Life often moves in breathtaking reversals. The tech mogul who seemed untouchable faces congressional hearings. The political dynasty that ruled for decades loses in a landslide. The startup launched by college dropouts becomes worth billions overnight. In the space of a single momentāa market crash, a medical diagnosis, an unexpected pregnancy, a political revolutionāeverything changes. The mighty fall, the humble ascend, and what seemed permanent proves as fragile as morning mist.
This is the reality Hannah knew intimately, and it’s one of the reasons her voice echoes through our synagogues on Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year).
Why do we read Hannah’s story from the Book of Samuel on the Day of Judgment? The traditional answers speak of divine remembrance, since God remembered Hannah on this day and granted her a child, and the power of prayer. But Rabbi Yissachar Frand points to another message embedded in Hannah’s own words. What truth about the nature of existence did this once-barren woman understand that makes her prayer essential reading as we stand before the divine throne of judgment?
Hannah’s prayer reveals a universe that is full of uncertainty. God actively orchestrates the rise and fall of human fortune with stunning regularity. After giving birth to Samuel, she doesn’t simply thank God for her personal miracle. In her prayer, she delivers a theological manifesto about the fundamental instability of all earthly circumstances:
God doesn’t merely permit changeāHe actively engineers it.
The Sages understood that when Hannah proclaims, “while the barren woman has born seven, she that had many children has been bereaved” (1 Samuel 2:5), she speaks not only of her own transformation from childlessness to motherhood, but of her co-wife Penina’s loss of motherhood.
Hannah had seven children, but, according to tradition, her rival wife Penina, who had taunted her for years with cruel reminders of her barrenness, would lose one child each time Hannah gave birth. The woman who had lorded her fertility over Hannah discovered that fortune’s wheel turns with merciless precision. Penina’s advantage became her devastation, while Hannah’s shame became her glory.
Rabbi Frand explains that Hannah’s prayer serves as the ultimate Rosh Hashanah message because it demolishes our illusions about permanence. We enter the Day of Judgment carrying assumptions about our fixed circumstances, our unshakeable positions, our guaranteed futures. Hannah shatters these assumptions by revealing that God specializes in complete reversals.
While this might instill within us a sense of uneasiness, it also gives us hope and confidence. The poverty that defines your identity today may become tomorrow’s wealth. The children you lack today may fill your house before another Rosh Hashanah arrives. The humiliation that crushes you now may become the foundation for your future honor.
Often, when we see the wealthy prospering while the righteous suffer, when we watch the humble being crushed while the arrogant soar, we make a critical error: we assume these circumstances are permanent. Hannah’s prayer reminds us that God operates on a different timeline than human expectation.
Penina’s mockery of Hannah lasted years, but God’s response lasted generations. Hannah’s disgrace was temporary; her vindication was eternal. The woman who couldn’t conceive became the mother of Samuel the prophet, whose spiritual influence shaped the entire future of Israel. The woman who was shamed at the Tabernacle became the author of one of Scripture’s most powerful prayers, from which we learn some of the fundamental laws about prayer in general.
Standing before God in divine judgment each Rosh Hashanah, we need Hannah’s perspective. The circumstances that seem so solid todayāyour financial security, your family problems, your health challenges, your social statusāexist within a universe where God actively rearranges human fortune according to His perfect wisdom.
Hannah’s prayer doesn’t promise that everyone’s situation will improve, but it promises that our circumstances can change according to divine will. The great reversal isn’t just Hannah’s storyāit can be the story that awaits everyone who places their trust in the One who holds the pillars of the earth in His hands. Nothing in your life is so broken that He cannot rebuild it, so lost that He cannot restore it, so humbled that He cannot exalt it. This Rosh Hashanah, as we hear Hannah’s words again, we’re reminded that the God who judges us is the same God who transforms us.
