Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

bloom of manhood. E^KOK, in contrast with |PJ, is used to denote men in the prime of life.

Ver. 34. " And let this be the sign to thee, what shall happen to (come upon) thy two sons, Hophni and Phinehas; in one day they shall both die." For the fulfilment of this, see ch. iv. 11. This occurrence, which Eli lived to see, but did not long survive (ch. iv. 17 sqq.), was to be the sign to him that the predicted punishment would be carried out in its fullest extent. — Ver. 35. But the priesthood itself was not to fall with the fall of Eli's house and priesthood; on the contrary, the Lord would raise up for himself a tried priest, who would act according to His heart. u And I will build for him a lasting house, and he will walk before mine anointed for ever." — Ver. 36. Whoever, on the other hand, should still remain of Eli's house, would come " bowing before him (to get) a silver penny and a slice of bread" and would say, u Put me, I pray, in one of the priests offices, that I may get a piece of bread to eat." n"j^, that which is collected, signifies some small coin, of which a collection was made by begging single coins. Commentators are divided in their opinions as to the historical allusions contained in this prophecy. By the " tried priest," Ephraem Syrus understood both the prophet Samuel and the priest Zadok. "As for the facts themselves," he says, " it is evident that, when Eli died, Samuel succeeded him in the government, and that Zadok received the high-priesthood when it was taken from his family." Since his time, most of the commentators, including Theodoret and the Rabbins, have decided in favour of Zadok. Augustine, however, and in modern times Thenius and O. v. Gerlach, give the preference to Samuel. The fathers and earlier theologians also regarded Samuel and Zadok as the type of Christ, and supposed the passage to contain a prediction of the abrogation of the Aaronic priesthood by Jesus Christ.1 This higher

1 Theodoret, qu. vii. in 1 Reg. Ovxovv i) 7rp6ppricrtc Kvpiaq ph uppcornt t£ aaTypi Xpicrqi. ».ocroi Ss iaropic&v ra "Sochovx, og Ik tov 'R'Kioi^ocp xocrxyau to ywos, tvjv cLp-fctipaovvYiv <W rov lo'hof&avog ihk^xro. Augustine says (_De civit. Dei xvii. 5, 2): " Although Samuel was not of a different tribe from the one which had been appointed by the Lord to serve at the altar, he was not of the sons of Aaron, whose descendants had been set apart as priests; and thus the change is shadowed forth, which was afterwards to be introduced through Jesus Christ." And again, § 3: " What follows (ver. 35) refers to

reference of the words is in any case to be retained; for the rabbinical interpretation, by which Grotius, Clericus, and others abide, — namely, that the transfer of the high-priesthood from the descendants of Eli to Zadok, the descendant of Eleazar, is all that is predicted, and that the prophecy was entirely fulfilled when Abiathar was deposed by Solomon (1 Kings ii. 27), — is not in accordance with the words of the text. On the other hand, Theodoret and Augustine both clearly saw that the words of Jehovah, "I revealed myself to thy father's house in Egypt," and, " Thy house shall walk before me for ever," do not apply to Itliamar, but to Aaron. "Which of his fathers," says Augustine, "was in that Egyptian bondage, from which they were liberated when he was chosen to the priesthood, excepting Aaron? It is with reference to his posterity, therefore, that it is here affirmed that they would not be priests for ever; and this we see already fulfilled." The only thing that appears untenable is the manner in which the fathers combine this historical reference to Eli and Samuel, or Zadok, with the Messianic interpretation, viz. either by referring vers. 31-34 to Eli and his house, and then regarding the sentence pronounced upon Eli as simply a type of the Messianic fulfilment, or by admitting the Messianic allusion simply as an allegory. The true interpretation may be obtained from a correct insight into the relation in which the prophecy itself stands to its fulfilment. Just as, in the person of Eli and his sons, the threat announces deep degradation and even destruction to all the priests of the house of Aaron who should walk in the footsteps of the sons of Eli, and the death of the two sons of Eli in one day was to be merely a sign that the threatened punishment would be completely fulfilled upon the ungodly priests; so, on the other hand, the promise of the raising up of the tried priest, for whom God would build a lasting house, also refers to all the priests whom

that priest, whose figure was borne by Samuel when succeeding to Eli.'1

So again in the Berleburger Bible, to the words, " I will raise me up a faithful priest," this note is added: u Zadok, of the family of Phinehas

and Eleazar, whom king Solomon, as the anointed of God, appointed high priest by his ordinance, setting aside the house of Eli (1 Kings ii. 35; 1 Chron. xxix. 22). At the same time, just as in the person of Solomon the Spirit of prophecy pointed to the true Solomon and Anointed One, so in this priest did He also point to Jesus Christ the great High Priest."

the Lord would raise up as faithful servants of His altar, and only receives its complete and final fulfilment in Christ, the true and eternal High Priest. But if we endeavour to determine more precisely from the history itself, which of the Old Testament priests are included, we must not exclude either Samuel or Zadok, but must certainly affirm that the prophecy was partially fulfilled in both. Samuel", as the prophet of the Lord, was placed at the head of the nation after the death of Eli; so that he not only stepped into Eli's place as judge, but stood forth as priest before the Lord and the nation, and " had the important and sacred duty to perform of going before the anointed, the king, whom Israel was to receive through him; whereas for a long time the Aaronic priesthood fell into such contempt, that, during the general decline of the worship of God, it was obliged to go begging for honour and support, and became dependent upon the new order of things that was introduced by Samuel " (O. v. Gerlach). Moreover, Samuel acquired a strong house in the numerous posterity that was given to him by God. The grandson of Samuel was Heman, u the king's seer in the wTords of God," who was placed by David over the choir at the house of God, and had fourteen sons and three daughters (1 Chron. vi. 33, xxv. 4, 5). But the very fact that these descendants of Samuel did not follow their father in the priesthood, shows very clearly that a lasting house was not built to Samuel as a tried priest through them, and therefore that we have to seek for the further historical fulfilment of this promise in the priesthood of Zadok. As the word of the Lord concerning the house of Eli, even if it did not find its only fulfilment in the deposition of Abiathar (1 Kings ii. 27), was at any rate partially fulfilled in that deposition; so the promise concerning the tried priest to be raised up received a new fulfilment in the fact that Zadok thereby became the sole high priest, and transmitted the office to his descendants, though this was neither its last nor its highest fulfilment. This final fulfilment is hinted at in the vision of the new temple, as seen by the prophet Ezekiel, in connection with which the sons of Zadok are named as the priests, who, because they had not fallen away with the children of Israel, were to draw near to the Lord, and perform His service in the new organization of the kingdom of God as set forth in that vision

(Ezek. xl. 46, xliii. 19, xliv. 15, xlviii. 11). This fulfilment is effected in connection with Christ and His kingdom. Consequently, the anointed of the Lord, before whom the tried priest would walk for ever, is not Solomon, but rather David, and the Son of David, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom.

Vers. 1-9. At the time when Samuel served the Lord before Eli, both as a boy and as a young man (ch. ii. 11, 21, 26), the word of the Lord had become dear, i.e. rare, in Israel, and "prophecy was not spread." 1T\P?9 from p_B, to spread out strongly, to break through copiously (cf. Prov. iii. 10). The " viord of the Lord" is the word of God announced by prophets: the " vision" u visio prophetica." It is true that Jehovah had promised His people, that He would send prophets, who should make known His will and purpose at all times (Deut. xviii. 15 sqq.; cf. Num. xxiii. 23); but as a revelation from God presupposed susceptibility on the part of men, the unbelief and disobedience of the people might restrain the fulfilment of this and all similar promises, and God might even withdraw His word to punish the idolatrous nation. Such a time as this, when revelations from God were universally rare, had now arisen under Eli, in whose days, as the conduct of his sons sufficiently proves, the priesthood had fallen into very deep corruption. — Vers. 2-4. The word of the Lord was then issued for the first time to Samuel. Vers. 2-4 form one period. The clause, " it came to pass at that time " (ver. 2a)y is continued in ver. 4a, " that the Lord called" etc. The intervening clauses from yjn to DwjJ P"1^ are circumstantial clauses, intended to throw light upon the situation. The clause, " Eli icas laid down in his place" etc., may be connected logically with "at that time" by the insertion of "when" (as in the English version: Tr.). The dimness of Eli's eyes is mentioned, to explain Samuel's behaviour, as afterwards described. Under these circumstances, for example, when Samuel heard his own name called out in sleep, he might easily suppose that Eli was calling him to render some assistance. The "lamp of God" is the light of the candlestick in the tabernacle, the seven lamps of which were put up and lighted every evening, and burned through the night till all the oil was consumed (see Ex. xxx. 8, Lev. xxiv. 2, 2 Chron. xiii. 11, and the explanation given at Ex. xxvii. 21). The statement that this light was not yet extinguished, is equivalent to " before the morning dawn." " And Samuel was lying (sleeping) in the temple of Jehovah, ivhere the ark of God ivas." /3*n does not mean the holy place, as distinguished from the " most holy," as in 1 Kings vi. 5, vii. 50,1 but the whole tabernacle, the tent with its court, as the palace of the God-king, as in ch. i. 9, Ps. xi. 4. Samuel neither slept in the holy place by the side of the candlestick and table of shew-bread, nor in the most holy place in front of the ark of the covenant, but in the court, where cells were built for the priests and Levites to live in when serving at the sanctuary (see at ver. 15). The ark of God, i.e. the ark of the covenant, is mentioned as the throne of the divine presence, from which the call to Samuel proceeded. — Vers. 5-9. As soon as Samuel heard his name called out, he hastened to Eli to receive his commands. But Eli bade him lie down again, as he had not called him. At first, no doubt, he thought the call which Samuel had heard was nothing more than a false impression of the youth, who had been fast asleep. But the same thing was repeated a second and a third time; for, as the historian explains in ver. 6, " Samuel had not yet knoivn Jehovah, and (for) the word of Jehovah was not yet revealed to him." (The perfect JJT after D")D, though very rare, is fully supported by Ps. xc. 2 and Prov. viii. 25, and therefore is not to be altered into T}*, as Dietrich and Bottcher propose.) He therefore imagined again that Eli had called him. But when he came to Eli after the third call, Eli perceived that the Lord was calling, and directed Samuel, if the call were repeated, to answer, " Speak, Lord; for Thy servant heareth"

Vers. 10-18. When Samuel had lain down again, " Jehovah came and stood," sc. before Samuel. These words show that the revelation of God was an objectively real affair, and not a mere dream of Samuel's. " And he called to him as at

1 The Masoretes have taken "OTl in this sense, and therefore have placed the Athnach under 23B>, to separate 23b> 780015*1 from 'w ^3T!3, and thus to guard against the conclusion, which might be drawn from this view of zDTl, that Samuel slept in the holy place.

