Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Eli and the house of God (ch. iv.); secondly, the manifestation of the omnipotence of God upon the enemies of His people, by the chastisement of the Philistines for carrying off the ark of the covenant, and the victory which the Israelites gained over their oppressors through Samuel's prayer (ch. v.-vii. 14); and lastly, a summary of the judicial life of Samuel (ch. vii. 15-17). The second section contains, first, the negotiations of the people with Samuel concerning the appointment of a king, the anointing of Saul by the prophet, and his election as king, together with the establishment of his kingdom (ch. viii.-xii.); and secondly, a brief survey of the history of his reign, in connection with which the only events that are at all fully described are his first successful conflicts writh the Philistines, and the war against the Amalekites which occasioned his ultimate rejection (ch. xiii.- xv.). In the third section (ch. xvi.-xxxi.) there is a much more elaborate account of the history of Saul from his rejection till his death, since it not only describes the anointing of David and his victory over Goliath, but contains a circumstantial account of his attitude towards Saul, and the manifold complications arising from his long-continued persecution on the part of Saul, for the purpose of setting forth the gradual accomplishment of the counsels of God, both in the rejection of Saul and the election of David as king of Israel, to warn the ungodly against hardness of heart, and to strengthen the godly in their trust in the Lord, who guides His servants through tribulation and suffering to glory and honour. The second book contains the history of the reign of David, arranged in four sections: (1) his reign over Judah in Hebron, and his conflict with Ishbosheth the son of Saul, whom Abner had set up as king over the other tribes of Israel (ch. i.-iv.): (2) the anointing of David as king over all Israel, and the firm establishment of his kingdom through the conquest of the citadel of Zion, and the elevation of Jerusalem into the capital of the kingdom; the removal of the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem; the determination to build a temple to the Lord; the promise given him by the Lord of the everlasting duration of his dominion; and lastly, the subjugation of all the enemies of Israel (ch. v.-viii. 14), to which there is appended a list of the principal officers of state (ch. viii. 15-18), and an account of the favour shown to the house of Saul in the person of Mephibosheth (ch. ix.): (3) the disturbance of his reign through his adultery with Bathsheba during the Ammonitish and Syrian war, and the judgments which came upon his house in consequence of this sin through the wickedness of his sons, viz. the incest of Amnon and rebellion of Absalom, and the insurrection of Sheba (ch. x.-xx.): (4) the close of his reign, his song of thanksgiving for deliverance out of the hand of all his foes (ch. xxii.), and his last prophetic words concerning the just ruler in the fear of God (ch. xxiii. 1-7). The way is prepared for these, however, by an account of the expiation of Saul's massacre of the Gibeonites, and of various heroic acts performed by his generals during the wars with the Philistines (ch. xxi.); whilst a list of his several heroes is afterwards appended in ch. xxiii. 8-39, together with an account of the numbering of the people and consequent pestilence (ch. xxiv.), which is placed at the close of the work, simply because the punishment of this sin of David furnished the occasion for the erection of an altar of burnt-offering upon the site of the future temple. His death is not mentioned here, because he transferred the kingdom to his son Solomon before he died; and the account of this transfer forms the introduction to the history of Solomon in the first book of Kings, so that the close of David's life was most appropriately recorded there.

So far as the character of the historical writing in the books of Samuel is concerned, there is something striking in the contrast which presents itself between the fulness with which the writer has described many events of apparently trifling importance, in connection with the lives of persons through whom the Lord secured the deliverance of His people and kingdom from their foes, and the summary brevity with which he disposes of the greatest enterprises of Saul and David, and the fierce and for the most part tedious wars with the surrounding nations; so that, as Thenius says, " particular portions of the work differ in the most striking manner from all the rest, the one part being very brief, and written almost in the form of a chronicle, the other elaborate, and in one part composed with really biographical fulness." This peculiarity is not to be accounted for from the nature of the sources which the author had at his command; for even if we cannot define with precision the nature and extent of these sources, yet when we compare the accounts contained in these books of the wars between David and the Ammonites and Syrians with those in the books of Chronicles (2 Sam. viii. and x. with 1 Chron. xviii. xix.), we see clearly enough that the sources from which those accounts were derived embraced more than our books have given, since there are several places in which the chronicler gives fuller details of historical facts, the truth of which is universally allowed. The preparations for the building of the temple and the organization of the army, as well as the arrangement of the official duties of the Levites which David undertook, according to 1 Chron. xxii.-xxviii., in the closing years of his life, cannot possibly have been unknown to the author of our books. Moreover, there are frequent allusions in the books before us to events which are assumed as known, though there is no record of them in the writings which have been handed down to us, such as the removal of the tabernacle from Shiloh, where it stood in the time of Eli (1 Sam. i. 3, 9, etc.), to Nob, where David received the shewbread from the priests on his flight from Saul (ch. xxi. 1 sqq.); the massacre of the Gibeonites by Saul, which had to be expiated under David (2 Sam. xxi.); the banishment of the necromancers out of the land in the time of Saul (1 Sam. xxviii. 3); and the flight of the Beerothites to Gittaim (2 Sam. iv. 3). From this also we must conclude, that the author of our books knew more than he thought it necessary to mention in his work. But we certainly cannot infer from these peculiarities, as has often been done, that our books are to be regarded as a compilation. Such an inference as this simply arises from an utter disregard of the plan and object, which run through both books and regulate the selection and arrangement of the materials they contain. That the work has been composed upon a definite plan, is evident from the grouping of the historical facts, in favour of which the chronological order generally observed in both the books has now and then been sacrificed. Thus, in the history of Saul and the account of his wars (1 Sam. xiv. 47, 48), the fact is also mentioned, that he smote the Amalekites; whereas the war itself, in which he smote them, is first described in detail in ch. xv., because it was in that war that he forfeited his kingdom through his transgression of the divine command, and brought about his own rejection on the part of God. The sacrifice of the chronological order to the material grouping of kindred events, is still more evident in the history of David. In 2 Sam. viii. all his wars with foreign nations are collected together, and even the wars with the Syrians and Ammonites are included, together with an account of the booty taken in these wars; and then after this, viz. in ch. x.-xii., the war with the Ammonites and Syrians is more fully described, including the circumstances which occasioned it, the course which it took, and David's adultery which occurred during this war. Moreover, the history of Saul, as well as that of David, is divided into- two self-contained periods, answering indeed to the historical course of the reigns of these two kings, but yet so distinctly marked off. by the historian, that not only is the turning-point distinctly given in both instances, viz. the rejection of Saul and the grievous fall of David, but each of these periods is rounded off with a comprehensive account of the wars, the family, and the state officials of the two kings (L Sam. xiv. 47-52, and 2 Sam. viii.). So likewise in the history of Samuel, after the victory which the Israelites obtained over the Philistines through his prayer, everything that had to be related concerning his life as judge is grouped together in ch. vii. 15-17, before the introduction of the monarchy is described; although Samuel himself lived till nearly the close of the reign of Saul, and not only instituted Saul as king, but afterwards announced his rejection, and anointed David as his successor. These comprehensive accounts are anything but proofs of compilations from sources of different kinds, which ignorance of the peculiarities of the Semitic style of writing history has led some to regard them as being; they simply serve to round off the different periods into which the history has been divided, and form resting-places for the historical review, which neither destroy the material connection of the several groups, nor throw any doubt upon the unity of the authorship of the books themselves. And even where separate incidents appear to be grouped together, without external connection or any regard to chronological order, on a closer inspection it is easy to discover the relation in which they stand to the leading purpose of the whole* book, and the reason why they occupy this position and no other (see the introductory remarks to 2 Sam. ix. xxi.-xxiv.).

If we look more closely, however, at the contents of these books, in order to determine their character more precisely, we find at the very outset, in Hannah's song of praise, a prophetic glance at the anointed of the Lord (ch. ii. 10), which foretells the establishment of the monarchy that was afterwards accomplished under Saul and David. And with this there is associated the rise of the new name, Jehovah Sabaoth, which is never met with in the Pentateuch or in the books of Joshua and Judges; whereas it occurs in the books before us from the commencement (ch. i. 3, 11, etc.) to the close. (For further remarks on the origin and signification of this divine name, see at ch. i. 3.) When Israel received a visible representative of its invisible God-king in the person of an earthly monarch; Jehovah, the God of Israel, became the God of the heavenly hosts. Through the establishment of the monarchy, the people of Jehovah's possession became a " world-power;" the kingdom of God was elevated into a kingdom of the world, as distinguished from the other ungodly kingdoms of the world, which it was eventually to overcome in the power of its God. In this conflict Jehovah manifested himself as the Lord of hosts, to whom all the nations and kingdoms of this world were to become subject. Even in the times of Saul and David, the heathen nations were to experience a foretaste of this subjection. When Saul had ascended the throne of Israel, he fought against all his enemies round about, and extended his power in every direction in which he turned (ch. i. 14, 47, 48). But David made all the nations who bordered upon the kingdom of God tributary to the people of the Lord, as the Lord gave him victory wherever he went (ch. ii. 8, 14, 15); so that his son Solomon reigned over all the kingdoms, from the stream (the Euphrates) to the boundary of Egypt, and they all brought him presents, and were subject to him (1 Kings v. 1). But the Israelitish monarchy could never thus acquire the power to secure for the kingdom of God a victory over all its foes, except as the king himself was diligent in his endeavours to be at all times simply the instrument of the God-king, and exercise his authority solely in the name and according to the will of Jehovah. And as the natural selfishness and pride of man easily made this concentration of the supreme earthly power in a single person merely an occasion for self-aggrandisement, and therefore the Israelitish kings were exposed to the temptation to use the plenary authority entrusted to them even in opposition to the will of God; the Lord raised up for Himself organs of His own Spirit, in the persons of the prophets, to stand by the side of the kings, and make known to them the will and counsel of God. The introduction of the monarchy was therefore preceded by the development of the prophetic office into a spiritual power in Israel, in which the kingdom was to receive not only a firm support to its own authority, but a strong bulwark against royal caprice and tyranny. Samuel was called by the Lord to be His prophet, to convert the nation that was sunk in idolatry to the Lord its God, and to revive the religious life by the establishment of associations of prophets, since the priests had failed to resist the growing apostasy of the nation, and had become unfaithful to their calling to instruct and establish the congregation in the knowledge and fear of the Lord. Even before the call of Samuel as a prophet, there was foretold to the high priest Eli by a man of God, not only the judgment that would fall upon the degenerate priesthood, but the appointment of a faithful priest, for whom the Lord would build a permanent house, that he might ever walk before His anointed (1 Sam. ii. 27-36). And the first revelation which Samuel received from God had reference to the fulfilment of all that the Lord had spoken against the house of Eli (ch. iii. 11 sqq.). The announcement of a faithful priest, who would walk before the anointed of the Lord, also contained a prediction of the establishment of the monarchy, which foreshadowed its worth and great significance in relation to the further development of the kingdom of God. And whilst these predictions of the anointed of the Lord, before and in connection with the call of Samuel, show the deep spiritual connection which existed between the prophetic order and the regal office in Israel; the insertion of them in these books is a proof that from the very outset the author had this new organization of the Israelitish kingdom of God before his mind, and that it was his intention not simply to hand down biographies of Samuel, Saul, and David, but to relate the history of the Old Testament kingdom of God at the time of its elevation out of a deep inward and outward decline into the full authority and power of a kingdom of the Lord, before which all its enemies were to be compelled to bow.

