Now the sons of Eli were wicked men. They didn’t know Yahweh.
Parallel Translations
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Now the sons of Eli were wicked men. They didn’t know Yahweh.
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Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial; they knew not the LORD.
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Now the sons of Eli were base men; they knew not the LORD.
Cross-references (19)
Passages linked to 1 Samuel 2:12 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Romans 1:28-30 Even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, malice; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil habits, secret slanderers, backbiters, hateful to God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
- Jeremiah 2:8 The priests didn’t say, ‘Where is Yahweh?’ and those who handle the law didn’t know me. The rulers also transgressed against me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal and followed things that do not profit.
- Judges 2:10 After all that generation were gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them who didn’t know Yahweh, nor the work which he had done for Israel.
- Romans 1:21 Because knowing God, they didn’t glorify him as God, and didn’t give thanks, but became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless heart was darkened.
- 2 Corinthians 6:15 What agreement does Christ have with Belial? Or what portion does a believer have with an unbeliever?
- Hosea 4:6-9 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you, that you may be no priest to me. Because you have forgotten your God’s law, I will also forget your children. As they were multiplied, so they sinned against me. I will change their glory into shame. They feed on the sin of my people, and set their heart on their iniquity. It will be, like people, like priest; and I will punish them for their ways, and will repay them for their deeds.
- John 17:3 This is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and him whom you sent, Jesus Christ.
- Malachi 2:1-9 “Now, you priests, this commandment is for you. If you will not listen, and if you will not take it to heart, to give glory to my name,” says Yahweh of Armies, “then I will send the curse on you, and I will curse your blessings. Indeed, I have cursed them already, because you do not take it to heart. Behold, I will rebuke your offspring, and will spread dung on your faces, even the dung of your feasts; and you will be taken away with it. You will know that I have sent this commandment to you, that my covenant may be with Levi,” says Yahweh of Armies. “My covenant was with him of life and peace; and I gave them to him that he might be reverent toward me; and he was reverent toward me, and stood in awe of my name. The law of truth was in his mouth, and unrighteousness was not found in his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and turned many away from iniquity. For the priest’s lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth; for he is the messenger of Yahweh of Armies. But you have turned away from the path. You have caused many to stumble in the law. You have corrupted the covenant of Levi,” says Yahweh of Armies. “Therefore I have also made you contemptible and wicked before all the people, according to the way you have not kept my ways, but have had respect for persons in the law.
- John 8:55 You have not known him, but I know him. If I said, ‘I don’t know him,’ I would be like you, a liar. But I know him and keep his word.
- John 16:3 They will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor me.
- Deuteronomy 13:13 certain wicked fellows have gone out from among you and have drawn away the inhabitants of their city, saying, “Let’s go and serve other gods,” which you have not known,
- Judges 19:22 As they were making their hearts merry, behold, the men of the city, certain wicked fellows, surrounded the house, beating at the door; and they spoke to the master of the house, the old man, saying, “Bring out the man who came into your house, that we can have sex with him!”
- 1 Samuel 3:7 Now Samuel didn’t yet know Yahweh, neither was Yahweh’s word yet revealed to him.
- 1 Samuel 10:27 But certain worthless fellows said, “How could this man save us?” They despised him, and brought him no present. But he held his peace.
- 1 Samuel 25:17 Now therefore know and consider what you will do; for evil is determined against our master, and against all his house; for he is such a worthless fellow that one can’t speak to him.”
- 1 Kings 21:10 Set two men, wicked fellows, before him, and let them testify against him, saying, ‘You cursed God and the king!’ Then carry him out, and stone him to death.”
- 1 Kings 21:13 The two men, the wicked fellows, came in and sat before him. The wicked fellows testified against him, even against Naboth, in the presence of the people, saying, “Naboth cursed God and the king!” Then they carried him out of the city and stoned him to death with stones.
- Jeremiah 9:6 Your habitation is in the middle of deceit. Through deceit, they refuse to know me,” says Yahweh.
- Jeremiah 22:16 He judged the cause of the poor and needy; so it was well, then. Wasn’t this to know me?” says Yahweh.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (18 sources)
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain That is, they neglected his ordinance.
That is, they neglected his ordinance.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 1Sa 2:12 Now the sons of Eli [were] sons…
1Sa 2:12 Now the sons of Eli [were] sons of Belial; they knew not the LORD.
Ver. 12. Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial.] So were Jehoshuah the high priest’s sons. {Ezr 10:18} Heroum filii noxae! Their parents, much employed about other things, are oft not so careful of well-breeding their children; and besides, they are apt to abuse their father’s authority and power to a licentious practice. Eli brought up his sons to bring down his house. He might fitly have called them, as Augustus did his lewd daughters, his ulcers or cankers.
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They knew not the Lord.] Apprehensively they knew him, but not affectively; they had no lively light, their knowledge was not accompanied with faith and fear of God. {Rom 1:21 Tit 1:16}
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain To wit, practically, i.e. they did not acknowledge honour,…
To wit, practically, i.e. they did not acknowledge honour, regard, love, or serve God; for so words of knowledge are commonly used in Scripture: see Rom 1:28; 1Co 15:34; Tit 1:16
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain And the priest's custom with the people was,.... Not…
And the priest's custom with the people was,.... Not what was according to the will and law of God, but which the sons of Eli had introduced; and in which they were followed by the rest of the priests, and so it became an established custom, and had the force of a law, statute, or judgment, as the word signifies:
that when any man offered sacrifice; not any sort of sacrifice, for if it was a burnt offering, it was wholly consumed by fire, and in that the following custom could not take place; and if it was a sin offering, that was eaten by the priests, and so there was no need of taking such a method as after related; but a peace offering, part of which belonged to the Lord, the fat that was burnt, and the breast and shoulder to the priest, and the rest to the owner, who made a feast of it for his family and friends:
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the priest's servant came while the flesh was in seething; that is, while those parts were boiling for the owner and his family; which was done in some part of the tabernacle, as afterwards in the temple:
with a flesh hook of three teeth in his hand; with a three forked instrument, with which he was sent by order of the priest that slew the sacrifice, and offered it, to whom belonged the parts before mentioned, allowed him by the law; but not content with these, he sent his servant, while the rest were boiling, with such an instrument as here described, to draw up more out of the boiling pot.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain Knew not - They did not honour, love, or…
Knew not - They did not honour, love, or serve God.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 12. The sons of Eli were sons of…
Verse 12. The sons of Eli were sons of Belial] They were perverse, wicked, profligate men; devil's children. They knew not the Lord.
"THEY know! nor would an angel show Him;
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They would not know, nor choose to know Him."
These men were the principal cause of all the ungodliness of Israel. Their most execrable conduct, described 1Sa 2:13-17, caused the people to abhor the Lord's offering. An impious priesthood is the grand cause of the transgressions and ruin of any nation; witness France, Germany, Spain, Ac., from 1792 to 1814.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain Sons of Belial - See the marginal reference note.…
Sons of Belial - See the marginal reference note. The phrase is very frequent in the books of Samuel. In the New Testament, Paul contrasts Christ and Belial, as if Belial were the name of an idol or the personification of evil 2Co 6:15. This probably led to the use of the term “Belial” in the the King James Version, instead of expressing its meaning, which is “mischief, wickedness.”
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain The Lord, whom they denied by their works, Titus…
The Lord, whom they denied by their works, Titus i. 16.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain THE SIN OF ELl'S SONS. (Sa1 2:12-17)
THE SIN OF ELl'S SONS. (Sa1 2:12-17)
Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial--not only careless and irreligious, but men loose in their actions, and vicious and scandalous in their habits. Though professionally engaged in sacred duties, they were not only strangers to the power of religion in the heart, but they had thrown off its restraints, and even ran, as is sometimes done in similar cases by the sons of eminent ministers, to the opposite extreme of reckless and open profligacy.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 12. Sons of Belial — Worthless, good-for-nothing fellows. See…
12. Sons of Belial — Worthless, good-for-nothing fellows. See note on chap. 1Sa_1:16.
Knew not the Lord — Had no reverence for his worship, and no deep sense of the Divine holiness.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 12–17. The faithless priests of Shiloh
12–17. The faithless priests of Shiloh
12. sons of Belial] Worthless men. See note on 1Sa_1:16.
