The wife of Elkanah. Her name signifies gracious; and she was, indeed, a very gracious woman. We have her history in 1 Samuel 1:1-28 and 1 Samuel 2:1-36. Her hymn is truly spiritual, and forms a blessed song concerning redemption. It is worthy remark, that though the patriarchs, and other holy men of old, before the days of Hannah, spoke of the Lord Jesus under various characters belonging to him, yet Hannah is the first that was commissioned by the Holy Ghost to speak of him as the Messiah, the Anointed. (See 1 Samuel 2:10) This was her honour. It is worthy remark, that the Lord so distinguished this Old Testament saint: to be the first preacher of Jesus as the Anointed, and Mary Magdalen, in the New Testament, to be the first preacher of Jesus in his resurrection. (Mark 16:9)
And while I remark it in her history, I beg to call the reader's attention to an infinitely more important consideration on the subject. If the Lord Jesus was thus anointed, and called as such the Messiah (which is, in fact, the Anointed), so many ages before his incarnation, as the glorious Head of his body the church, was not the church, the body of that glorious Head, anointed also in him? Could the Head, in this instance, be considered detached and separated from the members? Surely Christ, as Christ, that is, Anointed, could not have been thus called, had not the Holy Ghost virtually and truly, in the secret councils of JEHOVAH, anointed him as much as God the Father called him. (See Isaiah 42:6) And as such the church was as much called and anointed in him as his body, and that from everlasting; and in the everlasting love of God, the Holy Ghost presented to the Father the object of his everlasting love thus anointed, sanctified, and set apart, for his glory, and the spouse of the Lord Jesus. "A body hast thou prepared me." (Hebrews 10:5) Oh! what a sweet and precious thought, or rather numberless thoughts of rapture and delight arise out of this one view of the church's oneness and connection with her glorious Head and Husband before all worlds! Eyeing Jesus thus, as the Anointed, in his secret name and character, before the open display of it in time, was, without all doubt, in relation to his spouse, the church. Had not the Father given his dear Son a church, Jesus had not given himself to the church, and for the church, neither would the Holy Ghost named him as the Messiah, the Anointed, before his incarnation; neither after would he have anointed him and given him without measure of his influence. But as we find the same name given of the Anointed before, as after, he became man, and tabernacled in the substance of our flesh, nothing can be more plain, in confirmation of this blessed truth, than that God the Holy Ghost had an everlasting love to the church, as the body of the Lord Jesus, before the world began, and anointed the glorious Head, and the church in her glorious Head, watched over her, protected her, blessed her, and set her apart, in all and every member of her, as "the church which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all." (Ephesians 1:22-23)