The story of Samuel in the
Temple is an old friend, isn’t it?
I was amazed, when I came
to have another look at it,
that it was actually a much darker
story than I remembered.
We all know the bit about Samuel waking
up in the night and thinking Eli has called him,
and Eli
eventually clicking that God was trying to speak to Samuel....
but
what is the context?
And what, actually, did God want to
say?
It all started, of course, with Samuel’s mother,
whose name was Hannah.
She was married to a man called Elkanah,
and, in fact, she was his senior wife.
But her great sadness was
that she had no children,
and her co-wife, called Penninah,
did.
Elkanah actually loved Hannah more than he loved Penninah,
and although I don’t suppose he minded for his own sake that
she had no children, he minded for her sake.
And, we are
told, whenever Elkanah went to the Temple to make sacrifices, he gave
Hannah a double portion.
And one day, Hannah, in the Temple, is
just overcome by the misery of it all,
and pours out her heart
to God –
I’m sure you’ve been there and done that;
I
know I have.
And Eli, the priest, thought she was drunk, seeing
her mumbling away like that.
It was rather a bad time in
Israel’s history.
I don’t know if it ever occurred to you
–
it hadn’t to me until quite recently –
but this is not
the Temple in Jerusalem that Jesus would have known;
the first
Temple in Jerusalem wouldn’t be built until the reign of King
Solomon, about seventy or eighty years in the future.
This
Temple was in Shiloh, and really, it was the place where the Ark of
the Covenant resided.
And Eli is the priest in the Temple.
Now,
back then, being a priest was something that only certain families
could do;
and if your father was a priest, you usually were,
too.
It’s actually only within quite recent history that what
you do with your life isn’t determined by what your father did
–
and isn't it the case that people are finding
it increasingly hard to get a better education than their parents,
and perhaps do different things?
Anyway, back then, you followed
in your father’s profession,
and if your father was a priest,
as Eli was, then you would expect to be one, too.
Unfortunately,
Eli’s sons were not really priestly material.
They abused the
office dreadfully –
taking parts of the sacrifices that were
meant to be burnt for God alone,
sleeping with the women who
served at the entrance to the temple.
I don’t think these
women were prostitutes –
temple prostitution was definitely a
part of some religions in the area,
but I don’t think it ever
was part of Judaism.
These women would have been servants to Eli
and his family, I expect,
and considered that service as part
of their devotion to God.
And perhaps, too, they helped people
who had come to make sacrifices and so on.
Whatever, Hophni and
Phineas, Eli’s sons, shouldn’t have been sleeping with them,
and
they shouldn’t have been disrespecting the sacrifices,
either.
There had been a prophecy that the Lord would not
honour Eli’s family any more, and that Hophni and Phineas would
both die on the same day,
and a different family would take
over the priesthood.
Eli had tried to tell his sons that their
behaviour was unacceptable, but they hadn’t listened, and one
rather gets the impression that he had given up on them.
He was
not a young man, by any manner of means.
And now he had
this child to bring up, Samuel, first-born of the Hannah whom he had
accused of being drunk.
Hannah had lent her first-born child to
the Lord “as long as he lives”,
since God had finally
granted her request and sent her children –
unlike some of the
other childless women in the Bible,
people like Sarah or
Elisabeth,
God gave her more than one child in the end.
So
Samuel, her first-born, was lent to God, and grew up in the
Temple.
I had always somehow imagined the Temple as being
very like
the Temple in Jerusalem, but, of course, it can’t
have been.
It was probably just an ordinary house, but with the
main room reserved for the altar of the Lord and the Ark of the
Covenant.
Samuel sleeps in there, you notice, and Eli has his
own room at the back somewhere.
And I imagine Hophni and Phineas
have rooms of their own, too.
I do think that the first
verse of our reading is one of the saddest there is;
“The word
of the Lord was rare in those days;
visions were not
widespread.”
“The word of the Lord was rare in those
days;
visions were not widespread.”
It sounds like a very
bleak time, doesn’t it?
Samuel, we are told, did not
know the Lord.
He didn’t know the Lord.
This in spite of
ministering in the Temple daily.
He wasn’t able to offer
sacrifices, of course –
he was not, and couldn’t ever be, a
priest, as he came from the wrong tribe.
But he would have
helped Eli get things ready,
he would perhaps have made the
responses.
He would certainly have known what it was all
about.
But he did not know the Lord, in those days.
The
word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.
So when
God calls him in the night, he has no idea what is happening,
and
thinks that Eli is in need of help.
