1 Samuel 1:7 Meaning So Year by Year

Saṃsāra: The Round of Wandering The round that keeps arriving back where it started. Year by year she goes up to the house at Shiloh, and every climb sets out toward blessing and reaches the same rival, the same tears, the same portion left untouched. A circuit is a circuit whether it takes a year or a lifetime, and the going around again is itself the suffering.

Taṇhā: Craving The thirst that leans toward what is absent. Hannah's thirst is for a son, and it burns in proportion to how long it goes unslaked, which is why the annual feast reopens it instead of easing it. Peninnah's words have somewhere to land only because that place already aches.

Māna: Conceit, the habit of measuring Ranking oneself beside another: better, worse, or level. The provoking works by holding a full table of children up against empty arms, and the sting depends on Hannah accepting the comparison as the true account of her worth. Where there is no scale, a rival has nothing to weigh.

Salla: The Dart Two darts strike a person, the first from outside and the second from within. Peninnah's provoking is the first, arriving once a year and never in Hannah's hands. Weeping through the feast and pushing the food away is the second, and it keeps working long after the one who spoke has walked off to eat.

Soka: Sorrow Grief that dries a person out from the inside. It shows in the body before it shows in words: she wept, and the meat set before her at the festival stayed exactly where it was put. Sorrow like this asks to be met rather than argued with, and she carries hers up to the doorpost of the temple, where it turns into prayer.