1 Samuel 4:1

And the word of Samuel came to all Israel,.... Or was "known", as the Targum, the word of prophecy by him, which related to what befell Eli and his family; this was spread throughout the land, and

And the word of Samuel came to all Israel. Now Israel went out against the Philistines to battle, and pitched beside Ebenezer: and the Philistines pitched in Aphek. The word of Samuel came to all Israel.

1 SAMUEL CHAPTER 4 The Israelites are smitten by the Philistines at Eben-ezer, ,2. They fetch the ark from Shiloh; receive it with a great shout, to the terror of the Philistines, ; who yet take courage, and a second time beat the Israelites: the ark is taken; the two sons of Eli are slain, ; which Eli hearing, falleth backward from his seat, and breaketh his neck, . His daughter-in-law falls in labour, nameth her son Ichabod, and dieth, . The word of Samuel, i.e. the word of the Lord revealed to Samuel, and by him to the people; either, first, The prophetical word mentioned before, , &c., which is here said to come, or to come to pass, as it was foretold, to all Israel. But the subject of that prophecy was not all Israel, but Eli and his house, as is evident. Or rather, secondly, A word of command, that all Israel should go forth to fight with the Philistines, as the following words explain it, that so they might be first humbled and punished for their sins, and so prepared by degrees for their future deliverance. Against the Philistines; or, to meet the Philistines, who having by this time recruited themselves after their great loss by Samson, , and perceiving an eminent prophet arising among them, by whom they were likely to be united, counselled, and assisted, thought fit to suppress them in the beginning of their hopes and designs of rescuing themselves from their power. Ebenezer; a place so called here (by anticipation) from a following event, . Aphek; a city so called in the tribe of Judah, , upon the borders of the Philistines’ country; not that Aphek in Asher, , which was very remote from them.

1 Samuel 4:1 And the word of Samuel came to all Israel. Now Israel went out against the Philistines to battle, and pitched beside Ebenezer: and the Philistines pitched in Aphek.Ver. 1. And the word of Samuel came to all Israel.] It was commonly noised and noticed what he had foretold against Eli and the whole people; and it happened accordingly, because they prepared not to meet the Lord with entreaties of peace, as afterwards they did, when once and again they had paid for their learning. Samuel was but a child when he foretold this calamity; but at man’ s estate, fit to succeed Eli in the government, ere it was inflicted. God is slow, but sure, if men repent not; and those that will not hearken to the word shall "bear the rod, and who hath appointed it." And pitched beside Ebenezer,] i.e., The stone of help, so called here by anticipation. See 1 Samuel 7:12. And, as it proved now to the defeated Israelites, by antiphrasis, as Mare Pacificum, which is out of measure troublesome and dangerous.

(1) And the word of Samuel.—To which portion of the narrative does this statement belong? Is it part of that account of the Lord’s dealings with Samuel which closed the preceding chapter? Does it close that brief narrative which tells of the Divine voice which called to, and the vision seen by, the young chosen servant of the Highest, with a note simply relating how the word of the boy-prophet was received through the varied tribes of the people? Or does it tell us that at Samuel’s word—that is, acting under his advice—Israel commenced this new disastrous war with the Philistines? By adopting the first supposition, which understands the words as a general statement respecting Samuel’s influence in Israel, the grave difficulty of supposing that Samuel was mistaken in his first advice to the people is, of course, removed; but then we have to explain the separation of this clause from the preceding section in chapter 3, to which it would appear so naturally to belong; we have also to account for the exceeding abruptness with which the announcement of the war with the Philistines follows the clause respecting the “word of Samuel.” The Speaker’s Commentary attempts to solve the problem by suggesting as “the cause of the abruptness” that the account of the battle probably is extracted from some other book in which it came in naturally and consecutively, and that it was here introduced for the sake of exhibiting the fulfilment of Samuel’s prophecy concerning Eli’s family. Evidently, however, the Hebrew revisers of Samuel did not so understand the clause. They have placed the notice of Samuel’s words coming to all Israel as introducing the narrative of the battle. The compiler of the book, in his relation of the young prophet’s error, touches upon an important feature of his great life. Anarchy and confusion had long prevailed throughout the tribes, and none of the hero Judges who had as yet been raised to power had succeeded in restoring the stern, rigid form of theocracy which had made the Israel of Moses and Joshua so great and powerful. The high qualities which in his prime had, no doubt, raised Eli to the first place in the nation, in his old age were almost totally obscured by a weak affection for his unworthy sons. A terrible picture of the corruption of the priesthood is presented to us during the last period of Eli’s reign. We can well imagine what the ordinary life of many among the people, with such an example from their religious guides and temporal governors, must have been. Individual instances of piety and loyalty to the God of their fathers, such as we see-in the house of Elkanah, even though such instances were not unfrequent of themselves, would have been totally insufficient to preserve the nation from the decay which always follows impiety and corruption.

