Hannah wept and would not eat because she had no children, and her rival wife provoked her painfully. This happened during the family’s yearly worship trip to Shiloh. 1 Samuel 1:6–7
1 Samuel 1:1–7 opens by locating Elkanah’s household in the hill country and introducing a family shaped by unequal outcomes: two wives, one with children and one without. Each year the family travels to Shiloh to worship and offer sacrifices. In the meal connected with that sacrifice, Elkanah publicly favors Hannah with an extra share because he loves her. These verses act as the story’s doorway, establishing the key people, places, and tensions before any request or dramatic change occurs. The narrator begins with a careful family and hometown introduction, then narrows to the repeated yearly journey to Shiloh, where worship and sacrifice frame the household conflict.
These opening verses set a family story inside Israel’s public worship life. Elkanah’s household is introduced with an unusually full set of place-names and ancestors, grounding the narrative in a particular clan and region (verse 1). The family structure is immediately tense: two wives, one with children (Peninnah) and one without (Hannah) (verse 2).
A careful answer keeps the immediate passage, the book's argument, and the whole-Bible storyline together, so the question is answered in context instead of as a detached idea.
Start with 1 Samuel 1:6-7, then read the surrounding section so the answer stays connected to the passage's flow.
6Her rival provoked her sore, to make her fret, because Yahweh had shut up her womb.
7[as] he did so year by year, when she went up to the house of Yahweh, so she provoked her; therefore she wept, and did not eat.