other times" (see Num. xxiv. 1; Judg. xvi. 20, etc.). When Samuel replied in accordance with Eli's instructions, the Lord announced to him that lie would carry out the judgment that had been threatened against the house of Eli (vers. 11-14). " Behold, I do a thing in Israel, at which both the ears of every one that heareth it shall tingle" sc. with horror (see 2 Kings xxi. 12; Jer. xix. 3; Hab. i. 5). — Ver. 12. " On that day I will ■perform against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house (see ch. ii. 30 sqq.), beginning and finishing it" i.e. completely. "\jH "1BW"TM ^?[}, to set up the word spoken, i.e. to carry it out, or accomplish it. In ver. 13 this word is communicated to Samuel, so far as its essential contents are concerned. God would judge " the house of Eli for ever because of the iniquity, that he knew his sons were preparing a curse for themselves and did not prevent them." To judge on account of a crime, is the same as to punish it. U7\V~^V, i.e. without the punishment being ever stopped or removed. on? Ey?i?p, cursing themselves, i.e. bringing a curse upon themselves. " Therefore I have sworn to the house of Eli, that the iniquity of the house of Eli shall not (EN, a particle used in an oath, equivalent to assuredly not) be expiated by slain-offerings and meat-offerings (through any kind of sacrifice) for ever? The oath makes the sentence irrevocable. (On the facts themselves, see the commentary on ch. ii. 27-36.) — Ver. 15. Samuel then slept till the morning; and when he opened the doors of the house of Jehovah, he was afraid to tell Eli of the revelation which he had received. Opening the doors of the house of God appears to have been part of Samuel's duty. We have not to think of doors opening into the holy place, however, but of doors leading into the court. Originally, when the tabernacle was simply a tent, travelling with the people from place to place, it had only curtains at the entrance to the holy place and court. But when Israel had become possessed of fixed houses in the land of Canaan, and the dwelling-place of God was permanently erected at Shiloh, instead of the tents that were pitched for the priests and Levites, who encamped round about during the journey through the desert, there were erected fixed houses, which were built against or inside the court, and not only served as dwellingplaces for the priests and Levites who were officiating, but were also used for the reception and custody of the gifts that were brought as offerings to the sanctuary. These buildings in all probability supplanted entirely the original tent-like enclosure around the court; so that instead of the curtains at the entrance, there were folding doors, which were shut in the evening and opened again in the morning. It is true that nothing is said about the erection of these buildings in our historical books, but the fact itself is not to be denied on that account. In the case of Solomon's temple, notwithstanding the elaborate description that has been given of it, there is nothing said about the arrangement or erection of the buildings in the court; and yet here and there, principally in Jeremiah, the existence of such buildings is evidently assumed. '"^"ip, visio, a sight or vision. This expression is applied to the word of God which came to Samuel, because it was revealed to him through the medium of an inward sight or intuition. — Vers. 16-18. When Samuel was called by Eli and asked concerning the divine revelation that he had received, he told him all the words, without concealing anything; whereupon Eli bowed in quiet resignation to the purpose of God: u It is the Lord; let Him do what seemeth Him good" Samuel's communication, however, simply confirmed to the aged Eli what God had already made known to him through a prophet. But his reply proves that, with all his weakness and criminal indulgence towards his wicked sons, Eli was thoroughly devoted to the Lord in his heart. And Samuel, on the other hand, through his unreserved and candid communication of the terribly solemn word of God wTith regard to the man, whom he certainly venerated with filial affection, not only as high priest, but also as his own parental guardian, proved himself to be a man possessing the courage and the power to proclaim the word of the Lord without fear to the people of Israel.

Vers. 19-21. Thus Samuel grew, and Jehovah was writh him, and let none of his words fall to the ground, i.e. left no word unfulfilled which He spoke through Samuel. (On TW, see Josh. xxi. 45, xxiii. 14, 1 Kings viii. 56.) By this all Israel from Dan to Beersheba (see at Judg. xx. 1) perceived that Samuel was found trustworthy, or approved (see Num xii. 7) as a prophet of Jehovah. And the Lord continued to appear at Shiloh; for He revealed himself there to Samuel " in the word of Jehovah" i.e. through a prophetic announcement of

His word. These three verses form the transition from the call of Samuel to the following account of his prophetic labours in Israel. At the close of ver. 21, the LXX. have appended a general remark concerning Eli and his sons, which, regarded as a deduction from the context, answers no doubt to the paraphrastic treatment of our book in that version, but in a critical aspect is utterly worthless.

WAR WITH THE PHILISTINES. LOSS OF THE ARK. DEATH OF ELI AND HIS SONS. — CHAP. IV.

At Samuel's word, the Israelites attacked the Philistines, and were beaten (vers. 1, 2). They then fetched the ark of the covenant into the camp according to the advice of the elders, that they might thereby make sure of the help of the almighty covenant God; but in the engagement which followed they suffered a still greater defeat, in which Eli's sons fell and the ark was taken by the Philistines (vers. 3-11). The aged Eli, terrified at such a loss, fell from his seat and broke his neck (vers. 12-18); and his daughter-in-law was taken in labour, and died after giving birth to a son (vers. 19-22). With these occurrences the judgment began to burst upon the house of Eli. But the disastrous result of the war was also to be a source of deep humiliation to all the Israelites. Not only were the people to learn that the Lord had departed from them, but Samuel also was to make the discovery that the deliverance of Israel from the oppression and dominion of its foes was absolutely impossible without its inward conversion to its God.

Vers. 1, 2. The two clauses, " The word of Samuel came to all Israel" and " Israel went out" etc., are to be logically connected together in the following sense: "At the word or instigation of Samuel, Israel went out against the Philistines to battle." The Philistines were ruling over Israel at that time. This is evident, apart from our previous remarks concerning the connection between the commencement of this book and the close of the book of Judges (see vol. iv. pp. 280 sqq.), from the simple fact that the land of Israel was the scene of the war, and that nothing is said about an invasion on the part of the Philistines. The Israelites encamped at Ebenezer, and the Philistines were encamped at Aphek. The name Ebenezer

(" the stone of help*') was not given to the pl.i mated till I later period, when Samuel set up a memorial stone there to commemorate i victory that was gained over the Philistines upon the same chosen battle-field after the Lapse of twenty yean (ch« vii. 12). According to this pa-. the stone was up between Mtzpeh and Shen, The former was not the

Mi/peh in the lowlands of Judah (Josh. w. 38)j hut the Mi:j>Jt present A v muni, two hours to the Qorth-west of Jerusalem, and half an hour to the south of ( rib 6 at Josh,.w iii. 26)•

The situation of Aphek has not been dig!. It cannot have been far from Mizpeh and Ebenezer, however, and was probably the same j)laee as the C'anaanitish capital mentioned in Josh. xii. IS, anil is certainly different from the Aphekah upon the mountains of, Judah (Josh. xv. oil); for this was on the south or south-west of Jerusalem, since, according to the book of Joshua, it belonged to the towns that were situated in the district of Gibeon. — Yer. 2. When the battle was fought, the Israelites were defeated by the Philistines, and in battlearray four thousand men were smitten upon the iield. tf}V3 sc. ncrfeD, as in Judg. xx. 20, 22, ete. nfWB?, in battle-array, i.e. upon the field of battle, not in flight. " In the field" i.e. the open field where the battle was fought.

Vers. 3-11. On the return of the people to the camp, the elders held a council of war as to the cause of the defeat they had suffered. " Why hath Jehovah smitten us to-day before the Philistines?" As they had entered upon the war by the word and advice of Samuel, they were convinced that Jehovah had smitten them. The question presupposes at the same time that the Israelites felt strong enough to enter upon the war with their enemies, and that the reason for their defeat could only be that the Lord, their covenant God, had withdrawn His help. This wras no doubt a correct conclusion; but the means which they adopted to secure the help of their God in continuing the war were altogether wrong. Instead of feeling remorse and seeking the help of the Lord their God by a sincere repentance and confession of their apostasy from Him, they resolved to fetch the ark of the covenant out of the tabernacle at Shiloh into the camp, with the delusive idea that God had so inseparably bound up His gracious presence in the midst of His people with this holy ark, which He had selected as the throne of His gracious appearance, that He would of necessity come with it into the camp and smite the foe. In ver. 4, the ark is called u the ark of the covenant of Jehovah of hosts, who is enthroned above the cherubim" partly to show the reason why the people had the ark fetched, and partly to indicate the hope which they founded upon the presence of this sacred object. (See the commentary on Ex. xxv. 20—22.) The remark introduced here, " and the two sons of Eli were there with the ark of the covenant of God" is not merely intended to show who the guardians of the ark were, viz. priests who had hitherto disgraced the sanctuary, but also to point forward at the very outset to the result of the measures adopted. — Ver. 5. On the arrival of the ark in the camp, the people raised so great a shout of joy that the earth rang again. This was probably the first time since the settlement of Israel in Canaan, that the ark had been brought into the camp, and therefore the people no doubt anticipated from its presence a renewal of the marvellous victories gained by Israel under Moses and Joshua, and for that reason raised such a shout when it arrived. — Vers. 6-8. When the Philistines heard the noise, and learned on inquiry that the ark of Jehovah had come into the camp, they were thrown into alarm, for " they thought {lit. said), God (Elohhn) is come into the camp, and said, u Woe unto us! For such a thing has not happened yesterday and the day before (i.e. never till now). Woe to us! Who will deliver us from the hand of these mighty gods? These are the very gods that smote Egypt with all kinds of jilagues in the icilderness" The Philistines spoke of the God of Israel in the plural, DH^xn DV"PXn, as heathen who only knew of gods, and not of one Almighty God. Just as all the heathen feared the might of the gods of other nations in a certain degree, so the Philistines also were alarmed at the might of the God of the Israelites, and that all the more because the report of His deeds in the olden time had reached their ears (see Ex. xv. 14, 15). The expression "in the wilderness" does not compel us to refer the words "smote with all the plagues " exclusivelv to the destruction of Pharaoh and his army in the lied Sea (Ex. xiv. 23 sqq.). u All the plagues" include the rest of the plagues which God inflicted upon Egypt, without there being any necessity to supply the copula 1 before ""^.^a, as in the LXX. and Syriac.

