Hannah's song

The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble bind on strength. Hannah sings a prophetic poem of divine reversal a thousand years before Mary's Magnificat — which borrows its shape directly.

1 Samuel 2:1–10 is the prayer Hannah sings after the birth of Samuel. It is the first of a small class of poems in scripture that announce a theology of reversal: the proud brought low, the weak raised up, the barren made fruitful. Mary's Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55), a thousand years later, is modeled on Hannah's song line for line. Hannah's poem also contains the first scriptural reference to God's "anointed one" — meshiach, messiah — at its very end. A woman's prayer supplies both the shape of Mary's song and the first use of the word "messiah" in the Hebrew Bible.