1 Samuel 3

2 12, 13 Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial ; they knew not the LORD. And the custom of the priests with the people was, that, when any man offered sacrifice, the priest’s servant came, while the flesh was in seething, with a fleshhook of three teeth in his hand ; and he struck it into the pan, or kettle, or caldron, or pot ; all that the fleshhook brought up the priest took therewith. So they did in Shiloh unto all the Israelites that came thither. Yea, before they burnt the fat, the priest’s servant came, and said to the man that sacrificed, Give flesh to roast for the priest ; for he will not have sodden flesh of thee, but raw. And if the man said unto him, They will surely burn the fat presently, and then take as much as thy soul desireth ; then he would say, Nay, but thou shalt give it me now : and if not, I will take it by force. And the sin of the young men was very great before the LORD : for men abhorred the offering of the LORD.

18,19. But Samuel ministered before the LORD, being a child, girded with a linen ephod. Moreover his mother made him a little robe, and brought it to him from year to year, when she came up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice. And Eli blessed Elkanah and his wife, and said, The LORD give thee seed of this woman for the loan which was lent to the LORD. And they went unto their own home. And the LORD visited Hannah, and she conceived, and bare three sons and two daughters. And the child Samuel grew before the LORD.

22. Now Eli was very old ; and he heard all that his sons did unto all Israel, and how that they lay with the women that did service at the door of the tent of meeting. And he said unto them, Why do ye such things ? for I hear of your evil dealings from all this people. Nay, my sons ; for it is no good report that I hear : ye make the LORD’s people to transgress. If one man sin against another, God shall judge him : but if a man sin against the LORD, who shall intreat for him ? Notwithstanding they hearkened not unto the voice of their father, because the LORD would slay them. And the child Samuel grew on, and was in favor both with the LORD, and also with men.

Verses 27-36. God’s message to Eli, affirming his great sin, and its terrible punishment.

3 1 And the child Samuel ministered unto the LORD before Eli. And the word of the LORD was precious in those days ; there was no open vision. And it came to pass at that time, when Eli was laid down in his place, (now his eyes had begun to wax dim, that he could not see,) and the lamp of God was not yet gone out, and Samuel was laid down to sleep, in the temple of the LORD, where the ark of God was ; that the LORD called Samuel : and he said, Here am I. And he ran unto Eli, and said, Here am I ; for thou calledst me. And he said, I called not ; lie down again. And he went and lay down. And the LORD called yet again, Samuel. And Samuel arose and went to Eli, and said, Here am I ; for thou calledst me. And he answered, I called not, my son ; lie down again. Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD, neither was the word of the LORD yet revealed unto him. And the LORD called Samuel again the third time. And he arose and went to Eli, and said, Here am I ; for thou calledst me. And Eli perceived that the LORD had called the child. Therefore Eli said unto Samuel, Go, lie down : and it shall be, if he call thee, that thou shalt say, Speak, LORD ; for thy servant heareth. So Samuel went and lay down in his place. And the LORD came, and stood, and called as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel said, Speak ; for thy servant heareth. And the LORD said to Samuel, Behold, I will do a thing in Israel, at which both the ears of every one that heareth it shall tingle. In that day I will perform against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from the beginning even unto the end. For I have told him that I will judge his house forever, for the iniquity which he knew, because his sons did bring a curse upon themselves, and he restrained them not. And therefore I have sworn unto the house of Eli, that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be purged with sacrifice nor offering forever.

15,16. And Samuel lay until the morning, and opened the doors of the house of the LORD. And Samuel feared to shew Eli the vision. Then Eli called Samuel, and said, Samuel, my son.

17. And he said, Here am I. And he said, What is the thing that the LORD hath spoken unto thee? I pray thee hide it not from me: God do so to thee, and more also, if thou hide any-

18 thing from me of all the things that he spake unto thee. And Samuel told him every whit, and hid nothing from him. And he said, It is the LORD: let him do what seemeth him good.

19. And Samuel grew, and the LORD was with him, and did let none of his words fall to the

20 ground. And all Israel from Dan even to Beer-sheba knew that Samuel was established to be

21 a prophet of the LORD. And the LORD appeared again in Shiloh: for the LORD revealed him-

4 1 self to Samuel in Shiloh by the word of the LORD. And the word of Samuel came to all Israel.

