Read the session · 23 min
First Samuel is a book about who gets to be king. And it answers that question by watching God bring down the people who grab, and lift up the people who wait.
A nobody in a nowhere town
Now, notice how weird this is. This is a book about kings. Palace drama, wars, prophets yelling at rulers. And it opens in a town you can't pronounce, with a guy you've never heard of, and his marriage problems.
One of the commentators I'm using, a guy named Stephen Chapman, says don't skip past this. A book that's about to tell you the story of kings and nobles starts with a socially marginal woman in an obscure village.
That's not an accident. That's the first move. If the book is going to say God lifts up the low and brings down the high, it's got to start low. So it starts with a woman with no kids, in a house where the other wife has a bunch.
Look at verse 3. Elkanah goes up every year to Shiloh to worship, and the narrator drops in a detail: "the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were priests of the LORD there."
Hophni and Phinehas. Sounds like a law firm. Twice in two verses, verse 5 and verse 6, the narrator says "the LORD had closed her womb." The text does not soften that. Hannah's childlessness isn't bad luck. The book puts it on God. Hang onto that, because she's going to sing about a God who makes poor and makes rich and brings low and lifts up, and she's not doing theology from a distance. She's describing her own life from the inside.
And then Elkanah. Verse 8. He loves her. He's trying. And he says: "Am I not more to you than ten sons?" Gentlemen. We've all done it. She's weeping, she's not eating, and the man answers a question nobody asked. Hannah didn't say "I don't love you." She didn't say anything. And he somehow made it about him.
I say that as a man who has done exactly that, in my own kitchen, more than once. Elkanah's a good guy. He's just a guy. For some of you, Hannah's story isn't a story. It's your house. If that's you, I'm not going to promise you a Samuel. I'll just say this: the Bible put a woman in your exact situation on page one of the story of Israel's kings, and it let her be sad and bitter and angry without cleaning her up. She's not a lesson. She's a person. And God saw her before anybody else in the story did.
She's deeply distressed. She prays. She weeps bitterly. And she makes a vow: if you give me a son, I give him back. All his life. No razor on his head, which is Nazirite language, set apart from birth, like Samson, except hopefully with better judgment.
Let me set the scene for you. Eli is the high priest. He is the senior religious leader in the country. He's sitting in his chair by the doorpost of the house of the LORD, which is basically the pastor's seat at the back of the sanctuary.
And a woman comes in and prays so hard her lips are moving and no sound is coming out. And the high priest looks at her and goes: she's drunk.
What's the most wrong somebody has ever read you? Not the worst thing that happened to you. The most wrong read. Now imagine it's your pastor. And you're praying.
I don't think the narrator put that in to dunk on Eli. I think he put it in to tell you what Shiloh has become. What kind of place is it where the guy in charge sees a woman in agony before God and his first instinct is "Put your wine away"? What kind of church is it where that's the normal read on someone praying?
That's the first clue to the second barrenness in this chapter. Hannah's womb is closed. And Shiloh, the place where God meets his people, is closed too, in a way that's harder to spot. The lights are on. The sacrifices are happening. The robes are on. And the man in charge can't recognize a prayer when it's three feet in front of him.
But watch what Hannah does with it. Verse 15: "No, my lord, I am a woman troubled in spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the LORD."
She doesn't storm out. She doesn't post about it. She corrects him, respectfully, and stays in the room. And Eli, to his credit, does the one thing he's still got. Verse 17, he blesses her: "Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant your petition."
And then verse 18, which might be my favorite line in the chapter: "Then the woman went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad."
Nothing has changed. She's not pregnant. All she has is a blessing from a priest who just called her a drunk. And her face isn't sad anymore. That's what actually pouring something out does. You walk out lighter before you know how it ends.
Verses 19 and 20. The LORD remembered her. She conceives, she has a son, and she names him Samuel, "for she said, 'I have asked for him from the LORD.'"
