Samuel’s story begins with his mother Hannah, who suffered because she had no children. Hannah’s husband Elkanah also had a wife named Peninnah. Peninnah had children and repeatedly provoked Hannah because Hannah had none. When the family made its yearly visit to the sanctuary at Shiloh, Hannah wept and could not eat. She prayed without making a sound and vowed that if she received a son, she would give him to God for life. Eli the priest first thought she was drunk. After hearing her explanation, he prayed that her request would be granted. Hannah returned home, gave birth to a son, and named him Samuel in connection with the request she had made.
After Samuel was weaned, Hannah brought him to Shiloh. She identified herself to Eli as the woman who had prayed there and said that she had prayed for this child. Keeping her vow, she gave Samuel to God, and he began serving beside Eli. Each year Hannah made a small robe and brought it to her son. She later had three more sons and two daughters. Samuel grew up at the sanctuary, but Eli’s sons Hophni and Phinehas abused the offerings and slept with women serving at the entrance to the tent. Eli rebuked them, but they would not listen to their father.
One night Samuel was lying down in the sanctuary where the ark was kept. Hearing his name, he ran to Eli, who said he had not called. After this happened three times, Eli understood that God was calling the boy and taught him how to answer. Samuel responded as instructed and received a message of judgment against Eli’s household. In the morning Samuel feared telling Eli, but when Eli demanded that nothing be hidden, Samuel told him everything. As Samuel grew, his words proved reliable, and Israel from Dan to Beersheba recognized him as a prophet.
When Israel lost a battle against the Philistines, the elders brought the ark from Shiloh to the battlefield. Hophni and Phinehas came with it, but thirty thousand Israelite soldiers died, Eli’s two sons were killed, and the ark was captured. Eli fell backward from his seat and died after hearing the news. Samuel was not placed at the front of these events, but the judgment he had first received was fulfilled. After the ark brought disaster to Philistine cities and returned to Israel, Samuel called the people to abandon other gods and serve God alone. They gathered at Mizpah, confessed their sin, and Samuel prayed for them.
When the Philistines approached the gathering at Mizpah, the people begged Samuel not to stop crying out for them. As Samuel offered a sacrifice, thunder threw the Philistine army into confusion and Israel pursued it. Samuel set up a stone and named it Ebenezer, marking that God had helped them to that point. For the rest of his life he judged Israel, traveling each year through Bethel, Gilgal, and Mizpah before returning to his home at Ramah. He also judged cases there and built an altar. Samuel was not only a prophet who delivered messages; he served as a judge responsible for disputes and leadership among the people.
When Samuel grew old, he appointed his sons Joel and Abijah as judges in Beersheba. They did not follow his ways. They pursued gain, accepted bribes, and distorted justice. Israel’s elders pointed to their conduct and demanded a king like the kings of other nations. Samuel was displeased and prayed. God answered that the people had not rejected Samuel, but had rejected God as their king. Samuel warned that a human king could take their sons for war and labor, their daughters for service, and their fields and livestock. The people still demanded a king to lead them in battle.
Saul of Benjamin came to Samuel while searching for lost donkeys. The day before, God had told Samuel that a man would arrive whom he should anoint as Israel’s leader. Samuel gave Saul the place of honor at a meal, poured oil on his head the next morning, and described signs he would meet. At Mizpah, Saul was selected by lot but found hiding among the supplies. Samuel presented him to the people and wrote down the rights of kingship. After victory over Ammon, the kingship was renewed at Gilgal.
Once the king was established, Samuel asked the people whether he had taken anyone’s ox or donkey, cheated anyone, or accepted a bribe. They answered that he had not. To expose the wrong in their demand for a king, Samuel prayed during the wheat harvest, and thunder and rain came that day. When the frightened people asked him to pray for them, Samuel urged them not to turn away from God. He said that he too would sin if he stopped praying for them. The beginning of monarchy did not end Samuel’s responsibility to pray and teach.
The relationship between Saul and Samuel soon broke down. Before a battle with the Philistines, Saul offered the sacrifice himself when Samuel did not arrive at the appointed time. Samuel said Saul’s dynasty would not endure because he had not kept the command. Later Saul was ordered to destroy Amalek but spared King Agag and the best animals. Saul said the animals were kept for sacrifice, but Samuel answered that obedience was better than sacrifice. When Saul grabbed him, Samuel’s robe tore. Samuel said the kingdom had likewise been torn from Saul. After Samuel killed Agag, he returned to Ramah and did not go to visit Saul again during his life, though he mourned for him.
When Samuel continued mourning Saul, God sent him to Jesse in Bethlehem. Samuel feared that Saul would kill him if he heard, but traveled under instructions to offer a sacrifice. He assumed Jesse’s tall oldest son Eliab was the chosen one, but was told not to judge by appearance or height. After seven sons passed before him, Samuel asked whether another remained. David was brought in from tending the sheep, and Samuel anointed him in front of his brothers. God’s spirit came powerfully upon David from that day. Samuel had established Saul as king; now, while Saul still held the throne, he anointed the man who would follow him.
When David fled from Saul, he went to Samuel at Ramah and reported what had happened. They moved to Naioth. The men Saul sent there saw Samuel standing with a group of prophets and began to prophesy. A second and third group did the same. Finally Saul himself came toward Ramah and prophesied on the way to Naioth. The account records no conversation between Saul and Samuel there. David had come to Samuel as a fugitive, and Saul reached the place where Samuel was while trying to capture him.
Samuel died, and all Israel gathered to mourn him. He was buried at his home in Ramah, and David went down toward the wilderness of Paran. Scripture does not give Samuel’s age at death or preserve final words spoken from his deathbed. His public life had moved through Israel’s demand for a king, Saul’s failure, and David’s anointing, and it appeared to close with his burial at Ramah.
Yet before Saul’s final battle, Samuel appears in one more biblical scene. Terrified by the Philistine army and unable to receive an answer from God, Saul sought a woman at Endor who consulted the dead. In disguise, he asked her to bring up Samuel. The woman cried out when she saw the figure, and Saul identified Samuel from her description of an old man wearing a robe. Samuel asked why Saul had disturbed him. He said the kingdom had been given to David because Saul had disobeyed, that Israel would lose the battle, and that Saul and his sons would be with him the next day. This is the last scene in which Scripture directly reports Samuel’s words.