Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Samuel 3

The child Samuel ministered to the Lord. —The writer of this history, although well aware of the great revolution accomplished in Israel by the prophet whose life and work the Holy Spirit instructed him to record, gives us only the simplest and shortest possible account of the childhood of the one who was second only to Moses in his influence on the eventful story of the chosen people. But short and devoid of detail though the record is, it is enough to show us that the atmosphere in which the child lived was a pure and holy one; the boy was evidently kept apart from Hophni, Phinehas, and their impious, self-seeking party.

The high-priestly guardian was evidently fully conscious of the importance of his charge, and he watched over his pupil with tender, watchful care. Perhaps his sad experiences with his evil, headstrong sons had taught the old man wisdom; certainly, the training he gave to Samuel was one that educated the boy well for his later life of stirring public work. The accounts of his childhood and boyhood are indeed brief.

The first account sharply contrasts the lawless profligacy of the priestly houses with the pure, holy childhood spent in the sanctuary courts, probably always in the company of the old man.

Hophni and Phinehas, the grown men, prostituted the holy work for their own vile, worldly ends; the child ministered before the Lord in his little white robe.

And while in the home life of his own mother and father in Ramah, his brothers and sisters were growing up with the sorrows and joys of other Hebrew children, the child Samuel grew before the Lord amid the stillness, silence, and awful mystery of the Divine protection, which always seems, even in the darkest days of the history of Israel, to have surrounded the home of the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord.

It was amid this silent, sacred mystery, apart from the disorders of his priestly sons, that Eli taught the boy the story of his ancestors, with only the dark curtains of the sanctuary hanging between master and pupil and the mystic golden throne of God, on which His glory was sometimes pleased to rest.

The writer composed his gloomy recital of the wild, unbridled life of the wicked priests, and recorded the weak, sorrowful remonstrances of the father and high priest, foreshadowing, however, their certain doom.

Then, again, their life of shame is sharply contrasted with the pure childhood of the little pupil of the old, sorrow-stricken high priest—the boy whom all men loved: And the boy Samuel grew on, and was in favour both with the Lord, and also with men.

Once more Eli, now weak with age, is warned of the sure consequences that would follow the evil license and irreligion of his priestly sons.

And again, the boy Samuel and his life, guided by Eli, his guardian and teacher, is contrasted with the wild, unchecked lawlessness of Eli's priestly sons, who were perpetually dishonoring religion and the sanctuary—a lawlessness that had just been denounced by the nameless prophet (1 Samuel 2:27–36).

Josephus tells us that Samuel, when the Lord first called him, was twelve years old. This was the age of the child Jesus when He disputed with the doctors in the Temple.

Was precious in those days.—Precious, that is, rare. The word of the Lord is the will of the Lord announced by a prophet, seer, or man of God. Between the days of Deborah and the nameless man of God who came with the awful message to Eli, no inspired voice seems to have spoken to the chosen people.

Open vision refers to such manifestations of the Divinity as were granted to Abraham, Moses, Joshua, and Manoah, and in this chapter to Samuel. There may possibly be some reference to the appearance of Divine glory that was connected with the Urim and Thummim, which were worn by the high priest.

The writer dwells on this significant silence from the invisible King, explaining it as a result of the deep corruption into which the priests and, through their evil example, a large proportion of the nation had fallen.

Before the lamp of God went out. —There is a Talmud comment here of singular interest and beauty: “On the day that Rabbi Akiva died, Rabbi (compiler of the Mishnah) was born; on the day when Rabbi died, Rav Yehudah was born; on the day when Rav Yehudah died, Rava was born; on the day when Rava died, Rav Ashi (one of the editors of Guemara) was born. It teaches you, that no righteous man departs this life before another equally righteous is born; as it is said (Ecclesiastes 1:5): The sun riser, and the sun goes down. The sun of Eli had not set before that of Samuel rose; as it is said (1 Samuel 3:3): Ere the lamp of God was out ... and Samuel laid down.”—Tract Kiddushin, fol. 72,Colossians 2:0.

“It was night in the sanctuary. The high priest slept in one of the adjacent chambers, and the attendant ministers in another.

“In the centre, on the left of the entrance, stood the seven-branched candlestick, now mentioned for the last time; superseded in the reign of Solomon by the ten separate candlesticks, but revived after the Captivity by the copy of the one candlestick with seven branches, as it is still seen on the Arch of Titus.

“It was the only light of the Tabernacle during the night, was solemnly lighted every evening, as in the devotions of the Eastern world, both Muslim and Christian, and extinguished just before morning, when the doors were opened.

“In the deep silence of that early morning, before the sun had risen, when the sacred light was still burning, came through the mouth of the innocent child the doom of the house of Ithamar.”—Stanley, Lectures on the Jewish Church, Part I.

The Lord called Samuel. —It seems probable that the voice came from the “visible glory,” the Shekinah.

On that solemn night of the calling of the child-prophet, the Shekinah no doubt rested on its chosen earthly throne—the mercy-seat of God. This mercy-seat formed the top of the Ark and was overshadowed by the outspread wings of the golden Cherubim.

And Eli perceived that the Lord had called the child. —The whole story of the eventful night is told so naturally, the supernatural wonderfully interwoven with the common life of the sanctuary, that we forget, as we read, the strangeness of the events recorded. The sleeping child is awakened by a voice uttering his name. He naturally supposes it is his half-blind old master summoning him. The same thing occurs a second and a third time. Then it flashed upon Eli that the boy had had no dream.

We can well imagine the old man, when Samuel again came in, asking, “Where did the voice you thought was mine come from?” and the boy would reply, “From your chamber, master.” And the old high priest would remember that in the same direction, only at the farthest part of the sanctuary, behind the veil, was the Ark and the seat of God. Was, then, the glory of the Lord shining there? and did the voice, as in days of old, come from that sacred golden throne? So he instructed his pupil to go to his chamber again, and if the voice spoke to him again, to answer, not Eli, but the invisible King—“Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth.”

And the Lord came, and stood.—Then before the boy, as he lay and waited for the voice, came something, and it stood before him. The question naturally occurs to us, What came and stood before the boy’s couch? As a rule, we find that generally, when the Lord was pleased to take some form, the form is specified. Now, as in Abraham’s case at Mamre, it was a traveller; now, as in Joshua’s, an armed warrior; very frequently, as to Manoah, the form was that of an angel; here nothing is specially described.

Was it not simply “the glory” on which Moses gazed when he met the Holy One on Sinai—“the glory” which seemed to rest at times in the lightless Holy of Holies on the golden mercy-seat of the Ark of the Covenant? Was it not this “visible glory”—Shekinah, as the Hebrews termed it—which filled the chamber of the child, and from out of this came the voice of the Eternal, and spoke to Samuel? “See how God loves holiness in children. The child Samuel was preferred by Him to Eli, the aged high priest and judge.”—Theodoret, quoted by Bishop Wordsworth.

The ears of every one that heareth it shall tingle. —The calamity referred to here was the capture of the Ark of the Covenant. Neither the death of the warrior priests, Hophni and Phinehas, nor the crushing defeat of the Hebrew army, would have affected the people so powerfully; but the fact that the sacred symbol of the presence and protection of the invisible King was allowed to fall into the hands of the uncircumcised Philistines, the hereditary enemies of the chosen race, was a calamity unparalleled in their history.

It seemed to say that God had indeed forsaken them.

The expression is a very remarkable one, and recurs in 2 Kings 21:12, and Jeremiah 19:3, in connection with the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar.