Samuel’s Age When Brought to Eli was not three years old. The verses speaking of his being weaned are 1 Samuel 1:22–24. The Hebrew Gamal means to wean and is used in 1 Samuel 1:22 and 23: in verse 24 the word is G’malto, referring to a child who is old enough to leave his mother, generally considered to be at least eleven. 1 Samuel 1:24. And when she had weaned him, she took him up with her, with three bulls and one ephah of flour and a skin-bottle of wine, and brought him to the House of the LORD* in Shiloh, and the lad was young. This word translated Lad is Na’ar, usually used for men in their late teens to late twenties. While we do not know his age, the use of na’ar indicates mid-teens as the very youngest possible age.