CRITICAL AND EXPOSITORY NOTES—
1 Samuel 2:27. “A man of God.” A prophet, as in 1 Kings 13:1, etc. “The only one mentioned since Deborah.” (Biblical Commentary.) “Thy Father.” “Eli was a descendant of Ithamar, the youngest son of Aaron” (1 Chronicles 24:3).… “The transfer of the high-priesthood to him must have taken place, because at the death of the last high-priest of the family of Eleazer Aaron’s eldest son), the remaining son was too young and inexperienced to take his place.” (Keil.)
1 Samuel 2:28. “Did I not give,” etc. The bountiful provision made by God for His priests is mentioned as the great aggravation of the sins of Eli’s sons. (Biblical Commentary.)
1 Samuel 2:31. “The judgment did not fall upon Eli’s house immediately. His grandson Ahitub (1 Samuel 14:3), and Abiathar, Ahitub’s grandson (1 Kings 1:25; 1 Kings 2:26), successively held the office of high priest. So much importance in the East has always been attached to old age that it would be felt to be a great calamity, and sensibly lower the respectability of any family which could boast of few old men.” (Fausset.) Abiathar, the last high priest of Eli’s family, was deposed by Solomon, and the high-priesthood reverted to that of Eleazar, to whose family Zadok belonged (2 Samuel 15:24; 2 Samuel 17:15; 2 Samuel 19:12; 2 Samuel 20:25; 1 Kings 2:27).
1 Samuel 2:32. “This was the captivity mentioned in Judges 18:30. (Wordsworth.)
1 Samuel 2:35. “A faithful priest.” This probably refers, in the first instance, to Samuel, who was evidently called by God to perform priestly acts; and, secondly, to Zadok, the father of a long line of priests. It is also generally regarded as pointing on to the Messiah. “It would then seem best to regard it as announcing a line of faithful men.” (Tr. of Lange’s Commentary.)
1 Samuel 2:36. “A piece of silver.” The word is used only here. It signifies a small piece of money, and has been rendered “a beggar’s coin.” “Commentators are divided in their opinion as to the historical allusions contained in this prophecy.” (Keil.)
MAIN HOMILETICS OF 1 Samuel 2:27
A DIVINE MESSENGER
I. This remarkable messenger was a nameless person. “There came a man of God unto Eli.” All the prominent stars that stud our skies, and contribute their portion of light to the inhabitants of earth, are known to astronomers by name, but there are others that are so far off as not to admit of distinction, and we group them under some general designation: yet each one of these far-off bodies sheds some light upon us, nameless as it is. There are records in the holy Scriptures of many nameless persons, who, notwithstanding the little that is told about them, have been used by God to shed upon men the light of His truth. We group them together, like a cluster of far-off stars, under the general title of “men of God,” and all we know of their individual character or history we gather from the message which they delivered, and which has been left upon record to shed a permanent light upon the world. But although we cannot tabulate and name all the myriad stars of heaven, those which are left unnamed by men are known by name to their Creator. “He calleth them all by names” (Isaiah 40:26). And so it is with those human light-givers whose names are not known to their fellow-men. Although this man of God remains unknown by name to all who read his words, yet he was and is known and named by His Divine Master, who called him to His work, and has long since rewarded him for it. And as those nameless stars may excel in magnitude and glory many of those which, from their nearer position to us, seem to be stars of the first magnitude, so these unnamed prophets may be as great in God’s kingdom, and may have done as great a work in His estimation as those whose names are left recorded upon the Divine page. And so it may be now with many a God-sent messenger, whose name is unknown to the world, or even to the Church—he may be more highly esteemed by Him whose name is above every name, and stand in much closer fellowship with Him than many a one whose name stands high in the estimation of his fellow-Christians. But, after all the general name includes the particular—the greater name includes all lesser names. “A man of God” includes all that can be said in honour of either Isaiah the prophet or Paul the apostle. For “a man of God,” when the designation is not a misnomer, signifies—
1. A man who has got his character from God. An Englishman when he is a true representation of his country and nation, has the disposition and tendencies which generally characterize his people. A child generally has some of the characteristics of his parent, because he is of his parent. So a man of God is one who possesses, in some degree, a God-like disposition, is one who is in sympathy with God, who loves what He loves, and hates what He hates. No particular name can express more concerning a man’s relation to God than does this general one. “We are of God” (1 John 4:6), is as much as can be said of any human creature, for these four words include all the blessedness of Divine sonship—all the glory of the life everlasting.
