1 Samuel 2
TLBC1 Samuel 2:11-36
Eli’s Sons and Samuel (2:11-36)
The sons of Eli are described as worthless men who knew not the Lord. The term “have regard” here, and in the Old Testament generally, although sometimes translated “know,” refers to a personal encounter in which God meets us directly and confronts us with his will. Thus it is synonymous with personal commitment. It means more than awareness that God exists, or having some speculative idea of God in the mind. The latter is more in keeping with the Greek understanding of knowledge. The Old Testament term means living decisively within the Covenant which God has established; seeking to do his will; walking before him in faithfulness, obedience, and humility.
The condemnation of Eli’s sons is based also on their practice in the sanctuary. The phrase “custom of the priests” suggests a precedent established by long practice and thus regarded as binding. The law books of the Pentateuch contain many such customs which were regarded as given under divine authority. We need to remember that God has various ways of manifesting his moral law to men, and that one way is through the development of habitual lines of conduct within the give-and-take of social relationship and the commerce of wills. So here the shrine at Shiloh had developed certain rules with regard to the ordering of its sacrifices, and these rules were regarded as morally binding upon priest and worshiper. They were ritual rules with moral implications because they were under divine sanction.
The sacrifices were offered to God, and thus the rules governing them were under his authority. The worshiper or priest who broke the rules would be treating God with contempt.
The crime of Eli’s sons was that they took for their own use parts of the sacrifice other than that which was their rightful due. As the law codes developed, there seems to have been a universal ruling on this matter (Deuteronomy 18:3; Leviticus 7:31-34), but, even at this early stage, Phinehas and Hophni were familiar with the rule for their own shrine and contravened it. Their crime was twofold. They claimed their meat raw instead of taking it from the boiling pot by a three-toothed fork. But, further, they claimed it prior to the burning of the fat. To understand this we have to remember that the sacrifice here thought of was the “peace” or communion meal offering.
In this type of sacrifice, the beast was slain; the blood, as the element containing the life principle, was drained off and poured out at the foot of the altar; the fat and entrails were burned up on the altar; and the remaining flesh was eaten by the worshipers, the priests claiming their part. Until the fat had been burned, the sacrifice was totally holy; it was available to the worshiper only after the burning. The terrible crime of Eli’s sons was that they disregarded the holiness of the sacrifice and claimed their portion before it had become profane or available for human participation.
In God’s eyes the sacrifice thereby became abhorrent. Its end was not to give God glory but to satisfy gluttonous priests. Are not many of our more modern sacrifices tainted in a similar way?
Samuel is described in verse 18 as wearing an ephod, here clearly not an image but a priestly garment (see Judges 17:5). This is one of the enigmatic words of the Old Testament, the usage of which may have changed in the course of Israel’s history and may have varied locally from shrine to shrine. Samuel’s mother still kept the boy clothed, and the annual visit of his family to the sanctuary continued.
In his indictment of Eli’s sons, the historian now adds to their crime of gluttonous disregard of sacrificial rules the sin of adultery (vss. 22-25). The reference to “the tent of meeting” may indicate that prior to the erection of the sanctuary at Shiloh, there was a sacred tent to house the Ark of the Covenant and that this still existed. Be that as it may, the sins were serious enough, and their full significance is drawn out in verse 25 — they were sins against the Lord directly. In the Hebrew mind, God would be more concerned here than in the case of a crime between man and man. In the case of Eli’s sons there was no one to intercede, for God himself was offended and vengeance must descend from heaven. We miss the emphasis that even to sin against one’s fellow men is to sin against God.
The distinction introduced here into the problem of moral evil finds no parallel in the full development of the biblical revelation. God’s inevitable judgment is clearly implied by Eli, and the historian declares that it was the will of the Lord to slay Eli’s sons. We need, at this point, to remember that the devout Hebrew, unlike the speculative Greek, had no interest in intermediary causes. For the Hebrew, God is active in, with, and under all nature and history. Thus the processes of history or nature were not the final causes of events in the created order. God was the final cause, and his judgments as well as his saving activity directed and sustained natural and historical processes, working in accord with natural and moral law, in which they were fulfilled.
Thus the historical processes might bring about the deaths of Hophni and Phinehas, but it could be said that the Lord would slay them.
Verses 27-36 form an editorial addition, concerned to explain the replacement of Eli’s family in the priesthood by the Zadokite group of priests. The actual supersedure is recorded in 1 Kings 2:27, where we are told that Solomon ousted Abiathar from being priest in fulfillment of the prophetic word spoken at Shiloh. This story is significant as introducing an authentic prophet who declares the doom of Eli’s house. The prophetic oracle links Eli with the house of Aaron; the only evidence for this would be the usage of the Aaronic family name, Phinehas, for Eli’s son.
