Bible Commentaries
1 Samuel 4

Verse 1

II

THE EARLY LIFE OF SAMUEL

1 Samuel 1:1-4:1a and Harmony pages 62-66.

We omit Part I of the textbook, since that first part is devoted to genealogical tables taken from 1 Chronicles. That part of Chronicles is not an introduction to Samuel or Kings, but an introduction to the Old Testament books written after the Babylonian captivity. To put that in now would be out of place.

We need to emphasize the supplemental character of Chronicles. Our Harmony indeed will show from time to time in successive details the very important contributions of that nature in Chronicles not found in any form in the histories of Samuel and Kings, nor elsewhere in the Old Testament; but to appreciate the magnitude of this new matter we need to glance at it in bulk, not in detail, as its parts will come up later.

There are twenty whole chapters and parts of twenty-four other chapters in Chronicles occupied with matter not found in other books of the Bible. This is a considerable amount of new material, and is valuable on that account but it is still more valuable because it presents a new aspect of Hebrew history after the captivity. The following passages in Chronicles contain new matter: 1 Chronicles 2:18-55; 1 Chronicles 3:19-24; 1 Chronicles 4:9; 1 Chronicles 11:41-47; 1 Chronicles 11:12; 1 Chronicles 15:1-26; 2 Chronicles 6:40-42; 2 Chronicles 11:5-23; 2 Chronicles 12:4-8; 2 Chronicles 13:3-21; 2 Chronicles 14:3-15; 15:1-15; 2 Chronicles 16:7-10; 2 Chronicles 17-19; 2 Chronicles 20:1-30; 2 Chronicles 21:2-4; 2 Chronicles 21:11-19; 2 Chronicles 24:15-22; 2 Chronicles 25:5-10; 2 Chronicles 25:12-16; 2 Chronicles 26:5-20; 2 Chronicles 27:4-6; 2 Chronicles 28:5-25; 2 Chronicles 29:3-36; 2 Chronicles 29:30-31; 2 Chronicles 32:22-23; 2 Chronicles 32:26-31; 2 Chronicles 33:11-19; 2 Chronicles 34:3-7; 2 Chronicles 35:2-17; 2 Chronicles 35:25; 2 Chronicles 36:11-23.

Whoever supposed that there was that much material in the book of Chronicles that could not be found anywhere else? One can study Chronicles as a part of a Harmony with Samuel and Kings, but if that were the only way it could be studied he would never get the true significance of it, as it is an introduction to all of the later Old Testament books. In the light of these important new additions, we not only see the introduction of all subsequent Old Testament books and also inter-Biblical books by Jews, but must note the transition in thought from a secular Jewish kingdom to an approaching spiritual messianic kingdom.

We thus learn that Old Testament prophecy is not limited to distinct utterances foretelling future events, but that the whole history of the Jewish people is prophetic; not merely in its narrative, but in its legislation, in its types, feasts, sabbaths, sacrifices, offerings; in its tabernacle and Temple, with all of their divinely appointed worship and ritual, and this explains why the historical books are classed as prophetic, not merely because prophets wrote them, which is true, but also because the history is prophetic.

In this fact lies one of the strongest proofs of the inspiration of the Old Testament books in all of their parts. The things selected for record, and the things not recorded, are equally forcible. The silence equals the utterance. This is characteristic of no other literature, and shows divine supervision which not only makes necessary every part recorded, but so correlates and adapts the parts as to make perfect literary and spiritual structure which demands a New Testament as a culmination.

Moreover, we are blind if we cannot see a special Providence preparing a leader for every transition in Jewish history. Just as Moses was prepared for deliverance from Egypt, and for the disposition of the law, so Samuel is prepared, not only to guide from a government by judges to a government by kings, but, what is very much more important, to establish a School of the Prophets – a theological seminary.

These prophets were to be the mouthpieces of God in speaking to kingly and national conscience, and for 500 years afterward, become the orators, poets, historians, and reformers of the nation, and so, for centuries, avert, postpone, or remedy, national disasters provoked by public corruption of morals and religion.

Counting great men as peaks of a mountain range, and sighting backward from Samuel to Abraham, only one peak, Moses, comes into the line of vision.

There are other peaks, but they don’t come up high enough to rank with Abraham, Moses, and Samuel. A list of the twelve best and greatest men in the world’s history must include the name of Samuel. When we come, at his death, to analyze his character and posit him among the great, other things will be said. Just now we are to find in his early life that such a man did not merely happen; that neither heredity, environment, nor chance produced him.

Samuel was born at Ramah, lived at Ramah, died at Ramah, and was buried at Ramah. Ramah is a little village in the mountains of Ephraim, somewhat north of the city of Jerusalem. It is right hard to locate Ramah on any present map of the Holy Land. Some would put it south, some north. It is not easy to locate like Bethlehem and Shiloh.