The word for "ask" is sha'al. That root shows up seven times in this chapter. Seven. It's everywhere around this baby. She asked, God gave her the asking. And listen to how she says it at the end, verses 27 and 28: "For this child I prayed, and the LORD has granted me my petition that I made to him. Therefore I have lent him to the LORD. As long as he lives, he is lent to the LORD."
"Lent" there is the same root. She asked for him, so she gives him back to the one she asked. Asked, given, given back. Now here's the part that should make you sit up. The exact form of that word in verse 28, "he is lent," is sha'ul.
Letter for letter, that's the name Saul. Saul means "asked for." So the book opens with a boy who's asked for and handed back to God. And in seven chapters, Israel is going to ask God for a king, and God's going to give them one named Asked-For. Two asked-for people in this book. One gets given back. One gets kept. Watch what happens to each of them.
She weans him, so he's maybe three. She takes him to Shiloh. And she walks up to the same priest who called her a drunk and says, "I'm the woman who was standing here praying." She makes him remember. And then she hands him her kid.
Think about what that costs. She prayed for one thing for years. She got it. And she gives it to a place run by Eli and staffed by Hophni and Phinehas, whom we're about to meet, and you're not going to like them.
Hannah gets exactly what she prayed for and gives it away. To Eli's Shiloh, of all places. What would that cost you? Is there something you asked God for that you've been holding with a closed hand? That's what makes her next step so hard to imagine.
She hands her only son to a broken church because she made a promise to God. And then she doesn't cry. She sings.
The poem that runs the book
That's the thesis statement of 1 Samuel. Everything for the next thirty chapters is a test of whether that poem is true. Let me show you the shape of it, because the shape is the point. And then I'll show you the part that shouldn't be there.
David Tsumura, who wrote the big technical commentary I'm using, says the poem goes back and forth between two things. Who God is. And what God does. Watch it.
Verses 1 through 3: who God is. "There is none holy like the LORD: for there is none besides you; there is no rock like our God." He's holy, he's the only one, he knows.
Verses 4 and 5: what God does. "The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble bind on strength. Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, but those who were hungry have ceased to hunger. The barren has borne seven, but she who has many children is forlorn."
Reversal. The strong go down, the weak come up. And notice, she's in it. "The barren has borne seven." That's not a metaphor. That's her. Verses 6 and 7: who God is again. "The LORD kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up. The LORD makes poor and makes rich; he brings low and he exalts."
Verse 8: what he does again. Raises the poor from the dust, lifts the needy from the ash heap, seats them with princes. Then 8b through 10a: who God is. The pillars of the earth are his. He guards his faithful. He thunders. He judges the ends of the earth.
Who God is. What he does. Who God is. What he does. Who God is. It's like a chorus that keeps coming back. And then the last line. Verse 10. Out of nowhere.
"He will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed." What's wrong with that line? Who's the king? There is no king. There's no throne. There's no palace. Israel at this point is twelve tribes, a tent, and a priest who can't tell praying from drinking. And Hannah, in a poem about her own life, ends by praying for a king who does not exist.
Look at how the poem's framed. Verse 1: "my horn is exalted in the LORD." A horn is the animal picture for strength, a ram with its head up. Hannah's horn is lifted. Verse 10: "exalt the horn of his anointed." Same phrase. Same picture. It opens with a barren woman lifted up and closes with a king lifted up, and the whole book lives between those two lines.
Her reversal is the small version. The kingdom is the big version. Same God. Same move. And that word, "anointed." The word is mashiach. Messiah. This is the first time in your Bible that word gets attached to a coming king.
I want you to feel the weight of this story on its own terms first. But I'm also not going to pretend the book didn't just hand it to us. Hannah asked for a king whose horn God would lift. Israel's going to get a tall king who grabs, then a shepherd who waits, and neither of them is the end of that sentence.
Think about verses 6 through 8. God kills and brings to life. Makes poor and makes rich. Brings low and lifts up. Is that comforting to you? A little terrifying? Both? I think that tension is on purpose.
