Now the sons of Eli were wicked men. They didn’t know Yahweh. The custom of the priests with the people was that when anyone offered a sacrifice, the priest’s servant came while the meat was boiling, with a fork of three teeth in his hand; and he stabbed it into the pan, or kettle, or cauldron, or pot. The priest took all that the fork brought up for himself. They did this to all the Israelites who came there to Shiloh. Yes, before they burned the fat, the priest’s servant came, and said to the man who sacrificed, “Give meat to roast for the priest; for he will not accept boiled meat from you, but raw.”
If the man said to him, “Let the fat be burned first, and then take as much as your soul desires;” then he would say, “No, but you shall give it to me now; and if not, I will take it by force.” The sin of the young men was very great before Yahweh; for the men despised Yahweh’s offering. But Samuel ministered before Yahweh, being a child, clothed with a linen ephod. Moreover his mother made him a little robe, and brought it to him from year to year when she came up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice. Eli blessed Elkanah and his wife, and said, “May Yahweh give you offspring from this woman for the petition which was asked of Yahweh.” Then they went to their own home. Yahweh visited Hannah, and she conceived and bore three sons and two daughters. The child Samuel grew before Yahweh.
Now Eli was very old; and he heard all that his sons did to all Israel, and how that they slept with the women who served at the door of the Tent of Meeting. He said to them, “Why do you do such things? For I hear of your evil dealings from all these people. No, my sons; for it is not a good report that I hear! You make Yahweh’s people disobey. If one man sins against another, God will judge him; but if a man sins against Yahweh, who will intercede for him?” Notwithstanding, they didn’t listen to the voice of their father, because Yahweh intended to kill them.
The child Samuel grew on, and increased in favor both with Yahweh and also with men.
A man of God came to Eli and said to him, “Yahweh says, ‘Did I reveal myself to the house of your father when they were in Egypt in bondage to Pharaoh’s house? Didn’t I choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to go up to my altar, to burn incense, to wear an ephod before me? Didn’t I give to the house of your father all the offerings of the children of Israel made by fire? Why do you kick at my sacrifice and at my offering, which I have commanded in my habitation, and honor your sons above me, to make yourselves fat with the best of all the offerings of Israel my people?’ “Therefore Yahweh, the God of Israel, says, ‘I said indeed that your house and the house of your father should walk before me forever.’ But now Yahweh says, ‘Far be it from me; for those who honor me I will honor, and those who despise me will be cursed. Behold, the days come that I will cut off your arm and the arm of your father’s house, that there will not be an old man in your house. You will see the affliction of my habitation, in all the wealth which I will give Israel. There shall not be an old man in your house forever. The man of yours whom I don’t cut off from my altar will consume your eyes and grieve your heart. All the increase of your house will die in the flower of their age. This will be the sign to you that will come on your two sons, on Hophni and Phinehas: in one day they will both die. I will raise up a faithful priest for myself who will do according to that which is in my heart and in my mind. I will build him a sure house. He will walk before my anointed forever. It will happen that everyone who is left in your house will come and bow down to him for a piece of silver and a loaf of bread, and will say, “Please put me into one of the priests’ offices, that I may eat a morsel of bread.” ’ ”
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 22, 24, 25, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36 That is, they neglected his ordinance.
That is, they neglected his ordinance.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv12–36 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 On vv12–36 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.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v27 Eli reproved his sons too gently, and did not…
Eli reproved his sons too gently, and did not threaten them as he should, and therefore God sent a prophet to him to reprove him sharply, and to threaten him, because, by his indulgence of them, he had strengthened their hands in their wickedness. If good men be wanting in their duty, and by their carelessness and remissness contribute any thing to the sin of sinners, they must expect both to hear of it and to smart for it. Eli's family was now nearer to God than all the families of the earth, and therefore he will punish them, Amo 3:2. The message is sent to Eli himself, because God would bring him to repentance and save him; not to his sons, whom he had determined to destroy. And it might have been a means of awakening him to do his duty at last, and so to have prevented the judgment, but we do not find it had any great effect upon him. The message this prophet delivers from God is very close.
I. He reminds him of the great things God had done for the house of his fathers and for his family. He appeared to Aaron in Egypt (Exo 4:27), in the house of bondage, as a token of further favour which he designed for him, Sa1 2:27. He advanced him to the priesthood, entailed it upon his family, and thereby dignified it above any of the families of Israel. He entrusted him with honourable work, to offer on God's altar, to burn incense, and to wear that ephod in which was the breast-plate of judgment. He settled upon him an honourable maintenance, a share out of all the offerings made by fire, Sa1 2:28. What could he have done more for them, to engage them to be faithful to him? Note, The distinguishing favours we have received from God, especially those of the spiritual priesthood, are great aggravations of sin, and will be remembered against us in the day of account, if we profane our crown and betray our trusts, Deu 32:6; Sa2 12:7, Sa2 12:8.
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II. He exhibits a high charge against him and his family. His children did wickedly, and he connived at it, and thereby involved himself in the guilt; the indictment therefore runs against them all, Sa1 2:29. 1. His sons had impiously profaned the holy things of God: "You kick at my sacrifice which I have commanded; not only trample upon the institution as a mean thing, but spurn at it as a thing you hate to be tied up to." They did the utmost despite imaginable to the offerings of the Lord when they committed all that outrage and rapine about them that we read of, and violently plundered the pots on which, in effect, Holiness to the Lord was written (Zac 14:20), and took that fat to themselves which God had appointed to be burnt on his altar. 2. Eli had bolstered them up in it, by not punishing their insolence and impiety: "Thou for thy part honourest thy sons above me," that is, "thou hadst rather see my offerings disgraced by their profanation of them than see thy sons disgraced by a legal censure upon them for so doing, which ought to have been inflicted, even to suspension and deprivation ab officio et beneficio - of their office and its emoluments." Those that allow and countenance their children in any evil way, and do not use their authority to restrain and punish them, do in effect honour them more than God, being more tender of their reputation than of his glory and more desirous to humour them than to honour him. 3. They had all shared in the gains of the sacrilege. It is to be feared that Eli himself, though he disliked and reproved the abuses they committed, yet did not forbear to eat of the roast meat they sacrilegiously got, Sa1 2:15. He was a fat heavy man (Sa1 4:18), and therefore it is charged upon the whole family (though Hophni and Phinehas were principally guilty), You make yourselves fat with the chief of all the offerings. God gave them sufficient to feed them, but that would not suffice; they made themselves fat, and served their lusts with that which God was to be served with. See Hos 4:8.
III. He declares the cutting off of the entail of the high priesthood from his family (Sa1 2:30): "The Lord God of Israel, who is jealous for his own honour and Israel's, says, and lets thee know it, that thy commission is revoked and superseded." I said, indeed, that thy house, and the house of thy father Ithamar (for from that younger son of Aaron Eli descended), should walk before me for ever. Upon what occasion the dignity of the high priesthood was transferred from the family of Eleazar to that of Ithamar does not appear; but it seems this had been done, and Eli stood fair to have that honour perpetuated to his posterity. But observe, the promise carried its own condition along with it: They shall walk before me forever, that is, "they shall have the honour, provided they faithfully do the service." Walking before God is the great condition of the covenant, Gen 17:1. Let them set me before their face, and I will set them before my face continually (Psa 41:12), otherwise not. But now the Lord says, Be it far from me. "Now that you cast me off you can expect no other than that I should cast you off; you will not walk before me as you should, and therefore you shall not." Such wicked and abusive servants God will discard, and turn out of his service. Some think there is a further reach in this recall of the grant, and that it was not only to be fulfilled shortly in the deposing of the posterity of Eli, when Zadok, who descended from Eleazar, was put in Abiathar's room, but it was to have its complete accomplishment at length in the total abolition of the Levitical priesthood by the priesthood of Christ.