Samuel belonged to the tribe of Levi, but was not a descendant of Aaron. If he had been he would have been either a high priest or a priest. Only Aaron’s descendants could be high priests, or priests, but Samuel belonged to the tribe of Levi, and from 1 Chronicles 6 we may trace his descent. The tribe of Levi had no continuous landed territory like the other tribes, but was distributed among the other tribes. That tribe belonged to God, and they had no land assigned them except the villages in which they lived and the cities of the refuge, of which they had charge, and so Samuel’s father could be called an Ephrathite and yet be a descendant of the tribe of Levi – that is, he was a Levite living in the territory of Ephraim.

The bigamy of Samuel’s father produced the usual bitter fruit. The first and favorite wife had no children, so in order to perpetuate his name he took a second wife, and when that second wife bore him a large brood of children she gloried over the first wife, and provoked her and mocked at her for having no children, and it produced a great bitterness in Hannah’s soul. The history of the Mormons demonstrates that bitterness always accompanies a plurality of wives. I don’t see bow a woman can share a home or husband with any other woman.

We will now consider the attitude of the Mosaic law toward a plurality of wives, divorce, etc. In Deuteronomy 21:15-17 we see that the Mosaic law did permit an existing custom. It did not originate it nor command it, but it tolerated the universal custom of the times, a plurality of wives. From Deuteronomy 24:1-4, we learn that the law permitted a husband to get rid of a wife, but commanded him to give her a bill of divorcement. That law was not made to encourage divorcement, but to limit the evil and to protect the woman who would suffer under divorce. Why the law even permitted these things we see from Matthew 19:7-8. Our Saviour there tells us that Moses, on account of the hardness of their hearts, permitted a man to put away his wife. That is to say, that nation had just emerged from slavery, and the prevalent custom all around them permitted something like that, and because they were not prepared for an ideal law on the subject on account of the hardness of their hearts, Moses tolerated, without commending a plurality of wives or commanding divorce – both in a way to mitigate the evil, but when Jesus comes to give his statute on the subject he speaks out and says, “Whosoever shall put away his wife except for marital infidelity and marries again committeth adultery, and whosoever shall marry her that is put away committeth adultery." A preacher in a recent sermon, as reported, discredited that part of Matthew because not found also in Mark. I have no respect for the radical criticism which makes Mark the only credible Gospel, or even the norm of the others. Nor can any man show one shred of evidence that it is so. I have a facsimile of the three oldest New Testament manuscripts. What Matthew says is there, and may not be eliminated on such principles of criticism.

The radical critics say that the Levitical part of the Mosaic law was not written by Moses, but by a priest in Ezekiel’s time, and that Israel had no central place of worship in the period of the judges, but this section shows that they did have a central place of worship at Shiloh, and the book of Joshua shows when Shiloh became the central place of worship. The text shows that they did come up yearly to this central place of worship, and that they did offer, as in the case of Hannah and Elkanah, the sacrifices required in Leviticus.

In Joshua 18:1 we learn that when the conquest was finished Joshua, himself, placed the ark of the covenant and the tabernacle at Shiloh, and constituted it the central place of worship. In this section we learn what disaster ended Shiloh as the central place of worship. The ark was captured, and subsequently the tabernacle was removed, and that ark and that tabernacle never got together again. In Jeremiah 7:12 we read: "But go ye now unto my place which was in Shiloh, where I caused my name to dwell at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel." Jeremiah is using that history as a threat against Jerusalem, which in Jeremiah’s time was the central place of worship. His lesson was, "If you repeat the wickedness done in Samuel’s time God will do to your city and your home what he did to Shiloh." It is important to know the subsequent separate history of the ark and the tabernacle, and when and where another permanent central place and house of worship were established. The Bible tells us every move that ark and that tabernacle made, and when, where, and by whom the permanent central place and house of worship were established.

Eli was high priest at Samuel’s birth. In those genealogical tables that we omitted from 1 Chronicles we see that Eli was a descendant of Aaron, but not of Eleazar, the eldest son; therefore, according to the Mosaic law, he ought never to have been high priest, but he was, and I will have something to say about that when the true line is established later. 1 Samuel 4, which comes in the next chapter, distinctly states that Eli judged Israel forty years, and he was likely a contemporary of Samson. But Eli, at the time we know him, is ninety-eight years old, and nearly blind. He was what we call a goodhearted man, but weak. That combination in a ruler makes him a curse. Diplomats tell us "a blunder is worse than a crime," in a ruler. He shows his weakness in allowing his sons, Hophni and Phinehas, to degrade the worship of God. They were acting for him, as he was too old for active service. The most awful reports came to him about the infamous character of these sons, who occupied the highest and holiest office in a nation that belonged to God.