2. In the Scripture, a man of God is one who bears a message from God. This is a title given both to Old Testament prophets and to New Testament ministers. “But thou, O man of God, flee these things” (1 Timothy 6:11). “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.… that the man of God may be perfected,” etc. (2 Timothy 3:16-17). In both these passages the general name includes and means more than the particular. A “man of God” is more than Paul or Timothy—it is one who is entrusted with a message from the Eternal for his fellow-man—one who has “received” from God “the things which he speaks” (1 Corinthians 2:12-13). He speaks to men of God and for God—his life-work is that of beseeching men to be “reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20)—his one business in the world is to declare the “message” which he “has heard of Him,” viz., that “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5).
II. This messenger, though nameless, has been held in much greater honour by men than has the well known house whose doom he declared. Character is much more important than name, and the better the deed or the word the more easily we can dispense with the doer or the speaker. The names of Eli, of Hophni and Phinehas stand out prominently upon the page of Hebrew history, but what is recorded of the high-priest and judge himself is not calculated to set him very high in the estimation of men—he has left little more than his name behind him—while those of his sons are associated only with the memory of their crimes. The nameless prophet passes before us like a ship upon the horizon making for her destined port. We know not whence she came or whither she is going, but she leaves a pleasing impression upon the mind. But Eli and his sons remain like wrecks upon the shore, whose only use is to warn others to shun the rocks upon which they were broken.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 1 Samuel 2:27-36
A DIVINE MESSAGE
I. The charge. The house of Eli is charged with ingratitude. Perhaps no greater crime is chargeable upon human nature. The slave who has been freed from the tyranny of a cruel master by the putting forth on his behalf of a strong arm, and who has not only been thus made a partaker of liberty but who has been clothed, and fed, and educated by the same benefactor, is expected to manifest gratitude to him to whom he owes all that makes life worth having. Gratitude ought to well up in his spirit like water from a living spring, and if such a man proves ungrateful it indicates that he is destitute of all right feeling, for he sins, not against law but against love. Eli’s family, in common with all the other families of Israel, had dwelt in the “house of bondage.” They had been for many years in “the iron furnace, even in Egypt,” and God had delivered them from their degraded condition and made them “a people of inheritance unto Himself” (Deuteronomy 4:20). To be ungrateful to such a deliverer shows them to be without natural feeling. But their ingratitude was aggravated by their elevation above all the other families of the nation. “Did I plainly appear unto the house of thy father, when they were in Egypt in Pharaoh’s house? And did I choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest?” This is the head and front of their crime. When a number of homeless children are taken from the streets, and housed and cared for, those who rescue them have a claim upon the gratitude of all. But if out of this number, one is made the object of special care and is selected to fill a higher position than the rest, the ingratitude of this one will be so much greater than the ingratitude of the others, as the benefits bestowed upon the one have been greater than those bestowed upon the rest. Ingratitude in any would be a sin; but ingratitude in the one who has been especially favoured would be a sin of deeper die. The house of Aaron, of which Eli was a member, was bound to God by the common ties of gratitude by which all Israel was bound; but God had claims upon them which far exceeded those of any other family of the nation. The members of Aaron’s family had been elected by God to the highest possible honour, they had been set apart to the most sacred office, and they had been sustained at the command of God by the offerings of the people. It was demanded of them in return that they should show their gratitude for such unparalleled favours by reverent obedience to God. But the conduct of those who now represented them was of the very opposite nature. There had been the blackest profanity instead of reverence, and those who ought to have been examples of holiness had been promoters of vice. Ingratitude has been called a monster in nature, and a comparison between the privileges enjoyed by those men, and the returns they made, convicts them of being guilty of this monstrous crime in an aggravated form.
II. The sentence. The authority and influence of Eli’s house was to cease in Israel. That men by misdeeds entail a tendency to sin upon their posterity is a fact plainly written in the history of families and the oracles of God. A bad father generally leaves behind him bad children. This law must work unless God reconstitutes the present order of nature and makes each man’s power to work good or ill to end with himself. But while there is the relationship of parent and child this cannot be. Wherever we look we find instances in which children are born to an inheritance of good or evil influences, and the after-life of the greater number takes its moral tone from the character of their parents. Hence it is that families as well as individuals merit the blessing or the punishment of God. Eli had not used his own authority and influence to much purpose, and his sons had shamefully abused that which had been entrusted to them by God. Such men were very unlikely to be the founders of a house which would be a blessing to Israel, therefore the sentence is directed not against Eli and his sons only, but against their posterity. As they had dishonoured God, so God would bring their house to dishonour. As Eli had not used his power and authority to prevent the defilement of the house of the Lord, he shall have no power to hold back the desolation of his own. As he and his sons had not fulfilled the conditions laid down for the observance of the priests, their sons shall have no conditions to observe, for the priesthood shall be transferred to others. As is generally the case in the judgments of God, the nature of the punishment bears some resemblance to the nature of the transgression. “He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity; he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword” (Revelation 13:10).