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they knew not the Lord] Were ignorant of His character and so despised His laws. Cp. Jdg_2:10; Job_18:21; Hos_4:1.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (12) Sons of.—The word Belial is printed here and…
(12) Sons of.—The word Belial is printed here and 1Sa_1:16, as though Belial were the name of some pagan deity, but it simply signifies “worthlessness.” It is a common term in these records of Samuel, being used some nine or ten times. It is rarely found in the other historical books. “Sons of Belial” signifies, then, merely “sons of worthlessness,” worthless, good-for-nothing men. The Speaker’s Commentary ingeniously accounts for the use of Belial in the English Version here, and in other places in the Old Testament, by referring to the contrast drawn by St. Paul between Christ and Belial, as if Belial were the name of an idol. or the personification of evil (2Co_6:15).
They knew not the Lord.—The whole conduct of these high priestly officials showed they were utter unbelievers. They used their sacred position merely as affording an opportunity for their selfish extortions; and, as is so often the case now, as it was then, their unbelief was the source of their moral worthlessness (see 1Sa_2:22). “Hophni and Phinehas (the two sons of Eli) are, for students of ecclesiastical history, eminently suggestive characters. They are true exemplars of the grasping and worldly clergy of all ages.
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“It was the sacrificial feasts that gave occasion for their rapacity. It was the dances and assemblies of the women in the vineyards and before the sacred feast that gave occasion for their debaucheries. They were the worst development of the lawlessness of the age, penetrating, as in the case of the wandering Levite of the Book of Judges, into the most sacred offices.
“But the coarseness of these vices does not make the moral less pointed for all times. The three-pronged fork which fishes up the seething flesh is the earliest type of grasping at pluralities and Church preferments by base means, the open profligacy at the door of the Tabernacle is the type of many a scandal brought on the Christian Church by the selfishness or sensuality of the ministers.”—Dean Stanley, On the Jewish Churchy Lecture 17, Part I.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial,…
Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial, i.e. worthless men. (see on 1Sa_1:16) They knew not Jehovah. He had never been revealed to their consciences, and so his fear had no influence upon their lives. The next words, in ver. 13, are difficult, but lit. mean, "The legal right of the priests, towards, or as respects, the people." On this account the Vulgate and several commentators couple the sentence with what precedes: "they knew neither Jehovah, nor their own legal rights." But the word also in ver. 15 is incompatible with this rendering; for if what is mentioned there be illegal, so must also the practice be which is recorded here. But neither does custom give the sense; for the Hebrews has not priest"s (sing.) as the A.V, but of the priests, of all priests generally, and not of Eli merely and his sons. The right translation is that given by the Sept., Syriac, and Chaldee, namely, "the due of the priests from the people," on which see Lev_7:31-35. In the original this is put absolutely "And as to the priests" due from the people, when," etc., but our language requires some insertion to make it read more smoothly. "And as to the due of the priests from the people, the manner of its exaction was as follows: When," etc. But besides the due and legal portion, which, nevertheless, they took in an illegal way, they demanded a part of the flesh reserved for the feast of the offerer, and to which they had absolutely no right (see Lev_8:31; 2Ch_35:13)
The legal due of the priest was the right shoulder and the wave breast; but before he took them they were to be consecrated to God by the burning of the fat upon the altar. (Lev_3:5 Lev_7:31, Lev_7:34) It is worth observing that the people seem well acquainted with the words of the Law, and are indignant because the priests, its proper guardians, do not abide literally by them. This contempt of the Law distressed their religious susceptibilites, while the cupidity of Eli"s sons offended their moral nature. And so men abhorred the offering of Jehovah. Lit. it is the minchah, the unbloody sacrifice, or meat offering, but it is put here forevery kind of sacrificial offering.
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Vers. 12-17. (SHILOH.)
A degenerate priesthood.
best things when corrupted become the worst." It is thus with official positions such as were held by the priests of old. Their positions were a hereditary right, and their duties consisted largely of a prescribed routine of services. It was required, however, that their personal character should accord with their sacred work; (Mal_2:7) and their influence was great for good or evil. Whilst they reflected in their character and conduct the moral condition of the times, they a]so contributed in no small degree to produce it. The sons of Eli employed their high office not for the welfare of men and the glory of God, but. for their own selfish and corrupt purposes, and afford an example of "great and instructive wickedness." Concerning them the following things are recorded:
I CULPABLE IGNORANCE OF GOD (ver. 12). They had no proper conception of him as holy and just, and they did not consider that he observed and hated sin by whomsoever it was committed, and would surely punish it. They had no communion with him, no sympathy with his purposes, and no sense of their own obligations to him. They were unspiritual men, and practically infidel. And they were such notwithstanding the instructions they received, the opportunities they possessed, and the services they rendered. Although the servants of God, "they knew not God," and were "without excuse." Amidst a blaze of light men may be dark within. "And if the light within thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!
II OFFICIAL ROBBERY OF MEN (vers. 13, 14). Not satisfied with the liberal portions of the peace offerings which were legally assigned to them (the breast and shoulder), they claimed other and larger portions, to which they were not entitled, and robbed the people for the gratification of their own appetites. What they would have fiercely denounced in others they deemed venial offences in privileged men like themselves. How often do official positions and selfish indulgences blind men to the injustice of their conduct, and harden them in iniquity.
III WILFUL VIOLATION OF THE LAW (ver. 15). It was required by the Levitical law that the fat should be burnt on the altar before the offering was divided between the priest and the offerer; but instead of doing this, the priest sent his servant beforehand to demand his portion with the fat, that it might be better fitted for roasting than boiling, which was not to his taste. He thus appropriated to his private use what belonged to the Lord, and "robbed God" of his due. It was a gross act of disobedience, sacrilege, and profanity, prompted by the same pampered appetite as his dishonesty toward men; and, in addition, it hindered the people from fulfilling their religious purposes, and made his own servant a partner in his sin.
IV DESPOTIC EXERCISE OF AUTHORITY (ver. 16). When the people gently remonstrated, and promised to give up their own portion if the fat were first burnt on the altar, it was said to them, "Nay, but thou shalt give it me now, or else I will come and take it by force." Reason as well as right was overridden. Instead of regarding himself as a servant of God for the good of men, the priest made himself a "lord over God"s heritage". (1Pe_5:3) Having cast aside the authority of God, he made his own arbitrary dictum the law of others, and urged obedience to it by the threatening of force. By the same means, backed by spiritual terrors, he has often sought to accomplish his wishes in every age.
V INJURIOUS INFLUENCE ON RELIGION (vers. 17, 24). Men abstained from presenting as many offerings as they would have given, or even from presenting them at all, being repelled from the service of God by the evil conduct of his ministers. "Ye make the Lord"s people to transgress" (ver. 24). One unworthy priest has often made many unbelievers. Instead of strengthening what is noblest and best in men, he has destroyed it, and made its restoration impossible. And, generally, ungodly conduct on the part of professed servants of God is a great hindrance to the spread of truth and righteousness, and a powerful influence in extending error and evil in the world. "One sinner destroyeth much good." To complete the picture, two other things must be added, viz.
VI SHAMELESS INDULGENCE IN VICE (ver. 22). They knew nothing of self-control, gave the rein to their lusts, and indulged in vices which the heathen commonly associated with their idol worship, and which made that worship so terrible a temptation to Israel. The idol feasts at Shiloh were doubtless scenes of gross sensuality; and the sons of Eli scarcely cared to disguise their participation in similar indulgences, and made the tabernacle of the Lord like a heathen temple.
VII SUPERSTITIOUS USE OF SACRED THINGS. (1Sa_4:11) Having become insensible to the presence of the invisible King, they treated his services as a mere outward ritual, which may be performed without any felt inconsistency between it and any amount of immorality. Why should they observe it at all? From self-interest and from superstition. They still supposed that there was some mysterious benefit inseparably connected with the ark, and enjoyed by those who possessed it, apart from their moral and spiritual state. Their religion had become a superstition, like that of the heathen. And hence they took the ark into the battle field, in sure confidence of their safety, and were deprived of it by the heathen, and they themselves destroyed.
