CRITICAL AND EXPOSITORY NOTES—
1 Samuel 2:18. “But.” The Levite-child is contrasted with the grown-up priest” (Wordsworth). “Ephod.” “It does not appear whether the Levites wore the ephod properly. Micah wore one, but that may have been in his character as priest (Judges 18:4; Judges 18:6; Judges 18:14), and David when he danced before the ark (2 Samuel 6:14). Possibly this was a mark of Samuel’s special dedication” (Biblical Commentary).
1 Samuel 2:19. “Coat.” Meil, rendered mantle in 1 Samuel 15:27; 1 Samuel 28:14, etc. “It probably resembled the robe or ‘Meil’ of the High-priest (Exodus 28:31), but was made of course of some simpler material, and without the symbolical ornaments attached to the lower hem, by which that official dress was distinguished” (Keil). “It is interesting to know that the garment which his mother made and brought to the infant prophet at her annual visit was a miniature of the official priestly tunic or robe; the same that the great prophet wore in mature years, and by which he was on one occasion actually identified. When the witch of Endor, in answer to Saul’s inquiry, told him ‘that an old man was come up covered with a meil,’ Saul perceived that it was Samuel”— 1 Samuel 28:14. (Smith’s Biblical Dictionary).
1 Samuel 2:22. “Very old,” “consequently listless” (Patrick). “The women that assembled”. The same phrase as that used in Exodus 38:8. Some commentators consider that these women were employed in spinning, etc., for the service of the tabernacle like those mentioned in Exodus 35:25. Others, as Hengstenberg, look upon their service as purely spiritual, as that of Anna (Luke 2:36). Others again regard them as simply worshippers. Kitto says that if they were employed in service they would have been inside, not at the doors of the tabernacle.
1 Samuel 2:25. “If one man sin against another,” etc. “A man may intercede with God for remission of a penalty due to himself, but who shall venture to entreat for one who has outraged the majesty of God.” (Wordsworth.)
1 Samuel 2:26. “In favour,” etc. The same words as are used of Christ (Luke 2:52).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 1 Samuel 2:18-21; 1 Samuel 2:26
TRUE MINISTRY
I. Qualification for the service of God is not always on the side of years. A child may have a more correct idea of how to serve God than a man. The son may possess knowledge on this matter of which his parents may be profoundly ignorant. This is true of other knowledge than spiritual. One who is very young in years may far surpass his elders in his aptitude for science or art. The youthful Watt had thoughts suggested to his mind by the phenomena of nature such as had never occurred to the ancients who had preceded him, and he was thus at a very early age more qualified to serve his generation in this department of knowledge than they were. So in spiritual service. Age and experience do not necessarily qualify men to minister acceptably before the Lord. Hophni and Phinehas were old enough to serve God acceptably in the priest’s office, but while they brought dishonour upon Him in the performance of the most sacred functions, the child Samuel so performed his more humble duties as to make them an acceptable service to Jehovah. It is not the office which is held, but the spirit in which its duties are performed, that constitutes the real service, and that depends not on years, but on character, and often those who have been long nominal or even real servants of God are outstripped in fervour and devotion by those who have entered the lists many years later. “Many that are first shall be last, and the last first” (Matthew 19:30). Many who take the lead in the first start of the race are left far behind when others have reached the goal. Some who enter a school long before others are overtaken and outstripped by the later comers. And it is so in the Church of God. The sons of Eli were in the priesthood before Samuel was in the world, yet he was far in advance of them in the possession of that “reverence and godly fear,” without which no service to God is acceptable (Hebrews 12:28).
II. When regeneration has began in the young and degeneration has set in in those of mature years, the progress is commonly rapid in both. While Samuel “grew on, and was in favour both with the Lord and also with men,” Hophni and Phinehas hastened to fill up the measure of their iniquity. The sinful human nature which is the inheritance of all men was common both to Samuel and the sons of Eli, and they were both surrounded with influences favourable to the overcoming of evil tendencies and to the formation of a holy character. But Hophni and Phinehas strengthened every sinful natural disposition by giving themselves up to be ruled by their passions, by utterly disregarding the commandment of the Lord, the voice of conscience, or even their own reputation. Such an entire disregard of all the restraints which God had placed upon them made rapid degeneration inevitable, and they soon became as bad as it was possible for fallen men to become. But Samuel’s upward growth was as rapid as their descent. He had evidently already become a subject of the regenerating influence of the Holy Spirit, he had yielded himself up to that Divine guidance which is powerful enough to renew the human heart and to give a new birth unto holiness, and so to make the path of him who is willing to be moulded by it “as the shining light which shineth more and more unto the perfect day.” The child grew and so did the men. The one ripened for a noble and holy and useful life, the others for the condemnation and judgment of God.