III. The authority for the sentence. “Thus saith the Lord.” God’s authority to pronounce this doom upon the house of Eli springs—
1. From the relation which He sustains to men in general. God was the absolute proprietor of the lives of these men, as He is of the life of every human creature. He, as we have seen (see on 1 Samuel 2:6), is the giver of life to men; to Him also belongs the world, which He has “given to the children of men” (Psalms 115:16) for a dwelling-place, and, if men abuse His good gifts, He has an absolute right to deprive them of that which He has bestowed.
2. But God had a special right to judge the house of Eli, a right springing from the special relation to Himself in which He had placed them. As we have before seen, in considering the charge, as Israelites they had been objects of His special favour, as men of the house of Aaron they were brought into a closer relationship to God, and this threefold obligation gave to Jehovah a threefold authority to pronounce upon them and theirs this terrible yet deserved sentence.
IV. The principle upon which God exercises this authority over all men. “For them that honour me I will honour,” etc. God can be known so as to be honoured. God must be known, not only as to His existence, but as to His character, in order to be honoured. Eli and his sons had enough knowledge of the character of Jehovah to make it possible for them to honour Him, they had enough knowledge to make their “lightly esteeming” Him a black transgression. Wherever men find moral excellence they are bound to honour it, their consciences call upon them to reverence goodness wherever it is found, and God here lays down a law of His government that He will not hold them guiltless who withhold from His perfect character the honour which is His due.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
1 Samuel 2:29. “And honourest thy sons above me.” Choosing rather to gratify them than to glorify me, by abdicating them from the priesthood. But it may be Eli feared lest the high-priesthood should by this means go from his family, as it had before from Eleazar’s for misdemeanour, which also afterwards befell him, and he by seeking to prevent it hastened it.—Trapp.
The well-fed beast becomes unmanageable and refractory, and refuses the yoke, and bursts the bonds (Jeremiah 5:5; Jeremiah 5:7-8). So the priests, instead of being grateful for the provision made for them, in their pampered pride became dissatisfied, wantonly broke the laws of God which regulated their share of the offerings, and gave themselves up to an unbridled indulgence of their passions and their covetousness.—Biblical Commentary.
It is often easy to be exposed to this reproach of God without being aware of it. Those who labour to spread the light of Divine truth by publicly declaring it to the people certainly offer a sacrifice which may be very acceptable to God. But if they nourish in their hearts a secret pride, and if they seek in these holy services their own glory rather than the glory of God, they take for themselves the first-fruits of the sacrifice. They become the end of their action, and God is only the means. They put the creature before the Creator, and this is the greatest of all misplacements.—De Sacy.
1 Samuel 2:30. “Them that honour Me, I will honour.” This is a bargain of God’s own making; you may bind upon it. “And they that despise Me.” God’s visitation is like chequer-work, black and white.—Trapp.
Never did man dishonour God but it proved the greatest dishonour 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 dishonour from yourselves.—Baxter.
There are three sorts of men to be considered with respect to the honour due to God.
I. Such as despise Him instead of honouring Him. Such were the sons of Eli who knew not the Lord. Those do not know God who despise His services. It is impossible to despise infinite goodness, and power, and wisdom, for those are things which all that know them cannot but reverence and esteem. For a poor creature to despise his Creator, or one that lives upon the bounty of another to despise his benefactor, seems to be such an inconsistency in morality, as if human nature were incapable of it.… But although God cannot be despised for His glorious perfections, yet His authority may be despised when men presumptuously break His laws—when “they profess to know God, but in works deny Him” (Titus 1:16), when they own a God, and yet live as if there were none.
II. There are such as pretend to honour God, but do not. Men may be guilty of dishonouring God under a pretence of honouring Him, by worshipping their imaginations instead of Him, or by doing honour to Him according to their own imaginations, and not according to His will. Persons form false conceptions of God, and so give their worship to an idol of their own fancy, and they pretend to honour Him not according to His will, but according to their own fancy. There are some things practised and defended in the Christian world, which one would hardly think possible to have ever prevailed, had it not been that men thought to do honour to God by them.
