For This Child I Prayed  

Chana, wife of Elkanah of Efrat, stepped out of the doorway of her home, perched on a high ridge on the mountain of Ephraim. A soft breeze danced between her and the ridge opposite her, as though mocking her by saying, “Even we, the hills, are two… and you? You’re alone.”

“I’m not alone!” she flared at the silent ridge. “My husband, Elkanah, awaits me at home,” she told the pastures spread out before her. “My husband, a Levi, is a choshuve man, equal to thirty-one tzaddikim of the generation. He’s one of two hundred prophets who prophesied to the people of Israel but whose prophecy wasn’t recorded for future generations. He carries the burden of the people upon his heart,” she cried silently.

The wind stilled, and Chana sat down in the courtyard of her home — quiet, sad, empty. After some time, she felt someone’s eyes on her. She turned and saw her husband Elkanah standing in the doorway, looking at her sadly. She stared at him with a look that encapsulated the pain of the past decade of childlessness, a look that rent the air with the cry, “Give me children… and if not, it’s as if I’m dead.”

Elkanah approached her, to calm her, to comfort her, to instill hope within her. Chana snapped out of her wallowing and said, “I’m not the first barren woman. Our Imahos came before me, and they paved the way.”

Elkanah understood that she was suggesting he take another wife, just like some of the Avos had done, and cut her off, shook his head, and declared, “Absolutely not! You’re my wife, and with Hashem’s help, we’ll merit to have children.”

“Sarah brought another woman into her home, and in that merit she had a son,” Chana countered. “Take another wife, and perhaps I’ll be fulfilled through her having children….”

“True, Sarah merited a son, but afterward she said to Avraham: ‘Chamasi alecha. My wrong is upon you.’ And Rochel, who revealed the secret signs she’d made with Yaakov to her sister, in the end became jealous of her, and when she came with her complaint to Yaakov, he grew angry with her. Is this what you want?” Elkanah asked her.

Chana burst into bitter tears. “No, my husband. That isn’t what I want. I want a healthy, whole child. I want you to be his father, and I want to be his mother. I want us to raise him together, in joy, in love, in friendship — not, Heaven forbid, in strife. I will not agree to do something that will lead to the two of us standing on opposite sides of the room, each davening our own separate tefillah. This is our joint nisayon,” she wept. “But in a nisayon there is hishtadlus — and perhaps if you marry another woman I know of, her name is Penina, that merit will stand us in good stead and we’ll merit to have a child.

“Are you not called an Efrati, a man from Efrat?” she pressed on through her tears. “But you’re from Shevet Levi. You don’t own the land. So why are you known by your place of residence rather than your shevet? Do you not see that this hints that our story is bound up with the story of the woman buried in Efrat, that our life path is similar to that of Rochel Imeinu’s?” she argued passionately.

Elkanah saw his righteous wife’s deep pain. He knew she was a neviah and that her request came from a broken heart, and so he agreed to take a second wife.