IV. He gives a good reason for this revocation, taken from a settled and standing rule of God's government, according to which all must expect to be dealt with (like that by which Cain was tried, Gen 4:7): Those that honour me I will honour, and those that despise me shall be lightly esteemed.
1. Observe in general, (1.) That God is the fountain of honour and dishonour; he can exalt the meanest and put contempt upon the greatest. (2.) As we deal with God we must expect to be dealt with by him, and yet more favourably than we deserve. See Psa 18:25, Psa 18:26.
2. Particularly, (1.) Be it spoken, to the everlasting reputation of religion or of serious godliness, that it gives honour to God and puts honour upon men. By it we seek and serve the glory of God, and he will be behind-hand with none that do so, but here and hereafter will secure their glory. The way to be truly great is to be truly good. If we humble and deny ourselves in any thing to honour God, and have a single eye to him in it, we may depend upon this promise, he will put the best honour upon us. See Joh 12:26. (2.) Be it spoken, to the everlasting reproach of impiety or profaneness, that this does dishonour to God (despises the greatest and best of beings, whom angels adore) and will bring dishonour upon men, for those that do so shall be lightly esteemed; not only God will lightly esteem them (that perhaps they will not regard, as those that honour him value his honour, of whom therefore it is said, I will honour them), but they shall be lightly esteemed by all the world; the very honour they are proud of shall be laid in the dust; they shall see themselves despised by all mankind, their names a reproach; when they are gone, their memory shall rot, and, when they rise again, it shall be to everlasting shame and contempt. The dishonour which their impotent malice puts upon God and his omnipotent justice will return upon their own heads, Psa 79:12.
V. He foretels the particular judgments which should come upon his family, to its perpetual ignominy. A curse should be entailed upon his posterity, and a terrible curse it is, and shows how jealous God is in the matters of his worship and how ill he takes it when those who are bound by their character and profession to preserve and advance the interests of his glory are false to their trust, and betray them. If God's ministers be vicious and profane, of how much sorer punishment will they be thought worthy, here and for ever, than other sinners! Let such read the doom here passed on Eli's house, and tremble. It is threatened,
1. That their power should be broken (Sa1 2:31): I will cut off thy arm, and the arm of thy father's house. They should be stripped of all their authority, should be deposed, and have no influence upon the people as they had had. God would make them contemptible and base. See Mal 2:8, Mal 2:9. The sons had abused their power to oppress the people and encroach upon their rights, and the father had not used his power, as he ought to have done, to restrain and punish them, and therefore it was justly threatened that the arm should be cut off which was not stretched out as it should have been.
2. That their lives should be shortened. He was himself an old man; but instead of using the wisdom, gravity, experience, and authority of his age, for the service of God and the support of religion, he had suffered the infirmities of age to make him more cool and remiss in his duty, and therefore it is here threatened that none of his posterity should live to be old, Sa1 2:31, Sa1 2:32. It is twice spoken: "There shall not be an old man in thy house for ever;" and again (Sa1 2:33), "All the increase of thy house, from generation to generation, shall die in the flower of their age, when they are in the midst of the years of their service," so that though the family should not be extinct, yet it should never be considerable, nor should any member of it come to be eminent in his day. Bishop Patrick relates, out of some of the Jewish writers, that long after this, there being a family in Jerusalem none of which commonly lived above eighteen years, upon search it was found that they descended from the house of Eli, on which this sentence was passed.
3. That all their comforts should be embittered. (1.) The comfort they had in the sanctuary, in its wealth and prosperity: Thou shalt see an enemy in my habitation. This was fulfilled in the Philistines' invasions and the mischiefs they did to Israel, by which the country was impoverished (Sa1 13:19), and no doubt the priests' incomes were thereby very much impaired. The captivity of the ark was such an act of hostility committed upon God's habitation as broke Eli's heart. As it is a blessing to a family to see peace upon Israel (Psa 128:5, Psa 128:6), so the contrary is a sore judgment upon a family, especially a family of priests. (2.) The comfort of their children: "The man of thine whom I shall not cut off by an untimely death shall live to be a blot and burden to the family, a scandal and vexation to his relations; he shall be to consume thy eyes and grieve thy heart, for his foolishness or his sickliness, his wickedness or his poverty." Grief for a dead child is great, but for a bad child often greater.
4. That their substance should be wasted and they should be reduced to extreme poverty (Sa1 2:36): "He that is left alive in thy house shall have little joy of his life, for want of a livelihood; he shall come and crouch to the succeeding family for a subsistence." (1.) He shall beg for the smallest alms - a piece of silver (and the word signifies the least piece) and a morsel of bread. See how this answered the sin. Eli's sons must have the best pieces of flesh, but their sons will be glad of a morsel of bread. Note, Want is the just punishment of wantonness. Those who could not be content without dainties and varieties are brought, they or theirs, to want necessaries, and the Lord is righteous in thus visiting them. (2.) He shall beg for the meanest office: Put me into somewhat belonging to the priesthood (as it is in the original); make me as one of the hired servants, the fittest place for a prodigal. Plenty and power are forfeited when they are abused. They should not be able to pretend to any good preferment, not to any place at the altar, but should petition for some poor employment, be the work ever so hard and the wages ever so small, so they might but get bread. This, it is probable, was fully accomplished when Abiathar, who was of Eli's race, was deposed by Solomon for treason, and he and his turned out of office in the temple (Kg1 2:26, Kg1 2:27), by which it is easy to think his posterity were reduced to the extremities here described.
5. That God would shortly begin to execute these judgments in the death of Hophni and Phinehas, the sad tidings of which Eli himself should live to hear: This shall be a sign to thee, Sa1 2:34. When thou hearest it, say, "Now the word of God begins to operate; here is one threatening fulfilled, from which I infer that all the rest will be fulfilled in their order." Hophni and Phinehas had many a time sinned together, and it is here foretold that they should die together both in one day. Bind these tares in a bundle for the fire. This was fulfilled, Sa1 4:11.