This section tells us that he only remonstrated in his weak way: "My sons, it is not a good report that I hear about you," but that is all he did. As he was judge and high priest, why should he prefer his sons to the honor of God? Why did he not remove them from positions of trust and influence? His doom is announced in this section, and it is an awful one. God sent a special prophet to him and this is the doom. You will find it in 1 Samuel 2, commencing at 1 Samuel 2:30: "Wherefore the Lord, the God of Israel, saith, I said indeed that thy house, and the house of thy father, should walk before me forever: but now the Lord saith, Be it far from me; for them that honor me I will honor, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed. Behold, the days come, that I will cut off thine arm, and the arm of thy father’s house, that there shall not be an old man in thine house. And thou shalt see an enemy in my habitation (Shiloh), in all the wealth which God shall give Israel: and there shall not be an old man among thy descendants forever. And the descendants of thine, whom I do not cut off from mine altar, shall live to consume thine eyes and grieve thine heart: and all the increase of thine house shall die in the flower of their age."

Or as Samuel puts it to him, we read in 1 Samuel 3, commencing at verse 1 Samuel 3:11: "And the Lord said unto 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 shall perform against Eli all things that I have spoken against his house: when I begin I will also make an end. For I have told him that I will judge his house forever for the iniquity which he knoweth, because his sons made themselves vile and he restrained them not; 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."

What was the sign of his doom? The same passage answers: "And this shall be a sign unto thee, that shall come upon thy two sons, on Hophni and Phinehas: in one day they shall die both of them. And I will raise me up a faithful priest, that shall do according to that which is in my heart and in my mind: and I will build him a sure house; and he shall walk before mine anointed forever. And it shall come to pass, that everyone that is left in thy house shall come and bow down to him for a piece of silver and a loaf of bread." That was the sign. In the time of Solomon the priesthood goes back to the true line, in fulfilment of the declaration in that sign. The priesthood passes away from Eli’s descendants and goes back where it belongs, to Zadok – who is a descendant of Aaron’s eldest son.

The Philistine nation at this time dominated Israel. The word, "Philistines," means emigrant people that go out from their native land, and it is of the same derivation as the word "Palestine." That Holy Land, strangely enough, takes its name from the Philistines. The Philistines were descended from Mizraim, a child of Ham, and their place was in Egypt.

Leaving Egypt they became "Philistines," that is, emigrants, and occupied all of that splendid lowland on the western and southwestern part of the Jewish territory, next to the Mediterranean Sea, which was as level as a plain, and as fertile as the Nile Valley. There they established five independent cities, which, like the Swiss Cantons, formed a confederacy. While each was independent for local affairs, they united in offensive and defensive alliances against other nations, and they had complete control of Southern Judea at this time. Joshua had overpowered them, but the conquest was not complete. They rose up from under his power, even in his time, and in the time of Samson and Eli they brought Israel into a pitiable subjection. They were not allowed to have even a grindstone. If they wanted to sharpen an ax they had to go and borrow a Philistine’s grindstone, and what a good text for a sermon! Woe to the man that has to sharpen the implement with which he works in the shop of an enemy! Woe to the Southern preacher that goes to a radical critic’s Seminary in order to sharpen his theological ax!

Speaking of the evils of a plurality of wives, we found Hannah in great bitterness of heart because she had no child, and we saw her lingering at the central place of worship, and without saying words out loud, her lips were moving, and her face was as one entranced, so that Eli thinks she is drunk. The New Testament tells us of a certain likeness between intoxication with ardent spirits and intoxication of the Holy Spirit. She told him that she was praying. When her child was born she came back and said to him, "I am the woman that you thought was drunk, but I was praying," and then she uses this language: "I prayed for this child," holding the little fellow up in her hands, "and I vowed that if God would give him to me I would lend him to the Lord all the days of his life," and therefore she brings him to be consecrated perpetually to God’s service. The scripture brings all that out beautifully.

So the text speaks of the woes pronounced on a parent who put off praying for and restraining his children until they were grown. Like Hannah we should commence praying for them before they are born; pray for them in the cradle, and if we make any promise or vow to God for them, we should keep the vow.

I know a woman who had many children and kept praying that God would send her one preacher child, promising to do everything in her power to make him a great preacher. The Lord gave her two. One of my deacons used to send for me when a new baby was born, to pray for it. Oliver Wendell Holmes says a child’s education should commence with his grandmother. Paul tells us that this was so with Timothy. The Mosaic law required every male to appear before the Lord at the central place of worship three times a year. The text says that Elkanah went up yearly, but does not state how many times a year. The inference is fairly drawn that he strictly kept the Mosaic law.