By this addition an antithesis is introduced into the words, which, if it really were intended, would require to be indicated by a previous pN3 or B^nKS. According to the notions of the Philistines, all the wonders of God for the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt took place in the desert, because even when Israel was in Goshen they dwelt on the border of the desert, and were conducted thence to Canaan. — Yer. 9. But instead of despairing, they encouraged one another, saying, u Show yourselves strong, and be men, 0 Philisti?ies, that ive may not be obliged to serve the Hebrews, as they have served you; be men, and fight /" — Vers. 10, 11. Stimulated in this way, they fought and smote Israel, so that every one fled home (" to his tent," see at Josh. xxii. 8), and 30,000 men of Israel fell. The ark also was taken, and the two sons of Eli died, i.e. were slain when the ark was taken, — a practical proof to the degenerate nation, that Jehovah, who was enthroned above the cherubim, had departed from them, i.e. had withdrawn His gracious presence.1

Vers. 12-22. The tidings of this calamity were brought by a Benjaminite, who came as a messenger of evil tidings, with his clothes rent, and earth upon his head — a sign of the deepest mourning (see Josh. vii. 6) — to Shiloh, where the aged Eli was sitting upon a seat by the side (T_ is a copyist's error for T) of the way watching; for his heart trembled for the ark of God, which had been taken from the sanctuary into the camp without the command of God. At these tidings the whole city cried out with terror, so that Eli heard the sound of the cry, and asked the reason of this loud noise (or tumult), whilst the messenger was hurrying towards him with the news. — Ver. 15. Eli was ninety-eight years old, and u his eyes stood" i.e. were

1 " It is just the same now, when we take merely a historical Christ outside us for our Redeemer. He must prove His help chiefly internally by His Holy Spirit, to redeem us out of the hand of the Philistines; though externally He must not be thrown into the shade, as accomplishing our justification. If we had not Christ, we could never stand. For there is no help in heaven and on earth beside Him. But if we have Him in no other way than merely without us and under us, if we only preach about Him, teach, hear, read, talk, discuss, and dispute about Him, take His name into our mouth, but will not let Him work and show His power in us, He will no more help us than the ark helped the Israelites." — Berlehurger Bible.

stiff, so that he could no more see (vid. 1 Kings xiv. 4). This is a description of the so-called black cataract (amaurosis), which generally occurs at a very great age from paralysis of the optic nerves. — Vers. 16 sqq. When the messenger informed him of the defeat of the Israelites, the death of his sons, and the capture of the ark, at the last news Eli fell back from his seat by the side of the gate, and broke his neck, and died. The loss of the ark was to him the most dreadful of all — more dreadful than the death of his two sons. Eli had judged Israel forty years. The reading twenty in the Septuagint does not deserve the slightest notice, if only because it is perfectly incredible that Eli should have been appointed judge of the nation in his seventy-eighth year. — Vers. 19-22. The judgment which fell upon Eli through this stroke extended still further. His daughter-in-law, the wife of Phinehas, was with child (near) to be delivered. 1")??, contracted from rnb? (from "EJ: see Ges. § 69, 3, note 1; Ewald, § 238, c). When she heard the tidings of the capture (nj??n vK, u with regard to the being taken away") of the ark of God, and the death of her father-in-law and husband, she fell upon her knees and was delivered, for her pains had fallen upon her (lit. had turned against her), and died in consequence. Her death, however, was but a subordinate matter to the historian. He simply refers to it casually in the words, u and about the time of her death" for the purpose of giving her last words, in which she gave utterance to her grief at the loss of the ark, as a matter of greater importance in relation to his object. As she lay dying, the women who stood round sought to comfort her, by telling her that she had brought forth a son; but u she did not answer, and took no notice (3? 1W = 2? D^, animum advertere; cf. Ps. lxii. 11), but called to the boy (i.e. named him), Ichabod ("N33 *8, no glory), saying, The glory of Israel is departed" referring to the capture of the ark of God, and also to her father-in-law and husband. She then said again, " Gone (HJJ, wandered away, carried off) is the glory of Israel, for the ark of God is taken" The repetition of these words shows how deeply the wife of the godless Phinehas had taken to heart the carrying off of the ark, and how in her estimation the glory of Israel had departed with it. Israel could not be brought lower. With the surrender of the earthly throne of His glory, the Lord appeared to have abolished

His covenant of grace with Israel; for the ark, with the tables of the law and the capporeth, was the visible pledge of the covenant of £race which Jehovah had made with Israel.

HUMILIATION OF THE PHILISTINES BY MEANS OF THE ARK OF THE COVENANT. — CHAP. V.-VII. 1.

Whilst the Israelites were mourning over the loss of the ark of God, the Philistines were also to derive no pleasure from their booty, but rather to learn that the God of Israel, who had given up to them His greatest sanctuary to humble His own degenerate nation, was the only true God, beside Whom there were no other gods. Not only was the principal deity of the Philistines thrown down into the dust and dashed to pieces by the glory of Jehovah; but the Philistines themselves were so smitten, that their princes were compelled to send back the ark into the land of Israel, together with a trespass-offering, to appease the wrath of God, which pressed so heavily upon them.

Chap. v. The Ark in the Land of the Philistines. — Vers. 1-6. The Philistines carried the ark from Ebenezer, where they had captured it, into their capital, AsJidod (Esdud; see at Josh. xiii. 3), and placed it there in the temple of Dagon, by the side of the idol Dagon, evidently as a dedicatory offering to this god of theirs, by whose help they imagined that they had obtained the victory over both the Israelites and their God. With regard to the image of Dagon, compounded of man and fish, i.e. of a human body, with head and hands, and a fish's tail, see, in addition to Judg. xvi. 23, Stark's Gaza, pp. 248 sqq., 308 sqq., and Layard's Nineveh and its Remains, pp. 466-7, where there is a bas-relief from Khorsabad, in which u a figure is seen swimming in the sea, with the upper part of the body resembling a bearded man, wearing the ordinary conical tiara of royalty, adorned with elephants' tusks, and the lower part resembling the body of a fish. It has the hand lifted up, as if in astonishment or fear, and is surrounded by fishes, crabs, and other marine animals" (Stark, p. 308). As this bas-relief represents, according to Layard, the war of an Assyrian king with the inhabitants of the coast of Syria, most probably of Sargon, who had to carry on a long conflict with the Philistian towns, more especially with Ashdod, there can hardly be any doubt that we have a representation of the Philistian Dagon here. This deity was a personification of the generative and vivifying principle of nature, for which the fish with its innumerable multiplication was specially adapted, and set forth the idea of the giver of all earthly good. — Ver. 3. The next morning the Ashdodites found Dagon lying on his face upon the ground before the ark of Jehovah, and restore^ him to his place again, evidently supposing that the idol had fallen or been thrown down by some accident. — Ver. 4. But they were obliged to give up this notion when they found the god lying on his face upon the ground again the next morning in front of the ark of Jehovah, and in fact broken to pieces, so that Dagon's head and the two hollow hands of his arms lay severed upon the threshold, and nothing was left but the trunk of the fish (|frj). The word Dagon, in this last clause, is used in an appellative sense, viz. the fishy part, or fish's shape, from H, a fish. I^SDH is no doubt the threshold of the door of the recess in which the image was set up. We cannot infer from this, however, as Thenius has done, that with the small dimensions of the recesses in the ancient temples, if the image fell forward, the pieces named might easily fall upon the threshold. This naturalistic interpretation of the miracle is not only proved to be untenable by the word nfaTO, since HV13 means cut off, and not broken off, but is also precluded by the improbability, not to say impossibility, of the thing itself. For if the image of Dagon, which was standing by the side of the ark, was thrown down towards the ark, so as to lie upon its face in front of it, the pieces that were broken off, viz. the head and hands, could not have fallen sideways, so as to lie upon the threshold. Even the first fall of the image of Dagon was a miracle. From the fact that their god Dagon lay upon its face before the ark of Jehovah, i.e. lay prostrate upon the earth, as though worshipping before the God of Israel, the Philistines were to learn, that even their supreme deity had been obliged to fall down before the majesty of Jehovah, the God of the Israelites. But as they did not discern the meaning of this miraculous sign, the second miracle was to show them the annihilation of their idol through the God of Israel, in such a way as to preclude every thought of accident. The disgrace attending the annihilation of their idol was probably to be heightened by the fact, that the pieces of Dagon that were smitten off were lying upon the threshold, inasmuch as what lay upon the threshold was easily trodden upon by any one who entered the house. This is intimated in the custom referred to in ver. 5, that in consequence of this occurrence, the priests of Dagon, and all who entered the temple of Dagon at Ashdod, down to the time of the historian himself, would not step upon the threshold of Dagon, i.e. the threshold where Dagon's head and hands had lain, but stepped over the threshold (not " leaped over," as many commentators assume on the ground of Zeph. i. 5, which has nothing to do with the matter), that they might not touch with their feet, and so defile, the place where the pieces of their god had lain. — Yer. 6. The visitation of God was not restricted to the demolition of the statue of Dagon, but affected the people of Ashdod as well. " The hand of Jehovah was heavy upon the Ashdodltes, and laid them waste." B^?, from D2K>, when applied to men, as in Micah vi. 13, signifies to make desolate not only by diseases, but also by the withdrawal or diminution of the means of subsistence, the devastation of the fields, and such like. That the Tatter is included here, is evident from the dedicatory offerings with which the Philistines sought to mitigate the wrath of the God of the Israelites (ch. vi. 4, 5, 11, 18), although the verse before us simply mentions the diseases with which God visited them.1 " And He smote them with BvSy, i.e. boils:" according to the Rabbins, swellings on the anus, mariscce' (see at Deut. xxviii. 27). For D^Dy the Masoretes have invariably substituted E'Hntp,

1 At the close of vers. 3 and 6 the Septuagint contains some comprehensive additions; viz. at the close of ver. 3: Kocl i(iotpvu&n y/ip Kvpiou \%\ rovg A^ariovs Kotl tfixaxvi^ev oLVTOvg, x.cc\ l^xroc^su ocvrovg tig rdg 'i^poa; ocvruu, rvji/ " A^arou kocI roc opioc ocvryg; and at the end of ver. 4: Kxl pttaou rqg yfi)potg otyrijc oii/ttyuYiaotv puts xol\ iyzvtro avy^vaig^&cx.voirov fiiyochyi \v ry mroKu. This last clause we also find in the Vulgate, expressed as follows: Et eballiverunt villas et agri in medio regionis illius, et nati sunt mures, ct facta est confusio mortis magnse in civitate. Ewald's decision with regard to these clauses (Gesch. ii. p. 541) is, that they are not wanted at ch. v. 3, 6, but that they are all the more necessary at ch. vi. 1; whereas at ch. v. 3, 6, they would rather injure the sense. Thenius admits that the clause appended to ver. 3 is nothing more than a second translation of our sixth verse, which has been interpolated by a copyist of the Greek in the wrong place; whereas that of ver. 6 contains the original though somewhat which is used in ch. vi. 11, 17, and was probably regarded as more decorous. Ashdod is a more precise definition of the word them, viz. Ashdod, i.e. the inhabitants of Ashdod and its territory.