III. But there is a way left to give God that honour which is due unto Him. I shall not take in all the ways of honouring God, but consider that which is most proper to the design of these words.… It was not for Eli’s personal miscarriages that God thought Himself so dishonoured by him, but for want of taking due care in suppressing profaneness and corruption in others. And this shows the true way in which God may be honoured by those who are bound to take care of others.
1. By an universal discountenancing of all sorts of vices and profaneness.
2. By an even, steady, and impartial execution of the laws against vice and debauchery.
3. By a wise choice of fit instruments to pursue so good an end.—Stillingfleet.
Outwardly, we see nothing to blame in the personal conduct of Eli. All that can be expected is found; all due respect for his office, all proper solemnity in the discharge of it. He is just the character who would have been eulogised by the men of his day as doing honour to the post which he filled; who, as the saying is, would have been respected in his life and lamented at his death.… But we presently see that he had been only up to, not beyond the mark, for what was expected of him. He had sense enough of propriety and decency, creditably to discharge an office, to the capability of filling which this same sense alone raised him. He had never lived above his office. That God had delighted in burnt offerings and sacrifices he had impressed upon himself, and these things were the summit of his estimate. He had never learned that there are things better than sacrifices and more acceptable than the fat of rams.… He knew not that in order to do good a man must live above, not up to, his outward duties; that influence with others is found not where life is raised up to the routine of duty, but where that routine of duty is quickened and inspired by a life led in higher places and guided by nobler motives. This sense of decency, this fine conservative feeling, may get one man creditably through his work, but it has no power over those who grow up around him; it has no deep springs, no living and sparkling eye, no winning to something above itself; all its motives are secondary; what others did before, others will think now.… Eli found, as men ever find, that all this system of secondary motive is nothing to curb the bounding heart of the young, or to win the guidance of their strong and precipitous course. He who dwells in the circumference of his life gains no sympathy from those who dwell in its centre.… Such a state in the individual, the family, or the community, contains of necessity the elements of decay and of downward progress.… What will be the effect on a community of the prevalence of a lifeless and conventional religion? First, and necessarily, a low standard of duty, up to that which is required by man, not beyond it. Next, a false estimate of realities; a substitution of primary objects for secondary ones; a growing conviction that this world is real, and another world visionary; that words and ceremonies will serve for religion; but that deeds all belong to self and the world.… As Israel became acted upon by the system which prevailed under Eli, superstition succeeded to the fear of God.… Who taught his people to trust to the ark to save them, and to forget Him … To what must a people have been degraded, who could look on that ark, accompanied with two ministers of such iniquity and profligacy, and greet its arrival with shouts of triumph?… Where life is lived as unto God, and in His sight and His revelation of Himself held as a living present truth, there is the seed of all true happiness, of all true success, of all genuine honour. Such men, whether they prosper or fall, alone win the real prizes of life: solid usefulness, firm stability, inward peace. Such families alone are the nurseries for worthy future generations, where God’s name is known and loved; where, if there be no glittering armour, no nicely jointed harness for the youthful warrior to go forth in, the young arm is at least familiar with the use of the simple sling, and knows where to cull the smooth stones from the river of the water of life. Such nations alone contain in them the pledges for sound and honourable progress, where the national religion is not a system upheld for venerable association’s sake, but is a genuine portion of the people’s life, a living seed expanding through its history … On the other hand, the man of mere proprieties gets to his grave in peace; the man of selfish views wins his prize, and becomes great and fills a space in the world, and passes away, but who cares for either?… The family where God was not, we have already followed in the same downward path; but who can tell, till the last dread day, the shame and misery and ruin which have overwhelmed men in generation after generation, for want of God as the guide of their youth? And if we ask respecting the fate of nations that have despised God—read it in the desolations of Nineveh and Babylon: read it in the history of the ancient people of God, scattered over the nations.—Alford.
God is honoured in general by avowed obedience to His holy will, but there are some acts which more signally conduce to God’s glory.
1. The frequent and constant performance (in a reverent manner) of devotions immediately addressed to His name (Psalms 29:2).
2. Using all things peculiarly related to God, His holy name, His holy word, His holy places, with especial respect (Isaiah 58:13).
