But God heard the boy’s voice. ¹  The angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and asked her, “What is the matter, ²  Hagar? Don’t be afraid, for God has heard ³  the boy’s voice right where he is crying.

We said to my lord, ‘We have an aged father, and there is a young boy who was born when our father was old. ¹  The boy’s ²  brother is dead. He is the only one of his mother’s sons left, ³  and his father loves him.’

When I send a boy after them, I will say, “Go and find the arrows.” If I say to the boy, ‘Look, the arrows are on this side of you; ¹  get them,’ then come back. For as surely as the Lord lives, you will be safe and there will no problem.

But God said to Abraham, “Do not be upset ¹  about the boy or your slave wife. Do ²  all that Sarah is telling ³  you because through Isaac your descendants will be counted. ⁴ 

So he ¹  said to his servants, “You two stay ²  here with the donkey while ³  the boy and I go up there. We will worship ⁴  and then return to you.” ⁵ 

“Do not harm the boy!” ¹  the angel said. ²  “Do not do anything to him, for now I know ³  that you fear ⁴  God because you did not withhold your son, your only son, from me.”

Reuben said to them, “Didn’t I say to you, ‘Don’t sin against the boy,’ but you wouldn’t listen? So now we must pay for shedding his blood!” ¹ 

Then Judah said to his father Israel, “Send the boy with me and we will go immediately. ¹  Then we will live ²  and not die – we and you and our little ones.

“So now, when I return to your servant my father, and the boy is not with us – his very life is bound up in his son’s life. ¹ 

When he sees the boy is not with us, ¹  he will die, and your servants will bring down the gray hair of your servant our father in sorrow to the grave.

Indeed, ¹  your servant pledged security for the boy with my father, saying, ‘If I do not bring him back to you, then I will bear the blame before my father all my life.’

but Hannah did not go up with them. ¹  Instead she told her husband, “Once the boy is weaned, I will bring him and appear before the Lord, and he will remain there from then on.”

So the Lord graciously attended to Hannah, and she was able to conceive and gave birth to three sons and two daughters. The boy Samuel grew up at the Lord’s sanctuary. ¹ 

Then the Lord called Samuel a third time. So he got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me!” Eli then realized that it was the Lord who was calling the boy.

She named the boy Ichabod, ¹  saying, “The glory has departed from Israel,” referring to the capture of the ark of God and the deaths of her father-in-law and her husband.

But Saul replied to David, “You aren’t able to go against this Philistine and fight him! You’re just a boy! He has been a warrior from his youth!”

But if I say to the boy, “Look, the arrows are on the other side of you,’ ¹  get away. For in that case the Lord has sent you away.