Vers. 7-12. " When the Ashdodites saw that it was so," they were unwilling to keep the ark of the God of Israel any longer, because the hand of Jehovah lay heavy upon them and their god Dagon; whereupon the princes of the Philistines (^10, as in Josh. xiii. 3, etc.) assembled together, and came to the resolution to " let the ark of the God of Israel turn (i.e. be taken) to Gath " (ver. 8). The princes of the Philistines probably imagined that the calamity which the Ashdodites attributed to the ark of God, either did not proceed from the ark, i.e. from the God of Israel, or if actually connected with the presence of the ark, simply arose from the fact that the city itself was hateful to the God of the Israelites, or that the Dagon of Ashdod was weaker than the Jehovah of Israel: they therefore resolved to let the ark be taken to Gath in order to pacify the Ashdodites. According to our account, the city of Gath seems to have stood between Ashdod and Ekron (see at Josh. xiii. 3). — Yer. 9. But when the ark was brought to Gath, the hand of Jehovah came upon that city also with very great alarm. n?na riDiriD is subordinated to the main sentence either adverbially or in the accusative. Jehovah smote the people of the city, small and great, so that boils broke out upon their hinder parts. — Vers. 10-12. They therefore sent the ark of God to Ekron, i.e. Ahir, the north-western city of the Philistines (see corrupt text, according to which the Hebrew text should be emended. But an impartial examination would show very clearly, that all these additions are nothing more than paraphrases founded upon the context. The last part of the addition to ver. 6 is taken verbatim from ver. 11, whilst the first part is a conjecture based upon ch. vi. 4, 5. Jerome, if indeed the addition in our text of the Vulgate really originated with him, and was not transferred into his version from the Itala, did not venture to suppress the clause interpolated in the Alexandrian version. This is very evident from the words confusio mortis magnse, which are a literal rendering of ovyxwi; 6ccvdcrov /u.eya.'AY); whereas in ver. 11, Jerome has given to niD roriD, which the LXX. rendered ovyxvcng favxrov, the much more accurate rendering pavor mortis. Moreover, neither the Syriac nor Targum Jonath. has this clause; so that long before the time of Jerome, the Hebrew text existed in the form in which the Masoretes have handed it down to us.

at Josh. xiii. 3). But the Ekronites, who had been informed of what had taken place in Ashdod and Gath, cried out, when the ark came into their city, " They have brought the ark of the God of Israel to me, to slay me and my people" (these words are to be regarded as spoken by the whole town); and they said to all the princes of the Philistines whom they had called together, " Send away the ark of the God of Israel, that it may return to its place, and not slay me and my people. For deadly alarm (rViD DD^nOj confusion of death, i.e. alarm produced by many sudden deaths) ruled in the whole city; very heavy was the hand of God there. The people who did not die were smitten with boils, and the cry of the city ascended to heaven." From this description, which simply indicates briefly the particulars of the plagues that God inflicted upon Ekron, we may see very clearly that Ekron was visited even more severely than Ashdod and Gath. This was naturally the case. The longer the Philistines resisted and refused to recognise the chastening hand of the living God in the plagues inflicted upon them, the more severely would they necessarily be punished, that they might be brought at last to see that the God of Israel, whose sanctuary they still wanted to keep as a trophy of their victory over that nation, was the omnipotent God, who was able to destroy His foes.

Chap, vi.-vii. 1. The Ark of God sent back. — Vers. 1—3. The ark of Jehovah was in the land {lit. the fields, as in Ruth i. 2) of the Philistines for seven months, and had brought destruction to all the towns to which it had been taken. At length the Philistines resolved to send it back to the Israelites, and therefore called their priests and diviners (see at Num. xxiii. 23) to ask them, " What shall we do with regard to the ark of God; tell us, with what shall we send it to its place?" u Its place " is the land of Israel, and ntS2 does not mean " in what manner" (quomodo: Vulgate, Thenius), but with what, wherewith (as in Micah vi. 6). There is no force in the objection brought by Thenius, that if the question had implied with what presents, the priests would not have answered, " Do not send it without a present; " for the priests did not confine themselves to this answer, in which they gave a general assent, but proceeded at once to define the present more minutely. They replied, " If they send away the ark of the God of Israel (D^fw'p is to be taken as the third person in an indefinite address, as in cli. ii. 24, and not to be construed with BriX supplied), do not send it away empty (i.e. without an expiatory offering), but return Him (i.e. the God of Israel) a trespass-offering" WjPK, lit. guilt, then the gift presented as compensation for a fault, the trespassoffering (see at Lev. v. 14-2G). The gifts appointed by the Philistines as an asham were to serve as a compensation and satisfaction to be rendered to the God of Israel for the robbery committed upon Him by the removal of the ark of the covenant, and were therefore called asham, although in their nature they were only expiatory offerings. For the same reason the verb 2vJ'n, to return or repay, is used to denote the presentation of these gifts, being the technical expression for the payment of compensation for a fault in Num. v. 7, and in Lev. v. 23 for compensation for anything belonging to another, that had been unjustly appropriated. " Are ye healed then, it will show you why His hand is not removed from you" sc. so long as ye keep back the ark. The words WD'tn tk are to be understood as conditional, even without DK, which the rules of the language allow (see Ewald, § 357, b); this is required by the context. For, according to ver. 9, the Philistine priests still thought it a possible thing that any misfortune which had befallen the Philistines might be only an accidental circumstance. With this view, they could not look upon a cure as certain to result from the sending back of the ark, but only as possible; consequently they could only speak conditionally, and with this the words " we shall know " agree.

Vers. 4-6. The trespass-offering was to correspond to the number of the princes of the Philistines, ispp is an accusative employed to determine either measure or number (see Ewald, § 204, a), lit. " the number of their princes: " the compensations were to be the same in number as the princes. u Five golden boils, and five golden mice" i.e., according to ver. 5, images resembling their boils, and the field-mice which overran the land; the same gifts, therefore, for them all, " for one plague is to all and to your princes," i.e. the same plague has fallen upon all the people and their princes. The change of person in the two words, DM?, " all of them," i.e. the whole nation of the Philistines, and ttWTJW, u your princes" appears very strange to us with our modes of thought and speech, but it is by no means unusual in Hebrew. The selection of this peculiar kind of expiatory present was quite in accordance with a custom, which was not only widely spread among the heathen but was even adopted in the Christian church, viz. that after recovery from an illness, or rescue from any danger or calamity, a representation of the member healed or the danger passed through was placed as an offering in the temple of the deity, to whom the person had prayed for deliverance; 1 and it also perfectly agrees with a custom which has prevailed in India, according to Tavernier (Ros. A. u. N. Morgenland iii. p. 77), from time immemorial down to the present day, viz. that when a pilgrim takes a journey to a pagoda to be cured of a disease, he offers to the idol a present either in gold, silver, or copper, according to his ability, of the shape of the diseased or injured member, and then sings a hymn. Such a present passed as a practical acknowledgment that the god had inflicted the suffering or evil. If offered after recovery or deliverance, it was a public expression of thanksgiving. In the case before us, however, in which it was offered before deliverance, the presentation of the images of the things with which they had been chastised was probably a kind of fine or compensation for the fault that had been committed against the Deity, to mitigate His wrath and obtain a deliverance from the evils with which they had been smitten. This is contained in the words, "Give glory unto the God of Israel! perad venture He will lighten His (punishing) hand from off you, and from off your

1 Thus, after a shipwreck, any who escaped presanted a tablet to Isis, or Neptune, with the representation of a shipwreck upon it; gladiators offered their weapons, and emancipated slaves their fetters. In some of the nations of antiquity even representations of the private parts, in which a cure had been obtained from the deity, were hung up in the temples in honour of the gods (see Schol. ad Aristoph. Acharn. 243, and other proofs in Winer's Real-worterbuch, ii. p. 255). Theodoret says, concerning the Christians of the fourth century (Therapeutik. J)isp. viii): "On hi TvyxoLUOvatv cov7rtp otlrovatv oi 7noTCog iTCxyyiKhovtig, d.va.tycfj'hov pocprvou roc tovtuv ocvocdvjfiotToc, TV)!/ ixrpetocv hvfhovv: oc, oi /xev yxp otyQoi'Kftuu, oi <y nohuv, xT^koi "he x,etp&)v Trpoatpipovoiv tKTVTra/uxTci' Kctl oi f^iu ix, %pvo-ov, oi e)g l| v'hYjg xpyvpov ire7ro(Yi/x£vx. hi^rxi yxp 6 rovrau Awttotyi; xxl rx Gftixpx rs kccI tvaux, ty) rov 7rpoo<PipovTo; hvvx^cn to h&ipov /aerpcou. o>yi'Ko7 "he rxvrx

TTpOKilfAiVX TCOV TTxQlflfiXTUV TV^U 'hVUlV, 9jg oivi.Ti&r\ flVYlfcCSlx TTXpoC TUV xpTlUV yiysvn^ivau. And at Rome they still hang up a picture of the danger, from which deliverance had been obtained after a vow, in the church of the saint invoked in the danger.

gods, and from off your land." The expression is a pregnant one for " make His heavy hand light and withdraw it," i.e. take away the punishment. In the allusion to the representations of the field-mice, the words " that devastate the land " are added, because in the description given of the plagues in ch. v. the devastation of the land by mice is not expressly mentioned. The introduction of this clause after D3*i33y, when contrasted with the omission of any such explanation after Davey, is a proof that the plague of mice had not been described before, and therefore that the references made to these in the Septuagint at ch. v. 3, 6, and ch. vi. 1, are nothing more than explanatory glosses. It is a well-known fact that field-mice, with their enormous rate of increase and their great voracity, do extraordinary damage to the fields. In southern lands they sometimes destroy entire harvests in a very short space of time (Aristot. Animal, vi. 37; Plin. h. n. x. c. 65; Strabo, iii. p. 165; iElian, etc., in Bochart, IReroz. ii. p. 429, ed. Ros.). — Ver. 6. " Wherefore" continued the priests, " will ye harden your heart, as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? (Ex. vii. 13 sqq.) Was it not the case, that when He (Jehovah) had let out His power upon them (3 <pyrin? as in Ex. x. 2), they (the Egyptians) let them (the Israelites) go, and they departed?" There is nothing strange in this reference, on the part of the Philistian priests, to the hardening of the Egyptians, and its results, since the report of those occurrences had spread among all the neighbouring nations (see at ch. iv. 8). And the warning is not at variance with the fact that, according to ver. 9, the priests still entertained some doubt whether the plagues really did come from Jehovah at all: for their doubts did not preclude the possibility of its being so; and even the possibility might be sufficient to make it seem advisable to do everything that could be done to mitigate the wrath of the God of the Israelites, of whom, under existing circumstances, the heathen stood not only no less, but even more, in dread, than of the wrath of their own gods.