VI. In the midst of all these threatenings against the house of Eli, here is mercy promised to Israel (v. 35): I will raise me up a faithful priest. 1. This was fulfilled in Zadoc, of the family of Eleazar, who came into Abiathar's place in the beginning of Solomon's reign, and was faithful to his trust; and the high priests were of his posterity as long as the Levitical priesthood continued. Note, The wickedness of ministers, though it destroy themselves, yet it shall not destroy the ministry. How bad soever the officers are, the office shall continue always to the end of the world. If some betray their trust, yet others shall be raised up that will be true to it. God's work shall never fall to the ground for want of hands to carry it on. The high priest is here said to walk before God's anointed (that is, David and his seed) because he wore the breast-plate of judgment, which he was to consult, not in common cases, but for the king, in the affairs of state. Note, Notwithstanding the degeneracy we see and lament in many families, God will secure to himself a succession. If some grow worse than their ancestors, others, to balance that, shall grow better. 2. It has its full accomplishment in the priesthood of Christ, that merciful and faithful high priest whom God raised up when the Levitical priesthood was thrown off, who in all things did his father's mind, and for whom God will build a sure house, build it on a rock, so that the gates of hell cannot prevail against it.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv12–35 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 On vv12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23, 25, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35 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 On vv12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36 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.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv13, 14, 16, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 25, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36 1Sa 2:13. When any man offered sacrifice — Brought…
1Sa 2:13. When any man offered sacrifice — Brought his peace-offerings to be offered at the altar. While the flesh was in seething — Or boiling. As the Lord’s part of the peace-offerings was burned upon the altar, so the priests’ and offerers’ parts were to be boiled. And when the temple was built, there were certain rooms in the court of the people, wherein they had liberty to boil the flesh, in order that they might feast with God at his own house. And the like rooms, no doubt, there were in the outward court of the tabernacle.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36 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 On vv12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36 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).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v27 The prophecy of a Man of God of the…
FIFTH SECTION
The prophecy of a Man of God of the divine judgment on Eli’s house and of the calling of a faithful priest
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1Sa_2:27-36
27And there came a man of God41 unto [to] Eli and said unto [to] him, Thus saith the Lord [Jehovah], Did I plainly appear [reveal myself] unto [to] the house of thy father when they were in Egypt in Pharaoh’s house [in servitude42 to the house 28of Pharaoh]? And did I choose [I chose43] him [it] out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest [to do priestly service to me], to offer44 upon my altar, to burn incense, to wear an ephod before me? [om.?], and did I give [I gave] unto [to] the house of thy father all the offerings made by fire [the fire-offerings] of the children 29of Israel? [om.?]. Wherefore kick ye at [trample ye under foot] my sacrifice and at [om. at] mine [my] offering which I have commanded in my habitation,45 and honorest thy sons above me to make yourselves fat with the chiefest of all the 30offerings [the best of every offering] of Israel my people?46 Wherefore [Therefore] the Lord [Jehovah] God of Israel saith, I said indeed47 that thy house and the house of thy father should walk before me for ever; but now the Lord saith [saith Jehovah], Be it far from me; for them that honor me I will honor, and they that 31despise me shall be lightly esteemed. Behold, the days come that I will cut off thine arm, and the arm of thy father’s house, [ins. so] that there shall not be an 32old man in thine house. And48 thou shalt see an enemy in my habitation in all the wealth which God shall give Israel [thou shalt see distress of house in all that does 33good to Israel]; and there shall not be an old man in thy house for ever. And the man of thine whom I shall not cut off [And I will not cut off every man of thine49] from my altar shall be [om. shall be], to consume thine eyes, and to grieve thine [thy] heart; and all the increase of thine [thy] house shall die in the flower 34of their age.50 And this shall be a [the] sign unto [to] thee, that [ins. which] shall come upon thy two sons, Hophni and Phinehas: in one day they shall die both of 35them. And I will raise me up a faithful priest, that [who] shall do according to that which is in my heart and in my mind [soul], and I will build him a sure51 36house, and he shall walk before my anointed for ever. And it shall come to pass that every one that is left in thy house shall come and crouch to him for a piece52 of silver and a morsel of bread, and shall say, Put me, I pray thee, into one of the priests’ offices, that I may eat a piece of bread.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1Sa_2:27. The “man of God” (for the expression comp. Deu_33:1; Jdg_13:6) who appears here is undoubtedly to be regarded as a prophet, both from this title, which marks him as standing in a specific relation to God, and from the introduction of his address: “Thus saith the Lord.” This is, however, not the first mention of a prophet after Moses (Thenius); against this are Jdg_4:14; Jdg_6:8.—[Bib. Comm.: “The term (man of God) is applied to Moses in Deu_33:1; Jos_14:6; and to different prophets upwards of forty times in Judg., Sam. and Kings, most-frequently in the latter. In the Prophets it occurs only once (Jer_35:4). It occurs six or seven times in Chron., Ezra and Neh., and in the inscription of Psalms 90, and nowhere else in the Old Testament. The sudden appearance of a man of God, the only prophet of whom mention is made since Jdg_6:8, without name, or any notice of his country, is remarkable.”—Tr.]—Thus saith the Lord.—Called and commissioned hereto by the Lord, he is nothing but His instrument; what he says is the very word of the Lord.—Did I reveal myself?—The interrog. particle (הֲ) stands here to strengthen the reality of the fact treated of, a question being introduced to which an affirmative reply is a matter of course, where in German [and in English] a not must be inserted. Comp. Jer_31:20; Job_20:4; Ges. § 153, 2. The Inf. Abs. (נִגְלֹה) shows the feeling of the question, and strengthens the assurance or assertion contained in it. By Eli’s father’s house we cannot understand Ithamar and his family, since a divine revelation to them in Egypt is out of the question; it is rather the family of Aaron (from whom Eli descended through Ithamar), as the high-priestly house. Aaron and his four sons, Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar, when they were in Egypt, “belonged to Pharaoh’s house,” were its subjects, property (לְבֵית פּ׳); the suffix ־ָם (when they were) refers not to the children of Israel, but to “the house of thy father.”
During the Egyptian bondage Aaron received the divine revelations by which he was called along with Moses to be God’s instrument for the redemption of His people; and with Moses he received the command to institute the feast of the Passover (Exo_4:14 sqq., Exo_4:27;Exo_12:1; Exo_12:43). These revelations were the preparation and foundation for the calling of Aaron and his house to the high-priesthood.—[So far as the calling was concerned, the house of Aaron and the house of Eli were identical. Hence Eli is in this discourse identified with Aaron as to his privileges, but distinguished from the whole house as to his sin and its Punishment.—TR.]
1Sa_2:28. [Erdmann renders: “I chose it (the house of thy father) to perform priestly service.”—TR.]53
How that house (Aaron and his sons) were formally called and appointed to the priestly office is circumstantially related in Exodus 28, 29. Comp. especially Exo_28:1; Exo_29:9; Exo_29:30; Exo_29:44, with Lev_8:1 sq. and Numbers 18—The priestly service is described in three grades, corresponding to the three divisions of the Sanctuary: 1) “to offer54 on my altar,” where the altar of burnt-offering with its service is meant; 2) “to burn incense.” Incense had to be burned daily. The incense-offering alone is named, and represents the other offerings as the indication of the priestly service in the Holy Place, Exo_30:8; Exodus 3) “to wear the ephod before me.” The high-priest wore the ephod55 when he went officially into the Most Holy place to represent the people before God, Exo_28:12; Exo_28:29-30.—And I gave to the house of thy father, etc.—The divine wages for these priestly services is the maintenance which the priests derived from the offerings. The “firings” (fire-offerings, אִשֵּׁי ב׳) are the same as “the firing and the firings of the Lord” (Lev_1:9; Lev_2:10; Deu_18:1) in the offerings, and so are the things offered. According to Num_18:20; Deu_10:9; Deu_18:1, the Levites, and therefore the whole priesthood, received no inheritance in land; their support was provided for by the portions of the offerings appointed them by law, that is, all sacrificial gifts, so far as they were not burnt in offering the sacrifice, Lev_6:7; Numbers 18.
