We seem to see a general pattern forming in Scripture, one in which barren women would often serve as the very special instruments God would use to raise up key figures in the history of redemption. Surely this pattern was planned by God to make sure we mortals did not attribute the arrival of these key figures in the plan of salvation to any human machinations or abilities. Hannah, therefore, could well belong to what we might call “the fellowship of the barren ones,” in which the total inability