Vers. 7-12. Accordingly they arranged the sending back in such a manner as to manifest the reverence which ought to be shown to the God of Israel as a powerful deity (vers. 7-9). The Philistines were to take a new cart and make it ready (nb'y), and to yoke two milch cows to the cart upon which no yoke had ever come, and to take away their young ones (calves)

from them into the house, i.e. into the stall, and then to put the ark upon the cart, along with the golden things to be presented as a trespass-offering, which were to be in a small chest by the side of the ark, and to send it (i.e. the ark) away, that it might go, viz. without the cows being either driven or guided. From the result of these arrangements, they were to learn whether the plague had been sent by the God of Israel, or had arisen accidentally. " Jf it (the ark) goeth up by the way to its horde?' towards Bethshemesh, He (Jehovah) hath done us this great evil; bat if not, we perceive that His hand hath not touched lis. It came to us by chance" i.e. the evil came upon us merely by accident. In DH!v2, E^?, and Dn^riKD (Ver. 7), the masculine is used in the place of the more definite feminine, as being the more general form. This is frequently the case, and occurs again in vers. 10 and 12. tr]K, which only occurs again in vers. 8, 11, and 15, signifies, according to the context and the ancient versions, a chest or little case. The suffix to)T\k refers to the ark, which is also the subject to i"W (ver. 9). i7Q3? the territory of the ark, is the land of Israel, where it had its home. fnpD is used adverbially: by chance, or accidentally. The new cart and the young cows, which had never worn a yoke, corresponded to the holiness of the ark of God. To place it upon an old cart, which had already been used for all kinds of earthly purposes, would have been an offence against the holy thing; and it would have been just the same to yoke to the cart animals that had already been used for drawing, and had had their strength impaired by the yoke (see Deut. xxi. 3). The reason for selecting cows, however, instead of male oxen, was no doubt to be found in the further object which they hoped to attain. It was certainly to be expected, that if suckling cows, whose calves had been kept back from them, followed their own instincts, without any drivers, they would not go away, but would come back to their young ones in the stall. And if the very opposite should take place, this would be a sure sign that they were driven and guided by a divine power, and in fact by the God whose ark they were to draw into His own land. From this they would be able to draw the conclusion, that the plagues which had fallen upon the Philistines were also sent by this God. There was no special sagacity in this advice of the priests; it was nothing more than a cleverly devised attempt to put the power of the God of the Israelites to the tost, though they thereby unconsciously and against their will furnished the occasion for the living God to display His divine glory before those who did not know Him. — Vers. 10-12. The God of Israel actually did what the idolatrous priests hardly considered possible. When the Philistines, in accordance with the advice given them by their priests, had placed the ark of the covenant and the expiatory gifts upon the cart to which the two cows were harnessed, " the coics wait straight forward en the way to Bethshemesh; they went along a road going and lowing (Le. lowing the whole time), and turned not to the right or to the left; and the princes of the Philistines went behind them to the territory of Bethshemes/i." TT?.? nJn^\ UL u they were straight in the way" i.e. they went straight along the road. The form nJT4'! for nj"|B^ is the imperf. Kal, third pers. plur. fern., with the preformative * instead of n, as in Gen. xxx. 38 (see Ges. § 47, Anm. 3; Ewald, § 191, b). Bethshemesh, the present Ain-shemsy was a priests' city on the border of Judah and Dan (see at Josh. xv. 10).

Vers. 13-18. The inhabitants of Bethshemesh were busy with the wheat-harvest in the valley (in front of the town), when they unexpectedly saw the ark of the covenant coming, and rejoiced to see it. The cart had arrived at the field of Joshua, a Bethshemeshite, and there it stood still before a large stone. And they (the inhabitants of Bethshemesh) chopped up the wood of the cart, and offered the cows to the Lord as a burnt-offering. In the meantime the Levites had taken off the ark, with the chest of golden presents, and placed it upon the large stone; and the people of Bethshemesh offered burntofferings and slain-offerings that day to the Lord. The princes of the Philistines stood looking at this, and then returned the same day to Ekron. That the Bethshemeshites, and not the Philistines, are the subject to U'i?T), is evident from the correct interpretation of the clauses: viz. from the fact that in ver. 14a the words from n,:i*rn to n?na |2X are circumstantial clans - introduced into the main clause, and that W*-*] is attached to rriX"v *npiWj and carries on the principal clause. — Ver. 1 contains a supplementary remark, therefore Wnn js to be translated as a pluperfect. After sacrificing the cart, with the cows, as a burnt-offering to the Lord, the inhabitants of Bethshemesh gave a further practical expression to their joy at the return of the ark, by offering burnt-offerings and slain-offerings in praise of God. In the burnt-offerings they consecrated themselves afresh, with all their members, to the service of the Lord; and in the slain-offerings, which culminated in the sacrificial meals, they sealed anew their living fellowship with the Lord. The offering of these sacrifices at Bethshemesh was no offence against the commandment, to sacrifice to the Lord at the place of His sanctuary alone. The ark of the covenant was the throne of the gracious presence of God, before which the sacrifices were really offered at the tabernacle. The Lord had sanctified the ark afresh as the throne of Plis presence, by the miracle which He had wrought in bringing it back again. — In vers. 17 and 18 the different atoning presents, which the Philistines sent to Jehovah as compensation, are enumerated once more: viz. five golden boils, one for each of their five principal towns (see at Josh. xiii. 3), and " golden mice, according to the number of all the Philistian towns of the five princes, from the fortified city to the village of the inliabitants of the level land" (perazi; see at Deut. iii. 5). The priests had only proposed that five golden mice should be sent as compensation, as well as five boils (ver. 4). But the Philistines offered as many images of mice as there were towns and villages in their five states, no doubt because the plague of mice had spread over the whole land, wdiereas the plague of boils had only fallen upon the inhabitants of those towns to which the ark of the covenant had come. In this way the apparent discrepancy between ver. 4 and ver. 18 is very simply removed. The words which follow, viz. '131 iTpy ^irvan i^S, " upon which they had set down the ark" show unmistakeably, when compared with vers. 14 and 15, that we are to understand by •vfaan??K the great stone upon which the ark was placed w7hen it was taken off the cart. The conjecture of Kimchi, that this stone was called Abel (luctus), on account of the mourning which took place there (see ver. 19), is extremely unnatural. Consequently there is no other course left than to regard?2$ as an error in writing for I^X, according to the reading, or at all events the rendering, adopted by the LXX. and Targum. But *W1 (even unto) is quite unsuitable here, as no further local definition is required after the foregoing TjBn nsb IV), and it is impossible to suppose that the

Philistines offered a golden mouse as a trespass-offering for the great stone upon which the ark was placed. We must therefore alter *tyl into TPl: " And the great stone is witness (for TJR in this sense, see Gen. xxxi. 52) to this day in the field of Joshua the Bethshemeshite" sc. of the fact just described.

Ver. 19-ch. vii. 1. Disposal of the Ark of God. — Ver. 19. As the ark had brought evil upon the Philistines, so the inhabitants of Bethshemesh were also to be taught that they could not stand in their unholiness before the holy God: u And He (God) smote among the men of Betlishcmesh, because they had looked at the ark of Jehovah, and smote among the people seventy men, fifty thousand men.''' In this statement of numbers we are not only struck by the fact that the 70 stands before the 50,000, which is very unusual, but even more by the omission of the copula 1 before the second number, which is altogether unparalleled. When, in addition to this, we notice that 50,000 men could not possibly live either in or round Bethshemesh, and that wre cannot conceive of any extraordinary gathering having taken place out of the whole land, or even from the immediate neighbourhood; and also that the words P*K *)?X nrj'^n are wanting in several Hebrew mss., and that Josephus, in his account of the occurrence, only speaks of seventy as having been killed (Ant. vi. 1, 4); we cannot come to any other conclusion than that the number 50,000 is neither correct nor genuine, but a gloss which has crept into the text through some oversight, though it is of great antiquity, since the numbers stood in the text employed by the Septuagint and Chaldee translators, who attempted to explain them in two different ways, but both extremely forced. Apart from this number, however, the verse does not contain anything either in form or substance that could furnish occasion for well-founded objections to its integrity. The repetition of?]*] simply resumes the thought that had been broken off by the parenthetical clause '" [hK3 HH ^3; and DV3 is only a general expression for 'V '3 HP3M3. The stroke which fell upon the people of Bethshemesh is sufficiently accounted for in the words, " because they had looked," etc. There is no necessity to understand these words, however, as many Rabbins do, as signifying u they looked into the ark," i.e. opened it and looked in; for if this had been the meaning, the opening would certainly not have been passed over without notice. nsi with 3 means to look upon or at a thing with lust or malicious pleasure; and here it no doubt signifies a foolish staring, which was incompatible with the holiness of the ark of God, and was punished with death, according to the warning expressed in Num. iv. 20. This severe judgment so alarmed the people of Bethshemesh, that they exclaimed, u Who is able to stand before Jehovah, this holy God!" Consequently the Bethshemeshites discerned correctly enough that the cause of the fatal stroke, which had fallen upon them, was the unholiness of their own nature, and not any special crime which had been committed by the persons slain. They felt that they were none of them any better than those who had fallen, and that sinners could not approach the holy God. Inspired with this feeling, they added, " and to whom shall He go away from us V The subject to n/JP is not the ark, but Jehovah who had chosen the ark as the dwelling-place of His name. In order to avert still further judgments, they sought to remove the ark from their town. They therefore sent messengers to Kirjath-jearim to announce to the inhabitants the fact that the ark had been sent back by the Philistines, and to entreat them to fetch it away.