1. It is possible for men to possess the highest privileges, and yet sink intothe deepest degradation.
2. The patience of Heaven toward sinners, is wonderful, and designed tolead them to repentance.
3. When men despise the goodness of God, and persist in transgression,they are certain to meet with signal punishment. D
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial.
1Sa_2:12-17
Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial.
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Indulgent home life
I. The sins it induces. The sons, Hophni and Phinehas, are the more prominent, so we will contemplate,
1. Their conduct and character. They appear in an official capacity; but the official must be viewed in its association with the personal, A degenerate priest is but the natural outgrowth of the degenerate man. The evil is in the moral constitution of these men, and whatever they do, wherever they go, it will appear.
(1) They were audacious. (Ver. 12.) The children of Satan, and yet in the temple of God. They knew not the Lord. There are certain qualifications needful to the right discharge of every occupation, and he is a bold man who will undertake the duty without the fitness. What verdict would society pass upon anyone who should pursue the career of a doctor, without having studied the principles of anatomy, ignorant of the laws of medicine? Death to the patient would in all probability be the result. Much more criminal he who will engage to remedy the malady of the immortal soul when ignorant of its antidote. They knew not the Lord. They were in the very place surrounded by indications of the Divine--how wilful their ignorance! The history of their religious life was embodied in the ark; they could not look upon its ancient timbers without seeing in every board the mercy and providence of God. But their hearts were out of sympathy with these holy associations, and instead of stimulating to devotion, habitual contact with such sanctities led to criminal familiarity. When it is said that they knew not the Lord, it cannot mean that they doubted the reality of His existence. Faint gleams of His essential life had shone upon their intellects. Though in the sunlight, they saw not the beauties it revealed. Probably when at first they entered upon the Temple duties it was with feeble steps--the pallor of a revealed dread would blanch their cheeks; but now fear had lost its tremor in the cool hardihood of habitual sin. What a degree of defiance does their conduct disclose!
(2) They were covetous. (Vers. 18, 14.) What a contradiction is an avaricious priesthood! how strangely out of harmony with the royal beneficence of its Institutor, and the noble munificence of its intended exercise. A devoted ministry looks more to the Divine remuneration than to the human, and does not strike its fish hook into the caldron of the worshipper. So instead of stimulating the religious sentiments of penitent souls, and lifting them to God, they perverted the design of their office by making themselves the object of its toil. The priest took for himself. Such a class of men have almost unlimited scope for the exercise of their purpose. The strongest instincts of the soul are those which pertain to God and His worship. Hence when claims are presented to the mentally weak and morally credulous, such demands have but to be uttered to be obeyed. How mean thus to make religion a means of personal gain!
(3) They were despotic. (Ver. 16.) Coercion is operating without its sphere when brought to bear on matters of religion. Spiritual life and devotion are essentially free, both as regards the principle of its action and the form of its homage. I will take it by force of these wicked priests. A religion that cannot establish its claim by motive must be weak. Force is always the weapon of the morally imbecile.
(4) They were adulterous. (Ver. 22.)
(5) They brought contempt upon religion. (Ver. 17.) Men failed to make a distinction between the priests and the religion whose interests they wore pretending to serve. Nature is inherently beautiful, but if viewed through a piece of stained glass its perfection would be marred by an unnatural tint. So if we desire to behold the loveliness of piety we must not regard it as presented through any coloured media, but by direct contact and inspection. Religion to be correctly estimated must be felt; it is not a thing for the eye to admire, but for the heart to appreciate. Still, ungodly men have their ideals of rectitude, often sharply defined, and such, seeing the sacrilege of the priests, abhorred the offering of the Lord.
(2) The conduct and character of Eli. As a parent he was over-indulgent (1Sa_13:18). This statement is demonstrated even by his rebukes. Eli was very old, and the slightest vexation would be harassing to his feeble energies, but especially when occasioned by the ill conduct of his sons. What a sad reality!--the father old in years, the sons old in sin!
What a reflection upon his discipline and example!
(1) The method of Elis reproof. He reproves them
(1) Collectively--Ye. Should not each have been taken to the private chamber, that correction might have been adapted to disposition and age. The reproof was, therefore, indiscriminate. He reproves
(2) By interrogation (Ver. 23);
(3) By assertion (Ver. 24);
(4) By argument (Ver. 25).
(2) The Effect of his reproof. They hearkened not. Eli would be reminded that correction had come too late; though the plastic nature of childhood might have yielded to his touch, he had now to deal with sterner material. Gods controversy with an indulgent parent (Ver. 27). Eli is held responsible for the sins of his family. Unto Eli. He is charged with
(1) Ingratitude (Ver. 28);
(2) With insult (Ver. 29).
II. The sorrows it entails.
1. God revokes the mandate of Elis election, and asserts the universal principle of his action (Ver. 30). Elis election was not unalterable, or irrespective of personal conduct. A motto for the warehouse, Them that honour Me I will honour. The punishment predicted. This was the cloud before the storm.
(1) It was humiliating (Ver. 31). The once priestly family is to be divested of all authority or power. I will cut off thine arm.
(2) It was irreparable (Ver. 32).
(3) It was eternal. A new line of priests was to be established which should be forever. How the prophetical becomes historical! It is a page of war which issues in
(1) National defeat (1Sa_4:10);
(2) Social consternation--All the city cried out.
(3) Spiritual declension (Ver. 22).
(4) Family extinction (Vers. 17-20). While Eli sat on the gate, above it sat the Eternal God. So one evil family contained the germ of the nations overthrow.
Lessons:
(1) Parental discipline should be firm as kind.
(2) The welfare of the nation and church depend upon family training.
(3) A respect of God the truest way to promotion.
(4) The sorrowful termination of even a good mans life.
(5) The awful extinction of an impious priesthood. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Elis house
The notices of little Samuel, that alternate in this passage with the sad accounts of Eli and his house, are like the green spots that vary the dull stretches of sand in a desert; or like the little bits of blue sky that charm your eye when the firmament is darkened by a storm. We see evil powerful and most destructive; we see the instrument of healing very feeble--a mere infant. Yet the power of God is with the infant, and in due time the force which he represents will prevail. It is just a picture of the grand conflict of sin and grace in the world. It was verified emphatically when Jesus was a child. It is to be noticed that Eli was a descendant, not of Eleazar, the elder son of Aaron, but of Ithamar, the younger. Why the high priesthood was transferred from the one family to the other, in the person of Eli, we do not know. Evidently Elis claim to the priesthood was a valid one, for in the reproof addressed to him it is fully assumed that he was the proper occupant of the office. From Elis administration great things would seem to have been expected; all the more lamentable and shameful was the state of things that ensued.
1. First our attention is turned to the gross wickedness and scandalous behaviour of Elis sons. Hophni and Phinehas take their places in that unhonoured band where the names of Alexander Borgia, and many a high ecclesiastic of the Middle Ages send forth their stinking savour. They are marked by the two prevailing vices of the lowest natures--greed and lechery. It is difficult to say whether the greater hurt was inflicted by such conduct on the cause of religion or on the cause of ordinary morality. As for the cause of religion, it suffered that terrible blow which it always suffers whenever it is dissociated from morality. The very heart and soul is torn out of religion when men are led to believe that their duty consists in merely believing certain dogmas, attending to outward observances, paying dues, and performing worship. What kind of conception of God can men have who are encouraged to believe that justice, mercy, and truth have nothing to do with His service?