And it isn’t until the
second or third time that Eli realises what is happening, either.
But
once he does, Eli explains that it might be that God is wanting to
speak to Samuel, and he should say “Speak, Lord, for your servant
is listening!”
And then what?
No message of hope or
encouragement such as anybody would want to hear.
In fact, quite
the reverse:
“See, I am about to do something in Israel
that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle.
On
that day I will fulfil against Eli all that I have spoken concerning
his house, from beginning to end.
For I have told him that I am
about to punish his house forever,
for the iniquity that he
knew, because his sons were blaspheming God,
and he did not
restrain them.
Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the
iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or
offering forever.”
There will be no escape for Eli;
he
could, and should, have stopped his sons from being blasphemous,
from disrespecting the offerings of God’s people,
from
sleeping with the temple servants.
I get the feeling Eli has
rather given up, don’t you?
When Samuel tells him what the
Lord has said, his reaction is simply,
“It is the Lord;
let
him do what seems good to him.”
And in the end, just to round
off the story, both sons were killed in a battle against the
Philistines,
and Eli died of a heart attack or something very
similar that same day.
And the Philistines captured the Ark of
the Covenant.
All very nasty –
not one of the nicer
stories in the Bible, I don’t think.
But what does it say to
us?
What do we have in common with these people at the end of
the Bronze Age, or early Iron Age, I’m not quite sure which they
are?
The thing is, of course, we do have rather too much
in common with them.
This is a time when the Word of God is not
heard too much in our land.
It is a time when churches, and,
indeed, synagogues and mosques, too, are disrespected;
synagogues
and mosques even have to have security at the entrance, just for when
people are coming to worship.
Thank goodness that isn’t yet
the case with our churches, and pray God it will never be.
But
even ministers and priests have been known to abuse their position –
I have not heard of any rabbis or imams doing so, but I shouldn't be
in the least surprised.
I suppose that there is nothing
new;
every age has probably said the same of itself.
We
know that we are, naturally, sinners, and unless God help us we shall
continue to sin.
Samuel served in the Temple but he
didn’t, then, know God.
Eli had given up;
Hophni and
Phineas set him a poor example.
It must have been confusing for
Samuel –
what was it all about?
And then when God did
finally speak to him,
it wasn’t a comforting message of cheer
and strength,
but a reminder that God’s judgement on the whole
shrine and the priestly family who ran it was going to happen.
But
good things came from it, too.
Samuel became known and respected
as a prophet and as a judge in Israel.
He couldn’t be a
priest, as he was from the wrong tribe,
but he could be, and
was, a prophet who was widely respected and loved.
It was he who
anointed Saul as king, and then David.
So there is hope,
even in the cloudiest, stormiest days.
The temple of Shiloh was
abandoned, and the Ark never returned there.
But the Ark did
return, and eventually the Temple was built in Jerusalem.
Samuel
became one of the most famous prophets of them all.
Samuel
said “Yes” to God.
He was willing to hear God’s message,
no matter how unpleasant it had to be,
no matter how
traumatic.
He was willing to hear, and he was willing to speak
it out.
And so God used him to establish the Kings of Israel and
then of Judah –
perhaps not the most successful monarchy ever,
but from King David’s line came, of course, Jesus.
It
is never totally dark.
God ended Eli’s family’s service to
him, yes;
but the Temple endured, and was eventually rebuilt in
Jerusalem,
bigger and better than before.
The Ark of the
Covenant was taken into captivity –
but it came back, and
remained in the Temple until it was no longer needed, as God made a
new covenant with us.
When we go through difficult times,
and I think we all do, whether as individuals,
as
churches,
or as a society,
it’s good to think back on
this story.
God may be bringing one thing to an end;
but a
new thing will, invariably, follow, just as spring follows
winter.
The difficult thing, of course, is going on
trusting Him when all does seem dark, when we can’t see how things
are going to work out.
It's been terribly dark just lately,
hasn't it, with the wars in Ukraine and Israel threatening our own
world.
But remember Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter
8;
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of
those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
I
do think that we can ask to see how God is going to work a bad
situation for good;
it’s amazing how that can and does
happen.
Perhaps one day we will see the good that God has worked
out of the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Perhaps one day we
will see the good that God has worked out of the conflict between
Israel and Hamas.
And we need, like Samuel, to listen to
God, and to do what He asks of us, no matter how difficult.
Are
you willing to do this for God?
Am I willing?
It isn’t
easy, is it?
Thanks be to God that we need do none of this
in our own strength, but in the power of the Holy Spirit, who
strengthens us.
Amen!