If you're Hannah, it's the best news you've ever heard. If you're Peninnah, or Eli, it's a threat. It depends entirely on where you're standing. That's going to be true of the whole book. The God who lifts David up is the God who brings Saul down, and it's the same action. He's not doing two things. He's doing one thing, and it looks completely different depending on whether you're grabbing or waiting.
Some scholars say this song must have been written later, after Israel had kings, because it mentions one. Others say kingship was already in the air: Genesis, Numbers, and Deuteronomy all anticipate a king, and Judges keeps circling the question. Honestly? It's uncertain both ways, and it doesn't change what the poem is doing here. Wherever it came from, it sits at the front of the book as the thesis, and the next thirty chapters argue it.
Verse 11. Elkanah goes home. The boy stays. "And the boy was ministering to the LORD in the presence of Eli the priest." Hannah walks out of the story. Her kid walks into Shiloh. And now we find out what Shiloh is.
Meanwhile, at church
Verse 12. "Now the sons of Eli were worthless men. They did not know the LORD." Remember the law firm? Here's the payoff. Now, the narrator in this book almost never tells you what somebody's like. He shows you and lets you decide. Here he just says it. Worthless. The Hebrew is "sons of Belial." And here's the thing: Hannah used that exact phrase in 1:16 when she begged Eli, "Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman."
So the priest accused an innocent woman of being a daughter of Belial while his own sons were literally sons of Belial in the next room. What did they do? Verses 13 through 17. The priests were owed a cut of the sacrifice. That's legit. But Eli's boys sent a servant with a three-pronged fork to stab into the pot and take whatever came up. And worse, they wanted the meat raw, before the fat was burned to God, and the fat was the part that was God's.
When a worshiper pushes back, what does the servant say? Listen to the threat in his answer. Verse 16. "No, you must give it now, and if not, I will take it by force."
Take. That's the word for this whole book. Eli's sons take. When Israel asks for a king, Samuel's going to warn them what kings do. He says "he will take" over and over. Your sons. Your daughters. Your fields. Your flocks. Saul's going to take. And the book is going to set against all of them a man who could take and won't.
Taking versus receiving. Grabbing versus waiting. It starts here, with a fork in a pot at a church potluck.
Now watch what the narrator does, because it's slick. He cuts back and forth. Verse 11: the boy Samuel ministers before the LORD. Verses 12 through 17: Eli's sons are worthless. Verses 18 through 21: Samuel's serving in a little linen ephod, his mom brings him a new robe every year, and God gives Hannah more kids. Verses 22 through 25: Eli's sons are sleeping with the women who serve at the tent, and Eli scolds them, and they ignore him. Verse 26: "Now the boy Samuel continued to grow both in stature and in favor with the LORD and also with man."
Samuel grows. Eli's sons get worse. Samuel grows. Eli's sons get worse. Back and forth, back and forth. The narrator doesn't explain it. He just keeps cutting between them until you get it.
Then a man of God shows up, verses 27 through 36, and reads the verdict on Eli's house. But I need you to hear verses 29 and 30, because there's a word in them that's going to chase us for the next three chapters.
Verse 29, God to Eli: "Why then do you scorn my sacrifices and my offerings that I commanded for my dwelling, and honor your sons above me by fattening yourselves on the choicest parts of every offering of my people Israel?"
Verse 30: "Far be it from me, for those who honor me I will honor, and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed." "Honor" there is the Hebrew root kabed: heavy. Weight. Glory. To honor somebody is to treat them as heavy. To give them weight. Same root as "glory." And "despise" is the opposite: to treat as light. Weightless.
So look at what God says. You gave your sons more weight than me. And you got fat doing it. You've been making yourselves heavy on what was mine.
Here's the principle, and it's the principle of the whole book. Those who give God weight, God gives weight. Those who treat God as light get treated as light.
Remember "heavy." Eli, who is old and heavy, is going to fall backward off his chair and break his neck. And his daughter-in-law is going to name her baby Ichabod, which means "no glory," or "where's the glory?" Same root. Same word. The book's going to make you watch what happens to a man who gave the wrong thing weight.