Israel was to become a kingship of priests, i.e. a kingdom whose citizens were priests and kings. The Lord had announced this to the sons of Israel before the covenant was concluded at Sinai, as the ultimate object of their adoption as the people of His possession (Ex. xix. 5, 6). Now although this promise reached far beyond the times of the Old Covenant, and will only receive its perfect fulfilment in the completion of the kingdom of God under the New Covenant, yet it was to be realized even in the people of Israel so far as the economy of the Old Testament allowed. Israel was not onlv to become a priestly nation, but a royal nation also; not only to be sanctified as a congregation of the Lord, but also to be exalted into a kingdom of God. The establishment of the earthly monarchy, therefore, was not only an eventful turning-point, but also an "epoch-making" advance in the development of Israel towards the goal set before it in its divine calling. And this advance became the pledge of the ultimate attainment of the goal, through the promise which David received from God (2 Sam. vii. 12-16), that the Lord would establish the throne of his kingdom for ever. With this promise God established for His anointed the eternal covenant, to which David reverted at the close of his reign, and upon which he rested his divine announcement of the just ruler over men, the ruler in the fear of God (2 Sam. xxiii. 1—7). Thus the close of these books points back to their commencement. The prophecy of the pious mother of Samuel, that the Lord would give strength unto His king, and exalt the horn of His anointed (1 Sam. ii. 10), found a fulfilment in the kingdom of David, which was at the same time a pledge of the ultimate completion of the kingdom of God under the sceptre of the Son of David, the promised Messiah.

This is one, and in fact the most conspicuous, arrangement of the facts connected with the history of salvation, which determined the plan and composition of the work before us. By the side of this there is another, which does not stand out so prominently indeed, but yet must not be overlooked. At the very beginning, viz. in ch. i., the inward decay of the house of God under the high priest Eli is exhibited; and in the announcement of the judgment upon the house of Eli, a longcontinued oppression of the dwelling-place (of God) is foretold (ch. ii. 32). Then, in the further course of the narrative, not only is the fulfilment of these threats pointed out, in the events described in 1 Sam. iv., vi. 19-vii. 2, and xxii. 11-19; but it is also shown how David first of all brought the ark of the covenant, about which no one had troubled himself in the time of Saul, out of its concealment, had a tent erected for it in the capital of his kingdom upon Mount Zion, and made it once more the central point of the worship of the congregation; and how after that, when God had given him rest from his enemies, he wished to build a temple for the Lord to be the dwellingplace of His name; and lastly, when God would not permit him to carry out this resolution, but promised that his son would build the house of the Lord, how, towards the close of his reign, he consecrated the site for the future temple by building an altar upon Mount Moriah (2 Sam. xxiv. 25). Even in this series of facts the end of the work points back to the beginning, so that the arrangement and composition of it according to a definite plan, which has been consistently carried out, are very apparent. If, in addition to this, we take into account the deep-seated connection between the building of the temple as designed by David, and the confirmation of his monarchy on the part of God as exhibited in 2 Sam. vii., we cannot fail to observe that the historical development of the true kingdom, u in accordance with the nature and constitution of the Old Testament kingdom of God, forms the leading thought and purpose of the work to which the name of Samuel has been attached, and that it was by this thought and aim that the writer was influenced throughout in his selection of the historical materials which lay before him in the sources that he employed.

The full accounts which are given of the birth and youth of Samuel, and the life of David, are in the most perfect harmony with this design. The lives and deeds of these two men of God were of significance as laying the foundation for the development and organization of the monarchical kingdom in Israel. Samuel was the model and type of the prophets; and embodied in his own person the spirit and nature of the prophetic office, whilst his attitude towards Saul foreshadowed the position which the prophet was to assume in relation to the king. In the life of David, the Lord himself educated the king of His kingdom, the prince over His people, to whom He could continue His favour and grace even when he had fallen so deeply that it was necessary that he should be chastised for his sins. Thus all the separate parts and sections are fused together as an organic whole in the fundamental thought of the work before us. And this unity is not rendered at all questionable by differences such as we find in the accounts of the mode of Saul's death as described in 1 Sam. xxxi. 4 and 2 Sam. i. 9, 10, or by such repetitions as the double account of the death of Samuel, and other phenomena of a similar kind, which can be explained without difficulty; whereas the assertion sometimes made, that there are some events of which we have two different accounts that contradict each other, has never yet been proved, and, as we shall see when we come to the exposition of the passages in question, has arisen partly from unscriptural assumptions, partly from ignorance of the formal peculiarities of the Hebrew mode of writing history, and partly from a mistaken interpretation of the passages themselves.

With regard to the origin of the books of Samuel, all that can be maintained with certainty is, that they were not written till after the division of the kingdom under Solomon's successor. This is evident from the remark in 1 Sam. xxvii. 6, that " Ziklag pertaineth unto the kings of Judah unto this dayT For although David wTas king over the tribe of Judah alone for seven years, it was not till after the falling away of the ten tribes from the house of David that there were really " kings of Judah." On the other hand, nothing can be inferred with certainty respecting the date of composition, either from the distinction drawn between Israel and Judah in 1 Sam. xi. 8, xvii. 52, xviii. 16, and 2 Sam. iii. 10, xxiv. 1, which evidently existed as early as the time of David, as we may see from 2 Sam. ii. 9, 10, v. 1-5, xix. 41, xx. 2; or from the formula " to this day" which wre find in 1 Sam. v. 5, vi. 18, xxx. 25, 2 Sam. iv. 3, vi. 18, xviii. 18, since the duration of the facts to which it is applied is altogether unknown; or lastly, from such passages as 1 Sam. ix. 9, 2 Sam. xiii. 18, where explanations are given of expressions and customs belonging to the times of Saul and David, as it is quite possible that they may have been altogether changed by the time of Solomon. In general, the contents and style of the books point to the earliest times after the division of the kingdom; since we find no allusions whatever to the decay of the kingdoms which afterwards took place, and still less to the captivity; whilst the style and language are classical throughout, and altogether free from Chaldaisms and later forms, such as we meet with in the writings of the Chaldean period, and even in those of the time of the captivity. The author himself is quite unknown; but, judging from the spirit of his writings, he was a prophet of the kingdom of Judah. It is unanimously admitted, however, that he made use of written documents, particularly of prophetic records made by persons who were contemporaries of the events described, not only for the history of the reigns of Saul and David, but also for the life and labours of Samuel, although no written sources are quoted, with the exception of the " book of Jasher," which contained the elegy of David upon Saul and Jonathan (2 Sam. i. 18); so that the sources employed by him cannot be distinctly pointed out. The different attempts which have been made to determine them minutely, from the time of Eichhorn down to G. Em. Karo (de fontibus librorum qui feruntur Samuelis Dissert. Berol. 1862), are lacking in the necessary proofs which hypotheses must bring before they can meet with adoption and support. If we confine ourselves to the historical evidence, according to 1 Chron. xxix. 29, the first and last acts of king David, i.e. the events of his entire reign, were recorded in the " dibre of Samuel the seer, of Nathan the prophet, and of Gad the seer." These prophetic writings formed no doubt the leading sources from which our books of Samuel were also drawn, since, on the one hand, apart from sundry deviations arising from differences in the plan and object of the two authors, the two accounts of the reign of David in 2 Sam. viii.-xxiv. and 1 Chron. xi.-xxi. agree for the most part so thoroughly word for word, that they are generally regarded as extracts from one common source; whilst, on the other hand, the prophets named not only lived in the time of David but throughout the whole of the period referred to in the books before us, and took a very active part in the progressive development of the history of those times (see not only 1 Sam. i.-iii. vii.-x. xii. xv. xvi., but also 1 Sam. xix. 18-24, xxii. 5, 2 Sam. vii. 12, xxiv. 11-18). Moreover, in 1 Chron. xxvii. 24, there are " chronicles (diaries or annals) of king David" mentioned, accompanied with the remark that the result of the census appointed by David was not inserted in them, from which we may infer that all the principal events of his reign were included in these chronicles. And they may also have formed one of the sources for our books, although nothing certain can be determined concerning the relation in which they stood to the writings of the three prophets that have been mentioned. Lastly, it is very evident from the character of the work before us, that the author had sources composed by eyewitnesses of the events at his command, and that these were employed with an intimate knowledge of the facts and with historical fidelity, inasmuch as the history is distinguished by great perspicuity and vividness of description, by a careful delineation of the characters of the persons engaged, and by great accuracy in the accounts of localities, and of subordinate circumstances connected with the historical events.

The call of Samuel to be the prophet and judge of Israel formed a turning-point in the history of the Old Testament kingdom of God. As the prophet of Jehovah, Samuel was to lead the people of Israel out of the times of the judges into those of the kings, and lay the foundation for a prosperous development of the monarchy. Consecrated like Samson as a Nazarite from his mother's womb, Samuel accomplished the deliverance of Israel out of the power of the Philistines, which had been only commenced by Samson; and that not by the physical might of his arm, but by the spiritual power of his word and prayer, with which he led Israel back from the worship of dead idols to the Lord its God. And whilst as one of the judges, among whom he classes himself in 1 Sam. xii. 11, he brought the office of judge to a close, and introduced the monarchy; as a prophet, he laid the foundation of the prophetic office, inasmuch as he was the first to naturalize it, so to speak, in Israel, and develope it into a power that continued henceforth to exert the strongest influence, side by side with the priesthood and monarchy, upon the development of the covenant nation and kingdom of God. For even if there were prophets before the time of Samuel, who revealed the will of the Lord at times to the nation, they only appeared sporadically, without exerting any lasting influence upon the national life; whereas, from the time of Samuel onwards, the prophets sustained and fostered the spiritual life of the congregation, and were the instruments through whom the Lord made known His purposes to the nation and its rulers. To exhibit in its origin and growth the new order of things which Samuel introduced, or rather the deliverance which the Lord sent to His people through this servant of His, the prophetic historian goes back to the time of Samuel's birth, and makes us acquainted not only with the religious condition of the nation, but also with the political oppression under which it was suffering at the close of the period of the judges, and during the high-priesthood of Eli. At the time when the pious parents of Samuel were going year by year to the house of God at Shiloh to worship and offer sacrifice before the Lord, the house of God was being profaned by the abominable conduct of Eli's sons (ch. i. ii.). When Samuel was called to be the prophet of Jehovah, Israel lost the ark of the covenant, the soul of its sanctuary, in the war with the Philistines (ch. iii. iv.). And it was not till after the nation had been rendered willing to put away its strange gods and worship Jehovah alone, through the influence of Samuel's exertions as prophet, that the faithful covenant God gave it, in answer to Samuel's intercession, a complete victory over the Philistines (ch. vii.). In accordance with these three prominent features, the history of the judicial life of Samuel may be divided into three sections, viz.: ch. i. ii.; iii.-vi.; and vii.

