and said to her servants, "Go on ahead of me. I will come after you." But she did not tell her husband Nabal.

Finally her husband Elkanah said to her, "Hannah, why do you weep and not eat? Why are you so sad? Am I not better to you than ten sons?"

but Hannah did not go up with them. Instead she told her husband, "Once the boy is weaned, I will bring him and appear before the Lord, and he will remain there from then on."

So her husband Elkanah said to her, "Do what you think best. Stay until you have weaned him. May the Lord fulfill his promise." So the woman stayed and nursed her son until she had weaned him.

His mother used to make him a small robe and bring it up to him at regular intervals when she would go up with her husband to make the annual sacrifice.

His daughter-in-law, the wife of Phineas, was pregnant and close to giving birth. When she heard that the ark of God was captured and that her father-in-law and her husband were dead, she doubled over and gave birth. But her labor pains were too much for her.

She named the boy Ichabod, saying, "The glory has departed from Israel," referring to the capture of the ark of God and the deaths of her father-in-law and her husband.