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Hannah's prayer in 1 Samuel 1 is the most unguarded portrait of infertility in Scripture. She was in bitterness of soul. She wept sore. She prayed so intensely that Eli the priest watched her lips moving and assumed she was drunk. She did not pray a tidy, composed prayer. She poured out her grief before God with everything she had. And Scripture does not correct her emotional intensity. It records it as the prayer God heard.
Get These Verses Daily — Free“He maketh the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children. Praise ye the LORD.”
This verse closes a psalm about God's reversals of the most entrenched human conditions: poor lifted from dust, needy from the ash heap, barren made joyful. These reversals are presented as characteristic of God, not exceptional.
“And she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed unto the LORD, and wept sore.”
Hannah's prayer begins here — not with composure but with bitterness and weeping. The text does not correct her emotional state. It records it as the prayer that was heard. Raw grief before God is not disqualifying prayer. It is prayer.
“Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the LORD.”
Isaiah addressed this to a nation experiencing barrenness as exile — without land, temple, or hope. The command to sing is spoken into the desolation, not after it resolves. The promise is that desolation is not the final chapter.
“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
The Greek word for 'work together' — synergeo — is the root of 'synergy': multiple elements operating together toward an outcome. This is not a promise that each individual thing is good, but that God is working across all of them.
“And God remembered Rachel, and God hearkened to her, and opened her womb.”
The Hebrew word zakar — 'remembered' — in the Old Testament means God is acting on a prior commitment. Rachel had waited through years of her sister bearing children. 'God remembered' is not the end of waiting; it is the moment when the interval becomes visible as what it was.
Genesis 30:22 contains a phrase that is easy to read past: "And God remembered Rachel." The word "remembered" — zakar in Hebrew — does not suggest God had forgotten. In the Old Testament, when God "remembers" someone, it means he is acting on his prior commitment to them, moving into involvement. Rachel had been waiting while her sister bore child after child. The waiting was not divine indifference. It was the interval before God moved. This does not answer why the interval happens. But it names it as an interval, not an abandonment.
Isaiah 54:1 was addressed to Israel in exile — a nation without land, without temple, without the external markers of God's favor. The call to sing is addressed to the barren, the desolate, the one who has not borne a child. The promise is not that the specific longing will be met in the specific way desired. It is that desolation is not the final word.
Commentary is from a charismatic Protestant perspective, drawing on KJV text and public-domain sources including Spurgeon, Andrew Murray, and Matthew Henry.
Psalm 113:9 — "He maketh the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children" — is in a psalm that begins with "Praise ye the LORD" and surveys God's acts of unexpected reversal: raising the poor from the dust, lifting the needy from the ash heap, and placing the barren woman among the joyful mothers. The reversals in this psalm are not presented as random acts of kindness. They are presented as characteristic of who God is — the one who specializes in unexpected transformation of the most entrenched and painful circumstances.
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