While Eli the high priest was judging Israel, and at the time when Samson was beginning to fight against the Philistines, a pious Israel itish woman prayed to the Lord for a son (vers.

1-18). Her prayer was heard. She bore a son, to whom she gave the name of Samuel, because he had been asked for from the Lord. As soon as he was weaned, she dedicated him to the Lord for a lifelong service (vers. 19-28), and praised the Lord in a song of prophetic character for the favour which He had shown to His people through hearkening to her prayer (ch. ii. 1-10).

Yers. 1—8. SamueFs pedigree. — Ver. 1. His father was a man of Ramathaim-Zophim, on the mountains of Ephraim, and named Elkanah. Ramathaim-Zcphim, which is only mentioned here, is the same place, according to ver. 3 (comp. with ver. 19 and ch. ii. 11), which is afterwards called briefly ha-Ramah, i.e. the height. For since Elkanah of Ramathaim-Zophim went year by year out of his city to Shiloh, to worship and sacrifice there, and after he had done this, returned to his house to Ramah (ver. 19, ch. ii. 11), there can be no doubt that he was not only a native of Ramathaim-Zophim, but still had his home there; so that Ramah, where his house was situated, is only an abbreviated name for Ramathaim-Zophim.1 This Ramah (which is invariably written with the article, ha-Ramah), where Samuel was not only born (vers. 19 sqq.), but lived, laboured, died (ch. viL 17, xv. 34, xvi. 13, xix. 18, 19, 22, 23), and was buried (ch. xxv. 1, xxviii. 3), is not a different place, as has been frequently assumed,2 from the Ramah in Benjamin (Josh, xviii. 25), and is not to be sought for in Ramleh near Joppa (v. Schubert, etc.), nor in Soba on the north-west of Jerusalem (Robinson, Pal. ii. p. 329), nor three-quarters of an hour to the north of Hebron (Wolcott, v. de Velde), nor anywhere else in the tribe of Ephraim, but is identical with Ramah of Benjamin,

1 The argument lately adduced by Valentiner in favour of the difference between these two names, viz. that " examples are not wanting of a person being described according to his original descent, although his dwellingplace had been already changed,'' and the instance which he cites, viz. Judg. xix. 16, show that he has overlooked the fact, that in the very passage which he quotes the temporary dwelling-place is actually mentioned along with the native town. In the case before us, on the contrary, Ramathaim-Zophim is designated, by the use of the expression " from his city," in ver. 3, as the place where Elkanah lived, and where u his house" (ver. 19) was still standing.

2 For the different views which have been held upon this point, see the article " Ramah," by Pressel, in Herzog's Cyclopaedia.

and was situated upon the site of the present village of er-Ram, two hours to the north-west of Jerusalem, upon a conical mountain to the east of the Nablus road (see at Josh, xviii. 25). This supposition is neither at variance with the account in ch. ix. x. (see the commentary upon these chapters), nor with the statement that Ramathaim-Zophim was upon the mountains of Ephraim, since the mountains of Ephraim extended into the tribe-territory of Benjamin, as is indisputably evident from Judg. iv. 5, where Deborah the prophetess is said to have dwelt between Ramah and Bethel in the mountains of Ephraim. The name Ramathaim-Zophim, i.e. " the two heights (of the) Zophites," appears to have been given to the town to distinguish it from other Ramahs, and to have been derived from the Levitical family of Zuph or Zophai (see 1 Chron. vi. 26, 35), which emigrated thither from the tribe of Ephraim, and from which Elkanah was descended. The full name, therefore, is given here, in the account of the descent of Samuel's father; whereas in the further history of Samuel, where there was no longer the same reason for giving it, the simple name Ramah is invariably used.1 The connection between Zophim and Zuph is confirmed by the fact that Elkanah's ancestor, Zuph, is called Zophai in 1 Chron. vi. 26, and Zuph or Ziph in 1 Chron. vi. 35. Zophim therefore signifies the descendants of Zuph or Zophai, from which the name " land of Zuph," in ch. ix. 5, was also derived (see the commentary on this passage). The tracing back of Elkanah's family through four generations to Zuph agrees with the family registers in 1 Chron. vi., where the ancestors of Elkanah are mentioned twice, — first of all in the genealogy of the Kohathites (ver. 26), and then in that of Heman, the leader of the singers, a grandson of Samuel (ver.

1 The fuller and more exact name, however, appears to have been still retained, and the use of it to have been revived after the captivity, in the ' PctftctQi/n of 1 Mace. xi. 34, for ■which the Codd. have 'VotQupiiv and ' Pot/xoedxi'p, and Josephus 'Pce^a^a, and in the Arimathsea of the gospel history (Matt, xxvii. 57). " For the opinion that this Ramathaim is a different place from the city of Samuel, and is to be sought for in the neighbourhood of Lydda, which Robinson advocates (Pal. iii. pp. 41 sqq.), is a hasty conclusion, drawn from the association of Ramathaim with Lydda in 1 Mace. xi. 34, — the very same conclusion which led the author of the Qnomtutican to transfer the city of Samuel to the neighbourhood of Lydda" (Grimm on 1 Mace. xi. 34).

33), — except that the names Elihu, Tohu, and Zuph, are given as Eliab, Nahath, and Zophai in the first instance, and Eliel, Toah, and Ziph (according to the Chethibh) in the second, — various readings, such as often occur in the different genealogies, and are to be explained partly from the use of different forms for the same name, and partly from their synonymous meanings. Tohu and Took, which occur in Arabic, with the meaning to press or sink in, are related in meaning to nachath or nuachy to sink or settle down. From these genealogies in the Chronicles, we learn that Samuel was descended from Kohath, the son of Levi, and therefore was a Levite. It is no valid objection to the correctness of this view, that his Levitical descent is never mentioned, or that Elkanah is called an Ephrathite. The former of these can very easily be explained from the fact, that Samuel's work as a reformer, which is described in this book, did not rest upon his Levitical descent, but simply upon the call which he had received from God, as the prophetic office was not confined to any particular class, like that of priest, but was founded exclusively upon the divine calling and endowment with the Spirit of God. And the difficulty which Nagelsbach expresses in Herzog's Cycl.y viz. that u as it was stated of those two Levites (Judg. xvii. 7, xix. 1), that they lived in Bethlehem and Ephraim, but only after they had been expressly described as Levites, we should have expected to find the same in the case of Samuel's father," is removed by the simple fact, that in the case of both those Levites it was of great importance, so far as the accounts which are given of them are concerned, that their Levitical standing should be distinctly mentioned, as is clearly shown by Judg. xvii. 10, 13, and xix. 18; whereas in the case of Samuel, as we have already observed, his Levitical descent had no bearing upon the call which he received from the Lord. The word Ephrathite does not belong, so far as the grammatical construction is concerned, either to Zuph or Elkanah, but to " a certain man," the subject of the principal clause, and signifies an Ephraimite, as in Judg. xii. 5 and 1 Kings xi. 26, and not an inhabitant of Ephratah, i.e. a Bethlehemite, as in ch. xvii. 12 and Ruth i. 2; for in both these passages the word is more precisely defined by the addition of the expression " of Bethlehem-Judah," whereas in this verse the explanation is to be found in the expression " of

Mount Ephraim." Elkanah the Levite is called an Ephraimite, because, so far as his civil standing was concerned, he belonged to the tribe of Ephraim, just as the Levite in Judg. xvii. 7 is described as belonging to the family of Judah. The Levites were reckoned as belonging to those tribes in the midst of which they lived, so that there were Judsean Levites, Ephraimitish Levites, and so on (see Hengstenberg, Diss. vol. ii. p. 50). It by no means follows, however, from the application of this term to Elkanah, that Ramathaim-Zophim formed part of the tribeterritory of Ephraim, but simply that Elkanah's family was incorporated in this tribe, and did not remove till afterwards to Ramah in the tribe of Benjamin. On the division of the land, dwelling-places were allotted to the Levites of the family of Kohath, in the tribes of Ephraim, Dan, and Manasseh (Josh. xxi. 5, 21 sqq.). Still less is there anything at variance with the Levitical descent of Samuel, as Thenius maintains, in the fact that he was dedicated to the Lord by his mother's vow for he was not dedicated to the service of Jehovah generally through this vow, but was set apart to a lifelong service at the house of God as a Nazarite (vers. 11, 22); whereas other Levites were not required to serve till their twenty-fifth year, and even u then had not to perform an uninterrupted service at the sanctuary. On the other hand, the Levitical descent of Samuel receives a very strong confirmation from his father's name. All the Elkanahs that we meet with in the Old Testament, with the exception of the one mentioned in 2 Chron. xxviii. 7, whose genealogy is unknown, can be proved to have been Levites; and most of them belong to the family of Korah, from which Samuel was also descended (see Simonis, Onomast. p. 403). This is no doubt connected in some way with the meaning of the name Elkanah, the man whom God has bought or acquired; since such a name was peculiarly suitable to the Levites, whom the Lord had set apart for service at the sanctuary, in the place of the first-born of Israel, whom lie had sanctified to himself when He smote the first-born of Egypt (Num. iii. 13 sqq., 44 sqq.; see Hengstenberg, ut sup.). — Vers. 2, 3. Elkanah had two wives, Hannah (grace or gracefulness) and Peninnah (coral), the latter of whom was blessed with children, whereas the first was childless. He went with his wives year by year (n1?^ ^»JB, as in Ex. xiii. 10, Judg. xi. 40), according to the instructions of the law (Ex. xxxiv. 23, Deut. xvi. 16), to the tabernacle at Shiloh (Josh, xviii. 1), to worship and sacrifice to the Lord of hosts. "Jehovah Zebaoth" is an abbreviation of "Jehovah Elohe Zebaoth:' or niKljm \"6k nirp; and the connection of

Zebaoth with Jehovah is not to be regarded as the construct state, nor is Zebaoth to be taken as a genitive dependent upon Jehovah. This is not only confirmed by the occurrence of such expressions as " Elohim Zebaoth" (Ps. lix. 6, Ixxx. 5, 8, 15, 20, lxxxiv. 9) and " Adouai Zebaoth" (Isa. x. 16), but also by the circumstance that Jehovah, as a proper name, cannot be construed with a genitive. The combination " Jehovah Zebaoth" is rather to be taken as an ellipsis, where the general term Elohe (God of), which is implied in the word Jehovah, is to be supplied in thought (see Hengstenberg, Christol. i. p. 375, English translation); for frequently as this expression occurs, especially in the case of the prophets, Zebaoth is never used alone in the Old Testament as one of the names of God. It is in the Septuagint that the word is first met with occasionally as a proper name (XafiawO), viz. throughout the whole of the first book of Samuel, very frequently in Isaiah, and also in Zech. xiii. 2. In other passages, the word is translated either fcvptos, or #eo? ro)v Swd/juecov, or iravro/cpdrcop; whilst the other Greek versions use the more definite phrase Kvpio? arparicov instead.