2. It is often very difficult to explain how it comes to pass that godly men have had ungodly children. There is little difficulty in accounting for this on the present occasion. There was a fatal defect in the method of Eli. His remonstrance with his sons is not made at the proper time. It is not made in the fitting tone When disregarded, it is not followed up by the proper consequences. We must not forget that, however inexcusable their father was, the great guilt of the proceeding was theirs. How must they have hardened their hearts against the example of Eli, against the solemn claims of God, against the holy traditions of the service, against the interests and claims of those whom they ruined, against the welfare of Gods chosen people! Could anything come nearer to the sin against the Holy Ghost? No wonder though their doom was that of persons judicially blinded and hardened. They were given up to a reprobate mind, to do those things that were not convenient.
3. But it is time we should look at the message brought to Eli by the man of God. The house of Eli would suffer a terrible degradation. He (this includes his successors in slice) would be stript of his arm, that is, his strength. No member of his house would reach a good old age. One word respecting that great principle of the Kingdom of God announced by the prophet as that on which Jehovah would act in reference to His priests--Them that honour Me I will honour, 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, like the laws of the Medea and Persians, eternal as the ordinances of heaven. However men may try to get their destiny into their own hands; however they may secure themselves from this trouble and from that; however, like the first Napoleon, they may seem to become omnipotent, and to wield an irresistible power, yet the day of retribution comes at last; having sown to the flesh, of the flesh also they reap corruption. What a grand rule of life it is, for old and young. (W. G. Blaikie, D. D.)
The sons of Eli
Eli was high priest of the Jews when the ark of the Lord was in Shiloh. His two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, were priests of the Lord. Their office was holy, but their character was corrupt. They touched sacred things with unworthy hands. The incident shows but too plainly the vital difference between the spiritual and the official. Hophni and Phinehas were officially among the highest men of their day. They bore a holy name, they pronounced holy words, they were clothed in emblematic robes. Yet Hophni and Phinehas were men of Belial. The outside was beautiful; the inside was full of corruption and death. Is there not a lesson here to teachers of Christian truth? It is possible for a man to have a pulpit, and to have no God; to have a Bible, and no Holy Ghost; to be employing his lips in uttering the eloquence of truth, when his heart has gone astray from all that is true and beautiful and good. Is there not a lesson here to professors of Christ? We bear the holy name, and men have a right to expect the holy deed. We need instruction upon the great question of spiritual discipline. When a man who professes to know Christ is found drunk in the streets, we expel him from the Church, and call that discipline; when a man is convicted of some heinous crime, we cut him off from the fellowship of the Church, and call that the discipline of Christian fellowship. It is nothing of the kind; that is mere decency. There is not a club in the world that cares one iota for its own respectability that would not do the same thing. Ours is to be Christian discipline. Yet even here is a mystery--a strange and wondrous thing. Hophni and Phinehas, officially great and spiritually corrupt; minister after minister falling, defiling his garments, and debasing his name; professor after professor pronouncing the right word with the lips, but never realising it in the life. Such is the history of the Church. In the face of all this, God still employs man to reveal the truth to other men, to enforce his claims upon their attention. Instead of in a moment of righteous anger sweeping the Church floor, so that not a footstep of man might remain upon it, end then calling the world around him, and speaking personally face to face--he still employs men to teach men, to allure to brighter worlds and lead the way. The incident shows the deadly result of corruption in influential quarters. All quarters, indeed, are influential; yet some are known to be more influential than others, therefore we adopt this form of expression. The priests were sons of Belial. What was the consequence? The people abhorred the offering of the Lord. The minister is a bad man. What is the consequence? His character is felt through all the congregation. We should remember three things in connection with this advice.
1. The natural tendency of men to religious laxity and indifference.
2. The effect of insincerity upon doctrine. Sincerity is itself an argument. Is it possible to speak the truth with a liars heart? If his lips pronounce the truth, if his heart contradict it, and his life blaspheme it, what wonder if men--who have a natural tendency towards religious indifference--should believe the life and deny the teaching!
3. The peculiarity of moral teaching in requiring personal illustration. Men cannot understand merely theoretic morals; they must have them personified; they must have them taught by incarnation, and illustrated in daily life. The artist may teach you to paint a beautiful picture! yet he may have no regard for moral truth, His non-regard for moral truth may not interfere, so far as you can see, with his ability and earnestness as a mete artist. It is not so in the Church of God. A mans character is his eloquence; a mans spiritual reality is the argument that wins in the long run. The lesson is to Churches. What are we in our corporate capacity? Are we holy? If not we are helping to debase and ruin the world; we have taken Gods leverage to help to undo Gods work! The terribleness of a moral leader falling! On the other hand, we cannot admit the plea that bad leaders are excuse enough for bad followers, when that plea is urged in relation to Christian teaching and life. Nor can we allow that exceptional inconsistency should vitiate the whole Church. We go into an orchard and point to one bit of blemished fruit, and say, Because there is a blemish upon that piece of fruit the whole orchard is decayed and corrupt. Who would believe it? There can be found a light coin in every currency in civilisation. Suppose we took up a standard coin under weight and said, Because this is not of the standard weight, your whole currency is defective, and, as a nation of financiers, you are not worthy of trust. Who would believe it? Such a theory is instantly destroyed by the fact that Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church. We do not say, Look at Christians. We say, Look at Christ. Then, such a theory is never urged but by men who are in search of excuses for their own corruptness. We are not to be followers of Hophni and Phinehas. The priest is not God; the minister is not Jesus Christ; the professor is not the Redeemer of the world. We must, therefore, insist upon the honest investigation of great principles on the one hand, and specially insist upon the calm, severe scrutiny and study of our Saviours own personal life and ministry. We have a written revelation. To that revelation our appeal must be made; to the law and to the testimony must be our challenge. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The sons of Eli
We may justly regard this as affording the motto for a very instructive and mournful history, left to give warning of the weakness into which even good men are apt to fall, and of the manner in which a righteous God often punishes the failure of His servants in duty, through the consequences arising out of their own neglect. It is not, accordingly, said, nor is it to be supposed that Elis weakness, however blameable, furnished excuse for the wickedness of his children.
I. The aggravated guilt with which Elis sons were chargeable. Hophni and Phinehas are, in this portion of sacred history, marked out as examples of what is vicious and depraved. Not contented with committing wickedness in secret, they had reached a state of regardlessness, sinning against the Lord publicly, and with a high hand. Nor was it a time in the history of Israel when the conscience of the people was peculiarly alive. The fervour of grateful feeling for the past kindness of God had passed away; there seemed instead to be prevailing forgetfulness of the great purpose, for the advancement of which they had been so favoured, namely, the keeping alive of Gods worship amidst surrounding ignorance and idolatry. Both the civil and religious polity of the nation were in a state of disorder. In Elis person the two highest offices then existing in the state were united--for the long space of forty years he occupied over Israel the position, not of judge alone, but of high priest also. But defective as Elis conduct towards his family appears to have been--many as were the temptations to which they were exposed, the guilt of Hophni and Phinehas was marked by peculiar aggravation; they had misused great advantages. To know the truth and yet to reject it; to be told of Gods claims on our obedience, and to refuse compliance with them, is to begin in youth a course which often leads to a rebellious and profligate manhood, conducting, perhaps, to a premature grave, or prolonged to an unhonoured and miserable age. Such appears to have been the case with Elis sons. They had abused great advantages, and incurred no small measure of responsibility. They were not ignorant of Jehovahs claims, nor of the holiness of heart and life which He required; their guilt accordingly was conspicuous and undeniable. The lives of Elis sons, who were so near to the altar, might have been dedicated to Heaven. The sons of Eli were sons of Belial: had reached a frightful ripeness in depravity and maturity in crime. They seemed to have lost sight of the distinction between good and evil, to have forgotten the existence of a God, who judgeth righteously. That wickedness was indeed great. There is applied to them in the text such a title as indicates no ordinary proficiency in what was offensive to God, and opposed to His law. They are called sons of Belial, as though distinguished on account of the spirit of evil which they manifested. But can we suppose that depravity to have been at once attained? On the contrary, may they not have trembled with the fear and struggled with the reluctance of the less experienced transgressor?
