What I Learned from 1 Samuel This Week
Now for the three of you waiting to read this, please don’t get too excited. This is neither deep nor mysterious. I wish i had some deep thoughts for you but i am perfectly content tonight to lay on you some of the great details of 1 Samuel that God finally allowed me to see. (Sometimes i can be very dense)
In 1 Samuel 2 we find out that Eli (the priest) has two very wicked sons (Hophni and Phinehas). They were sleeping with temple prostitutes and taking sacrifices to God as their portions which did not belong to them and various other wicked things. Eli did try to rebuke his sons but wasn’t very convincing and in fact the boys “would not listen to the voice of their father, for it was the will of the LORD to put them to death.” 1 Sam 2:25. Then later in the chapter God curses Eli and his line to utter destruction (but we’ll come back to that).
Chapter four the Philistines whoop up on the Israelites and take the Ark of the Covenant and kill Hophni and Phinehas. Eli hears about it and falls out of his chair and dies of a broken neck (he was a very fat guy). Phinehas’ wife is in labor and gives birth to a son, names him Ichabod (which means the glory has departed) and then she dies. It would appear that Eli’s line is finished and we won’t hear about him again until we jump to…..
1 Kings 2:27 (which says) “So Solomon expelled Abiathar from being priest to the LORD, thus fulfilling the word of the LORD that he had spoken concerning the house of Eli in Shiloh.”
So that is a bit of history… and had always left me wondering what had happened to Eli’s line between 1 Sam 4 and 1 Kings 2… NOW HERE IS WHAT I PICKED UP TWO DAYS AGO….
In 1 Sam 14 we find Saul and his army (along with his son Jonathan) going to war against the Philistines. We find a priest going along with them “including Ahijah the son of Ahitub, Ichabod’s brother, son of Phinehas, son of Eli, the priest of the LORD in Shiloh”.
Catch this now: Ahitub was Ichabod’s brother. clearly the older brother because remember that both of Ichabod’s parents died on the day he was born. Now 1 Sam 4 doesn’t mention Ahitub but now we know that it is clear he was there and was likely serving as priest along side his wicked father.
Jump ahead again to 1 Sam 22… Saul is seeking to kill David. David has fled Saul and has spoken to the priests in the priest city. A wicked fellow (and a servant of Saul) sees David talking to the priests and rats him out to king Saul. (this dude’s name is Doeg the Edomite). Saul comes to the priestly city with his army and Doeg and has Doeg put all the priests to death: “Then the king said to Doeg, ‘You turn and strike the priest.’ and Doeg the Edomite turned and struck down the priests, and he killed on that day eighty-five persons who whore the linen ephod. And Nob the city of the priests, he put to the sword; both man and woman, child and infant. But one of the sons of Ahimelech the son of Ahitub, named Abiathar escaped and fled to David.”
So see this; the one guy that gets away is this guy named Abiathar (remember him from 1 Kings?). He will serve David for 42 years (roughly… give or take a month). He is the only guy of Eli’s line that survives this slaughter. He is the grandson of Ahitub (Ahitub obviously had two sons at least… Ahimelech and Ahijah ). Ahitub as you will remember was the brother of Ichabod and the grandson of Eli the priest.
Now here is where it gets really cool… why was Doeg such a punk? Why was he even in the priestly city to begin with? Why does the scripture say that he was “detained before the LORD”?
For that answer we have to go back to the curse that God speaks over Eli in 1 Sam 2:
(God talking here to Eli) “Behold, the days are coming when i will cut off your strength and the strength of your father’s house so that there will not be an old man in your house forever…the only ONE of you whom i shall not cut off from my altar shall be spared to weep his eyes out to grieve his heart, and all the descendants of your house shall die by the sword of men.”
I’m not sure if you caught all that but basically what we see happening in 1 Sam 22 is a DIRECT fulfillment of what God says in 1 Sam 2. Eli’s entire house is cut off. They are all put to death by the sword of man…. furthermore ONLY ONE ESCAPED… and what does 1 Sam 22 say? “But one of the sons escaped!”
We see then that the reason that Doeg was “detained before the LORD” was specifically so that he could be God’s instrument in carrying out God’s curse on Eli. David would say to Abiathar “I have caused the death of all the persons of your father’s house.” But in fact when we see the entire picture we see that in fact Eli, Hophni and Phinehas are the guilty parties.
I used to hate Doeg and i used to wonder why God didn’t say anything about the slaughter of all of his priests… now i get it.
How good it is that the Holy Spirit still teaches us and allows us to understand the bible better.
Sermon Point: WHAT GOD SAYS HE’S GOING TO DO… HE IS GOING TO DO!
I am sure you are disappointed that this isn’t ground breaking, but i still love putting the pieces together.
have a great day!
2 Comments
This sure would be a heck of a difficult plot line to maintain if it were just made up literature. God is AMAZING!
This was a good find! Thank you.