Samuel had certain duties in the tabernacle. He slept in the Lord’s house and tended to the lights. It is a great pity when a child of darkness attends to the lights in God’s house. I heard a preacher say to a sexton, "How is it that you ring the bell to call others to heaven and you, yourself, seem going right down to hell?" And that same preacher said to a surveyor, "You survey land for other people to have a home, and have no home yourself." So some preachers point out the boundaries of the home in heaven and make their own bed in hell.

Samuel’s call from God, his first prophecy, and his recognition by the people as a prophet are facts of great interest, and the lesson from his own failure to recognize at once the call is of great value. In the night he heard a voice saying, "Samuel! Samuel!" He thought it was Eli, and he went to Eli and said, "Here I am. You called me." "No, I didn’t call you, my son; go back to bed." The voice came again, "Samuel, Samuel," and he got up and went to Eli and said, "You did call me. What do you want with me?" "No, my son, I did not call you; go back and lie down," and the third time the voice came, "Samuel, Samuel," and he went again to Eli. Then Eli knew that it was God who called him, and he said, "My son, it is the Lord. You go back and when the voice comes again, say, Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth," and so God spoke and the first burden of prophecy that he put upon the boy’s heart was to tell the doom of the house of Eli. Very soon after that all Israel recognized Samuel as a prophet of God.

The value of the lesson is this: We don’t always recognize the divine touch at first. Many a man under conviction does not at first understand its source and nature. Others, even after they are converted, are not sure they are converted. It is like the mover’s chickens that, after their legs were untied, would lie still, not realizing that they were free. The ligatures around their legs had cut off the circulation, and they felt as if they were tied after they were loose. There is always an interval between an event and the cognition of it. For example, when a shot is fired it precedes our recognition of it by either the sight of smoke or the sound of the explosion, for it takes both sound and sight some time to travel over the intervening space. I heard Major Penn say that the worst puzzle in his life was the experiences whereby God called him to quit his law work and become an evangelist. He didn’t understand it. It was like Samuel going to Eli.

I now will give an analysis of that gem of Hebrew poetry, Hannah’s song, showing its conception of God, and the reason of its imitation in the New Testament. The idea of Hannah’s conception of God thus appears:

There is none besides God; he stands alone. There is none holy but God. There is none that abaseth the proud and exalteth the lowly, feedeth the hungry, and maketh the full hungry, except God; and there is none but God that killeth and maketh alive. There is none but God who establisheth this earth; none but God who keepeth the feet of his saints; none but God that has true strength; none but God that judgeth the ends of the earth, and the chief excellency of it is the last: "He shall give strength unto his king and exalt the horn of His Anointed." That is the first place in the Bible where the kingly office is mentioned in connection with the name "Anointed." The name, "Anointed," means Christ, the Messiah.

It is true that it was prophesied to Abraham that kings should be his descendants. It is true that Moses made provision for a king. It is true that in the book of Judges anointing is shown to be the method of setting apart to kingly office, but this is the first place in the Bible where the one anointed gets the name of the "Anointed One," a king. Because of this messianic characteristic, Mary, when it was announced to her that she should be the mother of the Anointed King, pours out her soul in the Magnificat, imitating Hannah’s song.

The state of religion at this time was very low. We see from the closing of the book of Judges that at the feast of Shiloh they had irreligious dances. We see from the text here that Hophni and Phinehas, the priests of religion, were not only as corrupt as anybody, but leaders in corruption. We see it declared that there is no open vision, and it is further declared that the Word of God was precious – rare.

I will now explain these two phrases in the texts, 1 Samuel 1:16 (A. V.), where Hannah says, "Count not thine handmaid for a daughter of Belial," and in 1 Samuel 2:12 (A. V.), where Hophni and Phinehas are said to be the "sons of Belial." The common version makes Belial a proper name; the revised version does not, and the revised version is at fault. If you will turn to 2 Corinthians 6:15, you will see that Belial is shown to be the name of Satan: "What concord hath Christ with Belial?" Get Milton’s Paradise Lost, First Book, and read the reference to Hophni and Phinehas as sons of Belial, and see that he correctly makes it a proper name.

Samuel was not a descendant of Aaron. He was merely a Levite, but he subsequently, as we shall learn, officiated in sacrifices as if he were a priest or high priest. It will be remember-ed that the priesthood was under the curse pronounced on Eli, and Samuel was a special exceptional appointee of God, as Moses was.

Dr. Burleson, a great Texas preacher, and a president of Baylor University, preached all over Texas a sermon on family government, taking his text from 1 Samuel 2:31.