II. We proceed to notice the ineffectual reproof of his sons on the part of Eli, and the punishment with which their wickedness was followed. At this stage of the history mention is first made of Eli as having reproved the shameful conduct of his sons. He was old; his faculties may have failed, and his perception have been dulled, yet surely he could not have been altogether unaware of what was going on. Instead of using his official power to put a stop to their enormities, his duty both as a father and a legislator--instead of the severity of censure and reprimand that were called for, all that Eli said was quite disproportioned to what was demanded by the exigencies of the case. They were his sons, but dear as they had been, if reprimand were fruitless, should they not have been removed, considering the sacred office they held, from the possibility of further transgressing? In this respect also Eli failed, adding to past neglect what was in effect equivalent to a betrayal of that cause to which, with all his faults and failings, he was strongly attached.
III. Let us now attempt to draw from the text one or two practical lessons.
1. We have here a lesson for parents and others, having a sphere of authority and influence. The service of the Lord is still that from which the corrupt heart recoils with unwillingness. How often has the tyranny of evil habit been suffered, as in the case of Elis household, to become confirmed, without adequate attempt to check its growth. How frequently is the period allowed to pass, during which a good foundation might have been laid, in habits of piety and the fear of God.
2. We have also here a more general lesson of warning to such as persevere in conduct denounced by Scripture, alike by positive precepts, and by means of warning examples. (A. Bonar.)
File priests and the pure child
The change in Samuels daily life and circumstances, when his mother left him behind in Shiloh, must have been like that which many a boy is brought to when he first leaves the shelter of home, and begins to find his way in new associations, among new faces, without the old supports and protection. Samuel, however, was too young when his mother first left him to become much stained by the sin that was round him in Shiloh, for the iniquity was too vile, too mature, too gross for him at that early age to know its real meaning and horror; but the danger of infection, of his very life blood, his inmost soul being poisoned and all his future life defiled, was, if we look with only human expectation, most imminent and sad. Between the tabernacle of the Lord at Shiloh and his fathers house at Ramah, there was a difference great and bad enough to blight any life. In place of Elkanah there was Eli; in place of his mothers pure faith and tender love there were the sons of Eli and the women who came to the tabernacle; instead of home sanctity there was the misery of priestly, official religion, together with the almost inevitable degradation of holiest things. The Lord keeps the feet of His saints when they are surrounded with vile dangers and sad spiritual perils. I can easily understand how Luther, in his dark days of conflict and battle for truth and purity and Christ against apostacy and formalism and a priesthood as dark and vile as that of the two sons of Eli, should often turn to those early chapters of the first book of Samuel, and should rise strengthened for the Lord and the struggle against spiritual wickedness in high places and impure error.
I. Samuel was endangered by priestly profanation of Divine ordinances. Just as some of the sweetest flowers smell the foulest when dead, so it was found that these men and their sacred office became rank and foul, defiling all that came to the sanctuary, and depraving even the most sacred things of the Most High. The priesthood, the sacrifices, the holy seasons, the holy places, the bright feasts that God had appointed, they turned to their own vile uses. Those things and offices of religion that Samuel had been taught to regard as most sacred he must have found, if old enough to think at all, systematically outraged and violated; and religion, sooner or later, would be thought by him to be an imposition and its services deceptive. Not that for him or for any young mind to reason or think so would have been or would now be wise; but it would have been human, natural, and not to be wondered at. For it ever has been a common error of young lives to confound principles with persons. Sometimes I have heard the evil lives of the children of pious parents, or of ministers of the Gospel, accounted for by the grim comment--they are behind the scenes of church life, and of Christian life. But there ought to be no seeing behind the scenes. If truly in Christ, ye are children of the light and of the day, and ought to walk in the light, as He is in the light. Here it may be well to distinctly, recognise the greater danger there is of the profanation of holy things and sacred duties where there is a ceremonial system than where there is a steady and consistent recognition of the belief that the religion which is most acceptable to God and most consistent with the mind of Christ is that which is least ceremonial, least ritual, least priestly, which, having the smallest possible sanctity in institutions and days and offices, must, if it would be consistent and worthy the name of a religion, insist to the very utmost on the greatest possible purity and holiness in hearts and souls.
II. Another of Samuels dangers was from priestly sensuality. In thus arranging the risks of Samuel at Shiloh I wish be keep in our minds the perils that souls as dear to us as Hannahs child was to her may and do have to encounter when they leave the immediate protection of home. I would not say any more on this part of the subject if it were not for the great, the gross dangers that even childrens lives now meet in the impurities of the streets, the vile sensuousness, bordering on sensuality and licentiousness, of much popular literature, and, with some, in the daily pollution in business places and elsewhere of those who already carry the plague spot about with them, and, like the plague-maddened wretches of old, delight in staining and contaminating others. It is such pernicious associations, such horrid perils, that so frequently lead to the deepest profanation of parts of our life that should be regarded as the most sacred and dealt with most purely. It is such infection that in many cases utterly destroys the influence of a mothers parting counsels, or a fathers almost divine commands.
III. Another danger of Samuel rose from the priestly rapacity of the sons of Eli. There have been covetous, worldly, rapacious ministers of religion in all ages, but there never have been so many as when and where a priestly system has gone its own way and developed its own life. Earthly greed and rapacity press as closely on the attention of the young in modern business and social life, as did Samuels life on him. The judgment of most things and men by a money standard; the public unscrupulousness of so many as to the ways and means they adopt so long as the end of gain is reached; the social customs that increasingly make money the principal thing; the prodigious wealth of our times, and the infatuated efforts of the rich to become richer, to add house to house and field to field;--all these things produce an atmosphere, if I may so say, that is charged with danger. No mans vileness will warrant you failing away from the truth. No hypocrites sin, no ministers unworthiness, will acquit any young life of guilt in backsliding from the hope and promise of early, pious days. It will now, perhaps, help us to see how Samuel lived in the midst of the sins of Shiloh.
1. And we know, first of all--That Samuel lived uncontaminated by the profanity, the covetousness, and the lust that were so near him. Now learn from this history, that there is no necessity to sin put on anyone anywhere. You cannot help running the risk, but having allowed this much, all has been allowed. If you have sinned it is because you have been careless or wilful, and not because you could not help sinning. Egypt, Shiloh, and Babylon put greater pressure on the young heroes who there fought for the Lord than we have to bear; yet they did not sin. Neither need we.
2. Again: We are told that Samuel grew in Divine grace and human favour with such vile surroundings. God gives this to you that are tempted as a hope and a promise to check our laments over unfortunate circumstances and temptations. You may grow in grace anywhere, just as you may sin anywhere. You may grow in grace on the borders of the pit; and you may sink into the pit from the house of God. Samuel grew in grace: what shall we do?
3. Moreover, Samuel grew thus by grace that we may have. The strongest of us will live as helplessly as a child that cannot yet walk, if we go forth in our own strength, and will utterly fail; while the weakest of us and those of us whose lot in life is full of spiritual hazard and care may have all the more the full and strong confidence that the Lord will keep the feet of His saints and will strengthen us with every kind of might, while the wicked shall soon be silent, in darkness. (G. B. Ryley.)
Degradation at the altar
As garments to a body, so are ceremonies to religion. Garments on a living body preserve the natural warmth; put them on a dead body and they will never fetch life. Ceremonies help to increase devotion; but in a dead heart they cannot breed it. These garments of religion upon a holy man are like Christs garments on his own holy body; but joined with a profane heart, they are like Christs garments on his crucifying murderers. (Ralph Brownrig.)