This expression, which was not used as a divine name until the age of Samuel, had its roots in Gen. ii. 1, although the title itself was unknown in the Mosaic period, and during the times of the judges (see p. 7). It represented Jehovah as ruler over the heavenly hosts (i.e. the angels, according to Gen. xxxii. 2, and the stars, according to Isa. xl. 26), who are called the " armies" of Jehovah in Ps. ciii. 21, cxlviii. 2; but we are not to understand it as implying that the stars were supposed to be inhabited by angels, as Gesenius (Thes. s. v.) maintains, since there is not the slightest trace of any such notion in the whole of the Old Testament. It is simply applied to Jehovah as the God of the universe, who governs all the powers of heaven, both visible and invisible, as He rules in heaven and on earth. It cannot even be proved that the epithet Lord, or God of Zebaoth, refers chiefly and generally to the sun, moon, and stars, on account of their being so peculiarly adapted, through their visible splendour, to keep alive the consciousness of the omnipotence and glory of God (Hengstenberg on Ps. xxiv. 10). For even though the expression BX3S (their host), in Gen. ii. 1, refers to the heavens only, since it is only to the heavens (vid. Isa. xl. 26), and never to the earth, that a u host" is ascribed, and in this particular passage it is probably only the stars that are to be thought of, the creation of which had already been mentioned in Gen. i. 14 sqq.; yet we find the idea of an army of angels introduced in the history of Jacob (Gen. xxxii. 2. 3 >. where Jacob calls the angels of God who appeared to him the u camp of God," and also in the blessing of Moses (Deut. xxxiii. 2), where the " ten thousands of saints'' (A are not stars, but angels, or heavenly spirits: whereas the fighting of the stars against Sisera in the song of Deborah probably refers to a natural phenomenon, by which God had thrown the enemy into confusion, and smitten them before the Israelites (see at Judg. v. 20). We must also bear in mind, that whilst on the one hand the tribes of Israel, as they came out of Egypt, are called Zebaoth Jehovah, u the hosts of Jehovah" (Ex. vii. 4, xii. 41), on the other hand the angel of the Lord, when appearing in front of Jericho in the form of a warrior, made himself known to Joshua as u the prince of the army of Jehovah," i.e. of the angelic hosts. And it is in this appearance of the heavenly leader of the people of God to the earthly leader of the hosts of Israel, as the prince of the angelic hosts, not only promising him the conquest of Jericho, but through the miraculous overthrow of the walls of this strong bulwark of the Canaanitish power, actually giving him at the same time a practical proof that the prince of the angelic hosts was fighting for Israel, that we have the material basis upon which the divine epithet u Jehovah God of hosts" was founded, even though it was not introduced immediately, but only at a later period, when the Lord began to form His people Israel into a kingdom, by which all the kingdoms of the heathen were to be overcome. It is certainly not without significance that this title is given to God for the first time in these books, which contain an account of the founding of the kingdom, and (as Auberlen has observed) that it was by Samuel's mother, the pious Hannah, when dedicating her son to the Lord, and prophesying of the king and anointed of the Lord in her song of praise (ch. ii. 10), that this name was employed for the first time, and that God was addressed in prayer as "Jehovah of hosts" (ver. 11). Consequently, if this name of God goes hand in hand with the prophetic announcement and the actual establishment of the monarchy in Israel, its origin cannot be attributed to any antagonism to Sabaeism, or to the hostility of pious Israelites to the worship of the stars, which was gaining increasing ground in the age of David, as Hengstenberg (on Ps. xxiv. 10) and Strauss (on Zeph. ii. 9) maintain; to say nothing of the fact, that there is no historical foundation for such an assumption at all. It is a much more natural supposition, that when the invisible sovereignty* of Jehovah received a visible manifestation in the establishment of the earthly monarchy, the sovereignty of Jehovah, if it did possess and was to possess any reality at all, necessarily claimed to be recognised in its allembracing power and glory, and that in the title " God of (the heavenly) hosts" the fitting expression was formed for the universal government of the God-king of Israel, — a title which not only served as a bulwark against any eclipsing of the invisible sovereignty of God by the earthly monarchy in Israel, but overthrew the vain delusion of the heathen, that the God of Israel was simply the national deity of that particular nation.1

The remark introduced in ver. 2>b, u and there were the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, priests of the Lord" i.e. performing the duties of the priesthood, serves as a preparation for what follows. This reason for the remark sufficiently explains why the sons of Eli only are mentioned here, and not Eli himself, since, although the latter still presided over the sanctuary as high priest, he was too old to perform the duties connected with the offering of sacrifice. The addition made by the LXX., (H\l ko\, is an arbitrary interpolation, occasioned by a misapprehension of the reason for mentioning the sons of Eli. — Vers. 4, 5. a And it came to pass, the day, and he

1 This name of God was therefore held up before the people of the Lord even in their war-songs and paeans of victory, but still more by the prophets, as a banner under which Israel was to fight and to conquer the world. Ezekiel is the only prophet who does not use it, simply because he follows the Pentateuch so strictly in his style. And it is not met with in the book of Job, just because the theocratic constitution of the Israelitish nation is never referred to in the problem of that book.

offered sacrifice " (for, " on which he offered sacrifice "), that he gave to Peninnah and her children portions of the flesh of the sacrifice at the sacrificial meal; but to Hannah he gave D*3X nnx lTJDy " one portion for two persons" i.e. a double portion, because he loved her, but Jehovah had shut up her womb: i.e. he gave it as an expression of his love to her, to indicate by a sign, " thou art as dear to me as if thou hadst born me a child" (O. v. Gerlach). This explanation of the difficult word E)SN, of which very different interpretations have been given, is the one adopted by Tanchum Hieros., and is the only one which can be grammatically sustained, or yields an appropriate sense. The meaning face (fades) is placed bevond all doubt by Gen. iii. 19 and other passages; and the use of '•BXp as a synonym for ^Bp in ch. xxv. 23, also establishes the meaning " person," since B\3Q is used in this sense in 2 Sam. xvii. 11. It is true that there are no other passages that can be adduced to prove that the singular *)X was also used in this sense; but as the word was employed promiscuously in both singular and plural in the derivative sense of anger, there is no reason for denying that the singular may also have been employed in the sense of face (jrpoaooTrov). The combination of D]2K with nnK PUD in the absolute state is supported by many other examples of the same kind (see Ewald, § 287, h). The meaning double has been correctly adopted in the Syriac, whereas Luther follows the tristis of the Vulgate, and renders the word traurig, or sad. But this meaning, which Fr. Bottcher has lately taken under his protection, cannot be philologically sustained either by the expression T?.? vM (Gen. iv. 6), or by Dan. xi. 20, or in any other way. *]X and D^SX do indeed signify anger, but anger and sadness are two very different ideas. But when Bottcher substitutes " angrily or unwillingly " for sadly, the incongruity strikes you at once: "he gave her a portion unwillingly, because he loved her!" For the custom of singling out a person by giving double or even large portions, see the remarks on Gen. xliii. 34. — Ver. 6. "And her adversary (Peninnah) also provoked her with provocation, to irritate her." The D3 is placed before the noun belonging to the verb, to add force to the meaning. Din (Iliphil), to excite, put into (inward) commotion, not exactly to make angry. — Ver. 7. " So did he (Elkanah) from year to year

(namely give to Hannah a double portion at the sacrificial meal), as often as she went up to the house of the Lord. So did she (Peninnah) provoke her (Hannah), so that she wept, and did not eat." The two |3 correspond to one another. Just as Elkanah showed his love to Hannah at every sacrificial festival, so did Peninnah repeat her provocation, the effect of which was that Hannah gave vent to her grief in tears, and did not eat. — Ver. 8. Elkanah sought to comfort her in her grief by the affectionate appeal: " A m I not better to thee (3iD, i.e. dearer) than ten children?" Ten is a round number for a* large number.

Vers. 9-18. Hannalis prayer for a son. — Vers. 9-11. a After the eating at Shiloh, and after the drinking," i.e. after the sacrificial meal was over, Hannah rose up with a troubled heart, to pour out her grief in prayer before God, whilst Eli was sitting before the door-posts of the palace of Jehovah, and vowed this vow: " Lord of Zebaoth, if Thou regardest the distress of Thy maiden, and givest meris seed to Thy maiden, I will give him to the Lord all his life long, and no razor shall come upon his head" The choice of the infinitive absolute nh^ instead of the infinitive construct is analogous to the combination of two nouns, the first of which is defined by a suffix, and the second written absolutely (see e.g. rnDfl VW, Ex. xv. 2; cf. 2 Sam. xxiii. 5, and Ewald, § 339, b). The words from vjtt onwards to B*M mo form two circumstantial clauses inserted in the main sentence, to throw light upon the situation and the further progress of the affair. The tabernacle is called " the palace of Jehovah " (cf. ch. ii. 22), not on account of the magnificence and splendour of the building, but as the dwellingplace of Jehovah of hosts, the God-king of Israel, as in Ps. v. 8, etc. HPiTp is probably a porch, which had been placed before the curtain that formed the entrance into the holy place, when the tabernacle was erected permanently at Shiloh. 5PBJ) rno, troubled in soul (cf. 2 Kings iv. 27). ^nn nby is really subordinate to ^snri, in the sense of " weeping much during her prayer." The depth of her trouble was also manifest in the crowding together of the words in which she poured out the desire of her heart before God: " If Thou wilt look upon the distress of Thine handmaid, and remember and not forget" etc. "Mens seed" (semen virorum^, i.e. a male child. O^JK an laness. Tne vow container:

all thv. would dedicate him to the Lord for the Lt vires as such were not bound to perform; and (2) no razor should come upon his head b be was set apart as