There are some passages and quotations from Geikie’s Hours With the Bible on the evils of a plurality of wives that are pertinent. Commenting on Elkanah’s double marriage he says, "But, as might have been expected, this double marriage – a thing even then uncommon – did not add to his happiness, for even among the Orientals the misery of polygamy is proverbial. ’From what I know,’ says one, ’it is easier to live with two tigresses than with two wives.’ And a Persian poet is of well-nigh the same opinion: – “Be that man’s life immersed in gloom Who needs more wives than one: With one his cheeks retain their bloom, His voice a cheerful tone: These speak his honest heart at rest, And he and she are always blest. But when with two he seeks for joy, Together they his soul annoy; With two no sunbeam of delight Can make his day of misery bright.” An old Eastern Drama is no less explicit: – "Wretch I would’st thou have another wedded slave? Another? What? Another? At thy peril Presume to try the experiment: would’st thou not For that unconscionable, foul desire Be linked to misery? Sleepless nights, and days Of endless torment – still recurring sorrow Would be thy lot. Two wives! O never! Never! Thou hast not power to please two rival queens; Their tempers would destroy thee; sear thy brain; Thou canst not, Sultan, manage more than one. Even one may be beyond thy government!"

QUESTIONS

1. Why omit Part I of the textbook?

2. What, in bulk, is the supplemental matter in Chronicles, and what its importance?

3. What and where is the place of Samuel’s birth, residence, and burial?

4. What is his ancestry and tribe?

5. If he belonged to the tribe of Levi, why then is he called an Ephraimite, or Ephrathite, which in this place is equivalent?

6. Show that the bigamy of Samuel’s father produced the usual bitter fruit.

7. What was the attitude of the Mosaic law toward a plurality of wives, and divorce, and why?

8. Why did the law ever permit these things?

9. What is the bearing of this section of the contention of the radical critics that the Levitical part of the Mosaic law was not written by Moses, but by a priest in Ezekiel’s time, and that Israel had no central place of worship in the period of the Judges?

10. When did Shiloh become the central place of worship, how long did it so remain, and what use did Jeremiah make of its desolation?

11. Trace the subsequent and separate history of the ark of the covenant and the tabernacle, and show when and where another permanent central place and house of worship were established.

12. Who was high priest at Samuel’s birth, how was he descended from Aaron, and what the proof that he also judged Israel?

13. With which of the judges named in the book of Judges was he likely a contemporary?

14. What was Eli’s character, sin, doom, sign of the doom, and who announced it to him?

15. What nation at this time dominated Israel?

16. Give a brief and clear account of these people.

17. Show how Samuel was a child of prayer, the subject of a vow, a Nazarite, how consecrated to service, and the lessons therefrom.

18. How often did the Mosaic law require every male to appear before the Lord at the central place of worship, and to what extent was this law fulfilled by Samuel’s father and mother?

19. What were the duties of the child Samuel in the tabernacle?

20. Give an account of Samuel’s call from God, his first prophecy, his recognition by the people as a prophet, and the lesson from his own failure, for a while, to recognize the call.

21. Analyze that gem of Hebrew poetry, Hannah’s song, showing its conception of God, and give the reason of its imitation in the New Testament.

22. What was the state of religion at this time?

23. Explain the references to Belial in 1 Samuel 1:16; 1 Samuel 2:12.

24. As Samuel was not a descendant of Aaron, but merely a Levite, why does he subsequently, as we shall learn, officiate in sacrifices as if he were a priest or high priest?

25. What great Texas preacher preached all over Texas a sermon on family government, taking his text from 1 Samuel 2:31?

26. Cite the passages and quotations from Geikie’s Hours With the Bible on the evils of a plurality of wives.

Verses 1-17

III

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF ELI, AND THE RISE OF SAMUEL

1 Samuel 4:1-7:17

I will give, in order, the passages showing the rise of Samuel over against the descent of Eli. Samuel, more than any other book of the Bible, excels in vividness of detail, and especially in showing progressiveness in character, either upward or downward – growing either better or worse. Over against the iniquities of Eli’s sons and the doom pronounced on his house, we have in order, these passages: 1 Samuel 1:27-28; 1 Samuel 2:18, and the last clause of 1 Samuel 2:21; 1 Samuel 2:26; 1 Samuel 3:1-4; 1 Samuel 19-21; 1 Samuel 4:1.