1Sa_2:29. In the preceding verses (27, 28) reference is made to the favor which had been shown the family of Eli in their selection and calling to the service of priests in the Sanctuary, and their maintenance with the offerings is mentioned as proof of the Lord’s care for His servants; there the question (1Sa_2:27) was introduced by the simple interrog. sign (הֲ); here the more sharply toned question with “why” (לָמָּה) portrays in distinct contrast the wicked conduct of the priests: Why do ye trample under foot? etc.—“Sacrifice and offering” (זֶבַח וּמִנְחָה) is a “general designation for all altar-offerings” (Keil). בָּעַט “is in Aram. first tread (Heb. דרך), and might thence (as בום ,דרך, Jdg_5:23; Pro_27:7) like ‘tread’ in many languages figuratively mean to treat with contempt” (Böttcher). מָעוֹן, the “dwelling,” in pregnant sense is the Tabernacle, as the Lord’s dwelling-place in the midst of His people. Though the word has not elsewhere in itself this meaning, yet it follows here and in 1Sa_2:32 from the connection, which without difficulty permits the same addition that we find in Psa_26:8, “of thy house.” There is no need therefore here to suppose (with Thenius) either a wrong reading or in general anything superfluous, particularly not the latter, because the Lord’s abode with His people was in fact the scene of the priests’ enormities, and their guilt thus appeared so much the greater. מָעוֹן is Accus. of place “in the dwelling” (= בַּיִת “in the house”). Böttcher proposes as a “faultless text” א׳ צִוִּיתִים עָוֹן, “why do ye trample under foot,… what I commanded them, sinfully,” where the suffix “them” refers to the Israelites (1Sa_2:28), and עָוֹן “sin,” is taken in the sense of בְּעָוֹן, “in sin,” which is found in Psa_51:7. But according to the preceding explanation there is no need for such a change, apart from the fact “that the ‘sinfully’ precisely speaking is already contained in the ‘trample under foot’ ” (Thenius). He says: “why do ye trample,” etc., because Eli was partaker in the guilt of his sons; because he, not only as father towards sons, but also as high-priest towards them as priests, was weakly lacking in the proper chastisement and in the enjoined holy strictness. Eli ought to have opposed his sons as a zealous contender for the Lord’s honor; since he did not do this, he not only made himself partaker of their guilt, but honored his sons before the Lord, more than the Lord, because he spared them, and showed unseasonable paternal gentleness. In the plu. pron. “make yourselves fat,” Eli’s guilt is again referred to; what they did, namely, that they took (1Sa_2:15) the first (רֵאשִׁית) of the offering before the best of the offering (מִנְחָה) was presented to the Lord by burning it in the fire of the altar, that he did along with them; they made themselves fat. The wickedness of Eli and his sons in connection with the offering is also put here in two-fold form, namely, against God (“my offering”), and against the people as the people of the Lord (all the offerings of Israel, my people).56 After the reference to the guilt follows now the judgment, the announcement of punishment, which applies to Eli as well as to his sons and his whole house.
1Sa_2:30. אָמַרַתִּי=I had said.—The house of thy father in connection with “thy house,” indicates the whole priestly connection in all its branches from Aaron down, to whom with his sons the same expression in 1Sa_2:27 refers. For this reason, if for no other, because “the house of thy father” must mean the same here as in 1Sa_2:27, we must set aside the view that here only Ithamar’s family is meant, to which the high-priesthood passed from Eleazar’s family, and to which Eli belonged. But also the expression: should walk before me for ever, is in conflict with this view. The “walking before the Lord” would be understood in too narrow a sense, on the one hand, if it were restricted to the entrance of the high-priest into the Holy of Holies, and in too wide a sense, on the other hand, if it were regarded as a general description of a pious walk before God, as in Gen_17:1. Rather it points to the life in priestly service before the Lord promised to the house of Aaron for ever (Exo_29:9). The promise of the “covenant of an everlasting priesthood” was renewed to Phinehas, the son of Eleazar (Num_25:13) for his zeal for the Lord’s honor. This fact and its motive contribute essentially to the explanation of what here follows. The “and now” introduces a declaration opposed to that promise, not in the sense that the latter is annulled, but in reference to its non-fulfilment for those in whom the condition of its fulfilment was lacking.— Far be it from me, that is, this promise shall not be fulfilled unless the condition be fulfilled which is expressed in the words: Those that honor me I will honor.—According to the priests’ attitude towards God the Lord in their whole walk will be His attitude towards them in respect to the fulfilment of His promise.
1Sa_2:31-32. The general truth of the last words in 1Sa_2:30, which emphasize in the distinctest manner the ethical condition of the exercise of the holy sacerdotal office in the priest’s bearing towards God, is applied to Eli and his house in 1Sa_2:31, and contains the standard by which he with his sons is judged. I will cut off thy arm.—The “arm” signifies might, power, Psa_10:15; Job_12:9. “There shall not be an old man in thy house.” Thus will be shown that the strength of the family and the house is broken; for strength is shown in reaching a great age. No one in Eli’s house shall attain a great age. This supposes that sickliness will early consume its members. “On the aged rested the consideration and power of families” (Böttcher). As the house of Eli will perish, so will also the house of God suffer affliction (1Sa_2:32). הִבִּיט always means to look with astonishment or attention (Böttcher, Num_12:8; Isa_38:11; Psa_10:14); צָר is only “oppressor” or “enemy,” and is not to be rendered “rival” or “adversary,” as Aquila (ἀντίζηλος) and Jerome (œmulus), and also Luther and De Wette give it; מַעוֹן “dwelling” is here to be understood of the dwelling-place of God, not of Eli. From these meanings it follows that Samuel cannot be here referred to, since he was not an enemy of Eli, nor the installation of Zadok in Abiathar’s place (1Ki_2:27), for Zadok was not Abiathar’s enemy. Something must be meant which Eli lived to see with astonishment or consternation in the house of the Lord, and it can therefore only be the oppression of the house by the oppressor or enemy who met Israel in the person of the Philistines, carried away the ark, and thus robbed the Lord’s house of its heart. We do not need therefore to alter the text to “rock of refuge” (צֻר סָעוֹז), as Böttcher proposes. “In all which” (בּכֹל אֲשֶׁר) is not to be rendered with De Wette “during the whole time which.” In יִיִלטִיב “shall do good” we must not supply a י as name of Jehovah (Kennicott), nor, as is commonly done, make Jehovah the subject (De Wette, Keil, etc.). “There is no reason why we should not take “all which” itself as unpersonal subject; precisely where י׳ has an unpersonal subject, it has, as here, a simple Acc. after it, Pro_15:13; Pro_15:20; Pro_17:22; Ecc. 20:9, while, with a personal subject, a preposition follows, Exo_1:20; Num_10:32; Jdg_17:13” (Böttcher). The affliction of God’s house from the loss of the Ark remained, while under the lead of Samuel there came blessing to the people. This is the fulfilment of this prophecy in reference to the affliction of God’s dwelling. “Not an old man” is repetition of the threat in 1Sa_2:31, and return of the discourse to the judgment on Eli’s house. “All the days” [Eng. A. V. for ever], for ever, that is, as long as his family existed. [Both text and translation of 1Sa_2:32 offer great difficulties. Vat. Sept. omits it. Al. Sept. and Theod.: “Thou shalt see strength” (κραταίωμα), etc. The Syr. and Arab.: “and (not) one who holds a sceptre in thy dwelling,” which involves a totally different text. Targ. has “thou shalt see the affliction which will come on a man of thy house in the sins which ye have committed in the house of my sanctuary.” The omission in Vat. Sept. was probably occasioned by the similar endings of 1Sa_2:31-32; the other versions and all the MSS. contain the verse, one MS. only of De Rossi giving מָעוֹז, “strength,” instead of מָעוֹן, “dwelling.” We must therefore retain the Heb. text, and explain the repetition of the last clause as intended to give emphasis to the statement in question. But, as צָר frequently means “distress,” and as the course of thought here suggests affliction for Eli’s house rather than for God’s, it is better to render: “thou shalt see distress of dwelling in all that brings prosperity to Israel,” the contrast being between the national prosperity and his personal affliction, which would thus exclude him from the national rejoicing, and so from the evidence of the divine favor. And we may regard the latter clause of the verse: “there shall not be an old man,” etc., as defining the “affliction” which is here brought out as a punishment additional to the “weakness” of 1Sa_2:31.—TR.]