: •:':.i L:r£. I..-. - new condition to the I:>ne which was not necessarily the qualification I Samuel for priestly functions, such as die offerir. j: I sacrifice, can neither I iced from the first point period, when the Lord had called him to be a prophet, and had laced him at the head of the nation, Samuel officiated

.-li. Bat when Hannah prayed much (ye. a long time)

pr saw net bul did not hear her ice. he though* she was drunken, and called out to her:

xx- ai 73 rnra. speaking to her heart. ^7 is not nate idea of a comforting address..-.-.. xxxir. 3. etc — rested spirit. I have mot drunk vine and stroma drink,

."' not «?unf lAt*« handmaid for a worthless woman, for I hare or rson, t^. generally to give a person up to another; here to place him in thought in the position of another, i.e. to take him for another, WW, meditation, inward movement of the heart, sighing. — Ver. 17. Eli then replied: " Go in peace, and the God of Israel give (grant) thy request (Tjnfe for ^VM), which thou hast asked of Him:' This word of the high priest was not a prediction, but a pious wish, which God in His grace most gloriously fulfilled. — Ver. 18. Hannah then went her way, saying, u Let thine handmaid find grace in thine eyes," i.e. let me be honoured with thy favour and thine intercession, and was strengthened and comforted by the word of the high priest, which assured her that her prayer would be heard by God; and she did eat, " and her countenance was no more" sc. troubled and sad, as it had been before. This may be readily supplied from the context, through which the word countenance (D^£) acquires the sense of a troubled countenance, as in Job ix. 27.

Vers. 19—28. SamueTs birth, and dedication to the Lord. — Vers. 19, 20. The next morning Elkanah returned home to Ramah (see at ver. 1) with his two wives, having first of all worshipped before the Lord; after which he knew his wife Hannah, and Jehovah remembered her, i.e. heard her prayer. " In the revolution of the days" i.e. of the period of her conception and pregnancy, Hannah conceived and bare a son, whom she called Samuel; u for (she said) I have ashed him of the Lord." The name bnB0 (Sapovfa, LXX.) is not formed from 10V= DK> and 5>K, name of God (Ges. Thes. p. 1434), but from itt TOf, heard of God, a Deo exauditus, with an elision of the y (see Ewald, § 275, a, Not. 3); and the words a because I have asked him of the Lord" are not an etymological explanation of the name, but an exposition founded upon the facts. Because Hannah had asked him of Jehovah, she gave him the name, " the God-he d," as a memorial of the hearing of her prayer. — Vers. 21, 22. When Elkanah went up again with his family to Shiloh, to present his yearly sacrifice and his vow to the Lord, Hannah said to her husband that she would not go up till she had weaned the boy, and could present him to the Lord, that he might remain there for ever. B^pvi rat, the sacrifice of the days, i.e. which he was accustomed to offer on the days when he went up to the sanctuary; really, therefore, the annual sacrifice. It follows from the expression " and his vow," that Elkanah had also vowed a vow to the Lord, in case the beloved Hannah should have a son. The vow referred to the presentation of a sacrifice. And this explains the combination of rn:~nK with HUP.1 Weaning took place very late among the Israelites. According to 2 Mace. vii. 28, the Hebrew mothers were in the habit of suckling their children for three years. When the weaning had taken place, Hannah would bring her son up to the sanctuary, to appear before the face of the Lord, and remain there for ever, i.e. his whole life long. The Levites generally were only required to perform service at the sanctuary from their twenty-fifth to their fiftieth year (Num. viii. 24, 25); but Samuel was to be presented to the Lord immediately after his weaning had taken place, and to remain at the sanctuary for ever, i.e. to belong entirely to the Lord. To this end he was to receive his training at the sanctuary, that at the very earliest waking up of his spiritual susceptibilities he might receive the impressions of the sacred presence of God. There is no necessity, therefore, to understand the word?E2 (wean) as including what followed the weaning, namely, the training of the child up to

1 The LXX. add to roc; £^«c oevrov the clause x,oc\ 7roc<joc; roc; }>ix.ocroc; Ty; yv); oevrov (" and all the tithes of his land"). This addition is just as arbitrary as the alteration of the singular i*n^ into the plural roc; svx,oc<, oevrov.

The translator overlooked the special reference of the word iT13 to the child desired by Elkanah, and imagined — probably with Deut. xii. 26, 27 in his mind, where vows are ordered to be paid at the sanctuary in connection with slain offerings and sacrificial meals — that when Elkanah made his annual journey to the tabernacle he would discharge all his obligations to God, and consequently would pay his tithes. The genuineness of this additional clause cannot be sustained by an appeal to Josephus {Ant. v. 10, 3), who also has liKoiroc; re eQigov, for Josephus wrote his work upon the basis of the Alexandrian version. This statement of Josephus is only worthy of notice, inasmuch as it proves the incorrectness of the conjecture of Thenius, that the allusion to the tithes was intentionally dropped out of the Hebrew text by copyists, who regarded Samuel's Levitical descent as clearly established by 1 Chron. vi. 7-13 and 19-21. For Josephus (7. c. § 2) expressly describes Elkanah as a Levite, and takes no offence at the offering of tithes attributed to him in the Septuagint, simply because he was well acquainted with the law, and knew tha.t the Levites had to pay to the priests a tenth of the tithes that they received from the other tribes, as a heave-offering of Jehovah (Num. xviii. 26 sqq.; cf. Neh. x. 38). Consequently the presentation of tithe on the part of Elkanah, if it were really well founded in the biblical text, would not furnish any argument against his Levitioal descent.

his thirteenth year (Seb. Schmidt), on the ground that a child of three years old could only have been a burden to Eli: for the word never has this meaning, not even in 1 Kings xi. 20; and, as O. v. Gerlach has observed, his earliest training might have been superintended by one of the women who worshipped at the door of the tabernacle (ch. ii. 22). — Yer. 23. Elkanah expressed his approval of Hannah's decision, and added, u only the Lord establish His word" i.e. fulfil it. By u His word " we are not to understand some direct revelation from God respecting the birth and destination of Samuel, as the Rabbins suppose, but in all probability the word of Eli the high priest to Hannah, " The God of Israel grant thy petition " (ver. 17), which might be regarded by the parents of Samuel after his birth as a promise from Jehovah himself, and therefore might naturally excite the wish and suggest the prayer that the Lord would graciously fulfil the further hopes, which the parents cherished in relation to the son whom they had dedicated to the Lord by a vow. The paraphrase of VllM in the rendering given by the LXX., to i£e\0bv €K rod o-to/luitos gov, is the subjective view of the translator himself, and does not warrant an emendation of the original text. — Vers. 24, 25. As soon as the boy was weaned, Hannah brought him, although still a "W3, i.e. a tender boy, to Shiloh, with a sacrifice of three oxen, an ephah of meal, and a pitcher of wine, and gave him up to Eli when the ox (bullock) had been slain, i.e. offered in sacrifice as a burnt-offering. The striking circumstance that, according to ver. 24, Samuel's parents brought three oxen with them to Shiloh, and yet in ver. 25 the ox ("i?l1) alone is spoken of as being slain (or sacrificed), may be explained very simply on the supposition that in ver. 25 that particular sacrifice is referred to, which was associated with the presentation of the boy, that is to say, the burntoffering by virtue of which the boy was consecrated to the Lord as a spiritual sacrifice for a lifelong service at His sanctuary, whereas the other two oxen served as the yearly festal offering, i.e. the burnt-offerings and thank-offerings which Elkanah presented year by year, and the presentation of which the writer did not think it needful to mention, simply because it followed partly from ver. 3 and partly from the Mosaic law.1 — Vers. 1 The interpretation of T\vhv} D"HB3 by w pwxv r^ieri^ourt (LXX.), upon which Thenius would found an alteration of the text, is proved to be

26-28. When the boy was presented, his mother made herself known to the high priest as the woman who had previously prayed to the Lord at that place (see vers. 11 sqq.), and said, u For this child I prayed; and the Lord hath granted me my request which J asked of Him: therefore I also make him one ashed of the Lord all the days that he liueth; he is asked of the Lord." *33K DJft: I also; et ego vicissim (Cler.). ^**tpn, to let a person ask, to grant his request, to give him what he asks (Ex. xii. 36), signifies here to make a person u asked " fattf). The meaning to lend, which the lexicons give to the word both here and Ex. xii. 36, has no other support than the false rendering of the LXX.,and is altogether unsuitable both in the one and the other. Jehovah had not lent the son to Hannah, but had given him (see ver. 11); still less could a man lend his son to the Lord. The last clause of ver. 28, " and lie worshipped the Lord there" refers to Elkanah, qui in votum Hanno? consenserat, and not to Samuel. On a superficial glance, the plural flQW^, which is found in some Codd., and in the Vulgate, Syriac, and Arabic, appears the more suitable; but when we look more closely at the connection in which the clause stands, we see at once that it does not wind up the foregoing account, but simply introduces the closing act of the transference of Samuel. Consequently the singular is perfectly appropriate; and notwithstanding the fact that the subject is not mentioned, the allusion to Samuel is placed beyond all doubt. When Hannah had given up her son to the high priest, his father Elkanah first of all worshipped before the Lord in the sanctuary, and then Hannah worshipped in the song of praise, which follows in ch. ii. 1-10.

both arbitrary and wrong by the fact that the translators themselves afterwards mention the Qvoia, which Elkanah brought year by year, and the f^oaxo;-, and consequently represent him as offering at least two animals, in direct opposition to the ftovxu t^hti^qvti. This discrepancy cannot be removed by the assertion that in ver. 24 the sacrificial animal intended for the dedication of the boy is the only one mentioned; and the presentation of the regular festal sacrilice is taken for granted, for an ephah of meal would not be the proper quantity to be offered in connection with a single ox, since, according to the law in Num. xv. 8, 9, only three-tenths of an ephah of meal were required when an ox was presented as a burnt-offering or slain offering. The presentation of an ephah of meal presupposes the offering of three oxen, and therefore shows that in ver. 24 the materials are mentioned for all the sacrifices that Elkanah was about to offer.

Chap. ii. 1-10. Hannah's song of praise. — The prayer in which Hannah poured out the feelings of her heart, after the dedication of her son to the Lord, is a song of praise of a prophetic and Messianic character. After giving utterance in the introduction to the rejoicing and exulting of her soul at the salvation that had reached her (ver. 1), she praises the Lord as the only holy One, the only rock of the righteous, who rules on earth with omniscience and righteousness, brings down the proud and lofty, kills and makes alive, maketh poor and maketh rich (vers. 2-8). She then closes with the confident assurance that He will keep His saints, and cast down the rebellious, and will judge the ends of the earth, and exalt the power of His king (vers. 9, 10).

