On the noun אִישׁ in 1 Samuel 1:11

The above rendering comes from the RJPS translation, an adaptation of the NJPS translation. Before accounting for this rendering, I will analyze the plain sense of the Hebrew term containing אִישׁ — or in this case, its plural אֲנָשִׁים.)

Six lines of evidence suggest that as Hannah is depicted in the MT, she articulates a vow that would be satisfied by a child of either gender. We must account for not only what was said (##1–2), but also what could have been said (##3–4), and what went without saying (##5–6).

1. In the expression זֶרַע אֲנָשִׁים, the head noun זֶרַע is not gendered.
2. As for the modifier, אֲנָשִׁים (in the absence of a contrast with women, as here) would be the least likely way to specify a male, because bare plurals are (diachronically speaking) the last form of a “cover” noun like אִישׁ to be lexicalized for gender; and for אֲנָשִׁים that stage was not reached until the Mishnah (Stein 2019). Its lack of lexical gender in the Bible is supported by the Akkadian cognate expression zēr amīlūti, which is attested in non-gendered usage from Old Babylonian to Neo-Assyrian times (citations in Shalom Paul, “A Rejoinder concerning 1 Samuel 1:11,” JBL 130.1 [2011]: 45).
3. The opening narration notably avoids framing Hannah’s perceived problem in terms of a son specifically—as argued by Michael Carasik (“Why Did Hannah Ask for ‘Seed of Men’?” JBL 129 [2010]: 433–36; here 434), and by Antony F. Campbell (Samuel, FOTL, 2003, 40–41): it not only speaks generically in terms of ילדים ‘children’ (v. 2), but also specifies that her rival, Peninnah, has daughters (v. 4); and it twice frames Hannah’s problem generically, in terms of her closed womb rather than the lack of a son per se (vv. 5, 6).
4. As for אֲנָשִׁים as Hannah’s choice of modifier, if she had wanted to specify a son, more clearly gendered terms were readily available (e.g., בֵּן זָכָר, “male child,” as in Jer 20:15).
5. The text’s audience would have believed that a daughter satisfies Hannah’s need for זֶרַע, given the Bible’s inclusion of daughters in all aspects of what זֶרַע could encompass: ongoing kinship relations (Gen 19:12; 29:15; 31:43; Lev 18:10, 17; Judg 9:1–3; 19:2; 2 Sam 13:37; 21:4–8; 1 Chr 7:18), familial emotional attachments (Gen 31:48–50; Judg 11:35; 1 Sam 1:4; 30:6; 2 Sam 12:3), inheritance arrangements (Num 27:1–11; Josh 17:3–6; Judg 11:34–35 [a thwarted plan]; 1 Chr 2:34–35; see also Zafrira Ben-Barak, “Mutual Influences in the Ancient Near East: Inheritance as a Case in Point,” Michmanim 9 [1996]: 1–15, here 8; eadem, “Inheritance by Daughters in the Ancient Near East,” JSS 25 [1980]: 22–33, here 22; eadem, Inheritance by Daughters in Israel and the Ancient Near East: A Social, Legal, and Ideological Turning Point [Heb.] [Old Jaffa: Archaeological Centre, 2003], 271–72), ritual purity regulations (Lev 21:1–2), and poetic style (Num 21:29; Isa 43:6; 49:22; Jer 48:46; Mic 7:6; Ps 144:12). These varied indications are independent and thus mutually reinforcing.
6. Hannah’s daughter would have been perceived as able to function as a dedicated servant of God; at least, the audience lacked the grounds to rule out this possibility. The social world of the Hebrew Bible attests to females in the relevant roles: leadership and prophetic agency (Judg 4:4), naziritehood (Num 6:2), and cultic participation (Exod 38:8; 1 Sam 4:22).

It is true that LXX reads σπερμα ανδρων (lit. “seed of men”; NETS: “offspring of men”) or alternatively σπερμα ανδρος (lit. “seed of a man”), and the Vulgate reads sexum virilem (lit. “manly child”). However, the Greek version rendered a distinctly different base Hebrew text, which presupposed different gender roles for women (not imagining their participation in the cult); see Stanley D. Walters, “Hannah and Anna: The Greek and Hebrew Texts of 1 Samuel 1,” JBL 107 (1988): 385–412. And the Vulgate may well be retrojecting the postbiblical understanding of אֲנָשִׁים as having male import (as noted above in #2).

Presumably for such reasons, REB and McCarter (Anchor Bible, 1980) render זֶרַע אֲנָשִׁים here generically as ‘offspring’, apparently treating אֲנָשִׁים as a species-generic term. Similarly, Paul claimed that the phrase זֶרַע אֲנָשִׁים means “mortal offspring” (op. cit.). However, these construals are unlikely. True, the similar expression זֶרַע אָדָם (Jer 31:27) means “human offspring” (as opposed to animal offspring), and likewise the Aramaic זְרַע אֲנָשָׁא (Dan 2:43) means “human offspring” (as opposed to inanimate materials). Yet the existence of those terms suggest that זֶרַע אֲנָשִׁים must mean something else, given that no two expressions in a language are exactly synonymous. Anyway, no opposition with a non-human category is apparent in this instance. (Hannah is not saying, “Give me a human offspring rather than some other kind.”) Furthermore, if Hannah’s desired outcome were merely offspring, then the word זֶרַע alone would have sufficed, as attested by this same story’s epilogue, when the priest Eli blesses Elkanah (2:20): יָשֵׂם יְיָ לְךָ זֶרַע מִן־הָאִשָּׁה הַזֹּאת “May GOD grant you offspring by this woman.” Consequently, the claim that the full expression זֶרַע אֲנָשִׁים means “[human] offspring” actually fails to account for Hannah’s articulation of אֲנָשִׁים. It treats אֲנָשִׁים either as superfluous, which is implausible, or as a matter of emphasis, which would be plausible only if a more informative construal is not available. However, as we will see, a situation-oriented construal yields a far more meaningful result.

