CRITICAL AND EXPOSITORY NOTES—
1 Samuel 7:1. “The house of Abinadab,” etc. “Why the ark was not carried back to Shiloh is uncertain. The reason may be that the Philistines had conquered Shiloh, and now held it, as Ewald supposes; or it may be that, without a special revelation of the Divine will, they were unwilling to carry the ark back to the place whence it had been removed by a judgment of God, in consequence of the profanation of the Sanctuary by the sons of Eli (Keil); or simply that the purpose was first and provisionally to carry it safely to a large city as far off as possible, inasmuch as, in view of the sentence which had been passed on Shiloh, they did not dare to select on their own authority a new place for the Sanctuary” (Erdmann). “It is probable that Abinadab and his sons were of the house of Levi.
1. For the catastrophe at Bethshemesh must inevitably have made the Israelites very careful to pay due honour to the ark in accordance with the law.
2. The fact of there being a high place at Kirjath-jearim makes it highly probable that there were priests there.
3. The names Eleazar, Uzzah, and Ahio are all names in Levitical families, and Abinadab is nearly allied to Nadab and Amminadab, both Levitical names.
4. It is inconceivable that the breaches of the law in looking into the ark, and in Uzzah laying hold of it, should have been so severely punished, but the neglect to employ the sons of Levi according to the law should not be even adverted to.” (Biblical Commentary.) “To keep the ark.” “Not to minister before it; but only to defend it from such profane intrusions as had caused so much suffering to the Bethshemites.” (Wordsworth.)
1 Samuel 7:2. “Twenty years,” i.e., twenty years before the events occurred which are recorded in this chapter. It was a much longer time before David brought the ark again to the tabernacle (2 Samuel 6:1-17), although it is not certain whether it remained in Kirjath-jearim until that time. During these twenty years it is obvious (from 1 Samuel 7:3) that the Philistine domination continued. “All the house of Israel lamented,” etc. “The image is that of a child that goes weeping after its father or mother, that it may be relieved of what hurts it.…, As, beside the constant pressure of the Philistine rule, no special calamity is mentioned, we must suppose a gradual preparation for this penitential temper of the people, which now, after the lapse of twenty years from the return of the ark, was become universal. The preparation came from within. By what means? By the prophetic labours of Samuel, from the summary description of which, according to their intensive power, their extensive manifestation, and their results in the whole nation (1 Samuel 3:19-21), we may clearly see that Samuel, without ceasing, proclaimed to the people the Word of God. And as in 1 Samuel 3:19 it is said that “none of his words fell to the ground,” we shall have occasion to recognise this penitential temper, and this following after God with sighing and lamentation, as the fruit of Samuel’s prophetic labours, which were directed to the relation of the innermost life of the people to their God.” (Erdmann.)
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 1 Samuel 7:1-2
CARE FOR THE ARK OF GOD
I. The judgments of God for contempt of His ordinances often make men more careful in the treatment of them. If the subject of a well-ordered state sets at nought its ordinances he finds himself visited with a penalty which generally leads him to be more careful of his future conduct. He must render honour where honour is due, whether it be to a person or to a law, or he will be visited with punishment which, if he do not profit by himself, will prove a salutary lesson to others. When a child has played with the fire until he has been burnt, he is not only more careful for the rest of his life how he trifles with it, but others learn a lesson from his sufferings and his scars. And when God punishes men for lightly esteeming that which He has commanded them to reverence, it is that those who suffer, and those who see them suffer, may fear to fall into the same sin. A fear which brings reverence is a motive power in the dispensation of the Gospel, as well as in that which preceded it. In the New Testament cases of judgment are recorded which were as swift and terrible as any found in Old Testament history. Men have needed, even in Gospel times, to be taught reverence for holy beings and holy ordinances by punishment which has worked fear. Ananias and Sapphira thought it a light matter to “lie to the Holy Ghost,” and their sudden death wrought “great fear upon all the Church” (Acts 5:11) which led to an increased reverence for the spirit of God. Elymas poured contempt upon the message of salvation as preached by Paul, and was struck with blindness by the man whose heart’s desire and prayer to God for all his countrymen was that they should be saved. But the judgment which fell upon the Jew led to the salvation of the Gentile, and taught all who beheld it that God will not hold them guiltless who scoff at the name of His Son (Acts 13:6-12). In the case of the “seven sons of Sceva” (Acts 19:13-17) men learnt that they must not lightly use the name of the Lord Jesus, and the effect of the punishment of those who did so was that when it “was known to all the Jews and Greeks dwelling at Ephesus that fear fell on them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified. Men of every age have needed to be taught not only that “God is love,” but that He is “a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29), that it is indeed His love which leads Him to visit men with judgment for contempt of His holy name and ordinances, in order that others may see it and fear, as the visitation upon the men of Bethshemesh led those of Kirjath-jearim to be more reverent in their treatment of the ark of God. In all the after history of Israel we never hear of their being guilty of a similar act. The death of the Bethshemites was an effectual preventive of any more attempts of this kind.