This psalm is the mature fruit of the Spirit of God. The pious woman, who had gone with all the earnest longings of a mother's heart to pray to the Lord God of Israel for a son, that she might consecrate hirn to the lifelong service of the Lord, " discerned in her own individual experience the general laws of the divine economy, and its signification in relation to the whole history of the kingdom of God" (Auberlen, p. 564). The experience which she, bowed down and oppressed as she was, had had of the gracious government of the omniscient and holy covenant God, was a pledge to her of the gracious way in which the nation itself was led by God, and a sign by which she discerned how God not only delivered at all times the poor and wretched who trusted in Him out of their poverty and distress, and set them up, but would also lift up and glorify His whole nation, which was at that time so deeply bowed down and oppressed by its foes. Acquainted as she was with the destination of Israel to be a kingdom, from the promises which God had given to the patriarchs, and filled as she was with the longing that had been awakened in the nation for the realization of these promises, she could see in spirit, and through the inspiration of God, the king whom the Lord was about to give to His people, and through whom He would raise it up to might and dominion.

The refusal of modern critics to admit the genuineness of this song is founded upon an a priori and utter denial of the supernatural saving revelations of God, and upon a consequent inability to discern the prophetic illumination of the pious

Hannah, and a complete misinterpretation of the contents of her song of praise. The "proud and lofty," whom God humbles and casts down, are not the heathen or the national foes of Israel, and the " poor and wretched " whom He exalts and makes rich are not the Israelites as such; but the former are the ungodly, and the latter the pious, in Israel itself. And the description is so well sustained throughout, that it is only by the most arbitrary criticism that it can be interpreted as referring to definite historical events, such as the victory of David over Goliath (Thenius), or a victory of the Israelites over heathen nations (Ewald and others). Still less can any argument be drawn from the words of the song in support of its later origin, or its composition by David or one of the earliest of the kings of Israel. On the contrary, not only is its genuineness supported by the general consideration that the author of these books would never have ascribed a song to Hannah, if he had not found it in the sources he employed; but still more decisively by the circumstance that the songs of praise of Mary and Zechariah, in Luke i. 46 sqq. and §8 sqq., show, through the manner in which they rest upon this ode, in what way it was understood by the pious Israelites of every age, and how, like the pious Hannah, they recognised and praised in their own individual experience the government of the holy God in the midst of His kingdom.

The first verse forms the introduction to the song. Holv joy in the Lord at the blessing which she had received impelled the favoured mother to the praise of God:

Ver. 1. My heart is joyful in the Lord, My horn is exalted in the Lord, My mouth is opened wide over mine enemies: For I rejoice in Thy salvation.

Of the four members of this verse, the first answers to the third, and the second to the fourth. The heart rejoices at the lifting up of her horn, the mouth opens wide to proclaim the salvation before which the enemies would be dumb. " My horn is high " does not mean l I am proud ' (Ewald), but " my power is great in the Lord." The horn is the symbol of strength, and is taken from oxen whose strength is in their horns (yid. Deut. xxxiii. 17; Ps. lxxv. 5, etc.). The power was high or exalted by the salvation which the Lord had manifested to her. To Him all the glory was due, because He had proved himself to be the holy One, and a rock upon which a man could rest his confidence.

Ver. 2. None is holy as the Lord; for there is none beside Thee; And no rock is as our God.

3. Speak ye not much lofty, lofty;

Let (not) insolence go out of thy mouth! For the Lord is an omniscient God, And with Him deeds are weighed.

God manifests himself as holy in the government of the kingdom of His grace by His guidance of the righteous to salvation (see at Ex. xix. 6). But holiness is simply the moral reflection of the glory of the one absolute God. This explains the reason given for His holiness, viz. " there is not one (a God) beside thee" (cf. 2 Sam. xxii. 32). As the holy and only One, God is the rock (vid. Deut. xxxii. 4, 15; Ps. xviii. 3) in which the righteous can always trust. The wicked therefore should tremble before His holiness, and not talk in their pride of the lofty things which they have accomplished or intend to perform, nnba is defined more precisely in the following clause, which is also dependent upon?N by the word pny? as insolent words spoken by the wicked against.the righteous (see Ps. xxxi. 19). For Jehovah hears such words; He is "a God of knowledge" (Deus scientiarum), a God who sees and knows every single thing. The plural niyn has an intensive signification, nippy l32ro to might be rendered " deeds are not weighed, or equal" (cf. Ezek. xviii. 25, 26, xxxiii. 17). But this would only apply to the actions of men; for the acts of God are always just, or weighed. But an assertion respecting the actions of men does not suit the context. Hence this clause is reckoned in the Masora as one of the passages in which K7 stands for S? (see at Ex. xxi. 8). " To Him (with Him) deeds are weighed:" that is to say, the acts of God are weighed, i.e, equal or just. This is the real meaning according to the passages in Ezekiel, and not " the actions of men are weighed by Him" (De Wette, Maurer, Ewald, etc.): for God weighs the minds and hearts of men (Prov. xvi. 2, xxi. 2, xxiv. 12), not their actions. This expression never occurs. The weighed or righteous acts of God are described in vers. 4-8 in great and general traits, as displayed in the government of His kingdom through the marvellous changes which occur in the circumstances connected with the lives of the righteous and the wicked.

And stumbling ones gird themselves with strength;

5. Full ones hire themselves out for bread, And hungry ones cease to be.

Yea, the barren beareth seven (children), And she that is rich in children pines away.

6. The Lord kills and makes alive; Leads down into hell, and leads up.

7. The Lord makes poor and makes rich, Humbles and also exalts.

8. He raises mean ones out of the dust,

He lifts up poor ones out of the dunghill, To set them beside the noble; And He apportions to them the seat of glory: For the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, And He sets the earth upon them.

In ver. 4, the predicate D'wn is construed with the nomen rectum E11"]3?? not with the nomen regens fl^P, because the former is the leading term (vid. Ges. § 148, 1, and Ewald, § 317, d). The thought to be expressed is, not that the bow itself is to be broken, but that the heroes who carry the bow are to be confounded or broken inwardly. " Bows of the heroes" stands for heroes carrying bows. For this reason the verb is to be taken in the sense of confounded, not broken, especially as, apart from Isa. li. 56, Ann is not used to denote the breaking of outward things, but the breaking of men. — Ver. 5. &V2W are the rich and well to do; these would become so poor as to be obliged to hire themselves out for bread, /in, to cease to be what they were before. The use of *W as a conjunction, in the sense of " yea" or " in fact," may be explained as an elliptical expression, signifying " it comes to this, that." " Seven children" are mentioned as the full number of the divine blessing in children (see Ruth iv. 15). " The mother of many children" pines away, because she has lost all her sons, and with them her support in her old age (see Jer. xv. 9). This comes from the Lord, who kills, etc. (cf. Deut. xxxii. 39). The words of ver. 6 are figurative. God hurls down into death and the danger of death, and also rescues therefrom (see Ps. xxx. 3, 4).

The first three clauses of ver. 8 are repeated verbatim in Ps. cxiii. 7, 8. Dust and the dunghill are figures used to denote the deepest degradation and ignominy. The antithesis to this is, sitting upon the chair or throne of glory, the seat occupied bv noble princes. The Lord does all this, for He is the creator and upholder of the world. The pillars (^E, from pw = py) of the earth are the LoroVs; i.e. they were created or set up by Him, and by Him they are sustained. Now as Jehovah, the God of Israel, the Holy One, governs the world with His almighty power, the righteous have nothing to fear. With this thought the last strophe of the song begins:

Ver. 9. The feet of His saints He will keep, And the wicked perish in darkness; For by power no one becomes strong.

10. The Lord — those who contend against Him are confounded. He thunders above him in the heavens; The Lord will judge the ends of the earth, That He may lend might to His king, And exalt the horn of His anointed.

The Lord keeps the feet of the righteous, so that they do not tremble and stumble, i.e. so that the righteous do not fall into adversity and perish therein (vid. Ps. lvi. 14, cxvi. 8, cxxi. 3). But the wicked, who oppress and persecute the righteous, will perish in darkness, i.e. in adversity, when God withdraws the light of His grace, so that they fall into distress and calamity. For no man can be strong through his own power, so as to meet the storms of life. All who fight against the Lord are destroyed. To bring out the antithesis between man and God, " Jehovah" is written absolutely at the commencement of the sentence in ver. 10: u As for Jehovah, those who contend against Him are broken" both inwardly and outwardly (nnn, as in ver. 4). The word vtf, which follows, is not to be changed into BDyy. There is simply a rapid alternation of the numbers, such as we frequently meet with in excited language. " Above him" i.e. above every one who contends against God, He thunders. Thunder is a premonitory sign of the approach of the Lord to judgment. In the thunder, man is made to feel in an alarming way the presence of the omnipotent God. In the words, " The Lord will judge the ends of the earth" i.e. the earth to its utmost extremities, or the whole world, Hannah's prayer rises up to a prophetic glance at the consummation of the kingdom of God. As certainly as the Lord God keeps the righteous at all times, and casts down the wicked, so certainly will He judge the whole world, to hurl down all His foes, and perfect His kingdom which He has founded in Israel. And as every kingdom culminates in its throne, or in the full might and government of a king, so the kingdom of God can only attain its full perfection in the king whom the Lord will give to His people, and endow with His might. The king, or the anointed of the Lord, of whom Hannah prophesies in the spirit, is not one single king of Israel, either David or Christ, but an ideal king, though not a mere personification of the throne about to be established, but the actual king whom Israel received in David and his race, which culminated in the Messiah. The exaltation of the horn of the anointed of Jehovah commenced with the victorious and splendid expansion of the power of David, was repeated with every victory over the enemies of God and His kingdom gained by the successive kings of David's house, goes on in the advancing spread of the kingdom of Christ, and will eventually attain to its eternal consummation in the judgment of the last day, through which all the energies of Christ will be made His footstool.

Samuel's service before eli. ungodliness of ell's sons. denunciation of judgment upon eli and his house.