That's the second barrenness. Hannah's womb was closed, and God opened it. Shiloh is closed too, and it's harder to see because the building's still standing. And God is going to answer that barrenness with the same boy.
The night the phone rang
Verse 1. "Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the LORD in the presence of Eli. And the word of the LORD was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision."
Verses 2 and 3. "At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his own place. The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the LORD, where the ark of God was."
Four details in the setup, and every single one of them is doing two jobs. The word of the LORD is rare. That's a statement about the times. It's also the diagnosis. God's people have a sanctuary, priests, an ark, sacrifices, and no word. All the equipment, none of the voice.
No frequent vision. Same thing, said again. Eli's eyes have grown dim. That's a fact about an old man. It's also the whole story of Eli. He couldn't see Hannah for what she was. He couldn't see his sons for what they were. Or wouldn't. Chapman says there's a deep irony in a priest who can't see. The body is telling you about the soul.
And the lamp of God had not yet gone out. That's a time stamp. The lamp in the sanctuary burned through the night, so this is the small hours, before dawn. But "not yet" is the most hopeful phrase in the chapter. It's dark. Eli's nearly blind. The word is rare. And the lamp has not yet gone out.
And where's Samuel? Lying down in the temple, where the ark is. Eli's in his own place. The kid is as close to the presence of God as a human being can get.
You know this story. God calls. Samuel runs to Eli. "Here I am! You called me." "I didn't call you. Go back to bed." Three times. Now, I have kids. If one of mine showed up at my bedside three times at 3 a.m. saying "You called me," by round three I am not a gentle man. Eli, to be fair, does better than I would. He says "my son." Twice.
But I want you to see verse 7, tucked between the second and third call: "Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD, and the word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him."
Look back at 2:12. What did the narrator say about Eli's sons? "They did not know the LORD." Now read 3:7 again. What's the difference? One word. Joyce Baldwin, another one of my commentators, catches this: in Hebrew, the sentence in 3:7 is identical to the one in 2:12, except "not" has become "not yet." The sons of Eli did not know the LORD. Samuel did not yet know the LORD. Same sentence. One word of difference. And the whole future of Israel is sitting in that one word.
That's the difference between a closed door and a door that hasn't opened yet. Eli looks at a praying woman and sees a drunk. Samuel lies next to the ark and doesn't know God's voice. Both of them are in the sanctuary. What do these three chapters say about the difference between being near God and knowing him? The narrator puts those two things right beside each other.
Eli's sons were in the sanctuary every day and they did not know him. Samuel was lying next to the ark and he did not yet know him. And the narrator tells you exactly why: "the word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him." Knowing God, in this book, isn't a feeling. It isn't being near the building. It's receiving his word. Samuel doesn't know God until God speaks. And when God speaks, he does.
Now here's the part that got me when I sat with this chapter this week. I think it's the heart of it. Verse 8. Third time, "Eli perceived that the LORD was calling the boy." Verse 9: "Go, lie down, and if he calls you, you shall say, 'Speak, LORD, for your servant hears.'"
Eli figures it out. The old, half-blind, compromised priest. The guy whose house is already under a death sentence. The guy who couldn't tell a praying woman from a drunk. He's the one who recognizes what's going on. And he's the one who knows what to say.
Chapman says it better than I can. Here's the paradox at the center of the chapter: Samuel is the one God chooses to speak to, but Samuel doesn't know what to say. Eli is the one God does not choose to speak to, but Eli knows what must be said.
God skips the high priest and talks to the kid. And the kid can't receive it. He needs the tired old failure to hand him the words. Eli still holds the formula. Whatever else has died in him, that hasn't. He knows how you answer God when God calls: "Speak, LORD, for your servant hears."
I think that's one of the most honest things in the Bible about how God actually works through people. The person God is speaking to and the person who knows how to listen aren't always the same person. Sometimes the fresh, called, chosen one needs the tired, compromised, failing one to teach him the posture.
And the book doesn't sneer at Eli for that. It gives him this. Chapman says the story strikes a note of appreciation for religious institutions and their leaders, even here, even at Shiloh, even with Eli. The tradition still carried the words when the men carrying it had gone bad.
