1 Samuel 2:6

The Lord killeth, and maketh alive,.... Which is true of different persons; some he takes away by death, and others he preserves and continues in life; and of the same persons, whom God removes by

The LORD killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up.

Killeth, and maketh alive; either, 1. Diverse persons; he killeth one, and maketh another alive. Or, 2. The same person whom he first killeth, or bringeth very nigh unto death, he afterwards raiseth to life. Me, who was almost overwhelmed and consumed with grief, he hath revived. The name of death, both in sacred Scripture and profane writers, is oft given to great calamities; as .

1 Samuel 2:6 The LORD killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up.Ver. 6. The Lord killeth, and maketh alive.] He layeth men for dead, and then reviveth them, as 2 Corinthians 1:9-10. That great apostle was "in death often"; and those ancient confessors cry out, "For thy sake are we killed all the day long." The Hebrews say that Peninnah’ s children died all but two, and that those were saved alive by Hannah’ s prayer for them, at their mother’ s request.

(6) The Lord killeth, and maketh alive.—Death too and life come from this same omnipotent Lord: nothing in the affairs of men is the sport of blind chance. The reign of a Divine law administered by the God to whom Hannah prayed is universal, and guides with a strict unerring justice what are commonly called the ups and downs, the changes and chances, of this mortal life. The following lines of the 7th, 8th, and 9th verses enforce by varied instances the same solemn truth. The Babylonian Talmud on these words has a curious and interesting tradition:—“Three classes appear on the day of judgment: the perfectly righteous, who are at once written and sealed for eternal life; the thoroughly bad, who are at once written and sealed for hell: as it is written (Daniel 12:2), ‘And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt;’ and those in the intermediate state, who go down into hell, where they cry and howl for a time, whence they ascend again: as it is written (Zechariah 13:9), ‘And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried; they shall call on my name, and I will hear them.’ It is of them Hannah said (1 Samuel 2:6), ‘The Lord killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to hell, and bringeth up.’”—Treatise Bosh Hashanah, fol. 16, Colossians 2.

Verse 6. The Lord killeth] God is the arbiter of life and death; he only can give life, and he only has a right to take it away. He bringeth down to the grave] The Hebrew word שאול sheol, which we translate grave, seems to have the same meaning in the Old Testament with αδης, hades in the New, which is the word generally used by the Septuagint for the other. It means the grave, the state of the dead, and the invisible place, or place of separate spirits. Sometimes we translate it hell, which now means the state of perdition, or place of eternal torments; but as this comes from the Saxon [Anglo-Saxon], to cover or conceal, it means only the covered place. In some parts of England the word helling is used for the covers of a book, the slating of a house, c. The Targum seems to understand it of death and the resurrection. "He kills and commands to give life he causes to descend into Sheol, that in the time to come he may bring them into the lives of eternity," i.e., the life of shame and everlasting contempt, and the life of glory.

Ch. 1 Samuel 2:1-11. The Song of Hannah Hannah’s song is a true prophecy. She is inspired “to discern in her own individual experience the universal laws of the divine economy, and to recognise its significance for the whole course of the Kingdom of God.” The deliverance from her proud adversary which had just been vouchsafed to her was but one instance of the great principles of Jehovah’s moral government of the world, principles which receive their fullest illustration in the exaltation of the Lord’s Christ through humiliation to victory, and which will only he fully realised when “the kingdoms of this world shall have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.” Hence it is that her own peculiar circumstances are so soon lost sight of in the wider view of the dealings of God’s Providence. The failure to recognise this has led critics to deny the authenticity of the song, and to conjecture that some ancient triumphal war-pæan has been erroneously placed in Hannah’s month by the compiler of the book. A brief analysis will help to explain the connexion of thought. “Jehovah is the sole author of my deliverance. He shall be the theme of my song. There is none to be compared with Him for holiness, power, faithfulness: be silent before him, all ye proud boasters! He knows your thoughts and weighs your actions. Observe the vicissitudes of human fortune: the haughty are humbled, the humble exalted: this is Jehovah’s doing: for He is the Almighty Governor of the universe. He guides and guards His saints, and destroys the wicked. May He finally discomfit his adversaries, judge the world, and establish the kingdom of His Anointed One!” The Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55) should be carefully compared with Hannah’s song, of which it is an echo rather than an imitation. The resemblance lies in thought and tone more than in actual language, and supplies a most delicate and valuable testimony to the appropriateness of this hymn to Hannah’s circumstances. The 113th Psalm forms a connecting link between the two.

6. Kills and makes alive — In his hand is the power of life and death.