Vers. 11-17. Samuel the servant of the Lord under Eli. Ungodliness of the sons of Eli. — Ver. 11 forms the transition to what follows. After Hannah's psalm of thanksgiving, Elkanah went back with his family to his home at Iiamah, and the boy (Samuel) was serving, i.e. ministered to the Lord, in the presence of Eli the priest. The fact that nothing is said about Elkanah's wives going with him, does not warrant the interpretation given by Thenius, that Elkanah went home alone. It was taken for granted that his wives went with him, according to ch. i. 21 (" all his house"), njrp-ns my, which signifies literally, both here and in ch. iii. 1, to serve the Lord, and which is used interchangeably with '" \33~nx rne> (ver. 18), to serve in the presence of the Lord, is used to denote the duties performed both by priests and Levites in connection with the worship of God, in which Samuel took part, as he grew up, under the superintendence of Eli and according to his instructions.— Ver. 12. But Eli's sons, Hophni and Phinehas (ver. 34), were tyl?! V.?, worthless fellows, and knew not the Lord, sc. as He should be known, i.e. did not fear Him, or trouble themselves about Him (vid. Job xviii. 21; Hos. viii. 2, xiii. 4). — Vers. 13, 14. " And the right of the priests toivards the people was (the following)." Mishpat signifies the right which they had usurped to themselves in relation to the people. " If any one brought a sacrifice (rQT rat B*&r?3 is placed first, and construed absolutely: ' as for every one who brought a slainoffering'), the priest's servant {lit. young man) came while the flesh was boiling, with a three-pronged fork in his hand, and thrust into the kettle, or pot, or bowl, or saucepan. A 11 that the fork brought up the priest took. This they did to all the Israelites who came thither to Shiloh." — Vers. 15, 16. They did still worse. " Even before the fat was consumed," i.e. before the fat portions of the sacrifice had been placed in the altar-fire for the Lord (Lev. hi. 3-5), the priest's servant came and demanded flesh of the person sacrificing, to be roasted for the priest; " for he will not take boiled flesh of thee, but only *n, raw, i.e. fresh meat." And if the person sacrificing replied, " They will burn the fat directly (lit. c at this time,' as in Gen. xxv. 31, 1 Kings xxii. 5), then take for thyself, as thy soul desireth" he said, " No (ii> for t6), but thou shalt give now; if not, I take by force" These abuses were practised by the priests in connection with the thank-offerings, with which a sacrificial meal was associated. Of these offerings, the portion which legally fell to the priest as his share was the heave-leg and wave-breast. And this he was to receive after the fat portions of the sacrifice had been burned upon the altar (see Lev. viu 30-34). To take the flesh of the sacrificial animal and roast it before this offering had been made, was a crime which was equivalent to a robbery of God, and is therefore referred to here with the emphatic particle D3, as being the worst crime that the sons of Eli committed. Moreover, the priests could not claim any of the flesh which the offerer of the sacrifice boiled for the sacrificial meal, after burning the fat portions upon the altar and giving up the portions which belonged to them, to say nothing of their taking it forcibly out of the pots while it was being boiled. — Ver. 17. Such conduct as this on the part of the young men (the priests' servants), was a great sin in the sight of the Lord, as they thereby brought the sacrifice of the Lord into contempt. Y^, causative, to bring into contempt, furnish occasion for blaspheming (as in 2 Sam. xii. 14). " The robbery which they committed was a small sin in comparison with the contempt of the sacrifices themselves, which they were the means of spreading among the people" (O. v. Gerlach). Minchah does not refer here to the meatoffering as the accompaniment to the slain-offe rings, but to the sacrificial offering generally, as a gift presented for the Lord.

Vers. 18-21. SamueVs service before the Lord. — Ver. 18. Samuel served as a boy before the Lord by the side of the worthless sons of Eli, girt with an ephod of white material (13, see at Ex. xxviii. 42). The ephod was a shoulder-dress, no doubt resembling the high priest's in shape (see Ex. xxviii. 6 sqq.), but altogether different in the material of which it was made, viz. simple white cloth, like the other articles of clothing that were worn by the priests. At that time, according to ch. xxii. 18, all the priests wore clothing of this kind; and, according to 2 Sam. vi. 14, David did the same on the occasion of a religious festival. Samuel received a dress of this kind even when a boy, because he was set apart to a lifelong service before the Lord. "Mn is the technical expression for putting on the ephod, because the two pieces of which it was composed were girt round the body with a girdle. — Ver. 19. The small ^TO also (Angl. "coat"), which Samuel's mother made and brought him every year, when she came with her husband to Shiloh to the yearly sacrifice, was probably a coat resembling the me'il of the high priest (Ex. xxviii. 31 sqq.), 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. — Ver. 20. The priestly clothing of the youthful Samuel was in harmony with the spiritual relation in which he stood to the high priest and to Jehovah. Eli blessed his parents for having given up the boy to the Lord, and expressed this wish to the father: u The Lord lend thee seed of this woman in the place of the one asked for (r6x#n)? whom they (one) ashed for from the Lord." The striking use of the third pers. masc.?fcjK? instead of the second singular or plural may be accounted for on the supposition that it is an indefinite form of speech, which the writer chose because, although it was Hannah who prayed to the Lord for Samuel in the sight of Eli, yet Eli might assume that the father, Elkanah, had shared the wishes of his pious wife. The apparent harshness disappears at once if we substitute the passive; whereas in Hebrew active constructions were always preferred to passive, wherever it was possible to employ them (Ewald, § 294, b). The singular suffix attached to toipo? after the plural wn may be explained on the simple ground, that a dwelling-place is determined by the husband, or master of the house. — Ver. 21. The particle s3, "for" (Jehovah visited), does not mean if, as, or when, nor is it to be regarded as a copyist's error. It is only necessary to supply the thought contained in the words, " Eli blessed Elkanah" viz. that Eli's blessing was not an empty fruitless wish; and to understand the passage in some such way as this: Eli's word was fulfilled, or still more simply, they went to their home blessed; for Jehovah visited Hannah, blessed her with " three sons and two daughters; but the boy Samuel grew up with the Lord" i.e. near to Him (at the sanctuary), and under His protection and blessing.

Vers. 22-26. Etis treatment of the sins of his sons. — Yer. 22. The aged Eli reproved his sons with solemn warnings on account of their sins; but without his warnings being listened to. From the reproof itself we learn, that beside the sin noticed in vers. 12-17, they also committed the crime of lying with the women who served at the tabernacle (see at Ex. xxxviii. 8), and thus profaned the sanctuary with whoredom. But Eli, with the infirmities of his old age, did nothing further to prevent these abominations than to say to his sons, " Why do ye according to the sayings which I hear, sayings about you which are evil, of this whole people." TO"] DD'HTrnx is inserted to make the meaning clearer, and 'iw3 riNO is dependent upon ypb\ " This whole people" signifies all the people that came to Shiloh, and heard and saw the wicked doings there. — Ver. 24. "03?K, " not, my sons" i.e. do not such things, "for the report which I hear is not good; they make the people of Jehovah to transgress." E^yD is written without the pronoun EflK in an indefinite construction, like CnpC'p in ch. vi. 3 (Maurer). Ewald's rendering as given by Thenius, " The report which I hear the people of God bring," is just as inadmissible as the one proposed by Bottcher, " The report which, as I hear, the people of God are spreading." The assertion made by Thenius, that "^n, without any further definition, cannot mean to cause to sin or transgress, is correct enough no doubt; but it does not prove that this meaning is inadmissible in the passage before us, since the further definition is actually to be found in the context. — Ver. 25. u If man sins against man, God judges him; but if a man si?is against Jehovah, who can interpose ivith entreaty for him?19 In the use of W3 and v/PEn'1 there is a paronomasia which cannot be reproduced in our language. s?B signifies to decide or pass sentence (Gen. xlviii. 11), then to arbitrate, to settle a dispute as arbitrator (Ezek. xvi. 52, Ps. cvi. 30), and in the Hithpael to act as mediator, hence to entreat. And these meanings are applicable here. In the case of one man's sin against another, God settles the dispute as arbitrator through the proper authorities; whereas, when a man sins against God, no one can interpose as arbitrator. Such a sin cannot be disposed of by intercession. But Eli's sons did not listen to this admonition, which was designed to reform daring sinners with mild words and representations; "/or," adds the historian, "Jehovah was resolved to slay them" The father's reproof made no impression upon them, because they were already given up to the judgment of hardening. (On hardening as a divine sentence, see the discussions at Ex. iv. 21.) — Ver. 26. The youthful Samuel, on the other hand, continued to grow in stature, and in favour with God and man (see Lev. ii. 52).

Vers. 27-36. Announcement of the judgment upon Eli and his house. — Ver. 27. Before the Lord interposed in judgment, He sent a prophet (a " man of God" as in Judg. xiii. 6) to the aged Eli, to announce as a warning for all ages the judgment which was about to fall upon the worthless priests of his house. In order to arouse Eli's own conscience, he had pointed out to him, on the one hand, the grace manifested in the choice of his father's house, i.e. the house of Aaron, to keep His sanctuary (vers. 276 and 28), and, on the other hand, the desecration of the sanctuary by the wickedness of his sons (ver. 29). Then follows the sentence: The choice of the family of Aaron still stood fast, but the deepest disgrace would come upon the despisers of the Lord (ver. 30): the strength of his house would be broken; all the members of his house were to die early deaths. They were not, however, to be removed entirely from service at the altar, but to their sorrow were to survive the fall of the sanctuary (vers. 31-34). But the Lord would raise up a faithful priest, and cause him to walk before His anointed, and from him all that were left of the house of Eli would be obliged to beg their bread (vers. 35, 36). To arrive at the true interpretation of this announcement of punishment, we must picture to ourselves the historical circumstances that come into consideration here. Eli the high priest was a descendant of Ithamar, the younger son of Aaron, as we may see from the fact that his great-grandson Ahimelech was " of the sons of Ithamar" (I Chron. xxiv. 3). In perfect agreement with this, Josephus (Ant. v. 11, 5) relates, that after the high priest Ozi of the family of Eleazar, Eli of the family of Ithamar received the high-priesthood. The circumstances which led to the transfer of this honour from the line of Eleazar to that of Ithamar are unknown. We cannot imagine it to have been occasioned by an extinction of the line of Eleazar, for the simple reason that, in the time of David, Zadok the descendant of Eleazar is spoken of as high priest along with Abiathar and Ahimelech, the descendants of Eli (2 Sam. viii. 17, xx. 25). After the deposition of Abiathar he was reinstated by Solomon as sole high priest (1 Kings ii. 27), and the dignity was transmitted to his descendants. This fact also overthrows the conjecture of Clericus, that the transfer of the high-priesthood to Eli took place by the command of God on account of the grievous sins of the high priests of the line of Eleazar; for in that case Zadok would not have received this office again in connection with Abiathar. We have, no doubt, to search for the true reason in the circumstances of the times of the later judges, namely in the fact that at the death of the last high priest of the family of Eleazar before the time of Eli, the remaining son was not equal to the occasion, either because he was still an infant, or at any rate because he was too young and inexperienced, so that he could not enter upon the office, and Eli, who was probably related by marriage to the high priest's family, and was no doubt a vigorous man, was compelled to take the oversight of the congregation; and, together with the supreme administration of the affairs of the nation as judge, received the post of high priest as well, and filled it till the time of his death, simply because in those troublous times there was not one of the descendants of Eleazar who was able to fill the supreme office of judge, which was combined with that of high priest. For we cannot possibly think of an unjust usurpation of the office of high priest on the part of Eli, since the very judgment denounced against him and his house presupposes that he had entered upon the office in a just and upright way, and that the wickedness of his sons was all that was brought against him. For a considerable time after the death of Eli the high-priesthood lost almost all its significance. All Israel turned to Samuel, whom the Lord established as His prophet by means of revelations, and whom He also chose as the deliverer of His people. The tabernacle at Shiloh, which ceased to be the scene of the gracious presence of God after the loss of the ark, was probably presided over first of all after Eli's death by his grandson Ahitub, the son of Phinehas, as his successor in the high-priesthood. He was followed in the time of Saul by his son Ahijah or Ahimelech, who gave David the shew-bread to eat at Nob, to which the tabernacle had been removed in the meantime, and was put to death by Saul in consequence, along with all the priests who were found there. His son Abiathar, however, escaped the massacre, and fled to David (ch. xxii. 9-20, xxiii. 6). In the reign of David he is mentioned as high priest along with Zadok; but he was afterwards deposed by Solomon (2 Sam. xv. 24, xvii. 15, xix. 12, xx. 25; 1 Kings ii. 27).

