Now the boy Samuel was ministering to
the LORD under Eli. Visions were not widespread then, and The word of the LORD
was rare in those days…
Those days, those days after Moses had
died, after Joshua and the Israelites had entered the Land along with the
Tabernacle in which God resided. They had conquered large swaths of the Land.
The 12 tribes each set out and settled
in a place, they become a decentralized tribal confederacy—and that tended to
work… for a time.
They would laze and lounge on their
own, each tribe as their own entity, for a generation—and in that time they
would fall into sin, creating Idols and oppressing the least and the lost—in
those days.
Then a threat would come along, and
chaos would reign, each tribe picked off one by one—divided they fell, only when united they stood.
And so, in those days, when things got
rough, when enemies would come and swallow them up tribe by tribe, they would
call on the LORD, and the LORD would send them a charismatic Shofet—a Judge,
and that Judge would rally the tribes together, like twelve fingers coming
together and making a fist—and together they would restore justice and
righteousness to the Israelis. He or she—yes she… have you heard of the Great
Prophet-Judge Deborah?—the Judge, would defeat the present threat—and for a
while all would be calm, the 12 tribes could get back to doing their own thing,
separated again from one another… until they committed apostasy, and an enemy
rose up, and they cried to God and they were yet again delivered from their
enemy by a Judge.
But in those days, by the time of
Samuel and Eli, this ongoing cycle, Apostasy, enemy, asking for divine assistance,
and the arrival of a Judge, was wearing thin.
It
was winding down,
it
was unsustainable.
At that time Eli, whose eyesight had
begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room, the
lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of
the LORD, where the ark of God was.
Samuel—this little child, the apple of
his mother’s eye… do you know his story?
Samuel’s mother, Hannah, was teased and
mistreated for being barren—and so badly did these barbs hurt, that she went
out to the tent of God and prayed
—cried
out to God in agony and ecstasy
—with
so much sincerity and emotion, that Eli the Priest heard it and assumed it was
the revelry of a drunk, and he tried to chase her out of his presence.
But Hannah refused, and God did a new
thing with her
—she
became with child
—she
bore little Samuel
—and
she sang of that joyous birth a song that centuries later Mary would remember
and sing as well, when she found out she too was pregnant with our Lord Jesus
—and
out of thanksgiving to God Hannah gave Samuel to Eli, that very same priest who
did not recognize her prayer.
How special it must have been, for
little Samuel, living there, next to the Ark
—next
to the very footstool of God
—essentially
a little kid camped out on God’s living room floor.
Then the LORD called, "Samuel!
Samuel!"
and
he said, "Here I am!"
and
ran to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me."
But he said, "I did not call; lie
down again."
Eli, the Priest of God had a history of
this—just as he misinterpreted the prayer of Samuel’s Mom, Hannah, as drunken
ramblings, so too, even in the very tent of God, where God lived—he did not
stop and say, “Perhaps God is speaking to this child.”
So Samuel
went and lay down.
The LORD called again,
"Samuel!"
Samuel
got up and went to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me."
But
he said, "I did not call, my son; lie down again."
I would imagine little Samuel is
starting to wonder if old man Eli is getting a little funny—and I would also imagine
Eli is starting to regret letting this child live there in the temple.
Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD,
and the word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him.
Visions were so rare in those days and
the Word of the LORD was so infrequent that even there at the center of it
all—as an apprentice to the Priest of all of Israel, little Samuel does not
know the LORD!
The LORD called Samuel again, a third
time.
And
he got up and went to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me."
You can imagine, at this point Samuel
is beside himself…
lucky
for him, third time is the charm, because then Eli perceived that the LORD was
calling the boy.
Therefore,
Eli said to Samuel, "Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say,
'Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.'" So Samuel went and lay down
in his place.
Now the LORD came and stood there,
calling as before, "Samuel! Samuel!" And Samuel said, "Speak,
for your servant is listening."
Then the LORD said to Samuel,
"See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of
anyone who hears of it tingle.
Would it ever
—a
new thing with this special new boy… things no pious man would ever dream, not a
righteous woman would ever utter.
Yet, happen they would
—God,
in his Ark that Samuel slept near, would be stolen by foreign pagans
—God
was Arknapped.
This
would cause a crisis that collapsed the ailing cycle of judges and topple the
priesthood and change the prophethood for good—everything different after
Samuel.
Judges
and independent tribes replaced by King Saul and a consolidated monarchy. Saul
in turn overthrown by King David
—his
son Solomon tearing down the tent and building a temple for the Ark of the LORD,
a grand house for God.
A
new kind of stability and a national strength.
These things that will make all ears
tingle
—are
strange fits and starts of change,
no
easy thing,
not
even a good thing necessarily
—yet
it’s what happened
—the
reality that little Samuel was to presided over.
On that day I will fulfill against Eli
all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. For I have
told him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he
knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them.
Do you know the horror? These boys who
intend to inherit the Priesthood there at Shiloh
—they
take the finest meat of sacrifice, giving their least to God
—leaving
even less for the poor
—not
allowing the poor to take the leavings from that temple barbeque as is required
of them…
And not only that
—the
women who serve at the temple—that tent of God
—these
priests, these Eli’s sons, force themselves upon them…
God
have mercy.
Lord Acton was right, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts
absolutely.”
“Therefore, I swear to the house of Eli,”
said the LORD, “that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not be expiated by
sacrifice or offering forever."
Samuel lay there until morning
—a
sleepless night to be sure. Blown away by a full-on experience of the Word of
God,
but also, imagine his dilemma
—how
to tell his mentor, this surrogate father, that the LORD was not pleased?
When he could not put it off any long, he
opened the doors of the house of the LORD. Samuel was afraid to tell the vision
to Eli, how could he not be?
But Eli called Samuel and said,
"Samuel, my son."
He
said, "Here I am."
Eli said, "What was it that he
told you? Do not hide it from me. May God do so to you and more also, if you
hide anything from me of all that he told you."
So
Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him.
Then he said, "It is the LORD; let
him do what seems good to him."
As Samuel grew up, the LORD was with
him and let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan to
Beer-sheba knew that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of the LORD.
In all those changes, when the fabric
of society was shifting.
With
Judges and tribal loyalties evaporating into the ether of Kingship.
With
foreign aggression and civil wars.
With
God’s very presence shifting from place to place.
It was good that they still knew where
to find a trustworthy prophet of the LORD.
It
was good they knew where they could hear the timeless truth of God.
It
was good that amongst the changes that made their heads spin and their ears
buzz, they knew that God was still faithful in all of that.
A+A
