1 Samuel 1:3

This man went up out of his city yearly,.... From year to year; or, as the Targum, from the time of the solemn appointed feast to the solemn appointed feast, from one to another; there were three of

And this man went up out of his city yearly to worship and to sacrifice unto the LORD of hosts in Shiloh. And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, the priests of the LORD, were there.

Yearly, to wit, at one of the solemn feasts, which probably was the passover, when he not only went up himself, but carried his wife and children with him. Compare . Or, at the appointed days or times; Heb. from days to days; or, from time to time, i.e. at the three solemn feasts, when he, together with all other males, were obliged to go to worship God in the place appointed; and at other times, when he as a Levite was to go thither in his course. To sacrifice; not in his own person, which the Levites could not do, but by the priests; in which sense David, and Solomon, and Absalom are said to offer sacrifices, . In Shiloh; where the tabernacle had long been, and now was. See 21:19. The priests of the Lord were there, or, were the priests of the Lord there, to wit, under their father Eli, who is generally conceived to have been the high priest, but being very old and infirm, , and unfit for service, his sons ministered in his stead, being as it were second priests. See . And this clause seems to be added, to show that this good man did not run into that vulgar error, of neglecting his duty of offering to God for the wickedness of the priests; of which see ,24.

1 Samuel 1:3 And this man went up out of his city yearly to worship and to sacrifice unto the LORD of hosts in Shiloh. And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, the priests of the LORD, [were] there.Ver. 3. To worship and to sacrifice,] viz., Peace offerings. The Rabbis here observe that to worship or pray is better than to sacrifice; because it is first named. And the two sons of Eli … the priests of the Lord.] These were learned and lewd; Multi sacerdotes, pauci sacerdotes, saith Chrysostom: There are many priest in name, but few that are right. I do not believe that there many priests, saith he, that shall be saved. Multi in nomine, pauci in opere. - Hom. 3, in Act.

(3) Went up out of his city yearly.—The He brew expression rendered yearly, is found in Exodus 13:10, and there refers to the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Passover. There is little doubt but that this great national festival is here referred to. It was the Passover that the whole family were accustomed to keep at the sanctuary of the Eternal. The writer places in strong contrast the piety and devotion which evidently still existed in the family life of many in Israel with the fearful disorders and crime which disfigured the priestly life in those days. There were not a few, doubtless, in Israel who, like Elkanah and his house, honoured the name of the Lord, while the recognised rulers and religious guides of the people, like the sons of Eli the high priest, too often lived in open and notorious sin. Unto the Lord of hosts.—This is the first time in the Old Testament Book that we find the well-known appellation of the Eternal “Jehovah Sabaoth,” Lord of hosts. It is computed that this title of God occurs 260 times in the Old Testament, but it is not found in any of the books written or compiled before this time. In the New Testament it is only once used (see James 5:4). The glorious title, with which Isaiah, who uses it some sixty times, and Jeremiah some eighty times, have especially made us familiar, represented Jehovah, the Eternal One, as ruler over the heavenly hosts: that is, over the angels and the stars; the stars being conceived to be the dwelling-places of these deathless beings. The idea of their invisible God-Friend being the sovereign Master of a host of those innumerable glorious beings usually known as angels, or messengers, was no strange one to Hebrew thought. For instance, already in the story of Jacob we find the patriarch calling the angels who appeared to him the “camp of God”(Genesis 32:1-2). In the blessing of Moses in the magnificent description of the giving of the law on Sinai (Deuteronomy 33:2), we read of “ten thousands of saints” (Kodesh). The glorious Angel who allowed Joshua to worship him under the towers of Jericho (Joshua 5:14) speaks of himself as “captain or prince of the host of the Lord.” It is especially noteworthy that here in these Books of Samuel, which tell of the establishment of an earthly sovereignty over the tribes, this stately title of the real King in Israel, which afterwards became so general, first appears. It was the solemn protest of Samuel and his school against any eclipsing of the mighty but invisible sovereignty of the Eternal by the passing splendours and the outward pomp of an earthly monarchy set up over the people. It told also the strange and the alien peoples that the God who loved Israel was, too, the star ruler, the Lord of the whole universe, visible and invisible. In Shiloh.—That is, rest. This sacred city was situated in Ephraim.