Different interpretations have been given of these verses. The majority of commentators understand them as signifying that the loss of the high-priesthood is here foretold to Eli, and also the institution of Zadok in the office. But such a view is too contracted, and does not exhaust the meaning of the words. The very introduction to the prophet's words points to something greater than this: " Thus saith the Lord, Did I reveal myself to thy fathers house, iclien they were in Egypt at the house of Pharaoh?" The n interrogative is not used for W[| (iionne), but is emphatic, as in Jer. xxxi. 20. The question is an appeal to Eli's conscience, which he cannot deny, but is obliged to confirm. By Eli's father's house we are not to understand Itharaar and his family, but Aaron, from whom Eli was descended through Ithamar. God revealed himself to the tribe-father of Eli by appointing Aaron to be the spokesman of Moses before Pharaoh (Ex. iv. 14 sqq. and 27), and still more by calling Aaron to the priesthood, for which the way was prepared by the fact that, from the very beginning, God made use of Aaron, in company with Moses, to carry out His purpose of delivering Israel out of Egypt, and entrusted Moses and Aaron with the arrangements for the celebration of the passover (Ex. xii. 1, 43). This occurred when they, the fathers of Eli, Aaron and his sons, were still in Egypt at the house of Pharaoh, i.e. still under Pharaoh's rule. — Ver. 28. " And did I choose him out of all the tribes for a priest to myself" The interrogative particle is not to be repeated before "tiniM, but the construction becomes affirmative with the inf. abs. instead of the perfect. "Him" refers back to " thy father" in ver. 27, and signifies Aaron. The expression u for a priest" is still further defined by the clauses which follow: 'B?V ™?y?, " to ascend upon mine altar" i.e. to approach my altar of burntoffering and perform the sacrificial worship; " to kindle incense" i.e. to perform the service in the holy place, the principal feature in which was the daily kindling of the incense, which is mentioned instar omnium; " to wear the ephod before me" i.e. to perform the service in the holy of holies, which the high priest could only enter when wearing the ephod to represent Israel before the Lord (Ex. xxviii. 12). " And have given to thy father s house all the firings of the children of Israel" (see at Lev. i. 9). These words are to be understood, according to Deut. xviii. 1, as signifying that the Lord had given to the house of Aaron, i.e. to the priesthood, the sacrifices of Jehovah to eat in the place of any inheritance in the land, according to the portions appointed in the sacrificial law in Lev. vi. vii., and Num. xviii. — Ver. 29. With such distinction conferred upon the priesthood, and such careful provision made for it, the conduct of the priests under Eli was an inexcusable crime. " Why do ye tread with your feet my slain-offerings and meatofferings, which I have commanded in the dwelling-place? " Slain-offering and meat-offering are general expressions embracing all the altar-sacrifices. |W is an accusative (" in the dwelling"), like N2, in the house. " The dwelling" is the tabernacle. This reproof applied to the priests generally, including

Eli, who had not vigorously resisted these abuses. The words which follow, " and thou honourest thy sons more than me" relate to Eli himself, and any other high priest who like Eli should tolerate the abuses of the priests. " To fatten yourselves with the first of every sacrificial gift of Israel, of my peopled "•sy? serves as a periphrasis for the genitive, and is chosen for the purpose of giving greater prominence to the idea of *®V (my people). JW"*T!> the first of every sacrificial gift (minchah, as in ver. 17), which Israel offered as the nation of Jehovah, ought to have been given up to its God in the altar-fire because it was the best; whereas, according to vers. 15, 16, the sons of Eli took away the best for themselves. — Ver. 30. For this reason, the saying of the Lord, tt Thy house (i.e. the family of Eli) and thy father s house (Eli's relations in the other lines, i.e. the whole priesthood) shall walk before me for ever" (Num. xxv. 13), should henceforth run thus: u This be far from me; but them that honour me I will honour, and they that despise me shall be despised." The first declaration of the Lord is not to be referred to Eli particularly, as it is by C. a Lapide and others, and understood as signifying that the high-priesthood was thereby transferred from the family of Eleazar to that of Ithamar, and promised to Eli for his descendants for all time. This is decidedly at variance with the fact, that although " walking before the Lord" is not a general expression denoting a pious walk with God, as in Gen. xvii. 1, but refers to the service of the priests at the sanctuary as walking before the face of God, yet it cannot possibly be specially and exclusively restricted to the right of entering the most holy place, which was the prerogative of the high priest alone. These words of the Lord, therefore, applied to the whole priesthood, or the whole house of Aaron, to which the priesthood had been promised, " for a perpetual statute" (Ex. xxix. 9). This promise was afterwards renewed to Phinehas especially, on account of the zeal which he displayed for the honour of Jehovah in connection with the idolatry of the people at Shittim (Num. xxv. 13). But even this renewed promise only secured to him an eternal priesthood as a covenant of peace with the Lord, and not specially the high-priesthood, although that was included as the culminating point of the priesthood. Consequently it was not abrogated by the temporary transfer of the high-priesthood from the descendants of Phinehas to the priestly line of Ithamar, because even then they still retained the priesthood. By the expression " be it far from me" sc. to permit this to take place, God does not revoke His previous promise, but simply denounces a false trust therein as irreconcilable with His holiness. That promise would only be fulfilled so far as the priests themselves honoured the Lord in their office, whilst despisers of God, who dishonoured Him by sin and presumptuous wickedness, would be themselves despised.

This contempt would speedily come upon the house of Eli. — Ver. 31. " Behold, days come" — a formula with which prophets were accustomed to announce future events (see 2 Kings xx. 17; Isa. xxxix. 6; Amos iv. 2, viii. 11, ix. 13; Jer. vii. 32, etc.), — " then will I cut off thine arm, and the arm of thy father s house, that there shall be no old man in thine house" To cut off the arm means to destroy the strength either of a man or of a family (see Job xxii. 9; Ps. xxxvii. 17). The strength of a family, however, consists in the vital energy of its members, and shows itself in the fact that they reach a good old age, and do not pine away early and die. This strength was to vanish in Eli's house; no one would ever again preserve his life to old age. — Yer. 32. " And thou wilt see oppression of the iwelling in all that He has shown of good to Israel" The meaning of these words, which have been explained in very different ways, appears to be the following: In all the benefits which the Lord would confer upon His people, Eli would see only distress for the dwelling of God, inasmuch as the tabernacle would fall more and more into decay. In the person of Eli, the high priest at that time, the high priest generally is addressed as the custodian of the sanctuary; so that what is said is not to be limited to him personally, but applies to all the high priests of his house. |to is not Eli's dwelling-place, but the dwelling-place of God, i.e. the tabernacle, as in ver. 29, and is a genitive dependent upon "W. y^\}, in the sense of benefiting a person, doing him good, is construed with the accusative of the person, as in Deut. xxviii. 63, viii. 16, xxx. 5. The subject to the verb ^EPJ. is Jehovah, and is not expressly mentioned, simply because it is so clearly implied in the words themselves. This threat began to be fulfilled even in Eli's own days. The distress or tribulation for the tabernacle began with the capture of the ark by the Philistines (ch. iv. 11), and continued during the time that the Lord was sending help and deliverance to His people through the medium of Samuel, in their spiritual and physical oppression. The ark of the covenant— the heart of the sanctuary — was not restored to the tabernacle in the time of Samuel; and the tabernacle itself was removed from Shiloh to Nob, probably in the time of war; and when Saul had had all the priests put to death (ch. xxi. 2, xxii. 11 sqq.), it was removed to Gibeon, which necessarily caused it to fall more and more into neglect. Among the different explanations, the rendering given by Aquila (koI iTTLpXeylrei (? eVtySXe-v/rT;?) avTiQtfKov tcaTOUcr)TT)piov) has met with the greatest approval, and has been followed by Jerome (et videbis cemulum tuum), Luther, and many others, including De Wette. According to this rendering, the words are either supposed to refer to the attitude of Samuel towards Eli, or to the deposition of Abiathar, and the institution of Zadok by Solomon in his place (1 Kings ii. 27). But ">V does not mean the antagonist or rival, but simply the oppressor or enemy; and Samuel was not an enemy of Eli any more than Zadok was of Abiathar. Moreover, if this be adopted as the rendering of ">¥, it is impossible to find any suitable meaning for the following clause. In the second half of the verse the threat of ver. 31 is repeated with still greater emphasis. D^*H/3, all the time, i.e. so long as thine house shall exist. — Ver. 33. " And I will not cut off every one to thee from mine altar, that thine eyes may languish, and thy soul consume away; and all the increase of thine house shall die as men." The two leading clauses of this verse correspond to the two principal thoughts of the previous verse, which are hereby more precisely defined and explained. Eli was to see the distress of the sanctuary; for to him, i.e. of his family, there would always be some one serving at the altar of God, that he might look upon the decay with his eyes, and pine away with grief in consequence. t^K signifies every one, or any one, and is not to be restricted, as Thenius supposes, to Ahitub, the son of Phinehas, the brother of Ichabod; for it cannot be shown from ch. xiv. 3 and xxii. 20, that he was the only one that was left of the house of Eli. And secondly, there was to be no old man, no one advanced in life, in his house; but all the increase of the house was to die in the full