The progress is: (1) For this child I prayed. (2) The child prayed for is devoted to Jehovah. (3) His home is God’s house and there he serves and worships. (4) The child is called. (5) The child grew in favor with God and man. (6) The child kept on growing. (7) He is recognized as a prophet by all Israel from Dan to Beersheba. In the meantime Eli’s house steadily descends until the bottom is reached. Macaulay, in his History of England, in telling about the great men in power at a certain time, including Lord Halifax, substantially makes this remark: "These great men did not know that they were even then being eclipsed by two young men who were rising up, that would attain to greater heights and influence than the others had ever attained," and he gives the names of the two young men as John Somers and Charles Montagu.

We may apply this throughout life: A train once in motion will run for a while on its own impetus, but in both cases the motion will gradually cease unless new power be applied. So in every community there are leaders holding positions from past momentum, while new men are rising that will eclipse and succeed them. As in nature when a tree quits growing it begins to die, and when a stream quits flowing its waters stagnate, so when a leader quits studying he begins to lose power and must give place to younger men who are studious. And it will some day be so with you, and you will enter what is called the declining period of your life. For a while it will astonish you that you are not cutting as wide a swath as you used to cut, and unless you live only in God, that will be the bitterest hour of your life. Very few people know how to grow old gracefully; some of them become very bitter as they grow old. The following is a summary of the events connected with the fall of the house of Eli:

1. An enemy is strengthened to smite them. The absence of purity, piety, veneration, and fidelity in God’s people, either his nominal people like Hophni and Phinehas, or his real people, as Eli, always develops a conquering enemy. The case of Samson, Eli’s contemporaneous judge, illustrates this. When he betrayed the secret of his strength, he went out as aforetime and knew not that the Spirit of the Lord had departed from him, and so became an easy victim of the Philistines, bound, eyes put out, enslaved, grinding in the mills of God’s enemies, a sport to them, with the added despair that the cause suffered in his downfall.

The devil has known from the beginning that his only chance to win against God’s people is, by their sins, to turn God against them. He knows that as long as God is for you, nobody can be against you. He knows that he cannot fight against you when you have God back of you, but if you become estranged from God, the devil will show you very quickly that when it comes to a wrestle he can give you a fall, and it does not take him long to do it.

It was in this way that he influenced Balaam to suggest to Balak the plan to make Israel sin with women, as a step toward idolatry. His slogan was: "If you can make them sin against their God and put him against them, then you can down them." The Phinehas of that day, how different from this Phinehas, Eli’s son! Naming a child after a great and good man does not make him like his namesake.

One of the most unpatriotic men I ever knew was named after George Washington; one of the greatest failures as a preacher was named after Spurgeon; one of the poorest excuses for a statesman was named after Sam Houston. Now here is Phinehas, the son of Eli, named after that other Phinehas of Balaam’s time.

The devil, here called Belial, is never more satisfied than when he can nominate his own children as ministers of religion. Hophni and Phinehas, children of Belial, were priests. The prevalent evils of today arise from the fact that children of Belial occupy many pulpits and many chairs in theological seminaries and Christian schools. Always they are the advance couriers of disaster to God’s cause, and herald the coming of a triumphant adversary.

When preachers and professors, in schools begin to hawk at and peck at the Bible, and rend it with their talons, or defile the spiritual feasts like harpies) you should not only count them as unclean birds of prey, but should begin to set your own house in order, for trouble is coming fast.

2. The Philistines won a battle. Four thousand Israelites were slain.

3. Stimulated by fear, the sons of Eli resorted to an expedient, tempting God. They sent for the ark of the covenant, taking it from its appointed place to be used as a fetish or charm. So used as an instrument of superstition it had no more power to avert evil than a Negro’s use of a rabbit’s foot, or the nailing up of a horseshoe over a door to keep off witches.

As religion becomes decadent its votaries resort to charms, amulets, relics of the saints, alleged pieces of the cross, images and other kinds of evil, instead of resorting to repentance, faith, and obedience. So used, the most sacred symbol becomes worse than any common thing.

We will see later in Jewish history the idolatrous worship of the brazen serpent made by Moses, and we will hear good King Hezekiah say, as he breaks it to pieces, "Nehushtan," i.e., "it is only a piece of brass." As a symbol, when lifted up, it was of great use, but when used as an object of worship it became only a piece of brass. A student of history knows that a multiplication of holy days, pyrotechnic displays, games, festivities, plays, and cruel sports, until there are no days to work, marks the decadence of a people. We need not be afraid of any nation that gives great attention to fireworks, a characteristic of the Latin races.

We shout in vain: "The ark of the Lord! The ark of the Lord!" when we fail to follow the Lord himself. No issue is made in that way, as it is not an issue of the Lord against Dagon, but a superstitious and impious use of sacred symbols against the devil, and the devil will whip every time. In the medieval times, early in the history of the crusades, we see that even the cross so used falls before the crescent, the sign of Mohammed followers.