The part of the country which may be roughly marked off by a line drawn south of the valley of Shechem has a history of its own, upon which we have little light till the period we have now reached. In this region, though unquestionably not free from idolatry, the authority of the high-priest at Shiloh seems to have been generally respected. That office was now held by Eli, a man of venerable age, of the house of Ithamar, Aaron’s younger son. Himself a man of the most sincere piety, he was guilty of sinful weakness in the indulgence he showed to the vices of his sons, whose profligacy disgraced the priesthood and ruined the people. While Eli was high-priest, it pleased God to raise up two champions for Israel whose characters form a contrast far more remarkable than any of Plutarch’s parallels. Alike in the Divine announcement of their birth, in being devoted as Nazarites from the womb, and in being early clothed with the spirit of Jehovah, Samson and Samuel exhibit the two extremes of physical energy and moral power, with all the inherent weaknesses of the former, and the majestic strength of the latter. In Samson we see the utmost that human might can do, even as the instrument of the Divine will; in Samuel we behold the omnipotence of prayer. The great faults of the former seem almost inseparable from his physical temperament: the faultlessness of the latter is the fruit of a nature early disciplined into willing subjection to the laws of God. Samuel, the last of the judges, was the first in that regular succession of prophets which never ceased till after the return from the Babylonian Captivity, and was the founder of the monarchy. His name is expressive of the leading feature of his whole history, the power of prayer. Himself the child of prayer, he gained all his triumphs by prayer; he is placed at the head of those “who called upon Jehovah, and He answered them;” and he is placed on a level with Moses as an intercessor. P. S.

The tabernacle and the ark were at Shiloh in the territory of Ephraim, from its fortunate central position the most powerful, as the least exposed to foreign invasion, of all the provinces. Milman.—Shiloh was well fitted to be the seat of ecclesiastical rule, lying as it did well off the main highroad which ran through the country from north to south, lying among hills which fairly shut it in on all sides but one, their sides terraced with vines and olives and fig trees, while in the plain below stood the tabernacle, containing the most precious things in Israel. Well might it have seemed an ideal house of prayer and study, of mild authority and ripe wisdom, where piety and purity and philanthropy might be trained to high perfection for the common good. Yet Shiloh was the scene of the base avarice, the high-handed violence, the vulgar profligacy of the sons of Eli; and Shiloh was the scene of Eli’s weakness, so culpable in itself, so fraught with ruin to his family and his home. H. P. L.

12-26. In these verses we have the good character and posture of Elkanah’s family, and the bad character and posture of Eli’s family; the account of these two is observably interwoven throughout this whole paragraph; as if the historian intended to set the one over against the other, that they might set off one another. The devotion and good order of Elkanah’s family aggravated the iniquity of Eli’s house; while the wickedness of Eli’s sons made Samuel’s early piety shine the more bright and illustrious. H.

13-17. The first description we have of Hophni and Phinehas has a terrible terseness: “Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial.” They had a double parentage: naturally, they were the children of the high-priest; morally, they were the children of iniquity. “Belial” signifies worthlessness or wickedness, and in the New Testament is used as the personification of evil. Having photographed the characters of Hophni and Phinehas in this one vivid line, the sacred narrative goes on to specify their peculiar transgressions. Their first sin was a lawless violation of the sanctity of the temple-services; it was a combination of stealing and of sacrilege. When the people came up to the holy place to offer their sacrifices, these two rapacious young priests seized upon a large part of the offerings which were presented—a larger part than they had any right to—and appropriated it to themselves. And, as if robbing the altar were not enough, they committed a robbery against God by destroying the devout veneration which was due to him. Cuyler.

The men who brought the offerings were more concerned for the honor and glory of God than were his own ministers. They implored the priest to allow the Lord’s offerings to be first presented, and then, said they, “take as much as thy soul desireth.” The answer was, “Nay, but thou shalt give it me now; and if not, I will take it by force.” What wonder that the people were disgusted at these proceedings, and that the result was that they abstained from bringing their peace-offerings to the altar? “Wherefore,” we are told, “the sin of the young men was very great before the Lord: for men abhorred the offering of the Lord.” This was their offence, and a terrible one it was—amounting to a betrayal of the high trusts committed to their care. Nor was this all—for we are told (verse 22) that they behaved themselves most vilely toward “the women who assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.” Kit.