CHAPTER IV A battle between Israel and the Philistines, in which the former are defeated, with the loss of four thousand men, 1, 2. They resolve to give the Philistines battle once more, and bring the ark of the Lord, with Hophni and Phinehas the priests, into the camp, 3, 4. They do so, and become vainly confident, 5. At this the Philistines are dismayed, 6-9. The battle commences; the Israelites are again defeated, with the loss of thirty thousand men; Hophni and Phinehas are among the slain; and the ark of the Lord is taken, 10, 11. A Benjamite runs with the news to Eli; who, hearing of the capture of the ark, falls from his seat, and breaks his neck, 12-18. The wife of Phinehas, hearing of the death of her husband, and father-in-law, and of the capture of the ark, is taken in untimely travail, beings forth a son, calls him I-chabod, and expires, 19-22. NOTES ON CHAP. IV Verse 1. The word of Samuel came to all Israel] This clause certainly belongs to the preceding chapter, and is so placed by the Vulgate, Septuagint, Syriac, and Arabic. Pitched beside Eben-ezer] This name was not given to this place till more than twenty years after this battle, see 1 Samuel 7:12; for the monument called האבן העזר haeben haezer, the "Stone of Help," was erected by Samuel in the place which was afterwards from this circumstance, called Eben-ezer, when the Lord had given the Israelites a signal victory over the Philistines. It was situated in the tribe of Judah, between Mizpeh and Shen, and not far from the Aphek here mentioned. This is another proof that this book was compiled after the times and transactions which it records, and probably from memoranda which had been made by a contemporary writer.

Ch. 1 Samuel 4:1-11. Defeat of Israel by the Philistines and Loss of the Ark 1. Now Israel went out] The Sept. and Vulgate contain an additional clause, which softens the abruptness of the transition: “And it came to pass in those days, that the Philistines gathered together to fight against Israel.” The abruptness of the narrative may be explained (1) because the historian only wishes to give an account of the war so far as it bears upon his main subject, the fulfilment of the prophecies against Eli’s house: (2) because probably the account of the battle with the Philistines is extracted from some other book, in which it came in naturally and consecutively. The last mention of the Philistines was in Judges 13-16. In Judges 13:1 we read that “the Lord delivered the children of Israel into the hand of the Philistines forty years,” and the best solution of the difficult question of the chronology of the Judges is to suppose that we are now at the middle of this period of Philistine oppression. The first twenty years of that oppression will then coincide with the last half of Eli’s judgeship, and probably with Samson’s judgeship of “twenty years in the days of the Philistines” (Judges 15:20). There is no difficulty in supposing that Eli, who was a civil judge during this time and permanently resident at Shiloh, was contemporaneous with Samson, the military leader of a guerilla warfare on the frontiers of Philistia. The second half of the period of Philistine oppression coincides with the twenty years during which the Ark remained at Kirjath-jearim (ch. 1 Samuel 7:2). Might we not conjecture that the present renewal of the war was connected with Samson’s death? Either the Israelites took the aggressive to avenge their champion, or the Philistines thought to profit by the opportunity and reduce them to more complete subjection. the Philistines] See Note IV. p. 238. Eben-ezer] = “the stone of help.” The name is used by anticipation. It was not given till twenty years afterwards, on the occasion of the great defeat of the Philistines, ch. 1 Samuel 7:12. Aphek] = “stronghold,” the name of several places in Palestine. This Aphek was close to Eben-ezer (1 Samuel 4:6), in the neighbourhood of Mizpeh of Benjamin, near the western entrance of the pass of Bethhoron, and probably distinct from the Aphek of ch. 1 Samuel 29:1.

Some attach the opening words to the close of 1 Sam. 3, as the complement of what is there said, “The Lord revealed himself to Samuel ... in Shiloh, and the word of Samuel went forth to all Israel.”

1. The word of Samuel came to all Israel. Now Israel went out against the Philistines — Some have thought that the first sentence of this verse belongs to the narrative of the preceding chapter, and