Verse 3. Went up out of his city yearly to worship] As the ark was at Shiloh, there was the temple of God, and thither all the males were bound by the law to go once a year, on each of the great national festivals: viz., the passover, pentecost, and feast of tabernacles. The Lord of hosts] יהוה צבאות Yehovah tsebaoth, Jehovah of armies. As all the heavenly bodies were called the hosts of heaven, צבא השמים tseba hashshamayim, Jehovah being called Lord of this host showed that he was their Maker and Governor; and consequently He, not they, was the proper object of religious worship. The sun, moon, planets, and stars, were the highest objects of religious worship to the heathens in general. The Jewish religion, teaching the knowledge of a Being who was the Lord of all these, showed at once its superiority to all that heathenism could boast. This is the first place where Lord of hosts is mentioned in the Bible; and this is so much in the style of the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, &c., that it gives some weight to the supposition that this book was written by a person who lived in or after the times of these prophets. See the preface.

3. yearly] The Law required every male to present himself “before Jehovah” at the central sanctuary of the nation at each of the three great Feasts (Exodus 34:23; Deuteronomy 16:16), but there is no evidence that this command was ever strictly observed, and Elkanah’s practice was probably that of a pious Israelite of the time. “All his household” (1 Samuel 1:21) went with him, in obedience to the injunctions of Deu 12:10-12. To which of the Feasts he went up must remain a matter of conjecture. Our Lord’s parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover (Luke 2:41). the Lord of hosts] See Note I. p. 235, for a discussion of the meaning of this title. in Shiloh] The position of Shiloh is defined with remarkable exactness in Judges 21:19. It was in Ephraim, “on the north side of Bethel, on the east side of the highway that goeth up from Bethel to Shechem, and on the south of Lebonah.” This agrees perfectly with the situation of the modern Seilûn, which is about ten miles north of Bethel, and east of the main road. It is thus described by Lieut. Conder (Tent Work in Palestine, I. 82): “The ruins of a modern village occupy a sort of tell or mound. On the east and north the site is shut in by bare and lofty hills of grey limestone, dotted over with a few fig trees; on the south the plateau looks down on the plain just crossed. A deep valley runs behind the town on the north. Below the top of the hill there is a sort of irregular quadrangle. The rock has here been rudely hewn in two parallel scarps for over 400 feet, with a court between, 77 feet wide, and sunk 5 feet below the outer surface. Thus there would be sufficient room for the court of the Tabernacle in this area.” Here in the territory of the most powerful tribe, in the heart of the promised land, the whole congregation of Israel met and set up the Tabernacle of the congregation, the last relic of their wanderings in the desert (Joshua 18:1). The name is appropriate. Shiloh signifies “Rest.” Shiloh continued (with temporary exceptions, see e.g. Judges 20:27) to be the religious centre of the nation, “the place which Jehovah had chosen to put his name there,” until after the loss of the Ark in the disastrous battle of Ebenezer. Possibly it was destroyed or occupied by the Philistines: at any rate it ceased to be the national sanctuary. Samuel sacrificed at Mizpeh, at Ramah, at Gilgal, never, so far as we read, at Shiloh. The tabernacle was removed to Nob (1 Samuel 21), and the once holy place was utterly desecrated. Jeremiah points to its desolation as the standing witness of God’s judgments. “Go ye now unto my place which was in Shiloh, where I set my name at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel” (Jeremiah 7:12).

It is likely that during the unsettled times of the Judges Judges 21:25 the attendance of Israelites at the three Festivals Exodus 34:23; Deuteronomy 16:16 fell into desuetude or great irregularity,

3. Went up… to worship… in Shiloh — Shiloh is situated thirteen miles north of Ramah.