Hannah prayed, "Give to your handmaid a manchild" (I Samuel 1:11); that is, a man distinguished among men. Samuel said: A son who will anoint two men, Saul and David. Rabbi Yochanan said: A son who is equivalent to two men: Moses and Aaron (Berachot 31b).

When the people of Israel saw the cloud suspended between heaven and earth, they knew that God was speaking with Moses. So it was also with Samuel (Sifrei Zuta, Bamidbar 12:5).

Samuel wrote the Book of Samuel, and in addition, Judges and Ruth. The Book of Samuel was completed by Gad the seer and Nathan the prophet (Bava Batra 14b, 15a).

The righteous Samuel went throughout all the Israelite towns to judge the people (Shabbat 56a).

Samuel aged prematurely because of the trouble with his sons (Aggadat Bereishit 41).

His mother had made a cosmic bargain: the gift of her son to Divine service in exchange for the greater glory of Israel. Thus is Samuel's fate prefigured, and his book one of the most inventive and gripping narratives in the Biblical corpus. He was a judge and a prophet, and later a counselor, adviser, and anointer of Israel's first kings, Saul and David.

Though he served the Mighty and the mighty, Samuel's task was not an easy one, as he watched Israel eventually reject a theocracy, succumbing to the secular rule of a king. This inspired the most antipolitical invective in the Bible, as Samuel, excoriating his people, forewarns of the "manner of the king that shall reign over them" (I Samuel 8:9). The Israelites learn that their sons will be conscripted, their daughters pressed into culinary service, their fields confiscated, their lands taxed, their cattle tithed, and they themselves enslaved. Gornicht helfen. Having heard Samuel's premonitions, they insist on receiving a king so that "we also may be like all the nations" (I Samuel 8:20).

Samuel wasn't one to say, "I told you so," but subsequent events fulfill his dire prophecy. The political intrigue of a nascent monarchy challenges the absolute religion of the righteous judge, who witnesses the rise and fall of the beleaguered Saul and that leader's desperate and shameful treatment of his successor, Israel's greatest prodigy, David. Samuel holds his own during these stressful times, but the years take their toll. His sons, the judges of the next generation, prove far more corruptible than the redoubtable prophet, and he ages prematurely. Yet he is called upon one more time for counsel - from his grave! - by an even more desperate King Saul, looking for his mentor's blessing. With no political obligations remaining in the afterlife, the weary counselor of kings tells the harsh truth: because Saul did not execute the Lord's wrath upon Amalek, the Philistines will conquer Israel. Samuel's words are upheld. Honest to the end, and even beyond.