1Sa_2:33. Böttcher declares De Wette’s explanation: “and I will not let thee lack a ingle man,” to be incorrect, and Thenius’ reference to the definite one “Ahitub” (1Sa_14:3; 1Sa_22:20) to be without ground, and then remarks (on וְאִישׁ לֹא): “There remains no other course but to regard it as an infrequent, but not unexampled exceptional case. In Heb., as is well known, a negative in a sentence with אִישׁ (“man”) and בל (“all”), whether it stand before or after, negatives these words not alone, but in connection with the whole sentence, and thus אַל אִישׁ ,לֹא אִישׁ mean not “not every one,” but “no one,” and so too אִישׁ אַל ,אִישׁ לֹא, Exo_16:19; Exo_34:3; Lev_18:6. But when the accent falls on the word expressive of universality by an adversative particle, as here (וְאִישׁ), the following negation may affect this word alone, as in Num_23:13. Accordingly we render here: “Yet I will not cut off every one from thee.” The following words: to consume thine eyes and to grieve thy heart, or “that I may consume,” etc., mark the highest degree of punishment which would befal Eli but for the limitation contained in the words “not every man.” Thenius refers this limitation specially to Ahitub, son of Phinehas, and brother of Ichabod, against which Keil justly remarks that it cannot be proved from 1Sa_14:3 and 1Sa_22:20 that he was the only one who survived of Eli’s house.57—The following words: the great majority or mass shall die as men, not only answer to the repeated threat in 1Sa_2:31-32, that there should be no old man in the house, but at the same time explain the declaration of 1Sa_2:31 : “I will break thine arm;” for “men” (אֲנָשִׁים) indicates the power and strength of the house, and is contrasted with “old man” (Luther: “when they have become men;” Van Ess: “in mature age”).—On מ׳ ב׳, “multitude,” “majority,” not “offspring,” comp. 1Ch_12:29; 2Ch_30:18.—[Sept.: “And every survivor of thy house shall fall by the sword of men.” Vulg.: “and the great part of thy house shall die when they attain the age of men.” Targ.: “and all the multitude of thy house shall be slain young.” Syr.: “and all the pupils (so Castle renders marbith) of thy house shall die men.” Philippson: “and all the increase of thy house shall die as men.” The Eng. A. V. probably gives the sense. The adj. “all” does not suit the rendering “multitude,” which Targ. and Erdmann adopt. In regard to the first clause of the verse, the rendering of Eng. A. V. seems to be possible, that is, the taking לֹא א׳ as indef. rel. clause. Erdmann regards the reservation of the “man” as a limitation of the punishment (“consume, grieve”); Eng. A. V. better, with most expositors, as an element of the punishment. Mendoza (in Poole’s Synopsis): “I will take from thee the high-priesthood, which thou hast by privilege; I will give thee or thy descendants the priesthood of the second order, which thou hadst by hereditary right.” Grotius: “They shall live that they may be the greatest grief to thee.”—Long afterwards this curse was held to cling to the family of Eli. Gill cites a saying of the Talmud that there was a family in Jerusalem the men of which did not live to be more than eighteen years old, and Johanan ben Zacchai being asked the reason of this, replied that they were perhaps of the family of Eli.—Sept. has “his eyes” and “his soul,” instead of thy; but there is no good ground for altering the Heb. text.—TR.]
1Sa_2:34. The fact announced, the death of his two sons in one day (1Sa_4:11), was to be a sign to Eli, who lived to see it, that this threat affecting his whole house should be fulfilled. The realization of this threat began with that event. Not all of Eli’s descendants indeed perished in this judgment, and among his immediate posterity were some who filled the office of priest, namely, Phinehas’ son, Ahitub; Ahitub’s sons, Ahiah (1Sa_14:3; 1Sa_14:18) and Ahimelech (1Sa_22:9; 1Sa_22:11; 1Sa_22:20); Ahimelech’s son, Abiathar (1Sa_22:20). Ahiah and Abiathar filled the high-priestly office. But Ahimelech and “all his father’s house, the priests, who were at Nob,” were hewn off from Eli’s family-tree. And Abiathar, Ahimelech’s son, who escaped that butchery (1Sa_22:19), and as a faithful adherent of David enjoyed the dignity of high-priest, was deposed from his office by Solomon. The office of high-priest passed now forever from Ithamar’s family, and went over to Eleazar’s, to which Zadok belonged; the latter from now on was sole high-priest, while hitherto Abiathar had exercised this office along with him.—Thus was to be fulfilled the negative part of the prophetic announcement (1Sa_2:31-34): gradually Eli’s house went down in respect to the majority of its members [better, in all its increase.—TR.]; the office of high-priest, which the surviving members for some time filled, was at last taken away from it altogether.
1Sa_2:35 sqq. Now follows the positive part of the prophecy.—But I will raise me up a faithful priest.—The priestly office, as a divine institution, remains, though those that fill it perish because they are unworthy, and because their life contradicts its theocratic meaning, and therefore falls under the divine punishment. The “faithful priest” is, in the first place, to be understood in contrast with Eli and his sons, to whom the above declaration of punishment was directed. We may distinguish the following facts in the announcement of this priest of the future, who is to assume the theocratic-priestly position between God and His people in place of Eli and his house: 1) he is to be raised up by God directly, that is, not merely called and chosen, but (according to the exact meaning of the word) set up; his priestly position is to be historically fixed and assigned by God directly and in an extraordinary manner; 2) he will be a faithful priest, that is, will not merely be in keeping with the end and meaning of his calling, but, in order to this, will be and remain personally the Lord’s own in true piety and in firm, living faith, constantly and persistently devoted to the Lord his God, and seeking only His honor; 3) he will do, act, according to the norm of the divine will; as faithful priest of God, he knows what is in God’s heart and soul, he knows His thoughts and counsels; these will be the rule by which (כַּאֲשֶר) he will act as a man of God, as a servant after his heart; 4) and I will build him a sure house, his family will continue as one well-pleasing to me and blessed, and will not perish like thine—this shall be the reward as well as the result of his faithfulness; 5) he shall walk before my anointed for ever. The “anointed” is the theocratic king, whom the Lord will call. Walking before Him denotes the most cordial life-fellowship with Him. In this reference of the prophetic announcement to the “anointed of the Lord” is expressed the same expectation of a theocratic kingdom as in the close of Hannah’s song.