Sons of Eli, Sons of Belial
That would seem to be impossible. Eli was a holy man; Eli was a priest. Eli was not intellectually a strong man, but morally he was righteous and faithful up to a very high degree, tie was not much of a ruler at home; still he was substantially a good man. Belial represents corruption, darkness, the devil, the unholy genius of the universe; anything that indicates selfishness, baseness, or corruption of character. Now read the text:--The sons of Eli the holy priest were sons of Belial the bad spirit, the evil genius. We are always coming upon these conflicts, ironies, impossibilities. At the same time there is the fact, solemn, tragical, tremendous, that the sons of a good man may be bad men, and that good men themselves may be surprised or insidiously led into the deepest, gravest evils. Unless we live and move and have our being in God we cannot realise all our privileges and turn them into solid and beneficent character. There may be something in physical descent, and there ought to be in spiritual descent. Eli ought not to have had bad sons. Bad people ought never to come out of good homes. The danger is that Eli himself may be charged with the responsibility. It is so difficult for an ill-judging and prejudiced human nature to distinguish between cause and effect. Do not suppose that you will be a good man because your father was a good man, and your mother a good woman. You may upset the whole process of heredity; you may create a point of departure in your own development. It lies within the power, but not within the right, of every man to say, From the date of my birth there shall be black blood in our family; I will live the downward life, I will make hospitality in the house of evil spirits. So easy is it to destroy, so tempting is it to make bad fame. We see thin not only religiously, in the distinctive sense of that term, but we see this inversion and perversion of heredity along all the lines of life and within all the spheres of human experience. A civilised man, a son of civilisation, may be the most barbarous man upon the face of the earth. It does not lie within the power of a savage to be so barbarous as a civilised man can be. The sons of Eli were sons of Belial. The corresponding sentence in the lower levels of history is, the sons of civilisation are sons of barbarism. So we might proceed to further illustration and say, The sons of education are sons of the greatest ignorance. Who can be so ignorant as a well-informed man when he has given himself up to the service of evil? It is not ignorance of the base and vulgar type that can be excused on the ground of want of privilege and want of opportunity, but it is that peculiar ignorance which knowing the light hides it, which knowing the right does the wrong. His education is an element in his condemnation. Sometimes we can say the sons of refinement are sons of vulgarity. The whole point is this: that our heredity may be broken in upon, our ancestral privileges may be thrown away,--sons of Eli may be sons of Belial. We hold nothing moral by right of ancestry. Every man should hold his property by right of labour, by right of honest moral conquest. Whatever you have, young man, take it at the spear point. You cannot hand a good character to others. You can set up a good reputation for goodness, and that ought to be a suggestion and a stimulus and a direction and a comfort, but you cannot hand on your character as you band on your acres and your pounds sterling. Every man has to conquer the alphabet as if no other man had ever conquered it before. Why not amplify that idea and carry it throughout the whole scheme of character, and see how we are called upon to work for what we have, and not to depend upon ancestral blessings and privileges. Do not then say, My father was good, my mother was good, therefore I need not take any interest in these matters myself: part of their virtue is laid up for me, I may draw upon it by-and-bye. All that reasoning is vicious, false, and spiritually destructive. A double damnation is theirs who had great advantages to begin with and who did not rise to the nobleness and greatness of their opportunities. What some men had to begin with! how much! They had such roomy homes, such libraries, such kindness and love on the part of parents and friends; they were born to all manner of social advantages so called. Where are they today? What have they done? Did they not begin with too much? Were they not overburdened? Possibly some of you may have begun too well. You are not altogether to be blamed for having fallen as you have done. I have applicants for bounty now from men whose fathers were worth a hundred thousand pounds. These are men who have wasted a whole inheritance of ancestral repute for wisdom and goodness. Yet I cannot altogether blame them; the parental Eli cannot altogether wholly escape responsibility. They had too much, things came too easily; Easy come, easy go, is the motto which experience has tested and endorsed. With how little have some other men begun, and yet look at them today. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Corrupt lives contagious
Men of corrupt lives at the head of religion, who are shameless in their profligacy, have a lowering effect on the moral life of the whole community Down and down goes the standard of living Class after class gets infected. The mischief spreads like dry rot in a building; ere long the whole fabric of society is infected with the poison. (W. G. Blaikie, D. D.)
They knew not the Lord.--
Sinful and childlike ignorance of God
(compare with 1Sa_3:7):--Hophni and Phinehas did not know the Lord; their lives showed it. Samuel did not know the Lord, and his actions showed it also. But as between the illustrative acts, so also between the meaning of the words in the two cases, there is as wide a difference as it is possible to conceive. It will help us if we here remember how wide a ground in Scripture this expression to knew or not to know the Lord coverses The first form is at times a synonym for salvation, for the whole course of perfect redemption and complete sanctification. The second, the negative form, is one of the intensest expressions that Scripture uses to state the condition of a sinful soul, and for showing the origin of some of the darkest enormities that have ever degraded the name of religion. The New Testament puts this before us very definitely. When Christ would express His perfect Albion and intercourse with the Father even on earth, He said, I am not come of Myself, but He that sent Me is true; whom ye know not, but I know Him. This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent. O righteous Father, the world tins not known Thee, but I have known Thee, and these have known that Thou hast sent me. John accounts for worldly antagonism to the saints of old in this way--The world knoweth us not because it knew Him not.
I. That the expression not knowing the Lord may imply and account for every kind and degree of sin. This is sinful ignorance of God. In the case now before use, it explains some of the most degrading transgressions of which man can be guilty.
1. But this sinful ignorance of God may co-exist with full knowledge of the truth of God--that is, intellectual knowledge, received by means of education, by example of others, by home training, by social custom or general habit. You may see this in the example of the two young priests. It is certain that they knew the law of the Lord which is perfect. They knew the truth of God, the ways of the Lord, the expectation and hopes of the Almighty that were associated with their priesthood and the offering of sacrifice. They knew the truth, but they knew not God. Their hearts and His were at enmity. Let us make the same distinction for ourselves, between knowing the truth of God and knowing the Lord; between knowing what God has said and knowing God Himself. Is it not one of the saddest facts that some of the worst lives are those that like Hophni and Phinehas know the way of the Lord, have had holy training and gentle nurture, many associations with Gods house, much hearing the Word, and still show that they know not God? Not the knowledge of truth or forms of truth, not correct beliefs or anything of such kind can be depended on to put us right with our God.
2. Notice, again, that there is an ignorance of God that is sinful in its consequences, but is at the same time not guilty. We can understand the vast transgressions of great cities, the brutal tendencies of so large a mass of the population by remembering their inheritance of gross ignorance and animalism in body and mind, their entailed heritage of utter ignorance of God, of inability almost to realise or even to recognise a God and Father of love, or see any meaning in the cross whereon their sins were borne. Is not some of the responsibility resting with Christians, on whose part there has been neglect of extending the light of the glory of God.
3. We must further note that there are cases in which ignorance of the Lord is in it, self a greater transgression than the worst sins that it may beget or account for. These two priests ware as evil in some things as men could be. But more shameful than their deepest impiety was that which was the cause of it--even their wilful ignorance of God. There is practically no restraint left that can touch the heart. To know God is to have now the root of eternal life within us; not to know God is to have the seed of eternal death growing in us now, and in the world to come to be altogether defiled.
II. Not knowing the Lord may comprise and account for every degree of immaturity in the spiritual life. There is a sinful ignorance, as we have seen; and now we have the ignorance of immaturity, of the childlike state. Of this state Samuel the child is the illustration. Samuel had had the preparatory training of his mothers love, the reverent guiding of his life along the way that literally leads to God; but still the moment of intelligent revelation of God to him had not yet come. His love to the Lord had grown like a little seedling plant; now it was to be transplanted into fuller soil, freer air--to have snore root room, more life room altogether. Stronger and more vigorous and bracing winds were to breathe their blessing upon it; hotter sunshine was to stimulate it; elements snore maturing were to lie about the roots. Soon the day of revelation, the night of the opening of heaven in solemnity to his young soul, came; but in prospect of that visitation by which his life was fixed forever, Samuel did not know the Lord. He rested till then as in the arms of God; he lived on God as once he had hung upon his mothers breast--not knowing the love that held him though he lived in it and by it; not seeing clearly the face that bowed over him in unspeakable affection, though his own features bore the same lines and carried the same marks. He did not yet know; but this was the ignorance of imperfect growth, of incomplete development. To some there may be a special need of considering this aspect of Samuels life, and a particular advantage in noting its obvious meaning. For this certainly means that there may be life in God before there is intelligent recognition of it. The father sees his image in the child before the little one recognises it. The Lord was in our life, and we knew it not; nor did we know Him till He Himself drew aside the veil. Or, as it seemed at times, we rambled, as a child might in the tabernacle, into that which is within the veil, into the very Holy of Holies, and there, instead of mighty glory and awful power, we found One gentler than any of earth, a voice speaking more softly than a loving woman, saying, My son, give Me thy heart! and, as to presences, we could not see in the Holy Place, This is My beloved Son. We knew not God, but he knew us as His. I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known Me. I girded thee, though thou hast not known Me. Then shall we know if we follow on to know the Lord. It may be Chat we are all involved, to some extent, in blame, for we have not attained that knowledge which depends on earnest seeking after God. God will not teach the souls that will not wait on Him. God cannot show His beauty to eyes that are turned away from Him. He can reveal His secret only to those that fear Him. If we give up lifes strength, and all the power of our days, to one or to many inferior earthly things, giving to the Lord none of our strength, how can we expect the Lords light and knowledge, with the consequent blessing of our advance in holiness, to be ours? (G. B. Ryley.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain 1Sa_2:12. “Sons of Belial.” See on Chapter 1Sa_1:16.
