Then Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife, and say, “May the LORD give you children by this woman for the petition she asked of the LORD.” So then they would return to their home.
In these verses we have the good character and posture of Elkanah's family, and the bad character and posture of Eli's family. The account of these two is observably interwoven throughout this whole paragraph, as if the historian intended to set the one over against the other, that they might set off one another.
Commenting on 1 Samuel 2:11-26
And the Lord visited Hannah,.... In a way of mercy, approving and confirming the blessing of Eli; or rather granting the blessing he prayed for, by giving her power to conceive, bear, and bring forth children, as the following words explain it: so that she conceived and bare three sons and two daughters; whereby the prophecy of Hannah was fulfilled, Sa1 2:5, and was no...
Eli blessed Elkanah and his wife--This blessing, like that which he had formerly pronounced, had a prophetic virtue; which, before long, appeared in the increase of Hannah's family (Sa1 2:21), and the growing qualifications of Samuel for the service of the sanctuary.