III. The most godless and the holy may be found associated in the external service of God. Samuel and the sons of Eli were both engaged in the temple service. Samuel was “girded with a linen ephod,” and so, doubtless, were they. Wheat and tares grow together in the same field. John and Judas sat at meat together with the Lord. A saint of the highest type may be associated in external religious service with a most villanous man, they may worship in the same house of God, may sit together at the table of the Lord. It must and will be so until the harvest when the Lord of the field will say to the reapers, “Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them; but gather the wheat into my barn” (Matthew 13:30).
IV. Fulfilled obligations will not discharge us from obligations yet to be fulfilled. Hannah had taken her child and given him to Eli for the service of the Lord, but her loving care of him did not end there. Her heart was still with him, and her hands still busy for him. She “made him a little coat, which she brought to him from year to year.” The performance of past duties to God does not free us from the obligations of the present any more that debts discharged in the past will release us from those we may contract in the future. Not even a very special work done for God, or a great sacrifice made for His service in the past, will discharge us from the obligation to perform the commonest duties of to-day. When Hannah had performed her vow, and dedicated her first-born son to the Lord, and under the influence of the Holy Ghost had sung of the coming kingdom of righteousness and of the Lord’s Anointed, she still regarded it as her privilege and duty to care for her child’s every-day bodily wants, and to make his garment with her own hands. She recognised the fact that if the spirit is to serve God in the present life the body must be cared for too, even as did the great Apostle of the Gentiles when, looking forward to being shortly crowned by his Lord in Paradise, he sent for his “cloak which he left in Troas,” that so long as he was in the flesh he might keep his body from cold and sickness, and so continue fit to serve His Master until the end should come (2 Timothy 4:13). Those whose hearts are right will not despise the lowliest or the most ordinary work, or call anything that their hands find to do common or unworthy of their notice.
V. We have here a record of Divine compensation for human sacrifice. “The Lord blessed Hannah, so that she conceived, and bare three sons and two daughters.” The kingdom of nature demands sacrifices of men. The husbandman must cast away some seed and give it up as it were to death, and he must do this without regard to the wind or the cold. But Nature is generous when she finds that her conditions are fulfilled, she gives an ear for a single grain, and the joy of harvest to compensate for the toil of the sowing-time. And as it is in God’s natural kingdom, so is it more abundantly in His spiritual kingdom. No service rendered to Him, not “even a cup of cold water in the name of a disciple,” shall lose its reward. Hannah gave her firstborn son to the Lord in the service of the temple, and her home was gladdened by five more children. She found that God heaped into her bosom “good measure” and “running over.” In the more spiritual dispensation of the New Testament men must not look for, nor do spiritual men desire such a repayment in the same kind, but God will be no man’s debtor, and the word of Christ is sure: “And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life” (Matthew 19:29).
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
1 Samuel 2:18. Samuel did not merely worship and enjoy spiritual training; he ministered before the Lord, and did what he could to make himself useful. “Perhaps,” says Matthew Henry, “he attended immediately on Eli’s person—was ready to him to fetch and bring as he had occasion; and that is called ministering to the Lord.… He could light a candle, or hold a dish, or run on an errand, or shut a door; and because he did this with a pious disposition of mind, it is called ministering to the Lord, and great notice is taken of it.” We have not now a tabernacle such as there was in Shiloh, nor have we such services as Samuel was called upon to render; but in the Church of God there is sphere wide enough for the most active energy, diversified enough for many workers, and simple enough for the youngest to undertake.… Common obedience and everyday life, too, receive a consecration from the godly motive. Children, by their infant prayers, have ere now awakened a parent’s long silent heart.… An infant’s hymn has awakened the hardened, and the example of a believing boy has occasioned an older mind to inquire, “What must I do to be saved?”—Steel.