Ch. vii. 1. The inhabitants of Kirjath-jearim complied with this request, and brought the ark into the house of Abinadab upon the height, and sanctified Abinadab's son Eleazar to be the keeper of the ark. Kirjath-jearim, the present Kuryet el Enab (see at Josh. ix. 17), was neither a priestly nor aLevitical city. The reason why the ark was taken there, is to be sought for, therefore, in the situation of the town, i.e. in the fact that Kirjath-jearim was the nearest large town on the road from Bethshemesh to Shiloh. We have no definite information, however, as to the reason why it was not taken on to Shiloh, to be placed in the tabernacle, but was allowed to remain in the house of Abinadab at Kirjath-jearim, where a keeper was expressly appointed to take charge of it; so that we can only confine ourselves to conjectures. Ewald's opinion (Gesch. ii. 540), that the Philistines had conquered Shiloh after the victory described in ch. iv., and had destroyed the ancient sanctuary there, i.e. the tabernacle, is at variance with the accounts given in ch. xxi. G, 1 Kings iii. 4, 2 Chron. i. 3, respecting the continuance of worship in the tabernacle at Nob and Gibeon. There is much more to be said in support of the conjecture, that the carrying away of the ark by the Philistines was regarded as a judgment upon the sanctuary, which had been desecrated by the reckless conduct of the sons of Eli, and consequently, that even when the ark itself was recovered, they would not take it back without an express declaration of the will of God, but were satisfied, as a temporary arrangement, to leave the ark in Kirjath-jearim, which wras farther removed from the cities of the Philistines. And there it remained, because no declaration of the divine will followed respecting its removal into the tabernacle, and the tabernacle itself had to be removed from Shiloh to Nob, and eventually to Gibeon, until David had effected the conquest of the citadel of Zion, and chosen Jerusalem as his capital, when it was removed from Kirjath-jearim to Jerusalem (2 Sam. vi.). It is not stated that Abinadab was a Levite; but this is very probable, because otherwise they would hardly have consecrated his son to be the keeper of the ark, but would have chosen a Levite for the office.

CONVERSION OF ISRAEL TO THE LORD BY SAMUEL. VICTORY OVER THE FHILISTINES. SAMUEL AS JUDGE OF ISRAEL. — CHAP. VII. 2-17.

Vers. 2-4. Purification of Israel from idolatry. — Twenty years passed away from that time forward, while the ark remained at Kirjath-jearim, and all Israel mourned after Jehovah. Then Samuel said to them, " If ye turn to the Lord with all your heart, put away the strange gods from the midst of you, and the Astartes, and direct your heart firmly upon the Lord, and serve Him, only, that lie may save you out of the hand of the Philistines." And the Israelites listened to this appeal. The single clauses of vers. 2 and 3 are connected together by vav consec, and are not to be separated from one another. There is no gap between these verses; but they contain the same closely and logically connected thought,1 which may be arranged in

1 There is no force at all in the proofs which Thenius has adduced of a gap between vers. 2 and 3. It by no means follows, that because the Philistines had brought back the ark, their rule over the Israelites had ceased, so as to make the words u he will deliver you," etc., incomprehensible. Moreover, the appearance of Samuel as judye does not presuppose one period in the following manner: " And it came to pass, when the days multiplied from the time that the ark remained at Kirjath-jearim, and grew to twenty years, and the whole house of Israel mourned after Jehovah, that Samuel said," etc. The verbs ^*1, WJJ^ and Wl% are merely continuations of the infinitive n??*, and the main sentence is resumed in the words 7Ntt£CJ IDfcto. The contents of the verses require that the clauses should be combined in this manner. The statement that twenty years had passed can only be understood on the supposition that some kind of turning-point ensued at the close of that time. The complaining of the people after Jehovah was no such turning-point, but became one simply from the fact that this complaining was followed by some result. This result is described in ver. 3. It consisted in the fact that Samuel exhorted the people to put away the strange gods (ver. 3); and that when the people listened to his exhortation (ver. 4), he helped them to gain a victory over the Philistines (vers. 5 sqq.). tfB?, from nnj? to lament or complain (Micah ii. 4; Ezek. xxxii. 18). " The phrase, to lament after God, is taken from human affairs, when one person follows another with earnest solicitations and complaints, until he at length assents. We have an example of this in the Syrophenician woman in Matt, xv." (Seb. Schmidt). The meaning "to assemble together," which is the one adopted by Gesenius, is forced upon the word from the Chaldee ^nK? and it cannot be shown that the word was ever used in this sense in Hebrew. Samuel's appeal in ver. 3 recalls to mind Josh. xxiv. 14, and Gen. xxxv. 2; but the words, " If ye do return unto the Lord with all your hearts" assume that the turning of the people to the Lord their God had already inwardly commenced, and indeed, that his assumption of this office must necessarily have been mentioned before. As a general rule, there was no such formal assumption of the office, and this would be least of all the case with Samuel, who had been recognised as an accredited prophet of Jehovah (ch. iii. 19 sqq.). And lastly, the reference to idols, and to their being put away in consequence of Samuel's appeal, is intelligible enough, without any express account of their falling into idolatry, if we bear in mind, on the one hand, the constant inclination of the people to serve other gods, and if we observe, on the other hand, that Samuel called upon the people to turn to the Lord with all their heart and serve Him alone, which not only does not preclude, but actually implies, the outward continuance of the worship of Jehovah.

as the participle WIV expresses duration, had commenced as a permanent thing, and simply demand that the inward turning of the heart to God should be manifested outwardly as well, by the putting away of all their idols, and should thus be carried out to completion. The "strange gods" (see Gen. xxxv. 2) are described in ver. 4 as " Baalim." On Baalim and Ashtarothj see at Judg. ii. 11, 13. 3? ppn^ to direct the heart firmly: see Ps. Ixwiii. 8; 2 Chron. xxx. 10.

Vers. 5-14. Victory obtained over the Philistines through Samuel's prayer. — Vers. 5, 6. When Israel had turned to the Lord with all its heart, and had put away all its idols, Samuel gathered together all the people at Mizpeh, to prepare them for fighting against the Philistines by a solemn day for penitence and prayer. For it is very evident that the object of calling all the people to Mizpeh was that the religious act performed there might serve as a consecration for battle, not only from the circumstance that, according to ver. 7, when the Philistines heard of the meeting, they drew near to make war upon Israel, but also from the contents of ver. 5: u Samuel said (sc. to the heads or representatives of the nation), Gather all Israel to Mizpeh, and I will pray for you unto the Lord."' His intention could not possibly have been any other than to put the people into the right relation to their God, and thus to prepare the way for their deliverance out of the bondage of the Philistines. Samuel appointed Mizpeh, i.e. Nebi Samwil, on the western boundary of the tribe of Benjamin (see at Josh, xviii. 2G), as the place of meeting, partly no doubt on historical grounds, viz. because it was there that the tribes had former! v held their consultations respecting the wickedness of the inhabitants of Gibeah, and had resolved to make war upon Benjamin (Judg. xx. 1 sqq.), but still more, no doubt, because Mizpeh, on the western border of the mountains, was the most suitable place for commencing the conflict with the Philistines. — Ver. G. When they had assembled together here, u they drew water and poured it out before Jehovah, and fasted on that day. and said there, We have, sinned against the J.ordT Drawing water and pouring it out before Jehovah was a symbolical act, which has been thus correctly explained by the Chaldee, on the whole: " They poured out their heart like water in penitence before the Lord." This is evident from the figurative expr sions, "poured out like water," in Ps. xxii. 15, and "pour out thy heart like water," in Lam. ii. 19, which are used to denote inward dissolution through pain, misery, and distress (see 2 Sam. xiv. 14). Hence the pouring out of water before God was a symbolical representation of the temporal and spiritual distress in which they were at the time, — a practical confession before God, " Behold, we are before Thee like water that has been poured out;" and as it was their own sin and rebellion against God that had brought this distress upon them, it was at the same time a confession of their misery, and an act of the deepest humiliation before the Lord. They gave a still further practical expression to this humiliation by fasting (DVa), as a sifrn of their inward distress of mind on account of their sin, and an oral confession of their sin against the Lord. By the word Ew;, which is added to TtfpN'l, "they said there" i.e. at Mizpch, the oral confession of their sin is formally separated from the two symbolical acts of humiliation before God, though by this very separation it is practically placed on a par with them. What they did symbolically by the pouring out of water and fasting, they explained and confirmed by their verbal confession. DC> is never an adverb of time signifying "then;" neither in Ps. xiv. 5, exxxii. 17, nor Judg. v. 11. " And thus Samuel ju dyed the children of Israel at Mizpeh." BB'^i does not mean " he became judge " (Mich, and others), any more than "he punished everyone according to his iniquity" (Thenius, after David Kimchi). Judging the people neither consisted in a censure pronounced by Samuel afterwards, nor in absolution granted to the penitent after they had made a confession of their sin, but in the fact that Samuel summoned the nation to Mizpeh to humble itself before Jehovah, and there secured for it, through his intercession, the forgiveness of its sin, and a renewal of the favour of its God, and thus restored the proper relation between Israel and its God, so that the Lord could proceed to vindicate His people's rights against their foes.