In 1Sa_2:36 is added another feature in the portraiture of the faithful priest: in this close connection with the kingdom, he will occupy so exalted, honorable and mighty a position over against the fallen house of Eli, that the needy and wretched survivors of that house will be dependent on him for existence and support.—On the כּל before הַנּוֹתָר, where, on account of the following Article, it signifies all, whole, comp. Ges., § III., 1 Rem., Ew., § 290 c. “All the rest, all that remains.” The אֲגוֹרַת בֶּסֶף is “a small silver coin collected by begging” (Keil). The lower the remains of Eli’s house sink even to beggary, the higher will the “faithful, approved priest,” of whom the prophet here speaks, stand. In the immediate future of the theocratic kingdom he will see far beneath him those of Eli’s house who are still priests in humble dependence on him.
This prophecy found its fulfillment from the stand-point of historical exposition in Samuel. That the author of our Books had him in view in his account of the man of God’s announcement is clear from the narration immediately following in 1 Samuel 3; here the voice of the divine call comes to the child Samuel at the same time with the revelation imparted to him of the judgment against the house of Eli. He is indeed expressly called by the divine voice to be prophet; his first prophetic duty, which he performs as God’s organ, is the announcement of the judgment on Eli in the name of the Lord; it is true, it is said of him in 1Sa_2:20, that he was known in all Israel to be faithful and confirmed (נֶאֱמָן) as a prophet. But the summary statement of his prophetical vigor and work in 1Sa_2:19-21, in which the epithet “faithful, confirmed,” points back to the same expression in 1Sa_2:35, is connected with the reference to Shiloh and the constant revelations there, which had begun with the one made to Samuel; by the express reference to Shiloh Samuel’s prophetic character and work are at the same time presented under the sacerdotal point of view. An essential element of the calling of priest was instruction in the Law, the announcement of the divine will (Lev_10:11; Deu_33:10), and Mal_2:7, expressly declares the duty of the priest in these words: “the priest’s lips shall keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law from his mouth, for he is a messenger of heaven;” and so that prophecy of a faithful priest is all the more fulfilled in Samuel (whose words to the people, 1Sa_3:19-21, had the pure and the practical word of God in the Law for their content), because the priesthood of his time had proved itself unworthy and unable to fulfil this calling. The further sacred priestly acts which Samuel performed (1Sa_3:19-21), and the mediating position between God and the people as advocate and intercessor expressly ascribed to him in 1Sa_7:5 characterize him as the faithful, approved priest who is announced here in 1Sa_2:35-36. The other single traits in the picture suit Samuel. In the list of theocratic instruments of the succeeding period there is none that surpasses him; he surpasses them all so far, that our gaze fixes itself on him in seeking for a realization of this announcement in connection with the fulfilment of the threat against Eli and his house. Samuel’s bearing and conduct is everywhere such that the declaration “ he shall do according to what is in my heart and soul,” is verified in no other theocratic-prophetic and priestly person so eminently as in him. A sure house the Lord built him according to 1Ch_6:33; 1Ch_25:4-5. His grandson was Heman “the singer, the king’s seer in the words of God,” father of fourteen sons and three daughters. The intimate relation of Samuel to the theocratic kingdom under Saul and David, the Lord’s anointed kings, is an obvious fulfilment of the prophecy “he shall walk before my anointed for ever.” The raising up of the fore-announced priest was to follow immediately on the punishment of Eli and his house. In point of fact Samuel steps into the gap in the priesthood which that judgment made as priestly and high-priestly mediator between God and the people, as is shown by the passages cited and by the whole character of his work. By the corruption of its traditional representatives the hereditary priesthood had come to be so at variance with its theocratic significance and mission, that the fulfilment of this mission could be attained, in this great crisis in the development of Israel’s history into the theocratic kingdom, only in an extraordinary way, through direct divine calling, by such an instrument as Samuel. The statement, in the concluding words, of the walking of the faithful priest before the Lord’s anointed is fulfilled exactly (according to the above explanation) in Samuel’s relation to this kingdom.—It is held by some that the prophecy in 1Sa_2:30-36, (compared with 1Ki_2:27, and Joseph. V. 11, 5; VIII. 1, 3), refers to the transition of the priestly dignity from the house of Ithamar to the house of Eleazar, and therefore that this prophecy, in whole or in some parts, was composed in or after the time of Solomon, (De Wette, Einl. § 178 b.; Bertholdt, Einl. III. 916, and Ewald, Gesch. I. 190); against which Thenius (p. 15) properly points out that even after this change the high-priesthood remained still in the family of Aaron, while the words “and the house of thy father,” (1Sa_2:30-31), clearly shows that the prophecy does not speak of a change in the family, and that in 1Sa_2:27-36 we have a genuine ancient prediction of a prophet. Against the view that the prophecy of the “faithful priest” was, according to 1Ki_2:27 fulfilled in the complete transference of the high-priesthood, by the deposition of Abiathar, to the family of Eleazar, to which Zadok belonged, we remark: 1) that (if the advocates of this view mean this family and its succeeding line of high-priests) the words of the prophecy speak of a single person, not of several, or collectively of a body; and 2) that, if Zadok is held to be the “faithful priest” in whom the prophetic word was fulfilled, his person and work have no such epoch-making theocratic significance in the history as we should expect from the prophecy; the expectation is satisfied only in Samuel’s priestly-prophetical eminence. For the rest, the words of 1Ki_2:27 give no ground for the opinion that the prophecy in 1Sa_2:35 is in them referred to Zadok (Thenius), since the passage, having in view Abiathar’s deposition, is speaking merely of the fulfilment of the threatened punishment of Eli’s house, and not at all of the fulfilment of the positive part of the prophecy; there is, therefore, no occasion to speak (with Thenius) of a false conception of this prophecy as early as Solomon’s time. The lofty priestly position, which Samuel took in his calling as Judge and Prophet before the Lord and His people, the priestly work, by which (the regular priesthood completely retiring) he stood as mediator between Jehovah and His people in sacrifice, prayer, intercession and advocacy, and the high theocratic-reformatory calling, in which his “important, sacred duty was to walk before the anointed, the king, whom Israel was to receive through him, while the Aaronic priesthood fell for a good time into such contempt, that, in the universal neglect of divine worship, it had to beg honor and support from him, and became dependent on the new order of things begun by Samuel,” (O. v. Gerlach),—these things prove that, from the theocratic-historical point of view, in him is fulfilled the prophecy of the faithful priest.