18. But. This particle contrasts Samuel’s youthful piety with the wickedness of the sons of Eli. There was iniquity all around him—iniquity in holy things. But notwithstanding the wickedness with which he was surrounded, and which might have made him acquainted with evil, coarse, irreverent, and undutiful, in the midst of it all, “Samuel ministered before the Lord” as “a child.” E. M. G.—The writer dwells upon the contrast between Samuel and the sons of Eli. We see the child attending upon Eli in the sanctuary, growing before the Lord, in favor both with the Lord and with men, chosen to be God’s messenger to Eli, and finally re-establishing the broken intercourse between Jehovah and His people. On the other hand we see Hophni and Phinehas abusing their sacred office, sinking from rapacity and profanity to open profligacy, unchecked by rebuke or warning, and at last perishing miserably by the hands of the Philistines. A. F. K.

18,19. Yearly as they came up to the twice-loved service in Shiloh, the parents saw again the child, still serving in the courts of the Lord’s house, “girded with a linen ephod.” And the gift they brought him each year from home was that with which Hannah’s love best liked to connect her absent child—“a little Meil,” or priestly robe in which to do his service. She had made him “the God-asked,” and present or absent he was ever such in her loving thoughts. A. E.

20,21. The lad’s immediate duty lay in rendering such little services as his age allowed about the person of the high-priest; and, eventually, in some of the lighter services of the tabernacle. So impressed was Eli by the fine qualities of this child—so affected by the circumstances of his birth—and so gratified by the excellent conduct of the pious parents—that he bestowed upon them his solemn blessing, and prayed that they might have rich returns in kind for the child they had so faithfully and entirely lent to the Lord. And so it came to pass. Hannah had afterward three sons and two daughters. This was large interest for her “loan.” But the Lord is a very bountiful paymaster; and amid all the fervid speculations which inflame the world, to lend to Him remains the best investment which any one can make of aught that he possesses. Kit.

21. The child grew. In stature, no doubt, but also in grace and knowledge, and in all those qualifications which give a man moral and spiritual power. The secret of this growth is told us here—“the child Samuel grew before the Lord.” It was not only that he grew up to manhood in the courts of the tabernacle, where God was worshipped, but that the child knew and felt he was in God’s presence, and acted accordingly. E. M. G.

22-24. He should have rebuked them sharply, their crimes deserved it, their temper needed it; the softness of his dealing with them would but harden them the more. Whether it was because he loved them, or because he feared them, that he dealt thus tenderly with them, it was certainly an evidence of his want of zeal for the honor of God and his sanctuary. He bound them over to God’s judgment, but he should have taken cognizance of their crimes himself as high-priest and judge, and have restrained and punished them. What he said was right, but it was not enough. It is sometimes necessary that we put an edge upon the reproofs we give. H.

25. Eli’s wretched failure was the failure of millions of fathers since his day: when his children were young he would not restrain them, and when they grew older he could not. With a few timid words he vainly strove to subdue the stalwart transgressors whom he had allowed to wax strong and stubborn in their sins, which had become so rank as to “smell to heaven.” It was a mournful proof of the old man’s utter and pitiable loss of all power of restraint that the reckless sons would not even “hearken to the voice of their father.” The all-righteous God took them into his own hands, and, foreseeing their obdurate impenitence, he was preparing for them a terrible retribution. Cuyler. —Parents need no other means to make them miserable than weak indulgence to their children. Such parents are cruel to themselves and their posterity. Eli could not have devised any way to have plagued himself and his house so much as by his kindness to his children’s sins. What variety of judgments doth he soon hear of from the messenger of God! Bp. H.

Because the Lord would slay them. It must be carefully noted that it is not till Pharaoh has turned a deaf ear to repeated warnings, not till the Canaanites have polluted themselves with intolerable abominations, that God hardens their hearts; not till Eli’s sons have ignored His existence and defied His laws does He determine to slay them; not till Saul has set at naught his calling and deserted God, is he deserted by Him. Obstinate impenitence may be judicially punished by the withdrawal of the grace which leads to repentance. A. F. K. —There was a time, even with Hophni and Phinehas, there was a time with all the souls who may since have been equally lost, when God willed not to slay them; when His words to them were thus recorded by the Prophet Ezekiel: “Why will ye die? Turn yourselves and live ye.” God does speak to us now in the words of Ezekiel. If we are obstinately careless, we shall not listen to the voice of God’s word, because we have sinned beyond repentance. Nor will it avail to complain that we should not have been so fatally hardened had the means of good been more sparingly given us; that we should have loved the service of the tabernacle more had we been less familiar with it. The same page of Scripture which tells us of the sons of Eli tells us of Samuel also; brought by his mother, at his earliest years, to be in that same place, and to draw grace and strength from those very ministrations which, to the sons of Eli, had been the savor of death unto death. It is for us to determine whether we will be as Samuel or as Hophni and Phinehas; whether we will gain the habit of profiting by holy things or of despising them. Arnold.