Who taught you to pray? Not who prayed for you. Who taught you how? Think of that person as you look at Eli. Most of us learned to say "Speak, LORD" from an Eli.
Verse 10. "And the LORD came and stood, calling as at other times, 'Samuel! Samuel!' And Samuel said, 'Speak, for your servant hears.'" And then God speaks. Verses 11 through 14. And it's not what you'd want your first word from God to be. It's the verdict on Eli's house. "I am about to do a thing in Israel at which the two ears of everyone who hears it will tingle." Eli's sons were blaspheming God "and he did not restrain them." And it can't be atoned for.
Samuel's first word from God is a judgment on the man who just taught him how to listen. Verse 15. He lies there till morning. He opens the doors. And "Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli." Of course he was. He's a kid, and he's got to tell the man who raised him that his family is finished.
And Eli makes him say it. Verse 17: "What was it that he told you? Do not hide it from me." So Samuel tells him everything and hides nothing.
Verse 18. Eli's answer. "It is the LORD. Let him do what seems good to him." Is that faith, or is that giving up? Here's where I land: I think it's both, and I think the text is honest enough not to separate them.
Eli doesn't argue. He doesn't say "that's not fair." He doesn't bargain. That's real. But he also doesn't do anything. He's known about his sons for years. A man of God told him in chapter 2. A boy told him in chapter 3. And every time, his response is to accept the verdict and change nothing.
Chapman reads verse 18 generously. He sees strength of character in it, a real and personal awareness of God, nothing grudging. Baldwin is harder on him. She reads his whole story as a man who was told and told and never acted.
I think they're both right, and that's what makes Eli one of the most sympathetic people in the book. He's not a villain. He's a man who honored God with his mouth and honored his sons with his life, and when the bill came due he said "It is the LORD" and went back to bed.
There's something in that for every one of us who knows the right words. "And Samuel grew, and the LORD was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew that Samuel was established as a prophet of the LORD. And the LORD appeared again at Shiloh, for the LORD revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by the word of the LORD."
Verse 1: the word of the LORD was rare. Verse 21: the LORD revealed himself by the word of the LORD. Rare, then restored. Same phrase, front and back. That's the chapter.
So here's the thread. First Samuel 3:1 and 3:21. The word was rare, and God restored it. Through a kid. At a broken church. To a nation that hadn't heard from him in a long time.
Chapter 28, verse 6. "And when Saul inquired of the LORD, the LORD did not answer him, either by dreams, or by Urim, or by prophets." The book opens with God restoring his word and closes with a king who can't get one. Dreams. Urim. Prophets. Three channels. All silent.
Saul shut every one of those doors himself. One at a time. Over about fifteen chapters. He drove off his prophet. He had the priests killed, and the ephod walked out the door in the arms of the one survivor. He banned the mediums, and then went and found one in the dark. And then he stood there and said, "God's not answering."
Which means the question this book keeps asking isn't really "Is God speaking?" It's "Have you made yourself somebody who can hear him?" Where in your life is God's word "rare" right now? And the harder version: is it because he's quiet, or because you're not in the room? Those questions bring us back to the two barrennesses where this story began.
Two barrennesses. A woman who couldn't have a child. A sanctuary that couldn't hear God. And the answer to both was the same boy. Asked for. Given back. Lying by the ark. Learning from a failing old man how to say "Speak, LORD, for your servant hears."
God brings down the people who grab and lifts up the people who wait. Eli's sons grabbed with a fork. Hannah waited with an empty womb. And you know which one God honored, because he told you. Those who honor me, I will honor.
If you're Eli, if you know all the words and you've quietly stopped doing anything with them, the book doesn't write you off. It gives you one more chance to say "Speak, LORD."
If you're Hannah, if you've been misread by the people who should have known better, you're on page one of the story of the kings, and God saw you before anybody else did.
And if you're Samuel, if you think you might be hearing something and you don't know what to say, go find an Eli. Even a flawed one. That's what they're for.