(31) Behold, the days come, that I will cut off thine arm, and the arm of thy father's house, that there shall not be an old man in thine house. (32) And thou shalt see an enemy in my habitation, in all the wealth which God shall give Israel: and there shall not be an old man in thine house forever. (33) And the man of thine, whom I shall not cut off from mine altar, shall be to consume thine eyes, and to grieve thine heart: and all the increase of thine house shall die in the flower of their age.
These are awful denunciations, and are accompanied both with an awful signs and commencement of the threatened visitation. To lose both sons in one day; and that Eli himself should be the witness of this visitation, is a proof that all the other threatened evils would in their season surely come. See 1 Samuel 4:17. And what a sad catalogue was to follow? None of the race of Eli should be long lived; there shall not be an old man in thine house forever: that the family of Eli should see an enemy in God's habitation: perhaps unhallowed men exercising the priestly office: those of Eli's family, which were permitted to live, should be but for a reproach; perhaps by living in a scandalous manner: and that so far from being in the exercise of the priesthood, which had it been well conducted, would have been perpetuated in Eli's family, the lowest offices of the servants to the priests, should be eagerly sought after by his posterity to keep them from starving. Behold, Reader! the awful consequences of sin. See in the sad examples of Hophni and Phinehas, that when the kindliest gifts of the people would not satisfy them; their posterity shall want a morsel of bread. See that awful scripture thus strikingly fulfilled, in visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children. Exodus 20:5. Perhaps this visitation on Eli's family was, beside lesser instances, more strikingly shown in the days of Solomon, when Abiathar, who was among the descendants of Eli, was turned out of the Priest's office. 1 Kings 1:49; 1 Kings 1:49.