faithful priest, who will do what is in God’s heart and mind.”

In those days God seldom spoke to anyone, and visions were rare. Eli’s eyes had grown so dim that he could hardly see. One night he was lying in his usual place, and Samuel was asleep in the house of God, where the ark of God stood in the dark behind the curtain. The lamp of God had not yet gone out.

Then God called, “Samuel!”

“Here I am,” said Samuel. He ran to Eli. “Here I am. You called me.”

“I didn’t call you,” said Eli. “Go back and lie down.” So the boy went and lay down.

Again God called, “Samuel!”

Samuel got up and went to Eli. “Here I am. You called me.”

“I didn’t call you, my son,” said Eli. “Go back and lie down.”

Samuel did not yet know God’s voice, because God had never spoken to him before.

A third time God called, “Samuel!”

Again Samuel got up and went to Eli. “Here I am. You called me.”

At last Eli understood that it was God who was calling the boy. “Go and lie down,” he told Samuel, “and if he calls you again, say, ‘Speak, for your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

Then God called as before, “Samuel! Samuel!”

And Samuel answered, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”

“I am about to do something in Israel,” God said, “that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle. On that day I will do to Eli everything I have said against his family, from beginning to end. I told him I would judge his family forever, because he knew his sons were doing wrong and did not stop them. No sacrifice or offering will ever wipe it away.”

Samuel lay there until morning, and then he opened the doors of the house of God. He was afraid to tell Eli what he had heard.

But Eli called him. “Samuel, my son.”

“Here I am,” said Samuel.

“What did God say to you?” Eli asked. “Don’t hide it from me. May God punish you severely if you hide one word of what he told you.”

So Samuel told him everything and kept nothing back.

Eli bowed his head. “It is God,” he said. “Let him do what he thinks best.”

Samuel grew up, and God was with him and made every word Samuel spoke come true. God went on speaking to Samuel at Shiloh, and all Israel, from Dan in the north to Beersheba in the south, knew that Samuel was a true prophet of God.

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## About this tale

The Boy Samuel comes from the Bible and is not a fairy tale. It is the first three chapters of the First Book of Samuel, which tell of Hannah, her son Samuel and the old priest Eli at Shiloh. The book is named after Samuel, but these three chapters name no author. Our retelling draws on the King James Version (1611).

From the first verse of chapter 1 to the last of chapter 3, we tell it in plain modern English, and wherever the King James text says “the LORD”, ours says God. Gentler shortens Hannah’s song and the man of God’s warning to Eli. Original, our longer retelling, keeps both in full, together with Elkanah’s ancestors.

> Speak, for your servant is listening.
>
> King James Version, 1611, 1 Samuel 3:10: Then Samuel answered, Speak; for thy servant heareth.

### 1 Samuel 1–3 in the King James Version and in our retelling

|  | King James Version | Our retelling |
| --- | --- | --- |
| God’s name | “the LORD”, “the LORD of hosts” | God |
| Hannah’s portion | “a worthy portion” | “a double portion” |
| Samuel at Shiloh | “I have lent him to the LORD” | Gentler “giving him back”, Original “lending” |
| After the handover | “Hannah prayed, and said” | Hannah sings, shortened in Gentler |
| Where Samuel sleeps | in the temple, “where the ark of God was” | the ark stands “in the dark behind the curtain” |
| His reply | “Here am I” | “Here I am” |
| The ending | Samuel a prophet, “from Dan even to Beersheba” | the same, in both versions |

### How our retelling tells it

Year after year at Shiloh, Peninnah taunts Hannah for having no child until Hannah weeps and cannot eat. Hannah prays without a sound, and Eli the priest, seeing only her lips move, takes her for drunk. When her son is born she names him Samuel because she asked God for him, and once he is weaned she brings him to Eli with three bulls, flour and wine. The servant of Eli’s wicked sons takes meat from the sacrifices, by force if anyone objects, and a man of God warns Eli. Then one night God calls the boy four times. Three times Samuel runs to Eli, because he does not yet know God’s voice, and the fourth time he answers God. A few small details are ours: the ephod explained as a priest’s linen apron, the curtain and the dark around the ark, and “north” and “south” beside Dan and Beersheba.

The hard parts are kept, in plain words. Gentler says Eli’s sons did shameful things with the women who served at the sanctuary, and Original says they lay with those women, and that God had decided to put the sons to death. In both, the man of God says the two sons will die on the same day. Their deaths are only foretold; the story ends before they happen, with Samuel grown up and known in all Israel as a prophet of God.

### Samuel later in the book, and Hannah’s song

Eli’s sons Hophni and Phinehas die in the next chapter, as the man of God warned, but neither of our versions goes that far. Later in the same book Samuel anoints Saul, and after him David. Chapter 17 of that book is David and Goliath, another story on our site, though our retelling of it does not show Samuel.

In both our versions, the words Hannah speaks after handing Samuel over to Eli are a song, and Gentler introduces them with “Then Hannah sang”. The King James text says that “Hannah prayed, and said”.

Sources (claims checked against them on 2026-11-04):
- The King James Version of the Bible, Project Gutenberg eBook #10, 1 Samuel, chs. 1–3; also 4:11, 4:18, 10:1 and 16:13 [our source] (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10)
- Wikidata Q6577515 (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6577515)

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- Read online: https://talerie.com/en/tales/the-boy-samuel
- Characters: Eli, Hannah, Elkanah
- Version: gentler retelling; the longer, more faithful retelling: https://talerie.com/en/tales/the-boy-samuel-original.md
- Also in: [German](https://talerie.com/de/maerchen/samuel.md), [French](https://talerie.com/fr/contes/samuel.md), [Spanish](https://talerie.com/es/cuentos/el-nino-samuel.md), [Portuguese](https://talerie.com/pt/contos/o-menino-samuel.md), [Czech](https://talerie.com/cs/pohadky/samuel.md), [Polish](https://talerie.com/pl/bajki/powolanie-samuela.md)
- Subject (Wikidata): https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6577515
- Source: King James Version (1611; standard text of 1769), Project Gutenberg #10: 1 Samuel 1–3 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10)
- Public-domain basis: Talerie contemporary retelling (CC0 2026), based on: King James Version (1611; standard text of 1769), Project Gutenberg #10: 1 Samuel 1–3 — EU anonymous-work rule, translation published ≤1769 (+70 passed)
- License: CC0-1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)