3. Yielding due observance to the deputies and ministers of God, as such (Romans 13:4; Malachi 2:7, etc.).
4. Freely spending what God hath given us in works of piety, charity, and mercy (2 Corinthians 9:13; Proverbs 3:9; Proverbs 14:31).
5. A11 penitential acts, by which we submit to God, and humble ourselves before Him (Joshua 7:19; Revelation 16:9).
6. Cheerfully undergoing afflictions, losses, disgraces, for the profession of God’s truth (John 21:19).
7. By discharging faithfully those offices which God hath entrusted us with, and diligently improving those talents which God hath committed to us.—Barrow.
1 Samuel 2:33. The posterity of Eli possessed the high-priesthood in the time of Solomon, and even when that dynasty was preserved to another family, God preserved that of Eli; not to render it more happy, but to punish it by seeing the prosperity of its enemies, to the end that it might see itself destitute and despised. This shows the depth of the judgments of God, and the grandeur of His justice, which extends even to distant generations, and manifests itself to sinners both in life and death—both in their own disgrace and in the prosperity of their enemies.—Calmet.
1 Samuel 2:35. The exercise of the priestly office, which is well-pleasing to God:
1. Its personal condition and pre-sup-position, fidelity, firmness, steadfastness, “I will raise Thee up a faithful priest.”
2. Its rule and measure. “According to that which is in my heart and soul.”
3. Its blessing and reward. “And I will build him a sure house,” etc.—Lange’s Commentary.
Of the priests under the law it might be generally said that they walked before the Lord’s Anointed; or, in other words, they were appointed by His authority—they acted by His direction, and as his servants and representatives, till He should come personally to offer the one sacrifice on the strength of which their offerings had been made available on behalf of His believing people. And, in this view of the subject, the last clause of the verse conveyed another and more explicit assurance that the priesthood should be perpetuated during the Old Testament dispensation, notwithstanding all the calamities which might from time to time befall Israel. But it implied more. It contained a promise of blessing on that priesthood. To walk before the Lord’s Anointed must, I think, have implied not only walking by His directions as servants, but walking in the light of His countenance as their approving Lord and Master, in so far as His Church was dependent on their services for her edification and comfort. And how frequently then must the people of God, in Old Testament times, have been comforted and refreshed in seasons of perplexity and trouble when they called to mind this gracious assurance. But it is to the New Testament Church that this passage has opened up, in all its fulness, the inexhaustible fountain of consolation which it contains.… It is impossible for us to read the words without at least having Christ brought before us, and without feeling that to Him alone can the words be applied in their full, literal, and absolute sense.… Christ is exalted to the throne of the universe, but He has not forgotten His priestly office. He regards it with complacency, and still executes it with delight; for “He is a priest upon His throne.”—Dr. R. Gordon.
1 Samuel 2:36. See the sin and its punishment. They formerly pampered themselves, and fed to the full on the Lord’s sacrifices, and now they are reduced to a morsel of bread. They wasted the Lord’s heritage, and now they beg their bread.… In religious establishments vile persons, who have no higher motive, may and do get into the priest’s office, that they may clothe themselves with the wool, and feed themselves with the fat, while they starve the flock. But where there is no law to back the claims of the worthless and the wicked, men of piety and solid merit only can find support, for they must live on the free-will offerings of the people. Where religion is established by law the strictest ecclesiastical discipline should be kept up, and all hireling priests and drones should be expelled from the Lord’s vineyard.—A. Clarke.
1 Samuel 2:27-36. 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. What variety of judgments does he now hear from the messenger of God! First, because his old age, which uses to be subject to choler, inclined now to misfavour his sons, therefore there shall not be an old man left of his house for ever; and because it vexed him not enough to see his sons enemies to God in their profession, therefore he shall see his enemy in the habitation of the Lord; and because himself forebore to take vengeance of his sons, and esteemed their life above the glory of his Master, therefore God will revenge Himself by killing them both in one day; and because he abused his sovereignty by conniving at sin, therefore shall his house be stripped of this honour, and see it translated to another; and lastly, because he suffered his sons to please their own wanton appetite, in taking meat off from God’s trencher, therefore those which remain of his house shall come to his successor to beg a piece of silver and a morsel of bread.… I do not read of any fault Eli had but indulgence; and which of the notorious offenders were plagued more? Parents need no other means to make them miserable, than sparing the rod.—Bishop Hall.
God often contents himself with a single example of the estimation in which He holds the violation of certain duties. But one lesson so terrible ought to be sufficient to instruct every age, and unhappy is he who does not profit by it.—Duguet.