We might as well seek the remission of sins in baptism, or salvation in the bread of the Supper, as to expect God’s favor sought by any such means.

When Elisha smote the Jordan with Elijah’s mantle, he trusted not to the mantle, nor did he say, "Where is Elijah?" but he said, "Where is the Lord God of Elijah?" and so he divided the waters.

4. The Philistines won another battle. Thirty thousand Israelites perished; Hophni and Phinehas were slain; the ark was captured; Eli died, and the wife of Phinehas died in premature labor, naming her new born babe, "Ichabod," that is, "The glory is departed from Israel"; Shiloh was captured and made desolate forever, ceasing to be the central place of worship; both the ark and the tabernacle became fugitives, separating never to meet again, and so Israel lamented after the Lord.

5. The Philistines regarded the capture of the ark, (1). as a triumph of their god, Dagon, over Jehovah, the God of Israel, and so they placed it in a subordinate position before Dagon in their temple. (2) They regarded it as the capture of Jehovah himself, obligated by his captivity now to serve the Philistines as be had heretofore ministered to Israel.

The prevalence of such conceptions in ancient times is very evident. For ages the presence of a deity was associated with his symbol. To capture his symbol, or image, was to capture the deity, as in the story of Aladdin in The Arabian Nights, whoever held the lamp of the genie controlled the genie himself. Assyrian sculptures today exhibit the idols of vanished nations borne in triumphant procession, and the parade is always to show that they have triumphed over the gods of that country.

The Hebrew prophets allude to this custom frequently. The passages are: Isaiah 46:1; Jeremiah 48:7; Jeremiah 49:3; Hosea 10:6; Daniel 11:8. Cyrus, when he captured Babylon, adopted its gods, but the Romans under Marcellus brought to adorn their own cities the captured images and pictures of the Greek gods. Nebuchadnezzar carried away the sacred symbols of Jerusalem when he captured that city, as did Titus after our Lord’s time, and we see in Rome today carved on the Arch, the sevenbranched golden candlestick which Titus carried from the Temple of Jerusalem in triumph to Rome. The Roman general, Fabius, when he captured the city of Tarentum, said to his soldiers, "Leave their gods here; their gods are mad at them; so let us leave them with their gods which they have offended," and so they left the idols. It would have been a good thing, as after-events show, had Nebuchadnezzar done the same thing, for when Belshazzar, his successor, on a certain night at a drunken feast, used the sacred vessels of the Temple for desecration, it was then that the hand came out and wrote on the wall, Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.

Jehovah showed the Philistines that their victory was not over him: (1) By causing the image of Dagon to fall down before the ark, and when they set it up again, caused it to fall down again, and to break its head and arms off; (2) by sending two great plagues: tumors or boils, violent and fatal, under which thousands died, and field mice that swarmed so as to destroy the great harvests of grain that made their land famous; (3) by causing the cessation of the worship of Dagon in Ashdod, for after taking the falls and breaking his head and arms off, no man would go in and worship Dagon.

A natural inquiry when an individual or a people is subject to a series of severe and extraordinary disasters is, What sin have we committed and how may we expiate it, or avert its judgment? Such an inquiry is inseparably connected with any conception of the moral government of God. Men may indeed often fail to note that all afflictions are not punitive, some being disciplinary, or preparatory to greater displays of mercy. We see this problem discussed in the case of Job and his friends; also to those who asked Jesus, "Who did sin, this man or his parents?" He answered that this affliction did not result from personal sin of either of them, but that the glory of God might be manifested. It is the most natural thing in the world for anybody who has suffered one buffet of ill fortune after another, to ask, "What have I done?" and it is perfectly natural for the neighbors to point out that one and say, "Ah, you have been doing something against the Lord: your sin is finding you out." Therefore it was the most natural thing in the world for the Philistines, when they saw such disasters coming in connection with the capture of the ark, to put the question, "What is our sin?"

We will see what expedients the Philistines adopted to determine whether their calamities came only in a natural way, or were supernatural afflictions connected with the ark and coming from the offended Jehovah, and if from Jehovah, how be was to be appeased. 1 Samuel 5:7-11 gives us the first expedient: "We will move this ark from Ashdod to the next one of the five cities, and see what happens then. If the same things happen there, we will move it to the next city, and if the same things happen there we will move it to the next city, and so on around the circle of the five cities, and if the same results follow all of these cities, such a series of incidents will be regarded as full proof that the judgments are from Jehovah."

We recall the story of the boy and the cow bells: He said, "When my father found a cow bell, Ma and I were mighty glad, for we needed one. And when he found another cow bell we were glad again, for we really needed another one, but when Dad found another cow bell, Ma and I became suspicious." A man would not naturally find three cow bells one after another, so they thought that "Dad" had stolen them. So when five cities, one after the other, had the same afflictions, they could not call that chance.

