'God has heard' (or 'name of God') — the child asked of Jehovah by his barren mother HANNAH and given back to serve at Shiloh (ch 1). He becomes the LAST of the judges and the first of the great prophets, the hinge-figure of Israel's history: he leads a repentant Israel against the Philistines, and then, when the people demand a king 'like all the nations,' he warns them, anoints SAUL, and later anoints DAVID in Saul's place. A lifelong Nazirite, called by God as a boy ('speak, for your servant hears,' ch 3), he is the prophet under whose word the whole monarchy begins. He dies at 1 Samuel 25, before the book that bears his name is done.