CRITICAL AND EXPOSITORY NOTES—
1Sa_2:12. “Sons of Belial.” See on Chapter 1Sa_1:16.
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1Sa_2:13-14. They were not content with the portions assigned to them by the Levitical law, namely, the heave-leg and wave-breast (Lev_7:30-34), but robbed the offerer of that portion which belonged to him while he was preparing it to celebrate the feast of thanksgiving before the Lord.
1Sa_2:15. “The fat,” etc. This was the part of the animal which was to be offered to God (Lev_3:16; Lev_7:23; Lev_7:25, etc.). “This was high contempt of God to demand their portion before God had His”. (Patrick). “In the case of the peace offerings, the offerer slew the animal himself at the door of the tabernacle and the priest poured the blood and burnt the fat” (Biblical Commentary).
1Sa_2:17. “The young men.” “Not the servants of the priests (Keil) but the priests themselves, the sons of Eli” (Lange’s Commentary).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—1Sa_2:12-17
THE SIN OF ELI’S SONS
I. Natural birth is not qualification for spiritual service. It does seem to fit men for some professions. The sons of sailors and soldiers often seem to be born with tendencies towards the profession of their forefathers, and very early give proof that they are intended by nature to enter a service which only requires natural gifts for its right fulfilment. But men do not inherit qualifications which fit them to be moral leaders and spiritual guides. It is not enough to possess the natural gifts which belong to holy progenitors, another and a higher law must be brought to exert its influence upon a man’s heart before he is fit to succeed his parent in spiritual service. If he succeeds to his father’s position merely because he is his son, it is a transgression of the law of God’s kingdom and must end in evil. If birth and blood and time-honoured custom could qualify men for a moral service, then Eli’s sons would have been fully fitted to succeed their father. They were born to a good social position—no man in the kingdom stood higher than Eli. They belonged to a family peculiarly honoured by God—no human being ever held a higher spiritual position than the High-priest of Israel. They could trace back their relationship to Moses, that man of God, whose name had for generations justly held the highest place in the history of his nation and was destined to become one of the most honoured in the kingdom of God. They were in this respect “Hebrews of the Hebrews”—members of its most honoured family—born representatives of the nation of which God was, in a special sense, the invisible king. Yet they were utterly unfit for their important office. They “knew not the Lord” and therefore they were His enemies although they were Eli’s sons.
II. When men thus throw away all the advantages of birth and education, they generally become sinners of a double dye. Although godliness does not come by inheritance there is everything in a pious ancestry to favour its growth. The swimmer who finds himself in the stream with both wind and tide in his favour to second his efforts, is doubly to blame if he neglects to use his advantages, and dies by his own deliberate choice if he throws away the opportunity he had of gaining the shore. Though time and tide waited not for him, yet they waited upon him, and he is verily guilty if he refused to take advantage of them. Some are born into this world to find themselves surrounded with social and spiritual influences which, like favourable winds and tides, wait to make the road to godliness easy to them. If they neglect to avail themselves of these good gifts of God they must become sinners of the blackest type, for they harden their hearts against the most softening influence, they sin against light and knowledge. Thus did the sons of Eli. They were launched into life upon a stream whose current was flowing towards that which was pure and holy—they were surrounded by influences which tended to make them worthy to be priests of the Most High God and true sons of Abraham. But they cast them all aside, and not only did not become spiritually fit for their service, but grew into monsters of iniquity, and turned the very tabernacle of God into a home of the grossest sin.
III. No bond arising from social position or rank is strong enough to prevent the manifestation of the sin which is in the heart. A tree may at present seem to be in a healthy condition, but if there is that in the root beneath the ground that is enough to kill the tree, nothing can prevent the fact from becoming evident in that part of the tree which is above the surface. Leaves and branches will, bye-and-bye, tell the tale. Nature is a symbol, and an expounder of moral truth in this matter as in many others. There is nothing morally bad that is hidden in a man’s heart that will not manifest itself in his life, though his reputation and his rank call upon him to conceal it. The secret sin will ere long become too strong to continue secret, although loss of position and influence may be the result of its being made public. Social prestige is a garment too narrow to conceal from view the hidden man of the heart, however desirable it may be to do so. If the tree is corrupt, the fruit will be corrupt also (Mat_12:33). Eli’s sons had every temporal advantage to gain from preserving an outward decency of conduct—they must have been fully aware that only by so doing could they command in any degree the respect which was usually accorded to men in their position. But sin in the human heart is like pent-up water, which after being held back for a time rushes forth with a force that breaks down every dam, and sweeps away every obstacle, and carries desolation where-ever it goes. Even the restraint of the office of the priesthood was not strong enough to hold back Hophni and Phinehas from the grossest crimes, and their lust and greed broke down every social barrier, and spread moral desolation all around them.
IV. Those who are both irreverent and licentious poison human nature in its highest and lowest relations. The sin of licentiousness is a sin against the animal part of man; it defiles his body, and causes the race to degenerate physically. It makes all animal ties, which are intended to bring blessings to men, sink below those of the brute creation. The Lord is for the body (1Co_6:13), and He has proved that He cares for man’s physical well-being by the strictness with which He has fenced him round in this respect. He who transgresses God’s laws in this matter poisons the source of man’s physical well-being, and degrades his nature below the lowest animal. A river, while it flows within its appointed channel, carries fertility and beauty wherever it goes, but when it bursts its banks it obliterates all the beauty of the landscape, and spreads destruction all around. So with men’s animal passions. While they keep within the limits prescribed for them they are instruments of enjoyment and of blessing, but when the boundary is broken down and they flow beyond their lawful channel, they leave nothing but a curse behind them. Eli’s sons were guilty of thus defiling the body, and by so doing they poisoned one of the ordained streams of social blessing in their own families and in that of many others in Israel. They were also guilty of the grossest irreverence, and in this they sinned against man’s higher nature. Their conduct tended to dislodge from the mind all conceptions of the holiness and purity of God. This they did by the place in which they committed their most open crimes. The hospital is the place where men hope to receive healing medicine. If those who are expected to dispense remedies give poisonous drugs instead of healing, where shall the sick turn for help? The house of God is the place where men ought to find that which will conduce to moral health. If there they find only moral corruption, where shall they look? What higher crime can men be guilty of than that of turning the house of spiritual healing into a moral pest-house. Of what greater act of irreverence could the sons of Eli have been guilty than that whereby they corrupted the chastity of the women who frequented the tabernacle? They also tended to lower men’s conception of God by profaning His service. If a man constantly takes the name of God upon his lips in a light and careless manner he educates those about him to think lightly of the Divine Being. This is a tribute that a child of the wicked one is expected to pay to his father the devil, that thereby the name of the holy God may be lightly esteemed in the world. But if profanity of speech tends to dishonour God in the minds of men, much more does profanity of action. The sons of Eli were profane doers, and were therefore profane in a manner more calculated to produce irreverence in others than men of profane speech merely. They took God’s name in vain in their actions, and despised the holy name by which they were called by despising the offerings which were made to God according to His appointment. By open disobedience to Gods plain command, by robbing the Lord, and by robbing those who came to worship Him, those whose special function it was to hallow Him before the nation caused His offering to be abhorred. It is treason to speak or act against the king in any part of his dominion, but to defy him in his throne-room would surely be the most aggravated form of the crime. The whole earth is the Lord’s, and to act with irreverence towards Him in any part of His dominion is a sin, but to profane His holy ordinances in the palace of the Great King, is a sin of the blackest hue. The body-guard of a monarch is especially bound to render him loyal and faithful service; if it betray its trust, where is he to look for faithful servants? God’s ministers in all ages are the body-guard of the Eternal King; if they prove themselves renegades and unworthy of the high honour that He has put upon them, others will find in their unfaithfulness a licence to set Him at defiance. (For a parallel case in the modern history of the Church, see Froude’s “Annals of an English Abbey Short Studies,” vol. iii).