1 Samuel 2:19. This was much in Samuel’s education. It nurtured the family feeling, the loss of which is a great deprivation. It kept his heart tender, when amidst strangers his feelings might be blunted. It provided for him that he might not be reproached.—Steel.
“Petty little histories!” cries Unbelief. “What matters it whether one knows that Samuel had a little coat or no?” Holy Scripture is not written for the wise, but for child-souls, and a child-like soul does not doubt that even the little coat which Hannah prepared for her Samuel has its history. If I think of Hannah as every year sewing this coat at her home in Ramah, I know that at every stitch a prayer for her Samuel rose up to the throne of the Lord. The coat which she was sewing would remind her that she had given him to the Lord; and when the coat was ready, and she brought it to Shiloh, then every time with the coat she anew gave Samuel to her God, and said, “I give him to the Lord again for his whole life, because he was obtained from the Lord by prayer.”—Daechsel.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 1 Samuel 2:22-25
ELI’S REPROOF OF HIS SONS
I. Impartiality is an essential qualification in a judge or ruler. Some sins against Divine laws are to be dealt with by human rulers. Magistracy is an ordination of God, and in proportion as the character of him who administers the law is good, and the law itself is just, human judges are reflections of God, and represent Him who will not acquit the guilty, and will defend the innocent. But, above all things, he who holds such an office must be impartial. Eli, as the judge of Israel, was bound to imitate God in this particular, as in all others. No man can be honoured by his fellow-creatures unless he deals out evenhanded justice to all to whom he administers law, and the man who will allow rank, or position, or relationship to influence his judgment is no representative of Him who will render to all their dues. A man should be specially guarded when called upon to pass sentence or administer justice to one who is connected with him by the ties of blood or friendship. Such a medium has a tendency to distort our sense of right and wrong—to lead us to excuse the crime with which we should deal severely in a stranger. What we should look upon as pure villany in the one we may be disposed to regard as mere misfortune in the other. It needs a much higher standard of character than that possessed by Eli to deal out the rightful measure of punishment to those who are nearly connected with us. The goodness and integrity of God leads Him to adopt a course directly opposite to that which men generally pursue in such a case. He punishes with greater rigour in proportion as the offender has been hitherto favoured and brought into near relation to Him. We have reason to believe that few of the sons of God stood nearer the Eternal throne than Satan. And because it was so, his punishment has been severe in proportion, the hell into which he was banished was deep in proportion to the place in heaven from which he fell. No people of ancient days stood in such near and intimate relation to God as did the people of Israel. Yet for this very reason no nation has received such severe punishment for transgression. “You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities” (Amos 3:2). God, being the perfectly righteous judge and governor, is the Being whose example should be followed by all human magistrates, and the prominent feature in God’s magistracy is His strict impartiality. If Eli had imitated God in this respect he would have dealt very differently with his abandoned sons. But he looked at their crimes through the medium of his fatherly relationship, and this medium so softened down the blood-red stains upon their characters that when, as the first magistrate of Israel, he ought to have sentenced them to death or at least to have excommunicated them from office, he contents himself with a very tame remonstrance. He touches them gently with the back of the sword, whereas if a Moses or such a man as the first Phinehas had been in his place, he would have thrust the blade into them up to the very hilt (Numbers 25:6-11). His stern rebuke of Hannah for a fancied crime shows that he could be severe, in speech at least, upon occasions, and the contrast even in the words used to the unoffending woman and those in which he reproved his sons, makes him stand convicted of gross impartiality, and therefore as lacking the most essential qualification of a magistrate.
II. Men who are merely emotional are fit neither to govern men nor to train children. Honey is good for man’s eating, and contains some nutriment and also healing properties. But honey alone would be a poor sustainer or nourisher of human life. Wax is a useful material for some purposes, but it would be poor material of which to build a house. To feed upon the first would be to make sickness certain; to build with the second would be to ensure the fall of the house. Emotions have their place in the human soul, and a man destitute of feeling is a monster; but feelings are not to be the guide of human conduct, and the judge or the father who is swayed entirely by his emotions will in time forfeit all respect and confidence. Tenderness and gentleness are blessed and Divine attributes of character, but mere softness and inertness must not be mistaken for them; and where they really exist there is no lack of capability for righteous indignation, no want of will to administer deserved rebuke. Eli’s failure in his duty as a judge leads us to infer that he had been a too indulgent father—that which unfitted him to deal justly with his grown sons would have unfitted him to train them in childhood. Contrast the tender and long-suffering Son of God with the soft-hearted Eli, and place the reproof of the high priest side by side with our Lord’s denunciations of similar characters holding a like position, and we see how the tenderest compassion is compatible with the most terrible denunciation of sin. “Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!.… Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” etc.—(Matthew 23:23-35).
