or even barrenness-birth to complaint-assurance, the story turns our attention away from the event of the birth itself to the drama of fidelity between Hannah and Yahweh. The subject of the narrative is Yahweh’s astonishing fidelity and Hannah’s responding fidelity. The reality of need, and explicitly barrenness, is not distinctly an Israelite problem. The narrative, however, invites a Yahwistic rendering of human trouble and its resolution. Yahweh stands at the center of each scene: 1. “The LORD
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