[Four different interpretations explain the “faithful priest” to be Samuel, Zadok, Christ, or a line of priests, including Samuel and Zadok, and culminating in Christ; the last seems to be the only tenable one. I. We cannot restrict the prophecy to Samuel, for 1) the “established house” promised the faithful priest is clearly a priestly house, as is evident from a comparison of 1Sa_2:35 with 1Sa_2:30-31, where the everlasting official sacerdotal character of this house is contrasted with the fall of Eli’s priestly house; and Samuel founded no such house. 2) Eli’s house was not immediately deprived of the high-priesthood, nor was it at all excluded from the priesthood. Up to Solomon’s time descendants of Eli were high-priests, and the Jews held that his family continued to exist. Nor did Samuel succeed Eli immediately as Priest and Judges 3) It is an important fact that Samuel is nowhere called a priest, and it is an exaggeration of his position to ascribe to him a complete sacerdotal character. His mediatorial work belonged to him largely as a man of God, and similar work was performed by Moses, David, Solomon, none of whom acted as priests. It is doubtful whether Samuel sacrificed at all, still more whether he usually performed this service. The people are said to have sacrificed (1Sa_11:15), where is probably meant that they did it through the priests, and one passage (1Sa_9:13), seems to exclude Samuel from the act of sacrifice. At any rate his performance of sacrificial service may be regarded as extraordinary and unofficial like that of Gideon (Jdg_6:26-27) and Solomon (1Ki_3:4). But it is true that Samuel’s life developed the conception of the theocratically pure and faithful priest in contrast with the self-seeking and immorality of Eli’s sons. He was the first protest against their profane perversion of the holy office, the first exemplification after Eli’s time of pure-hearted service of God. II. Rashi, Abarbanel and the majority of modern commentators suppose the reference to be to Zadok, Christian writers usually adopting also the Messianic interpretation. And, though 1Ki_2:27 mentions only the deposition of Abiathar as the fulfilment of the judgment on Eli’s house, yet this, taken with 1Sa_2:35, can hardly be dissevered from the installation of Zadok as sole high-priest; the final exclusion of Eli’s representative is followed immediately by the elevation of the Zadokite family, which continues in an unbroken line to Christ. That the Zadokites were the true divinely-appointed priests, is assumed throughout the following books of the Old Testament, and especially in such passages as Eze_44:15, (quoted by Keil). Erdmann’s objections to this view do not seem conclusive. He urges: 1) that the prophecy (1Sa_2:27-36) speaks not of a change within the Aaronic family, but of a setting aside of that family in favor of a non-Aaronic priest.—But this is not the declaration of the prophecy, (1Sa_2:30 speaks of the exclusion of unworthy members, and the reference is plainly to Eli’s immediate family), and is contradicted by the facts of history; for the Aaronic priesthood did continue to the end, while the change announced (1Sa_2:36) was to take place in the history of Israel. Samuel founded no priestly family, and the restriction of the prophecy to him alone is not in keeping with the broadness of its declarations. 2) That Zadok was not specially prominent, and does not exhibit a commanding character cannot be urged against this view, since the prophecy promises not intellectual vigor in the “faithful priest” but theocratic official purity and personal godliness, which Zadok and his descendants in the main exhibited. III. Augustine (De Civ. Dei 17, 5) explains the priest here announced to be Christ alone, basing his view on the breadth and fulness of the statements made about Him. The text does not allow this exclusive reference to Christ, looking plainly, as it does, to the then existing order of things (as in 1Sa_2:36, which Augustine interprets of Jewish priests coming to worship Christ), but it may include Him, or rather point to Him as the consummation of the blessedness which it promises; and the remarkable fulness of the terms in 1Sa_2:35 naturally leads us to this explanation. IV. If the prophecy finds a partial fulfilment in Samuel and Zadok, and also points to Christ, then it would seem best to regard it as announcing a line of faithful men who would do God’s will in full official and personal sympathy with His law. First comes Samuel, not indeed an official priest, but a true representative of the spirituality of the divine service (see 1Sa_15:22). He is followed by Zadok, the father of a long line of priests, who (with many defects) in the main preserve among the people and in the presence of the king the fundamental ideas of the sacrificial service, and are a type (Eze_44:15) of the perfect priesthood into which they are finally merged. To this Erdmann objects that the reference is plainly (1Sa_2:35) to one person, and not to a body of men; but he himself understands the “anointed,” in which the expression of singleness is not less distinct, of Saul and David. If the anointed is to be understood of a line of kings, why not the priest of a line of priests?—This last view then seems best to meet the demands of this confessedly difficult passage. See Keil and Wordsworth in loco.—Tr.].
HISTORICAL AND THEOLOGICAL
1. The “man of God” who, by divine commission, predicts the punishment of Eli and his house is a proof that the prophetic gift, which appears sporadically in the Period of the Judges, had in this its gloomy close not yet disappeared. After it had been said: “ there arose not henceforth a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face” (Deu_34:10), nevertheless in the time of the Judges, by whose word as spoken according to the divine calling and commission, the people had to govern themselves, we see prophecy reappearing in the following individuals: Judges 2, the messenger of the Lord,58 who comes up from Gilgal to Bochim, and exhorts the Israelites to repentance in the name of the Lord; chap. 4, the Judge Deborah, who, expressly described as “prophetess,” combines the offices of Judge and Prophet, being the organ of Jehovah’s communications; chap. 6, the Prophet who was sent by the Lord as His messenger, to rebuke Israel for their idolatry, and to call Gideon to deliver Israel from the Midianitish bondage. The content of the prophetic declarations, in keeping with the history of the times, is: announcement of divine punishment for the people’s idolatry through the oppression of enemies, exhortation to repentance, promise of help.
2. The internal decline of the theocratic life of God’s people showed itself in the close of the Period of the Judges principally in the corruption of the sacerdotal office as cause and effect. In regard, therefore, to the priestly mediation between God and the people, there was needed a thorough reformation and a re-establishment of the proper inner relation between them by a true priestly mediation. For this reason the prophetic announcement of the “faithful, true priest” stands at the beginning of the new period, and, at the commencement of the new theocratic development, has an epoch-making fulfilment in Samuel’s person and work, in which the priestly side is chiefly prominent.
3. Samuel is in this respect a type of Christ; the idea of the priesthood, as here in 1Sa_2:35 expressed, found in all respects its completest and most universal fulfilment in Christ’s high-priestly office of mediator between God and man.
4. The conception of the honor of God and of knowing Him is impossible, without the idea of the personal living God, and without the existence of a relation, established by Him, between Him, the living God, and man, in which the consciousness of absolute dependence on Him is connected with that of the obligation to be heartily consecrated to Him and in fellowship with Him. The declaration “he who knows Me,” etc. [1Sa_2:30] expresses God’s righteous procedure in regard to the recognition or non-recognition of His honor by men.
5. When the guilt of the corruption and decline of the religious-moral life of the people rests on “the house of the Lord,” “it is time that judgment should begin at the house of God,” 1Pe_4:17.
6. [The walking of the priest before Jehovah’s anointed indicates a definite separation between the sacerdotal and judicial or governing offices, and a certain subordination of the first to the second. This was a condition of the developed Israelitish state, and appears in proper form first under David. Saul seems to have exercised authority over the priesthood, but in David’s time the relation of political subordination was first united with sincere religious unity of heart and purpose, and thus one step taken towards the perfect and complete form (king, prophet, priest), which was to shadow forth the office and work of Christ.—And, as of Hannah’s anticipation of the king, so we may say of the prediction by this man of God of the united king and priest, that it had its root in the felt need of the times, which, as it existed in its distinctest and intensest form in the most spiritual minds of the nation, was guided and elevated and intensified by the Spirit of God into prevision and prophecy.—Tr.].
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
[1Sa_2:27. A man of God. 1) His office is to come to the people with “Thus saith the Lord.” Though inspiration cannot now be expected, he may be “thoroughly furnished” from the Scriptures (2Ti_3:17). 2) When called to give rebukes and warnings, he should do it with faithfulness, solemnity, and tenderness.—Tr.].