II. Those who minister in holy things are especially bound to live holy lives. The men of Kirjath-jearim set apart a man for the special service of the ark. “They sanctifieth Eleazar his son to keep the ark of the Lord.” For every service in the world some qualification is needed, and men are not made custodians of men’s lives, or even of their property, unless they are believed to possess the qualifications indispensable to the fulfilment of the duties of the office. The setting apart of men in the Old Testament dispensation to the service of the tabernacle sets forth the truth that those who minister in holy things under the Gospel dispensation are especially bound to “come out from the world and be separate,” in a spiritual sense, that whatever else they lack, a high moral character is indispensable. It also suggests the need that such men should remember the apostolic exhortation, and give themselves “wholly” to the special work, and not “entangle themselves with the affairs of this life” (1 Timothy 4:15; 2 Timothy 2:4).
III. Men learn the value of Divine ordinances when they are deprived of them. When men have abundance of bread and water they have very little sense of the value of these necessaries of life. But if they are wholly or even partially deprived of them they realise how precious they really are. Want makes us sensible of the blessing of abundance. Sickness teaches us to appreciate the blessing of health, and days of gloom make us sensible how good a gift of God is sunshine. And we never know the true value of religious ordinances until we are deprived of them. Those whom sickness has long kept from the house of God, or those who have sojourned in a land where there were no stated. Divine ordinances, testify to the truth of this. When the soul of a godly man is shut away from God’s house, and has no opportunity of meeting Him in His sanctuary, then the sigh goes up to Heaven “How amiable are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts! My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the Living God.… Blessed are they that dwell in Thy house: they will be still praising Thee.… For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness” (Psalms 84:1-10). This was David’s experience, and thousands since he penned these words have used them to express their own feelings. Israel had for many years before this time had special religious privileges—compared with the rest of the nations they had had a plentiful supply of spiritual bread. But they had treated it as they had treated the manna in the wilderness—familiarity had bred contempt, and they had despised the means of grace, because they had been always in their midst. But the absence of the ark from Shiloh had suspended all the usual tabernacle-service, and the long famine of Divine ordinances caused them to “lament after the Lord.”
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
1 Samuel 7:1. Shiloh was wont to be the place which was honoured with the presence of the ark. Ever since the wickedness of Eli’s sons, that was forlorn and desolate, and now Kirjath-jearim succeeds to this privilege. It did not stand with the royal liberty of God, no, not under the law, to tie himself unto places and persons. Unworthiness was ever a sufficient cause of exchange. It was not yet His time to stir from the Jews, yet He removed from one province to another. Less reason have we to think that so God will reside among us, that none of our provocations can drive Him from us.—Bp. Hall.
1 Samuel 7:2. The time was long ere Samuel could bring them to this solemn conversion related in the verses following: so tough is the old Adam, and so difficult a thing it is to work upon such as are habituated and hardened in sinful practices. Samuel’s song had been, as was afterwards Jeremiah’s (Jeremiah 13:27), “Woe unto thee, O Jerusalem! wilt thou not be made clean? When shall it once be? They refused to return until God stopped them with the cross, suffered the Philistines grievously to oppress them, and then “all the house of Israel lamented after the law.”—Trapp.
There is no mention of their lamenting after the Lord while He was gone, but when He was returned and settled in Kirjath-jearim. The mercies of God draw more tears from His children than his judgments do from His enemies. There is no better sign of good nature or grace than to be won to repentance with kindness; not to think of God except we be beaten into it, is servile. Because God was come again to Israel, therefore Israel is returned to God; if God had not come first they had never come; if He, that came to them, had not made them come to Him, they had been ever parted; they were cloyed with God, while He was perpetually resident with them; now that His absence had made Him dainty, they cleave to Him fervently and penitently in His return. This was it that God meant in His departure, a better welcome at His coming back.—Bp. Hall.
I. The persons lamenting. God’s peculiar people. These only love, and mind God’s presence; when the lords and cities of the Philistines are weary of Him, and send Him away, yea, and the inhabitants of Bethshemesh, though a city of Levites belonging to the Church of God, through their ill management of matters send to get a release, yet God’s Israel will look after their God.
II. The object they lament after—not peace, plenty, or victory over their enemies, but after the Lord. Jehovah is the object of their affections; it is He whom they love, and with whom they long for communion.
III. The universality of the number.—all Israel. The whole house of Israel come; they that had woefully degenerated and had gone after their idols; what a wonderful act of God’s power and sovereignty was this upon their spirits. By this He manifests that He is the true God, and that Samuel was His servant … Christians should lament after the God of ordinances, or God in ordinances.—I. Because God is infinitely more worth than all ordinances; His presence is prizable for itself. This is the marrow of heaven, the want of this is hell, and this the child of God knows. II. God purposely withdraws that men may lament after Him. As when a mother steps out of a child’s sight, and when she seems to be gone, the child raises a cry after her (Hosea 5:15). “I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face; in their affliction they will seek me early.” III. Bécause sincere lamenting after the Lord may occasion His return. He purposely hovers, waits, and expects, that His people may call Him back by their prayers, entreaties, humiliation; not as though God were moved, or changed by men’s mournful complaints and outcries, but that such an earnest lamenting qualifies the subject, capacitates for mercy, and puts souls into the condition of the promise (Jeremiah 29:12).—Oliver Heywood.
The blessing of national mourning in a time of universal distress.
(1) Penitent recognition of the national sin which has occasioned it.
(2) Painful experience of the mighty hand which has inflicted it.
(3) Sorrowful, penitent seeking after the Lord’s consolation and help, which ends in finding.—Lange’s Commentary.