Samuel opens with a birth narrative, a nativity. Though the Bible is filled with such stories, they are not told recklessly. The Bible is not littered with nativities. Select nativities are set within the narrative. God does not toss nativities like trash out of a window. He sets them like gems in jewelry. When God tells a birth story, He is preparing us for a bigger story.
God made man and blessed him saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Genesis 1:28). A multitude of births followed, but the hope of man looks for just one—the promised Seed of the Woman who will crush the head of the serpent (Genesis 3:15). When God tells a birth story, it is pregnant with this hope.
Genesis is structured around genealogies. The story of the patriarchs is a story of births. God promised Abraham that “in your offspring all the nations of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 26:4). When God tells a birth story, He is telling the story of the Offspring in which all the nations are blessed. When God tells a birth story, pay attention, because something big is about to happen, something God-sized.
To tell any birth story, some introductions must be made. Ours opens telling us that “there was a certain man.” Before God has told us the man’s name, he has told us much. Samuel opens during the time of the judges and transitions us to the kings. The birth story of the most well known judge opens in this way, “There was a certain man of Zorah, of the tribe of the Danites, whose name was Manoah. And his wife was barren and had no children” (Judges 13:2).
Do you remember the rest?
“And the angel of the LORD appeared to the woman and said to her, ‘Behold, you are barren and have not borne children, but you shall conceive and bear a son. Therefore be careful and drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean, for behold, you shall conceive and bear a son. No razor shall come upon his head, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb, and he shall begin to save Israel from the hand of the Philistines’” (Judges 13:3–5).
This is the birth story of Sampson. When God tells us a birth story, He is telling us He is about to do something.
Later in Samuel we will encounter this phrase again. “There was a man of Benjamin whose name was Kish, the son of Abiel, son of Zeror, son of Becorath, son of Aphiah, a Benjaminite, a man of wealth” (1 Samuel 9:1). This is how we are introduced to Saul. When God tells us a birth story, He is telling us He is about to do something.
Yes, this nativity anticipates the nativity, but it foreshadows Elizabeth more than it does Mary. Elizabeth was barren. Her husband Zechariah receives a vision in the temple. The child is to be dedicated to the Lord. He is not the Seed, but he will introduce Him. Neither of these nativities tell of the King, but in both of them, we are introduced to the introducer. God is about to do something.
No Other Boast 