1Sa_2:27-36. The prophet’s sermon of censure, [German Strafpredigt] against Levi and his house. 1) Looking back to the past, it recalls the manifold exhibition of the benefits of God’s grace, 1Sa_2:27-28; 1 Samuel 2) Looking around upon the present, it holds before Eli his sins and those of his house, 1Sa_2:29-30; 1 Samuel 3) Looking out upon the future, it proclaims the divine judgment, 1Sa_2:30-36.
1Sa_2:27-30. To what are we bound by the experience of overflowing manifestations of God’s grace? 1) To be always thankfully mindful of them; 2) To proclaim everywhere the praises of God; 3) By a sober and holy walk to promote the honor of His name.
1Sa_2:27-36. God’s righteousness and grace in union with each other. 1) Grace in union with righteousness, 1Sa_2:27-32; (a) The actual proofs and gifts of God’s grace (1Sa_2:27-29) contain serious demands by the holy and righteous God; (b) The promises of grace are in respect of their fulfilment conditioned by the conduct of man towards God, which is weighed by his righteousness, 1Sa_2:30; (c) In proportion as man in view of the revelation of divine grace gives God the honor or not, he is requited by God according to his righteousness, 1Sa_2:30. 2) The severity of God’s righteousness does not exclude grace, 1Sa_2:30. (a) It suffers itself to lean upon forbearing, softening grace, in order that justice may not execute complete destruction, 1Sa_2:33; 1Sa_2:36; (b) It does not take away the arrangements which grace has established, but guards and preserves them against the sin of men, 1Sa_2:27-29; (c) It does not cause the promises of grace to fall away, but makes room for their fulfilment in another way, 1Sa_2:35.
1Sa_2:30. God the Lord, according to His righteousness, remains no man’s debtor: 1) Whoever honors Him, will He also honor; 2) He who despises Him shall be despised in return.—To honor God the loftiest task of human life: 1) Wherein it consists; 2) How it is performed; 3) What promise and threatening are here concerned.—[I. Some of the ways in which we may honor God. (1) By speaking His name with reverence. (2) By keeping the Lord’s day holy to Him. (3) By propriety of behaviour in public worship. (4) By practically recognizing our dependence on His Providence. (5) By performing all the duties of life as to the Lord (Col_3:17). II. Some of the ways in which He will honor us. (1) In causing us to be respected by our fellow-men (Pro_3:16). (2) In making us the means of converting others. (3) In receiving us to glory, honor and immortality in heaven (Rom_3:7).—Baxter: Never did man dishonor God, but it proved the greatest dishonor to himself. God will find out ways enough to wipe off any stain upon Him; but you will not so easily remove the shame and dishonor from yourselves.—Tr,].
1Sa_2:35. The exercise of the priestly office, which is well-pleasing to God: 1) Its personal condition and pre-supposition, fidelity, firmness, steadfastness, “I will raise me up a faithful priest;” 2) Its rule and measure, “according to that which is in my heart and in my soul;” 3) Its blessing and reward, “and I will,” etc. [Upon the phrase, “he shall walk before my Anointed forever,” comp. above on 1Sa_2:10, Hom, and Pract.—Tr.].
1Sa_2:27-30. The heavy guilt of neglecting the office of household-priest in the rearing of children: 1) It wrongs the welfare and honor of the house, so far as in earlier times God has in grace and compassion crowned it with blessings, 1Sa_2:27-29; 1 Samuel 2) In indulgent and weak love to the children it robs God of the honor which He demands, 1Sa_2:30; 1 Samuel 3) It thereby prepares for the children a sure destruction, 1Sa_2:34; 1 Samuel 4) It often thereby brings a curse and ruin upon succeeding generations, 1Sa_2:31-33; 1Sa_2:36.
[Hall: Indulgent, parents are cruel to themselves and their posterity. Eli could not have devised which way to have plagued himself and his house so much, as by his kindness to his children’s sins.…… I do not read of any fault Eli had but indulgence; and which of the notorious offenders were plagued more!—Tr.].
Footnotes:
[41][1Sa_2:27. Chald. “a prophet of Jehovah.”—Tr.]
[42][1Sa_2:27. לְ often expresses possession, and is here so rendered by Chald. and Sept.—Tr.]
[43][1Sa_2:28. The following וָאֶתְּנָה makes it better not to carry on the interrogation here. Erdmann: “I chose it (thy house) to perform priestly service.”—Tr.]
[44][1Sa_2:28. The Heb. form here may be Qal (“ascend”) or Hiphil (“offer”) but the sense it the same in both cases.—Tr.]
[45][1Sa_2:29. See Exeg. Notes.—Tr.]
[46][1Sa_2:29. The ל is probably repetition from the last letter of the preceding word; see Jos_10:21 for similar case.—Tr.]
[47][1Sa_2:30. “Indeed” is merely intensive, Heb. Infin. Absol.—Tr.]
[48][1Sa_2:32. On the text of this verse see Exeg. Notes.—Tr.]
[49][1Sa_2:33. See Exeg. Notes.—Tr.]
[50][1Sa_2:33. Lit. “shall die men;”. Sept. “by the sword of men,” which Wellhausen prefers, but see Exeg. Notes.—Tr.]
[51][1Sa_2:35. The Heb. word is the same as that rendered “faithful” just before.—Tr.]
[52][1Sa_2:36. More exactly “a small piece;” Erdmann: eine Bettelmünze, “a beggar’s coin.”—Tr.]
[53]Textual and Grammatical.—The Inf. Abs. בָּהֹר stands for the Verb, fin., as a Verb. fin. has preceded in the same sentence (Ges., § 131, 4 a). But the interrog. הֲ does not extend to this Inf. Abs., which stands for the Perf., and makes the discourse absolute.—אֹתוֹ is better referred to בַּיִת than to אָבִיךָ, on account of the following “tribes.” But then we must read with Böttcher and Thenius לְכַהֵן instead of לְכֹהֵן, “as agreeing better with the preceding בַּיִת and the succeeding Inf.” (Böttcher). So the Sept. ἱερατεύειν. Comp. Exo_31:10.—לַעֲלוֹת is contracted from לְהַעֲלוֹת. See Deu_1:33; 2Sa_18:3; Ecc_5:5.
[54][The Germ. has steigen, “ascend,” error for opfern, “offer.”—Tr.]
[55][Germ. achselkleid, “shoulder-dress,” “amice.”—Tr.]
[56] לְעַמִּי “is periphrasis for the Gen., and is chosen in order to make the ‘my people’ more prominent” (Keil). On this periphrasis of the Gen. see Ew. Gr. § 292, a. 3.—[But this does not apply here. See Textual Notes in loco.—Tr.].
[57]Böttcher: לַאֲדִיב is for לְהַדְאִיב=לַדְאִיב, one of the numerous clerical errors in these books.—[It is by no means clear that there is a clerical error here, since we may suppose a stem דאב=אדב as נאק=אנק.—Tr.]
[58][It is doubtful whether the malak can be considered other than an angel.—Tr.].
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv12, 13, 18, 19, 20, 22, 25, 27, 31, 32 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 On vv12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36 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 On vv12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36 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 On vv12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35 (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 On vv12, 18, 19, 20, 22, 24, 27, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36 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 On vv12, 18, 21, 23, 25, 26, 27, 30, 31, 33, 35 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 On vv12, 18, 27 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 On vv12, 18, 22 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 On vv12, 15, 18, 20, 22, 25, 27, 29, 31, 34, 36 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 On vv12, 13, 15, 18, 20, 22, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 32, 35 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.