III. There are sins beyond the power of human intercession. Even Eli allowed this (1 Samuel 2:25). Men have committed and do commit certain sins, and other men have interceded and do intercede for them and obtain their pardon. This is the case where sins are committed against other men, and sometimes when sin is committed against God. God Himself has accepted human mediation, and has held back His judgments. This He did often in the case of Moses and the people of Israel. Many a time He spared the sinful nation because the voice of His servant pleaded for them. But sometimes no intercession of man can avert Divine displeasure—no human creature can prevent the thunderbolt of God’s judgment from falling. Noah, Daniel, and Job were men who were highly esteemed by God, and whose prayers on behalf of others are—in the case of two at least—known to have been effectual (Job 42:8; Daniel 9:20; Daniel 9:23). But, if they had all lived in the days of Ezekiel, their joint intercessions could not have saved the guilty Israelites from the chastisement which their sins had made inevitable—“Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they should deliver but their own souls by their righteousness, saith the Lord God” (Ezekiel 14:14). The sins of Hophni and Phinehas were so outrageously vile, and their position and office so aggravated their crimes that they were beyond the power of human intercession. No prayer of Eli, not even the prayers of a Noah, a Daniel, or a Job, could now have turned away the judgment of God from them. The father seems to feel that he cannot ask forgiveness for them in their present state of heart—he exhibits some conception of the enormity of their crimes when he says, “If a man sin against the Lord, who shall entreat for him?” It was his right and privilege to draw nigh to God on behalf of others, but the iniquity of his sons was so great, that his very position as high-priest forbade his pleading that God would pass over their sins.
IV. When sinners are beyond the reach of intercession and marked for Divine punishment, they will not repent. The people of Sodom were in such a condition. Intercession for them could not avail, because they were so hardened in sin that repentance had become a moral impossibility. Even after God had stricken them with blindness they persisted in endeavouring to perpetrate their enormous wickedness, thus proving that neither the persuasions of men, nor the judgments of God, could lead them to repentance. Eli’s sons were as great sinners, for if their crimes were not quite so black, they were committed against Divine light and holy influences such as were not possessed by the men of Sodom. Where could stronger inducements to repentance be found than those which they had set at nought? How could men be led to repentance who turned the very house of God into a house of shameless crime? Before the executioner brings the sharp steel to the neck, he blindfolds the culprit. These men had blindfolded themselves by their persistent iniquity, and nothing now could prevent God’s axe from falling.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
1 Samuel 2:23. Had these men but some little slackened their duty, or heedlessly omitted some rite of the sacrifice, this censure had not been unfit; but to punish the thefts, rapines, sacrileges, adulteries, incests of his sons with “Why do ye so,” was no other than to shave the head which had deserved cutting off.… An easy rebuke doth but encourage wickedness, and makes it think itself so slight as that censure importeth. A vehement rebuke to a capital evil is but like a strong shower to a ripe field, which lays that corn which were worthy of a sickle. It is a breach of justice not to proportionate the punishment to the offence: to whip a man for murder, or to punish the purse for incest, or to burn treason in the hand, or to award the stocks to burglary, is to patronise evil instead of avenging it.—Bp. Hall.
1 Samuel 2:24. Too mild all along. He should have said as Isaiah 57:3-4, “Draw near hither, ye sons of the sorceress,” etc., ye degenerate brood and sons of Belial and not of Eli.… He should have said, “Woe is me that I live to hear it; it had been better that I had died long since, or that you had been buried alive, than thus to live to stink above ground.” But he saith only, “I hear ill of you by all the people,” as if he went only upon hearsay, and were put on by the people thus to check them.—Trapp.