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
1Sa_2:12. So were Jehoshua the high-priest’s sons (Ezr_10:18). Their parents, much employed about other things, are oft not so careful of well-breeding their children; and besides, they are apt to abuse their father’s authority and power to a licentious practice. Eli brought up his sons to bring down his house. They knew not the Lord. Apprehensively they knew Him, but not affectively; they had no lively light, their knowledge was not accompanied with faith and fear of God (Rom_1:21; Tit_1:16).—Trapp.
If the conveyance of grace were natural, holy parents would not be so ill suited with children. If virtue were as well entailed on us as sin, one might serve to check the other in our children; but now, since grace is derived from heaven on whomsoever it pleaseth the Giver, and that evil, which ours receive hereditarily from us, is multiplied, by their own corruption, it can be no wonder that good men have ill children; it is rather a wonder that any children are not evil.… If our children be good, let us thank God for it; this was more than we could give them; if evil, they may thank us and themselves, us for their birth sin, themselves for the improvement of it to that height of wickedness.—Bishop Hall.
1Sa_2:15. God may well call for the best of the best; but these liquorish Lurcos would needs be served before Him and be their own carvers. Boiled meat would not content them. But it ill becometh a servant of the Lord to be a slave to his palate. Christ biddeth His apostles, when they come into a house, “eat such things as are set before them.”—Trapp.
1Sa_2:17. It hath been an old saying, De templo omne bonum, de templo omne malum—all good or evil comes from the temple.—Chrysostom. Where the pastor is good, and the people good, he may say to them, as Paul to his Corinthians, “Are ye not my work in the Lord?” (1Co_9:1) Where the pastor is bad, and the people no better, they may say to him, Art thou not our destruction in the world? It is no wonder if an abused temple makes a disordered people. A wicked priest is the worst creature upon God’s earth; no sin is so black as that shall appear from under a white surplice. Every man’s iniquity is so much the heinouser as his place is holier. The sin of the clergy is like a rheum, which, rising from the stomach into the head, drops down upon the lungs, fretting the most noble and vital parts, till all the members languish into corruption. The lewd sons of Eli were so much the less tolerable by sinning in the tabernacle. Their sacrifices might do away the sins of others; no sacrifice could do away their own, Many a soul was the cleaner for the blood of those beasts they shed; their own souls were the fouler by it. By one and the same service they did expiate the people’s offences and multiply their own. Our clergy is no charter for heaven. Such men are like the conveyances of land: evidences and instruments to settle others in the kingdom of heaven, while themselves have no part of that they convey. It is no impossible thing for men at once to show the way to heaven with their tongue, and lead the way to hell with their foot. It was not a Jewish ephod, it is not a Romish cowl that can privilege an evil-doer from punishment. Therefore it was God’s charge to the executioners of His judgment, “Begin at mine own sanctuary” (Eze_9:6); and the apostle tells us that “judgment shall begin at the house of God” (1Pe_4:17); and Christ, entering into His prophetical office, began reformation at His Father’s house (Joh_2:15). Let our devout and holy behaviour prevent this, and by our reverent carriage in the temple of God let us honour the God of the temple.… If Christ, while he was upon the cross, saith Bernard, had given me some drops of His own blood in a vial, how carefully would I have kept them, how dearly esteemed them, how laid them next my heart. But now He did not think it fit to trust me with those drops, but He hath entrusted to me a flock of His lambs, those souls for whom He shed His blood, like whom His own blood was not so dear unto Him; upon these let me spend my care, my love, my labour, that I may present them holy saints to my dear Lord Jesus. But let Christians beware, lest, for the abuses of men they despise the temple of God. For as the altar cannot sanctify the priest, so neither can the unholiness of the priest disallow the altar. His sin is his own, and cannot make you guilty; the virtue and comfort is from God, and this is still able to make you holy. When we read that “the sin of the priests was great before the Lord, for men abhorred the offering of the Lord,” this, we all confess, was ill done of the priests, and I hope no man thinks it was well done of the people. Shall men, therefore, scorn the sanctuary, and cast that contempt on the service of God which belongs to the vices of men? This were to add our own evil to the evil of others, and to offend God because He was offended. Cannot the faults of men displease us, but we must needs fall out with God ?.… We say of the sacraments themselves, much more of the ministers—These do not give us what God doth give us by them.—T. Adams.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain The Wicked Practices of Eli’s Sons
The Wicked Practices of Eli’s Sons
v. 12. Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial, worthless, profitless rascals; they knew not the Lord, they did not fear Him, they had no faith in Him.
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v. 13. And the priest’s custom with the people was that, when any man offered sacrifice, the priest’s servant came, while the flesh was in seething, with a flesh-hook of three teeth, a trident, or three-pronged fork, in his hand;
v. 14. and he struck it into the pan, or kettle, or caldron, or pot; all that the flesh-hook brought up the priest took for himself. That was the greedy conduct of the priests in the preparation of the sacrificial meal after the sacrifice proper had been brought. This manner of acting had already become the rule. So they did in Shiloh unto all the Israelites that came thither, thus robbing the people and the Lord, instead of confining themselves to the wave-breast, the heave-shoulder, and certain other perquisites, Lev 7:28-36; Numbers 18.
v. 15. Also before they burned the fat, before the sacrifice proper, which included the fat, Lev 3:3-5, the priest’s servant came, and said to the man that sacrificed, Give flesh to roast for the priest, for they did not want boiled meat all the time; for he will not have sodden flesh of’ thee, but raw, such as was still full of strength and juice.
v. 16. And if any man said unto him, Let them not fail to burn the fat presently, that is, he was about to have the fat of his offering burned, according to law, and then take as much as thy soul desireth; then he, the priests’ servant, would answer him, Nay; but thou shalt give it me now; and if not, I will take it by force. These abuses had been introduced by Eli’s sons in connection with the peace-offerings, with which a sacrificial meal was connected.
v. 17. Wherefore the sin of the young men was very great before the Lord, it was an outrage equivalent to sacrilege; for men abhorred the offering of the Lord, they despised and blasphemed it as a form of graft in holy places. That is the height of corruption in the Church, when the servants of the sanctuary themselves are godless rascals, having only their temporal advancement in view, and thus give the enemies of the Lord occasion to blaspheme.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 General Information:
General Information:
When people would offer animals as sacrifices, they would first burn the animal's fat and then boil the meat and eat it.
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did not know Yahweh
"did not listen to Yahweh" or "did not obey Yahweh"
custom
A custom is an action that people regularly do.
into the pan, or kettle, or cauldron, or pot
These are containers in which food could be cooked. If your language does not have separate words for these items it can be stated more generally. AT: "into whatever the people were cooking the meat in"
pan
a small metal container for boiling and cooking
kettle
a large, heavy metal container for boiling and cooking
cauldron
a large, heavy metal container for boiling and cooking
pot
a clay container for cooking
translationWords
know
priest
sacrifice
servant
Shiloh
Israel
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 2:12 scoundrels (Hebrew sons of Belial): See study note…
2:12 scoundrels (Hebrew sons of Belial): See study note on 1:16. • had no respect for (literally did not know) the Lord: Although they were priests among God’s people, they did not acknowledge God or seek to abide by his will (cp. Jer 2:8).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.