27-29. The message this prophet delivers from God is very close. He reminds him of the great things God had done for the house of his fathers, and for his family. He exhibits a high charge against him and his family; his children did wickedly, and he connived at it, and thereby involved himself in the guilt; the indictment therefore runs against them all. His sons had impiously profaned the holy things of God. Eli had bolstered them up in it, by not punishing their insolence and impiety; “Thou for thy part honorest thy sons above me.” H.

30. Them that honor Me I will honor, but they that despise Me shall be lightly esteemed.** It is one of the grandest sayings in Scripture. It is the eternal rule of the kingdom of God, not limited to the days of Hophni and Phinehas, but eternal as the ordinances of heaven. It is a law confirmed by all history; every man’s life confirms it. However men may try to get their destiny into their own hands; however they may secure themselves from this trouble and from that, yet the day of retribution comes at last; having sown to the flesh, of the flesh also they reap corruption. While the men that have honored God, the men that have made their own interests of no account, but have set themselves resolutely to obey God’s will and do God’s work; the men that have labored in private life and in public service to carry out the great rules of His kingdom,—justice, mercy, the love of God and the love of man,—these are the men that God has honored; these are the men whose work abides; these are the men whose names shine with undying honor. W. G. B.

31. God here revokes the decree he had made in favor of him and his family, of being high-priests throughout all generations. This office was first settled upon Eleazar, the eldest son of Aaron; thence came to Phinehas, the eldest son of Eleazar: was transferred from him, probably for some sin or other, to Eli, a descendant of Aaron’s youngest son Ithamar, as it is now transferred back to the family of Eleazar, on account of the horrid sins of the sons of Eli. Bp. Patrick.

35. I will raise me up a faithful priest. This was fulfilled in Zadok, of the family of Eleazar, who came into Abiathar’s place, in the beginning of Solomon’s reign, and was faithful to his trust; and the high-priests were of his posterity as long as the Levitical priesthood continued. If some falsify their trust, yet others shall be raised up, that will be true to it. God’s work shall never fall to the ground for want of hands to carry it on. H.

1. The child Samuel.** According to Josephus, Samuel had just completed his twelfth year when the word of Jehovah came to him. In later times this age was a critical point in the life of a Jewish boy. He then became “a son of the Law,” and was regarded as personally responsible for obedience to it. It was at the age of twelve that “the child Jesus” first went up to Jerusalem along with his parents. A. F. K.

The word of the Lord was precious. Meaning that God very rarely in those days revealed his mind to any person. “There was no open vision:” here vision includes all the ways by which God revealed himself to men; which he did then so seldom, that whatsoever revelation there might be privately to some persons, there was no one publicly acknowledged to be a prophet, unto whom the people might resort to know the mind of God. Patrick.

3. The term “temple” includes the buildings round the Tabernacle, in some of the chambers of which Eli and Samuel were sleeping, not of course in the Tabernacle itself. The Ark is expressly mentioned because it was the visible symbol of the Presence of Him from whom the Voice proceeded. A. F. K.

4-8. The call of Samuel was the first step toward superseding Eli, and putting another and more faithful person in his room. It was necessary therefore that Eli should be assured that Samuel’s call was from God, and that it was the beginning of the fulfilment of God’s threatenings against himself. And how could this be done more forcibly or more naturally than by allowing Samuel to mistake God’s voice for Eli’s, and bringing him to Eli’s bedside in unsuspicuous simplicity three times in the course of the night? When the child came the third time, persisting that he had been called, Eli could no longer resist the conviction that it was a Divine call; “Eli perceived that the Lord had called the child.”

10. The Lord came, and stood. On this occasion there was something more than a voice summoning Samuel from the holy of holies, as on former occasions. The voice seemed to have drawn nearer; and Samuel saw a form standing by his bedside and speaking to him. It was doubtless the form of that Angel or Messenger of God’s Covenant, of whom we read so often in the Old Testament as appearing to patriarchs and prophets, and who was in fact our Lord Jesus before His incarnation. E. M. G.

