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The Ark is Back - 1st Samuel 6

At the end of chapter 5, the Philistines were afflicted with a serious disease process in all the cities where the ark of the covenant was taken. The KJV just says “emerods” which is footnoted to mean tumors or boils which is an interesting description. It would be weird to have the people erupt in tumors, boils would make more sense, but the IM gives a pretty good suggestion. Later in chapter 6 we learn that this plague was also accompanied by rats or mice, which lends credence to this suggestion. The IM notes “many died, and those who did not seem to have endured great suffering.” The IM also says that Josephus indicates that is was a “very destructive disease’ involving dysentery, bleeding, and severe vomiting… There severity of the disease and the fact that rodents were involved lead many scholars to conclude that what smote the Philistines was bubonic plague.” Whatever it was, it was severe enough that the people of these cities knew something was wrong and suddenly, to the point ...
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Dagon - 1st Samuel 5

The Israelites are devastated that the ark of the covenant has been captured by the Philistines, and maybe it’s partially because they have a quasi legitimate view of their God because it’s been so warped by centuries of apostasy that I think they are more equating the ark with the pagan idols that everyone else worships. In their mind, I would imagine, this is no different than when Rachel stole her father Laban’s idols and he came after them so fiercely. I think that they saw the ark as their idol representative of God and it being captured was the same as their God being captured. Yesterday I talked about why God would command Israel to go to war knowing that they were going to be slaughtered and have the ark captured, and I think there maybe two different reasons for that. The first might have been that maybe the 34,000 soldiers who were slain were a especially wicked part of Israel that would have impeded their turn back to God. It’s interesting to note that in the Book of Mormon ...
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Attacking the Philistines - 1st Samuel 4

Now that Samuel was recognized as a prophet throughout all of Israel, which had not been united for a while, “the word of Samuel came to all Israel.” We don’t know what the word was nor do we know what God said to Samuel beforehand to cause him to put this word out. The result of Samuel’s word, though, was that “Israel went out against the Philistines to battle.” Presumably Samuel told Israel to go to battle against the Philistines because presumably the Lord told Samuel to tell them to do that. TB reminds us that the Philistines were seafaring people so the fact that they had a military presence so far into Israel’s territory was proof that Israel had not only lost significant territory to them but just how entrenched the Philistines were in Israelite society. He also reminded us that the Philistines had a professional, skilled military whereas the Israelite army was most goat herders and farmers, so militarily, without God, it was going to be a bloodbath and the only reason why the H...
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Here I am - 1st Samuel 3

At this point, Eli has had “a man of God” come curse him and his family because of their wickedness and I’m sure that weighed heavily on him because he’s not a bad guy. TB gave an excellent summation of Eli and it was a very powerful commentary on leadership in God’s kingdom. He said, “We must be careful not to mischaracterize Eli as a thoroughly wicked man and thus worthy of destruction; he was not and thus God did not destroy him. Rather Eli was a decent man who loved the Lord, but he was a weak man, not strong enough for the challenging and critical role as Israel’s High Priest… Eli’s lack of fortitude led to allowing his sons to run rampant over God’s people… Undoubtedly Eli had inherited (and not created) a dysfunctional priesthood along with 12 dysfunctional tribes to oversee, but there is also no evidence that he did any more than to passively man his post, enjoy the honors and privileges of his lofty office and abide by the many questionable manmade traditions that developed an...
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Eli's Sons - 1st Samuel 2:12-36

Eli is the high priest in the temple that Hannah leaves Samuel with when he’s about 4-5 years old. I wonder what his reaction to all this was, like was leaving your children at the temple to be raised by the priests in priesthood service a regular thing? Were there other kids there? It’s just such a weird thing to me, not only for the parents be give up their kids but for the priests to be like yeah I’ll raise them. The whole thing just doesn’t make sense to me. But for what it’s worth, I guess Eli was fine with it. Verse 12 introduces Eli’s son as “sons of Belial; they knew not the Lord,” which is interesting because this implies that Eli is the high priest but that his sons were not associated with the priesthood at all, which as it turns out, if I followed this correctly, was incorrect because they actually were priests who worked at the temple. So it’s an interesting commentary that you can physically perform a task repeatedly and even “fulfill” your duty to God but still be cons...
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Hannah's Song - 1st Samuel 2:11

The first 11 verses of chapter 2 are Hannah’s song of praise to the Lord for the gift of her baby Samuel. TB spent an entire lecture hour on it and the IM goes into some depth as well, talking about the word choices and what they mean in context, I’m not going to go too much into it here because I feel like the sentiment is all the same, God is merciful and strong and empowering, and all that is true. There are a few interesting points that I want to discuss, however, like in verse 4 it says, “the bows of the mighty men are broken.” When we’ve been discussing the war chapters and how Israel displaced the Canaanites with Moses and Joshua, God used several different methods to defeat His enemies, some of which included equipment malfunctions, like chariots getting stuck in the mud. I’ve also thought about how God’s favor in combat might look in modern day conflicts. I’ve heard stories about like Desmond Doss and George Washington who could not be hit by enemy fire even though they were a...
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The Baby - 1st Samuel 1

1st Kings starts with a woman names Hannah who is married to a man named Elkanah. Interestingly, I think the pagan god that Abraham’s father tried to sacrifice him to was called Elkanah. Anyway, this name Elkanah had two wives, Hannah who had no children and Peninnah who did have children. There was a yearly festival that this little family went up to in Shiloh “to worship and to sacrifice unto the Lord of hosts.” TB said that this almost certainly wasn’t one of the big Jewish events like Passover but was more likely a family event that was held at there. Elkanah was a wealthy man and wealthy families often used that space to make special family sacrifices that were separate from the regular expected ones, like a religious family reunion kind of thing. When the little family got there, they went to do their sacrifices and Elkanah gave Hannah a large portion of the substances for her own personal sacrifices because he really loved her. Interestingly, TB said that usually in these situ...
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