Arguably Hannah was concerned to ensure that her offspring would thrive beyond weaning in order to be a participant in the larger society = אֲנָשִׁים. (Cf. Job 4:13.) Indeed, in the ancient world, about 1 in 5 persons died in early childhood (Gershon Galil, The Lower Stratum Families in the Neo-Assyrian Period [Leiden: Brill, 2007]: 310n3; Hornkohl, JBL 133.3 [2104]: 474n35). Thus a contextual English rendering for זֶרַע אֲנָשִׁים might be “offspring who joins society.” This meaning may have been articulated in Targum Jonathan: בַּר בְּגוֹ בְּנֵי אֱנָשָׁא “an offspring among humankind,” and more definitively by Isaiah di Trani the Younger (circa 1280): זרע קיימים שיגדל באנשים “offspring who will endure so as to grow up in society.” Then this construct chain conveys an “entity–result” semantic relationship, such as the expression אַבְנֵי־קֶלַע ‘stones meant for a sling’. Yet although such an intended meaning is valid, it is unlikely, given that concern about infant mortality was ubiquitous and thus generally went without saying—and anyway that would have been implied without having to be specified in a vow.

To find a construal of the phrase that yields a coherent and informative text, we must go back to the basics. A situating noun like אֲנָשִׁים is the default label for a speaker to employ when putting forward a proposal, for it efficiently enables the desired situation to be sketched in schematic terms. (Schematic depiction suffices because it relies upon the audience to readily mentally construct and fill in the depicted situation by invoking salient world knowledge, such as social conventions.) Hannah is probably invoking this noun label to make an underspecified situating reference that is pragmatically delimited: either nonspecifically, to a salient category; or specifically, to a referent that in context is unique. Let’s examine each of those two possibilities, in turn.

Regarding reference to a salient category, an instructive analogy is the similar expression לֶחֶם אֲנָשִׁים (Ezek 24:17, 22); in that context, אֲנָשִׁים denotes a group of participants in a situation that involves mourning rites. There, interpreters and translators variously construe two possibilities that are equally plausible (given our limited state of knowledge): the participants in question are either those who come to comfort mourners, or the mourners themselves. In either case, the expression is understood to make a contextually determined, situated reference.

Regarding a unique reference, an instructive analogy is Judg 18:25, where Danite warriors warn a distraught Micah that he is liable to be attacked by אֲנָשִׁים מָרֵי נֶפֶשׁ “desperate parties”—which in context is a unique reference to themselves, who are armed and clearly dangerous.

In short, we should be asking who are the contextually defined participants denoted by אֲנָשִׁים in the phrase זֶרַע אֲנָשִׁים. One answer comes from noticing that, in Hannah’s eyes (and those of the ancient audience), parents are the prototypical participants in society; they are normal—and thereby avoid public shaming. If so, we can understand Hannah’s reference as pragmatically delimited to a salient category: parents. Then the contextual meaning of זֶרַע אֲנָשִׁים, the offspring of salient participants, translates in effect to “offspring like those others [i.e., normal folks] have.” I.e., this construct chain is conveying a “relational role–possessor” semantic relationship, such as עֶבֶד עֲבָדִים ‘slave of slaves’ (Gen 9:25).

Most likely, given the narrative frame, we are to understand that Hannah is making a more concrete and unique reference to the specific parties in the immediate situation who have been preoccupying her attention and upsetting her: Peninah and Elkanah. If so, then זֶרַע אֲנָשִׁים means (in idiomatic English) “offspring like those others [i.e., my co-wife and husband] have.”

Given that for Hannnah, “those others”—namely Peninah and Elkanah—are exemplars of parents, the difference in meaning between the category reference and the unique reference is slight. We don’t have grounds to distinguish between them. They both resemble Flavius Josephus’s restatement of this story in his Jewish Antiquities (V.10.2, Niese V.344 [Begg, Brill]), where he writes that Hannah begged God δοῦναι γονὴν αὐτῇ καὶ ποιῆσαι μητέρα “to give her progeny and make her a mother.”

This situation-oriented, pragmatically delimited construal meets the criteria needed to be considered the plain sense. Not only would it have been highly salient (cognitively available) to the ancient audience—who have been primed by the chapter's long introduction to this climactic verse—but also adopting it yields a coherent and informative text overall (by making the introduction more relevant). It relates the usage of אֲנָשִׁים directly to what has been troubling Hannah.

As for rendering into English, the NJPS ‘a male child’ is implausible, as argued above.

The revised rendering expresses, in modern English idiom, the construal arrived at above.