Samuel was called to be a prophet of God in a great crisis of Jewish history. His appearance was less dramatic than those of Moses and Elijah, but it was almost as momentous. The epoch was one of those which determine the character and destiny of nations. One great act in the drama of Jewish history was closing, another was opening. Two great revolutions were effected: the one political, the other religious. Samuel was clearly one of those men of manifold gifts and functions whom God raises up in great crises and for great services. His entire course and character were probably determined by the spirit in which he responded to God’s first call. Allon.

11-14. This awful judgment was nothing else than what is recorded in the next chapter, the entire breaking up of the religious establishment in Shiloh; the place where the tabernacle had been set up in the time of Joshua. It was broken up by the ark’s falling into the hands of the Philistines. The taking of the ark was the casting off forever of Shiloh as the place of God’s solemnities, and the dissolution of the religious establishment which had grown up there. The judgment lived very long in the memory of God’s people. It is spoken of years after in the Psalms: “When God heard this, he was wroth, and greatly abhorred Israel; so that he forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent which he placed among men; and delivered his strength into captivity, and his glory into the enemy’s hand.” And the Prophet Jeremiah, living more than five hundred years after the casting off of Shiloh, foretells that the temple of Jerusalem and the magnificent religious establishment there should share the same fate. “Therefore will I do unto this house, which is called by my name, wherein ye trust, as I have done to Shiloh.”

15. Here is a child, on whom the highest honor has been conferred which can be put upon flesh and blood. He has communed with God in the night; the Jehovah-Angel, the second Person in the ever-blessed Trinity, has stood over his bed in visible form and spoken to him, and inaugurated, in so doing, a new era of prophecy. Priest and high-priest have been passed over, in the free electing grace of God, for this little servant of the sanctuary, shortly to be made both head of the State, and head of the Church also. How does he receive this marvellous communication? In a way completely to justify the choice made of him by the Divine wisdom. So far from being “exalted above measure” by the vision of the night, he turns in the morning to his ordinary daily task; “he opened the doors of the house of the Lord.” E. M. G.

18. The secret is now in the bosom of Samuel; shall he divulge it to Eli? It is one of the sore trials of the prophet’s mission; “he feared to show Eli the vision.” But Eli would know.

Consciously guilty, his conscience was more than half a prophet of doom. He adjured Samuel most solemnly to tell him every word—and he did. Here a shade of light falls on this picture, otherwise all dark;—Eli’s answer breathes submission to the terrible decision of Jehovah. “It is the Lord; let him do what seemeth to him good.” H. C.—His is an admirable faith, and more than human constancy and resolution; worthy of a heart sacrificed to that God whose justice had refused to expiate his sin by sacrifice! If Eli had been an ill father to his sons, yet he is a good son to God and is ready to kiss the very rod he shall smart withal. “It is the Lord whom I have ever found holy and just and gracious: and he cannot but be himself. Let him do what seemeth him good; for whatever seemeth good to him cannot but be good, howsoever it seems to me.” Bp. H.

19,20. The Lord was with him, and did let none of his words fall to the ground.** His fame grew with his growth, and the words uttered by him at Shiloh came to pass throughout all Israel. P. S.—Samuel’s childhood saw the period of Jewish history which Josephus calls the Theocracy, closed with the overthrow of the Sanctuary at Shiloh. The disastrous battle of Aphek brought Israel once more under the Philistine yoke. The Ark was captured, and though sent back after a brief interval, remained unnoticed in a private house. The twenty years which followed are a blank in the history of the nation. The people appear to have abandoned themselves to despair, and sought a vain refuge in the worship of Baalim and Ashtaroth. During those twenty years God was training Samuel to be the Deliverer of His people. “All Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew that Samuel was established to be a prophet of the Lord.” A. F. K.

God honored him by making him the founder of a new state of things—a succession of prophets educated and trained to act as a kind of national conscience to His people, guiding them in their perplexities, checking them when they were on the verge of wrong-doing, and reproving them for their sins. And it is because Samuel was the founder of the order of Prophets that Peter (Acts 3) speaks of “all the prophets from Samuel and those that follow after, as many as have spoken.” Prophecy, as an institution, dated from Samuel. He founded colleges, where young men might be trained for the prophetic ministry, instructed in sacred learning, and practised in devotional exercises, especially in psalmody and music. E. M. G.