The prophet declared that the crime of Eli’s sons would surely lead to the divine judgment. The implied references in verses 33-34 are various. Verse 33 probably refers to the massacre of the priests at Nob from which Abiathar alone survived (1 Samuel 22:18; 1 Samuel 22:20). Verse 34 probably has a double reference to the death of Eli’s sons, Hophni and Phinehas, in battle, and also to the final ousting of Abiathar in the time of Solomon. The mention of “a faithful priest” who should be raised up in the place of this corrupt priesthood (vs. 35) would then be a reference to Zadok, but it might also refer to Samuel. We need to remember that though a prophetic word was spoken to a contemporary historical situation, the principles enunciated in it and the prophetic insight into the divine will meant that its fulfillment might be extended down history and be manifested in more than one event. Apparently this passage was written down long after the unknown prophet gave his oracle; but looking back along the stream of events, the historian saw the outcome of that oracle of judgment in successive incidents such as those in the battle with the Philistines, in the affair at Nob, and in the fall of Abiathar.
This familiar story is a reminder of how God often works in history. Weak leadership by an old man, whose worthless sons were using the priestly office for their own ends, had brought the people to the verge of disaster. The opening verse of this chapter expresses this situation in the declaration that the word of God, the prophetic oracle, was “rare.” Authentic insight into God’s counsels, such as he gave to his genuine prophets, had become a rare occurrence, and therefore was greatly treasured. At such a moment God acts to raise the man for the hour, and often it is the weak and lowly who are so exalted in order that the power may manifestly be God’s and not man’s.
Samuel’s task was apparently to serve as attendant to the Ark, near which he slept in the Temple. The Ark itself has been a matter of considerable debate. It is described as a rectangular box, with two poles attached for transportation, containing, according to tradition, the two tablets of the Law (Exodus 25, 37). The lid of the box was termed “the mercy seat,” and two cherubim, possibly early representations of angels, were set above this lid. The Ark was the center of God’s presence among his people. It was his throne, and here he dwelt in the midst of his people (Exodus 25:8-22).
Thus to come before the Ark meant to come before the Lord, and to take the Ark to battle meant that God himself would come among his people and save them from their enemies (1 Samuel 4:4). When the Ark was lifted and moved forward before the people in their wilderness wanderings, it was equivalent to God’s arising that his enemies might flee before him (Numbers 10:35-36). Thus we may say that the Ark was a tangible sign of God’s presence among his people. It brought the divine presence to a focus and could be described as his “throne.” As the Ark was in some sense an extension of God’s personal being into the visible realm, it was to a degree an anticipation of the Incarnation. Of the Ark it could be said, “Immanuel” — “God with us.”
Since messages from God were infrequent in those days, we can understand Eli’s reaction to the experiences of Samuel recorded in 1 Samuel 3:1-9. By its threefold repetition the experience was proved to be real and not hallucinatory, and Eli was convinced that Samuel was being called by the Lord himself. Samuel, whose training hitherto had been for the priesthood, was now called of God to be a prophet, and the content of his first prophetic message was disclosed to him — the divine judgment on Eli’s house. This inaugural vision or audition initiated Samuel into both the reality of the Hebrew faith and his prophetic task. Like the other prophetic figures of Israel, Samuel had an initiatory experience in which the burden of his message was made plain. Eli’s greatness is disclosed in his recognition that God was working out his purpose in Samuel’s life, and still more so in his resigned acceptance of the prophetic message when his young attendant declared it to him. The sin of Eli’s house had become so deep that sacrifice would not avail to cover it and final destruction was God’s only way of dealing with it.
Samuel’s prophetic status was increasingly recognized (1 Samuel 3:19-21). Hebrew realism appears in the declaration that the Lord would not let Samuel’s words “fall to the ground.” Because the word of a man was a concrete thing, with his essential character in it, one’s dynamic intentions towards another could be made effective in the other’s life by words. This was the secret of the prophetic belief that if a prophet spoke God’s word, that dynamic word was full of divine content, with the divine purpose of judgment and mercy in it. It’ s very utterance into a situation would set to work those forces which would accomplish the divine plan. Through his servant Samuel, the Lord’s oracular presence was recognized at Shiloh as “the Lord revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by the word of the Lord.” The true prophet was marked uniquely by his possession of the divine word, a distinction to cause much trouble later in the differentiation of true from false prophets (see Jeremiah 14:14; Jeremiah 23:30-32).