Our haftorah by the tomb

I was pondering Sheol, this week of all weeks, and stumbled upon a synagogue over at wiki and in Holešov, with a Biblical passage. But it wasn't from the Torah. It was יְהוָ֖ה מֵמִ֣ית וּמְחַיֶּ֑ה מוֹרִ֥יד שְׁא֖וֹל וַיָּֽעַל׃ (not Czech) 1 Samuel 2:6; an extract from the Song of Hannah vv. 1-10 which their Tanakh calls a "prayer". Was it always in Samuel's book?

In this Jewish year, apart from inscriptions, Hannah's song will be cantillated in haftarah / haftorah - rather, was. It may not be half the Torah; but it is at least half the Chumash, worthy of regular recital alongside Torah. Various Jews tell interested parties it features on the first day of their year. It may as well be half the Torah!

How long has this been going on? The incantation bowl "Moriah Bowl II" features 1 Samuel 2:2 / Psalm 86:17. I suppose that is Cyrus Gordon, "Magic Bowls in the Moriah Collection", Orientalia 53 (1984), 220-41 although JSTOR isn't letting me in there.

Around here Emanuel Tov reported that vv. 2 and 6 both differ in the Old Greek "Reigns" (including Lucian - so, maybe Old Latin, and/or Sahidic). Syriac, like Targum-Jonathan before and Vulgate on the side, is a new translation from our MT. Dr Tov discussed these versions, but mostly looking around these two verses, to vv. 1, 8-10; he punted v. 2 and didn't comment on v. 6 (Κύριος θανατοῖ καὶ ζωογονεῖ / DMS mortificat et vivificat and that usual translation of Sheol to "in [Hades'] Inferno", I wouldn't even count as variant). As it happens the song's versions aren't in the same context. In this the infamous 4QSam^a presents a hybrid of preLXX and preMT; which clearly did not catch the attention of either tradition, any more than Moriah II did. Meanwhile our Church Fathers included it in Odes 3.

INTERJECT 3/31 Then there's the Song's internal content, preElohistic, even in its LXX Vorlage hence Κύριος [<*YHW/H].

This tells us that Hannah's Song was important to the Jews from a preBiblical age. Overall it is a song against enemies: nobody has contested v. 4. That bowl even attached it to bellicose Psalm 86. You could say that the Song started out as a haftorah... perhaps on Psalm 86 for some, but ending up in the Book Of Samuel on account of v. 5. By the time protoSamuel joined the Reigns corpus in the Deuteronomic History, the practice of cantillating this song was firmly established. Passive-voice; on account the Christians were likely doing that too.