In Samuel—Levite and Nazarite, at the sanctuary tuary of Shiloh, prophet and destined founder of a mightier prophetic power—were united from the first all spiritual gifts most potent for the welfare of the people, and under his powerful control stood the wheels on which the age revolved. He was truly the father of all the great prophets who worked such wonders in the ensuing centuries. Ewald.

The throne of the King of Israel was to have beside it this special honor, that one should be ever near who could speak the utterances of Israel’s God. For reproof, for direction, for counsel, that voice could ever be awoke. To Saul, to David, to Solomon, to Rehoboam, to Hezekiah, to the founder of the northern kingdom, and to his successors, we hear it from time to time speaking its solemn, alarming, consoling accents. It is ever present as a real abiding power to the kingdom’s end; dying out, at last, in the sad wail of Jeremiah’s lamentations. Wilberforce.

21. The Lord revealed Himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the Word of the Lord.** Here the new method of revelation is purposely indicated, which from that time was the customary one—namely, the “Word of the Lord,” that is, the inward converse with the prophet. Samuel is a prophet; and though before this there were single prophets, yet it is Samuel who first opens the continuous line of prophets in the special sense of the word. Let the words, too, with which his consecration as prophet is introduced (1 S. 3 : 1) be considered. They are not less characteristic than the rest: “And the Word of the Lord was precious (scarce) in those days; there was no open vision.” The usual form of revelation before this was not inward, as with the prophets, but an outward theophany, or manifestation of God. The consecration visions of the prophets, especially those of Isaiah and Ezekiel, form a connecting link between the theophany and the inward communication, since they are accomplished by means of visions. Samuel’s consecration, as is agreeable to its historic position, stands nearest the theophany. Auberlen.

Suggested Lessons.

It is a most emphatic warning that the story of Eli gives to parents, and to all who have influence or authority of any sort in families. The power may be of various kinds; it may be superior strength, or weight of character, or example, or that control which seasonable and tender affection wields, and gratitude gladly owns. But whatever it be, let it be faithfully and fully used. The positive duty lying upon all heads and members of households to seek one another’s good in the highest and most spiritual sense, is not more binding, and scarcely more important, than the negative duty of restraining one another’s evil. Nor is this a harsh or invidious task. It may be done with all the meekness and gentleness of Christ. And the secret of its being rightly and effectively done is this: Let no one, let nothing, be honored above God—let God be honored above all. Let your intercourse with children, or brothers, or sisters, or domestics, or any with whom you dwell together in families, be upon this principle. Honor God—honor God supremely—honor God alone. Consider not merely what may be best for them, but what, in every instance, is due to God. This will prevent compromise, concession, and fond indulgence on your part; while it will place your power of restraining evil on the highest of all grounds of advantage—the law and the will of God Himself. Candlish.

Life is full of voices of God, only we lack the spiritual faculty which discerns them. When we think of God’s voice we think first of God’s revelation of His will in the Bible. There are voices of God’s providence, which, if we have docile hearts, we shall not fail to recognize. The instincts and yearnings of our own spiritual nature are an unmistakable voice of God. And to this religious nature God speaks by the motions and monitions of His Holy Spirit; awakening solicitudes, exciting desires, touching impulses. In moments of intellectual perplexity, amid the tempest and earthquake of intellectual strife, the still small voice of the religious soul is heard—God’s voice within us. In quieter and more thoughtful moods of life we hear the voice of God. God has voices that reach us in crowds; distinct, perhaps loud, above every din of business or clamor of strife or song of revelry. In moments of temptation, even, God’s voice finds a tongue in some lingering power of conscience, in some sensitive remnants of virtue, in some angel memories of a pious home and an innocent heart. In times of sorrow God’s voice comes to us; summoning us to faith in His will, His purpose, and His presence, and to patience and acquiescence in the sacrifice demanded of us. Most terrible of all is it when the first voice of God that we seriously listen to is a sentence of doom. Allon.

PHILISTINE VICTORY AND CAPTURE OF THE ARK. DEATH OF ELI, AND OF THE WIFE OF PHINEHAS. THE ARK AND DAGON. PUNISHMENT OF CITIES HOLDING THE ARK RETURN OF THE ARK TO ISRAEL.