When the Philistines heard of the gathering of the Israelites at Mizpeh (vers. 7, 8), their princes went up against Israel to make war upon it; and the Israelites, in their fear of the Philistines, entreated Samuel, " Do not cease to cry for us to the Lord our God, that lie may save us out of the hand of the Philistines"— Ver. 9. " And Samuel took a milk-lamb (a lamb that was still sucking, probably, according to Lev. xxii. 27, a lamb seven days old), and offered it whole as a burnt-offering to the Lord."?v3 is used adverbially, according to its original meaning as an adverb, " whole." The Chaldee has not given the word at all, probably because the translators regarded it as pleonastic, since every burnt-offering was consumed upon the altar whole, and consequently the word ^v3 was sometimes used in a substantive sense, as svnonvmous with n?iy (Deut. xxxiii. 10; Ps. li. 21). But in the passage before us,?v2 is not synonymous with H7iy? but simply affirms that the lamb was offered upon the altar without being cut up or divided. Samuel selected a young lamb for the burnt-offering, not "as being the purest and most innocent kind of sacrificial animal," — for it cannot possibly be shown that very young animals wrere regarded as purer than those that were full-grown, — but as being the most suitable to represent the nation that had wakened up to new life through its conversion to the Lord, and wras, as it were, new-born. For the burnt-offering represented the man, who consecrated therein his life and labour to the Lord. The sacrifice was the substratum for prayer. When Samuel offered it, he cried to the Lord for the children of Israel; and the Lord "answered" i.e. granted, his prayer. — Ver. 10. When the Philistines advanced during the offering of the sacrifice to fight against Israel, " Jehovah thundered with a great noise" i.e. with loud peals, against the Philistines, and threw them into confusion, so that they were smitten before Israel. The thunder, which alarmed the Philistines and threw them into confusion (Dsn^ as in Josh. x. 10), was the answer of God to Samuel's crying to the Lord. — Ver. 11. As soon as they took to flight, the Israelites advanced from Mizpeh, and pursued and smote them to below Beth-car. The situation of this town or locality, which is only mentioned here, has not yet been discovered. Josephus (Ant. vi. 2, 2) has y^kyjpi Koppalcov. — Ver. 12. As a memorial of this victory, Samuel placed a stone between Mizpeh and Shen, to which he gave the name of Eben-ha-ezer, i.e. stone of help, as a standing memorial that the Lord had thus far helped His people. The situation of Shen is also not known. The name Shen (i.e. tooth) seems to indicate a projecting point of rock (see ch. xiv. 4), but may also signify a place situated upon such a point. — Ver. 13. Through this victory which was obtained by the miraculous help of God, the Philistines were so humbled, that they no more invaded the territory of Israel, i.e. with lasting success, as they had done before. This limitation of the words " they came no more " {lit. " they did not add again to come into the border of Israel"), is implied in the context; for the words which immediately follow, u and the hand of Jehovah teas against the Philistines all the days of Samuel" show that they made attempts to recover their lost supremacy, but that so long as Samuel lived they were unable to effect anything against Israel. This is also manifest from the successful battles fought by Saul (ch. xiii. and xiv.), when the Philistines had made fresh attempts to subjugate Israel during his reign. The defeats inflicted upon them by Saul also belong to the days of Samuel, who died but a very few years before Saul himself. Because of these battles which Saul fought with the Philistines, Lyra and Brentius understand the expression u all the days of Samuel " as referring not to the lifetime of Samuel, but simply to the duration of his official life as judge, viz. till the commencement of Saul's reign. But this is at variance with ver. 15, where Samuel is said to have judged Israel all the days of his life. Seb. Schmidt has given, on the whole, the correct explanation of ver. 13: " They came no more so as to obtain a victory and subdue the Israelites as before; yet they did return, so that the hand of the Lord was against them, i.e. so that they were repulsed with great slaughter, although they were not actually expelled, or the Israelites delivered from tribute and the presence of military garrisons, and that all the days that the judicial life of Samuel lasted, in fact all his life, since they were also smitten by Saul." — Yer. 14. In consequence of the defeat at Ebenezer, the Philistines were obliged to restore to the Israelites the cities which they had taken from them, " from Ekron to Gath." This definition of the limits is probably to be understood as exclusive, i.e. as signifying that the Israelites received back their cities up to the very borders of the Philistines, measuring these borders from Ekron to Gath, and not that the Israelites received Ekron and Gath also. For although these chief cities of the Philistines had been allotted to the tribes of Judah and Dan in the time of Joshua (Josh. xiii. 3, 4, xv. 45, 46), yet, notwithstanding the fact that Judah and Simeon conquered Ekron, together with Gaza and Askelon, after the death of Joshua (Judg. i. 18), the Israelites did not obtain any permanent possession. "And their territory" (coasts), i.e. the territory of the towns that were given back to Israel, not that of Ekron and Gath, " did Israel deliver out of the hands of the Philistines. And there was peace between Israel and the Amorites;" i.e. the Canaanitish tribes also kept peace with Israel after this victory of the Israelites over the Philistines, and during the time of Samuel. The Amorites are mentioned, as in Josh. x. 6, as being the most powerful of the Canaanitish tribes, who had forced the Danites out of the plain into the mountains (Judg. i. 34, 35).

Vers. 15-17. Samuel's judicial labours. — With the calling of the people to Mizpeh, and the victory at Ebenezer that had been obtained through his prayer, Samuel had assumed the government of the whole nation; so that his office as judge dates from this period, although he had laboured as prophet among the people from the death of Eli, and had thereby prepared the way for the conversion of Israel to the Lord. As his prophetic labours were described in general terms in ch. iii. 19-21, so are his labours as judge in the verses before us: viz. in ver. 15 their duration, — " all the days of his life" as his activity during Saul's reign and the anointing of David (ch. xv. xvi.) sufficiently prove; and then in vers. 16, 17 their general character, — " he went round from year to year" (22D1 serves as a more precise definition of Wj]\ he went and travelled round) to Bethel, i.e. Beitin (see at Josh. vii. 2), Gilgal, and Mizpeh (see at ver. 5), and judged Israel at all these places. Which Gilgal is meant, whether the one situated in the valley of the Jordan (Josh. iv. 19), or the Jiljilia on the higher ground to the southwest of Shiloh (see at Josh. viii. 35), cannot be determined with perfect certainty. The latter is favoured partly by the order in which the three places visited by Samuel on his circuits occur, since according to this he probably went first of all from Ramah to Bethel, which was to the north-east, then farther north or north-west to Jiljilia, and then turning back went towards the south-east to Mizpeh, and returning thence to Ramah performed a complete circuit; whereas, if the Gilgal in the valley of the Jordan had been the place referred to, we should expect him to go there first of all from Ramah, and then towards the north-east to Bethel, and from that to the south-west to Mizpeh; and partly also by the circumstance that, according to 2 Kings ii. 1 and iv. 38, there was a school of the prophets at Jiljilia in the time of Elijah and Elisha, the founding of which probably dated as far back as the days of Samuel. If this conjecture were really a well-founded one, it would furnish a strong proof that it was in this place, and not in the Gilgal in the valley of the Jordan, that Samuel judged the people. But as this conjecture cannot be raised into a certainty, the evidence in favour of Jiljilia is not so conclusive as I myself formerly supposed (see also the remarks on ch. ix. 14). nlDipBn~?3 nx is grammatically considered an accusative, and is in apposition to?Nnfe^T)tf, lit. Israel, viz. all the places named, i.e. Israel which inhabited all these places, and was to be found there. u And his return was to Ramah" i.e. after finishing the annual circuit he returned to Ramah, where he had his house. There he judged Israel, and also built an altar to conduct the religious affairs of the nation. Up to the death of Eli, Samuel lived and laboured at Shiloh (ch. iii. 21). But when the ark was carried away by the Philistines, and consequently the tabernacle at Shiloh lost what was most essential to it as a sanctuary, and ceased at once to be the scene of the gracious presence of God, Samuel went to his native town Ramah, and there built an altar as the place of sacrifice for Jehovah, who had manifested himself to him. The building of the altar at Ramah would naturally be suggested to the prophet by these extraordinary circumstances, even if it had not been expressly commanded bv Jehovah.

The earthly monarchy in Israel was established in the time of Samuel, and through his mediation. At the pressing desire of the people, Samuel installed the Benjaminite Saul as king, according to the command of God. The reign of Saul may be divided into two essentially different periods: viz. (1) the establishment and vigorous development of his regal supremacy (eh. viii.-xw): (2) the decline and gradual overthrow of his monarchy (ch. xvL-xxxL). The establishment of the monarchy is introduced by the negotiations of the elders of Israel with Samuel concerning the appointment of a king (ch. viii.). This is followed by (1) the account of the anointing of Saul as king (ch. ix. 1-x. 16), of his election by lot. and of his victory over the Ammonites and the confirmation of his monarchy at Giliial (ch. x. 17-xi. 15), together with Samuel's final address to the nation (ch. xii.): (2) the history I Saul's reign, of which only his earliest victories over the Philistines are given at all elaborately (ch. xiii. 1-xiv. 46), his other wars and family history being disposed of very summarily (ch. xiv. 47-.jL' the account of his disobedience to the command of God in the war against the Amalekites, and the rejection on the part of God with which Samuel threatened him in consequence (ch. xv.. The brevity with which the history of his actual reign is treated, in contrast with the elaborate account of his election and confirmation as king, may be accounted for from the significance and importance of Saul's monarchy in relation to the kingdom of God in Israel.

The people of Israel traced the cause of the oppression and distress, from which they had suffered more and more in the time of the judges, to the defects of their own political constitution. They wished to have a king, like all the heathen nations, to conduct their wars and conquer their enemies. Now, althou£rh the desire to be ruled by a king, which had existed in the nation even from the time of Gideon, was not in itself at variance with the appointment of Israel as a kingdom of God, yet the motive which led the people to desire it was botli wrong and hostile to God, since the source of all the evils and misfortunes from which Israel suffered was to be found in the apostasy of the nation from its God, and its coquetting with the gods of the heathen. Consequently their self-willed obstinacy in demanding a king, notwithstanding the warnings of Samuel, was an actual rejection of the sovereignty of Jehovah, since He had always manifested himself to His people as their king by delivering them out of the power of their f a, M soon as they returned to Him with simple penitence of heart. Samuel pointed this out to the elders of Israel, when they laid their petition before him that he would choose them a king. But Jehovah fulfilled their desires. He directed Samuel to appoint them a king, who possessed all the qualifications that were necessary to secure for the nation what it looked for from a king, and who therefore might have established the monarchy in Israel as foreseen and foretold by Jehovah, if he had not presumed upon his own power, but had submitted humbly to the will of God as made known to him by the prophet. Saul, who was chosen from Benjamin, the smallest but yet the most warlike of all the tribes, a man in the full vigour of youth, and surpassing all the rest of the people in beauty of form as well as bodily strength, not only possessed " warlike bravery and talent, unbroken courage that could overcome opposition of every kind, a stedfast desire for the well-being of the nation in the face of its many and mighty foes, and zeal and pertinacity in the execution of his plans" (Ewald), but also a pious heart, and an earnest zeal for the maintenance of the provisions of the law, and the promotion of the religious life of the nation. He would not commence the conflict with the Philistines until sacrifice had been offered (ch. xiii. 9 sqq.); in the midst of the hot pursuit of the foe he opposed the sin committed by the people in eating flesh with the blood (ch. xiv. 32, 33); he banished the wizards and necromancers out of the land (ch.xxviii. 3, 9); and in general he appears to have kept a strict watch over the observance of the Mosaic law in his kingdom. But the consciousness of his own power, coupled with the energy of his character, led him astray into an incautious disregard of the commands of God; his zeal in the prosecution of his plans hurried him on to reckless and violent measures; and success in his undertakings heightened his ambition into a haughty rebellion against the Lord, the God-king of Israel. These errors come out very conspicuously in the three great events of his reign which are the most circumstantially described. When Saul was preparing for war against the Philistines, and Samuel did not appear at once on the day appointed, he presumptuously disregarded the prohibition of the prophet, and offered the sacrifice himself without waiting for Samuel to arrive (ch. xiii. 7 sqq.). In the engagement with the Philistines, he attempted to force on the annihilation of the foe by pronouncing the ban upon any one in his army who should eat bread before the evening, or till he had avenged himself upon his foes. Consequently, he not only diminished the strength of the people, so that the overthrow of the enemy was not great, but he also prepared humiliation for himself, inasmuch as he was not able to carry out his vow (ch. xiv. 24 sqq.). But he sinned still more grievously in the war with the Amalekites, when he violated the express command of the Lord by only executing the ban upon that nation as far as he himself thought well, and thus by such utterly unpardonable conduct altogether renounced the obedience which he owed to the Lord his God (ch. xv.). All these acts of transgression manifest an attempt to secure the unconditional gratification of his own self-will, and a growing disregard of the government of Jehovah in Israel; and the consequence of the whole was simply this, that Saul not only failed to accomplish that deliverance of the nation out of the power of its foes which the Israelites had anticipated from their king, and was unable to inflict any lasting humiliation upon the Philistines, but that he undermined the stability of his monarchy, and brought about his own rejection on the part of God.