I knew of a general in a terrible battle who, when a bombshell as big as a water bucket came from a gunboat, cut through a tree and sank into the ground, making an excavation that you could put a house in, ran and put his head right into the hole where the shell came. Somebody asked him why, and he said that such a shell as that would never come twice in the same place. And so the Philistine idea was to move the ark from Ashdod to the next city, and if nothing happened, then they were mistaken about this being chastisement from Jehovah, but if wherever they took it there came the mice and boils on the inhabitants, they were not mistaken, and they could not misunderstand.

That was their first expedient. Their second expedient was to call upon their religious leaders, their diviners and soothsayers, and to ask them to tell them how they could conciliate Jehovah. And the diviners told them that the ark must be sent back, and it must be sent back with a gift, and the gift must signify their confession of sin. In the olden times if a man was healed of a wound in his hand, the Lord was presented with a silver offering to commemorate the healing of the hand. So they had five golden mice made, one for each city, and five golden tumors, one for each city, to symbolize their conception that the evils had come upon them for this offense to Jehovah. But as there still might be a question as to whether these afflictions were natural or supernatural, they tested it in this way: They went to the pen where were cows with young calves (you know what a fool a cow is over her first calf when it is little) and hitched two of these cows to a cart, put the ark on it, to see if the cows, against nature, would go away and leave their calves willingly, and still thinking about the calves and calling them, would carry the ark back to some city of the Levites; that would show that Jehovah was in it.

That was a pretty wise idea of those Philistines, and so when they took a new cart and put the ark on it, and took those two mother cows, they never hesitated but struck a beeline for the nearest Levite city, about twelve miles, and they went bellowing, showing that they felt the absence from their calves. These were their two expedients.

1 Samuel 6:19-20 says that some of the people at Bethshemesh looked into the ark to see what was in there, and the blow fell in a minute. No man was authorized to open that sacred chamber over which the mercy seat rested and on which the cherubs sat, but the high priests of God. If you will turn to the Septuagint, you will find another remarkable thing which does not appear in the Hebrew Bible, viz.: all of the Levites of the city of Bethshemesh rejoiced at the return of the ark of God, except one man, Jeconiah, and his family, who refused to rejoice at its homecoming, and God smote that family in a moment.

Now, a later instance: The ark, at the request of the citizens of Bethshemesh, was moved to Kirjathjearim, and stayed there until David had been reigning a long time; he sent after it, and Uzzah, when the ark was shaken by the oxen stumbling, reached up his hand to steady the ark and God struck him dead. His attempt was well meant, but it presumed that God was not able to take care of himself. It was a violation of the law for any man to touch that ark except the ones appointed by Jehovah. Which one of the Psalms commemorates the capture and restoration of the ark?

After twenty years Samuel led Israel to repentance and victory. 1 Samuel 7:3-12 tells us all about it. It says that Samuel called upon them to repent truly of their sins; if they ever wanted the favor of God any more, to cast off their idols and obey God. This is like John the Baptist saying, "Repent ye, repent ye." Every prophet, in order to be a reformer, was a preacher of repentance. The people repented of their sins, turned from their idols, and returned to God. He assembled all Israel at Mizpah; the Philistines heard of it and came with a great army. Samuel and Israel met them and smote them hip and thigh, and broke their power.

The next paragraph in the Harmony tells how Samuel judged Israel and the regular circuit he made while living at Ramah. He would go to Beth-el, Gilgal, and Mizpah, then come back, holding special courts of judgment, and with such wisdom, purity, and impartiality that he must be classed as the last, best, and greatest of the judges.

QUESTIONS

1. Cite, in order, the passages showing Samuel’s rise over against the descent of Eli.

2. What said Macaulay on this point, and what other examples cited by the author?

3. Give a summary of the events connected with the fall of the house of Eli.

4. How did the Philistines regard the capture of the ark?

5. Show the prevalence of such conceptions in ancient times.

6. How did Jehovah show the Philistines that their victory was not over him?

7. What is the natural inquiry when an individual or a people is subject to a series of severe and extraordinary disasters?

8. To what expedients did the Philistines resort to determine whether their calamities came only in a natural way, or were supernatural afflictions connected with the ark and coming from the offended Jehovah, and if from Jehovah, how was he to be appeased?

9. How else did Jehovah manifest the sanctity of his ark, both at Bethshemesh and later, as we will find in the history?

10. What Psalm commemorates the capture and restoration of the ark?

11. How does Samuel lead Israel, after twenty years, to repentance and victory?

12. What cities did Samuel visit in his judgeship, and what can you say of the judgments rendered by him?