1 Samuel 2:25. The duties which men are required to perform in society are two-fold, they owe duties to their brethren, they owe duties to God; or rather, considered in a Christian light, every one of our social duties, as it should be performed on a religious principle, so should it be considered of a religious character. “Whatsoever we do, we should do all to the glory of God.” The mind of man, however, is so gross that it is necessary for the sanctions of religion to be seconded by the authority of human laws in enforcing the observance of our social and moral duties. Not only, therefore, is the wrath of God denounced against the sinner for his offences, every one of which is a violation of God’s authority, but “if a man sin against another, the judge also judges him”—he is amenable also to that human authority which he has despised. Still, after all that can be done by man’s interference, after all the severity of punishment which men can inflict upon the offender to deter others from a like offence, it is the anger of God which is most to be avoided, it is the punishment of God which is most to be dreaded. Comparatively trifling should be our fear of them “which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul;” for comparatively feeble is their vengeance, and comparatively light and transitory is the punishment which they can inflict; but our fear of the Divine wrath should, if possible, be great in proportion to the greatness of the power of Him “who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell.”—Bishop Mant.
I read not in the Scripture of a hypocrite’s conversion, and what wonder? For whereas after sin conversion is left as a means to cover all other sins, what means to recover him who hath converted conversion itself into a sin?—Trapp.
“The Lord would slay them!” It is a dreadful sentence, and we would fain know of whom it was uttered. It is spoken of particular persons and not generally.… of the sons of a priest, brought up amidst holy things from their childhood.… What more could have been done unto the vineyard? What greater means of knowledge, what better opportunities of being impressed with a sense of God’s majesty and holiness could possibly have been granted them? But these means and opportunities had been neglected, till what was food at first was now their poison. They had gained such a habit of seeing and hearing holy things unmoved that nothing could possibly work on them. It is probable that every fresh service which they performed about the tabernacle did but harden them more and more. How, then, could they hearken to the voice of their father, a kind old man indeed, and a good one, but one with none of that vigour of character which commands respect, even from the evil. Were his words of gentle rebuke likely to move those hearts which for years had served every day in the presence of God, and had felt neither fear for Him nor love of Him. Vain was it to hope that such hearts should be so renewed to repentance. The seal of destruction was set on them but too plainly; the Lord would slay them; the laws of His providence, His unchanged and unchangable providence, had decreed that their case was hopeless; for they had hardened their hearts greedily all their lives, and their work was now set so sure that they could not undo it, because they could not now wish it to be undone.—Dr. Arnold.
The purpose of God was not the cause of their disobedience, but their disobedience was a sign that they were now ripe for destruction, and that the righteous purposes of God in their case should now soon be executed.—Starke.
They were in a state of inner hardening, which excluded the subjective condition of salvation from destruction, and so they had already incurred God’s unchangable condemnation. As hardened offenders they were already appointed by God to death; therefore the word of instruction had no moral effect upon them.—Lange’s Commentary.
God is more honoured or dishonoured in our religious actions than in all the actions of our lives; in them we do directly pretend His honour and service, and therefore if we do not walk in them watchfully, and intend them seriously, the greater is our sin. For a trespass committed against holy things the Jews were to bring a ram, to be valued by the shekel, to the sanctuary; for a trespass against their brethren a ram was required, but no such valuation expressed; whence Origen infers: “It is one thing to sin in holy things, another thing to sin beside them.” … When men are some way off in a king’s eye they will be comely in their carriage; but when they come into his presence-chamber to speak with him they will be most careful.… God is very curious how men carry themselves in His courts.… Do but observe, under the law, how choice He was about all things relating to His worship: the tabernacle must be made of the best wood, the purest gold, the finest linen, etc.… And what is the substance of all these shadows, but this, that God will be served by holy men, in the purest, holiest manner?… Dost thou not know that He “will be sanctified in them that draw nigh unto Him?” (Leviticus 10:3). Great persons are impatient of contempts and affronts, especially when they are offered them in their own houses; God will sooner overlook thy forgetfulness of Him in thy trade or travels than in His tabernacle. When thou drawest nigh to Him there, He will be sanctified, either in thee or upon thee. If thou refuse to give Him glory in His service, believe it, He will get Himself glory by thy suffering. His worship is His face, and look for His fury if thou darest Him to His face.—Swinnock.