From all this we may see very clearly, that the reason why the occurrences connected with the election of Saul as king are fully described on the one hand, and on the other only such incidents connected with his enterprises after he began to reign as served to bring out the faults and crimes of his monarchy, was, that Israel might learn from this, that royalty itself could never secure the salvation it expected, unless the occupant of the throne submitted altogether to the will of the Lord. Of the other acts of Saul, the wars with the different nations round about are only briefly mentioned, but with this remark, that he displayed his strength and gained the victory in whatever direction he turned (ch. xiv. 47), simply because this statement was sufficient to bring out the brighter side of his reign, inasmuch as this clearly showed that it might have been a source of blessing to the people of God, if the king had only studied how to govern his people in the power and according to the will of Jehovah. If we examine the history of Saul's reign from this point of view, all the different points connected with it exhibit the greatest hormony. Modern critics, however, have discovered irreconcilable contradictions in the history, simply because, instead of studying it for the purpose of fathoming the plan and purpose which lie at the foundation, they have entered upon the inquiry with a twofold assumption: viz. (1) that the government of Jehovah over Israel was only a subjective idea of the Israelitish nation, without any objective reality; and (2) that the human monarchy was irreconcilably opposed to the government of God. Governed by these axioms, which are derived not from the Scriptures, but from the philosophical views of modern times, the critics have found it impossible to explain the different accounts in any other wTay than by the purely external hypothesis, that the history contained in this book has been compiled from two different sources, in one of which the establishment of the earthly monarchy was treated as a violation of the supremacy of God, whilst the other took a more favourable view. From the first source, ch. viii., x. 17-27, xi., xii., and xv. are said to have been derived; and ch. ix.-x. 17, xiii., and xiv. from the second.

As Samuel had appointed his sons as judges in his old age, and they had perverted justice, the elders of Israel entreated him to appoint them a king after the manner of all the nations (vers. 1-5). This desire not only displeased Samuel, but Jehovah also saw in it a rejection of His government; nevertheless He commanded the prophet to fulfil the desire of the people, but at the same time to set before them as a warning the prerogatives of a king (vers. 6-9). This answer from God, Samuel made known to the people, describing to them the prerogatives which the king wTould assume to himself above the rest of the people (vers. 10-18). As the people, however, persisted in their wish, Samuel promised them, according to the direction of God, that their washes should be gratified (vers. 19-22).

Vers. 1-5. The reason assigned for the appointment of Samuel's sons as judges is his own advanced age. The inference which we might draw from this alone, namely, that they were simply to support their father in the administration of justice, and that Samuel had no intention of laying down his office, and still less of making the supreme office of judge hereditary in his family, is still more apparent from the fact that they were stationed as judges of the nation in Beersheba, which was on the southern border of Canaan (Judg. xx. 1, etc.; see at Gen. xxi. 31). The sons are also mentioned again in 1 Chron. vi. 13, though the name of the elder has either been dropped out of the Masoretic text or has become corrupt. — Ver. 3. The sons, however, did not walk in the ways of their father, but set their hearts upon gain, took bribes, and perverted justice, in opposition to the command of God (see Ex. xxiii. 6, 8; Deut. xvi. 19). — Vers. 4, 5. These circumstances (viz. Samuel's age and the degeneracy of his sons) furnished the elders of Israel with the opportunity to apply to Samuel with this request: " Appoint us a king to judge us, as all the nations " (the heathen), sc. have kings. This request resembles so completely the law of the king in Deut. xvii. 14 (observe, for example, the expression D^arrteS)), that the distinct allusion to it is unmistakeable. The custom of expressly quoting the book of the law is met with for the first time in the writings of the period of the captivity. The elders simply desired what Jehovah had foretold through His servant Moses, as a thing that would take place in the future and for which He had even made provision.

Vers. 6-9. Nevertheless " the thing displeased Samuel ichen they said" etc. This serves to explain "GNn, and precludes the supposition that Samuel's displeasure had reference to what they had said concerning his own age and the conduct of his sons. At the same time, the reason why the petition for a king displeased the prophet, was not that he regarded the earthly monarchy as irreconcilable with the sovereignty of God, or even as untimely; for in both these cases he would not have entered into the question at all, but would simply have refused the request as ungodly or unseasonable. But " Samuel prayed to the Lord" i.e. he laid the matter before the Lord in prayer, and the Lord said (ver. 7): " Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee." This clearly implies, that not only in Samuel's opinion, but also according to the counsel of God, the time had really come for the establishment of the earthly sovereignty in Israel. In this respect the request of the elders for a king to reign over them was perfectly justifiable; and there is no reason to say, with Calvin, "they ought to have had regard to the times and conditions prescribed by God, and it would no doubt have come to pass that the regal power would have grown up in the nation. Although, therefore, it had not yet been established, they ought to have waited patiently for the time appointed by God, and not to have given way to their own reasons and counsels apart from the will of God." For God had not only appointed no particular time for the establishment of the monarchy; but in the introduction to the law for the king, " When thou shalt say, I will set a king over me," He had ceded the right to the representatives of the nation to deliberate upon the matter. Nor did they err in this respect, that while Samuel was still living, it was not the proper time to make use of the permission that they had received; for they assigned as the reason for their application, that Samuel had grown old: consequently they did not petition for a king instead of the prophet who had been appointed and so gloriously accredited by God, but simply that Samuel himself would give them a king in consideration of his own age, in order that when he should become feeble or die, they might have a judge and leader of the nation. Nevertheless the Lord declared, " They have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them. As they have always done from the day that I brought them up out of Egypt unto this day, that they have forsaken me and served other gods, so do they also unto thee." This verdict on the part of God refers not so much to the desire expressed, as to the feelings from which it had sprung. Externally regarded, the elders of Israel had a perfect right to present the request; the wrong was in their hearts.1 They not only declared to the prophet their confidence in his administration of his office, but they implicitly declared him incapable of any further superintendence of their civil and political affairs. This mistrust was founded upon mistrust in the Lord and His

1 Calvin has correctly pointed out how much would have been warrant-

able under the circumstances: "They might, indeed, have reminded Samuel of his old age, which rendered him less able to attend to the duties of his office, and also of the avarice of his sons and the corruptness of the judges; or they might have complained that his sons did not walk in his footsteps, and have asked that God would choose suitable men to govern them, and thus have left the whole thing to His will. And if they had done this, there can be no doubt that they would have received a gracious and suitable answer. But they did not think of calling upon God; they demanded that a king should be given them, and brought forward the customs and institutions of other nations."

guidance. In the person of Samuel they rejected the Lord and His rule. They wanted a king, because they imagined that Jehovah their God-king was not able to secure their constant prosperity. Instead of seeking for the cause of the misfortunes which had hitherto befallen them in their own sin and want of fidelity towards Jehovah, they searched for it in the faulty constitution of the nation itself. In such a state of mind as this, their desire for a king was a contempt and rejection of the kingly government of Jehovah, and was nothing more than forsaking Jehovah to serve other gods. (See ch. x. 18, 19, and ch. xii. 7 sqq., where Samuel points out to the people still more fully the wrong that they have committed.) — Ver. 9. In order to show them wherein they were wrong, Samuel was instructed to bear witness against them, by proclaiming the right of the kino; who would rule over them. Dnn Yyn lyn neither means u warn them earnestly" (De Wette), nor "explain and solemnly expound to them" (Thenius). 2 Yyn means to bear ivitness, or give testimony against a person, i.e. to point out to him his wrong. The following words, '131 ^^\ are to be understood as explanatory, in the sense of " by proclaiming to them" u The manner (mishpat) of the king" is the right or prerogative which the king would claim, namely, such a king as was possessed by all the other nations, and such an one as Israel desired in the place of its own God-king, i.e. a king who would rule over his people with arbitrary and absolute power.

Vers. 10-18. In accordance with the instructions of God, Samuel told the people all the words of Jehovah, i.e. all that God had said to him, as related in vers. 7-9, and then proclaimed to them the riijht of the king. — Ver. 11. u lie will take your sons, and set them for himself upon his chariots, and upon his saddle-horses, and they will run before his chariot" i.e. he will make the sons of the people his retainers at court, his charioteers, riders, and runners. The singular suffix attached to iri33"]D2 is not to be altered, as Thenius suggests, into the plural form, according to the LXX., Chald., and Syr., since the word refers, not to war-chariots, but to the king's state-carriage; and KHQ does not mean a rider, but a saddle-horse, as in 2 Sam. i. 6, 1 Kings v. 6, etc. — Ver. 12. " And to make himself chiefs over thousands and over fifties;" — the greatest and smallest military officers are mentioned, instead of all the soldiers and officers

(comp. Num. xxxi. 14, 2 Kings i. 9 sqq., with Ex. xviii. 21, 25). DVCvl is also dependent upon nja* (ver. 1 1), — " and to plough his field (^"}l7, lit. the ploughed), and reap his harvest, and make his instruments of war and instruments of his chariots." — Yer. 13. " Your daughters he will take as preparers of ointments, cooks, and bakers," sc. for his court. — Vers. 14 sqq. All their possessions he would also take to himself: the good (i.e. the best) fields, vineyards, and olive-gardens, he would take away, and give to his servants; he would tithe the sowings and vineyards (i.e. the produce which they yielded), and give them to his courtiers and servants. DV!9? &&• the eunuch; here it is used in a wider sense for the royal chamberlains. Even their slaves (men-servants and maid-servants) and their beasts of draught and burden he would take and use for his own work, and raise the tithe of the flock. The word D3*Jin3, between the slaves (men-servants and maid-servants) and the asses, is very striking and altogether unsuitable; and in all probability it is only an ancient copyist's error for DS'HjpZL, your oxen, as we may see from the LXX. rendering, ra /3ovk6\lo,. The servants and maids, oxen and asses, answer in that case to one another; whilst the young men are included among the sons in vers. 11, 12. In this way the king would make all the people into his servants or slaves. This is the meaning of the second clause of ver. 17; for the whole are evidently summed up in conclusion in the expression, " and ye shall be his servants." — Yer. 18. Israel would then cry out to God because of its king, but the Lord would not hear it then. This description, which contains a fearful picture of the tyranny of the king, is drawn from the despotic conduct of the heathen kings, and does not presuppose, as many have maintained, the times of the later kings, which were so full of painful experiences.