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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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1st Samuel - An Introduction

As a short introduction to the next book of 1st Samuel, TB notes that the books of 1st and 2nd Samuel, as well as 1st and 2nd Kings used to only be one book. It wasn’t until I think he said the Septuagint was compiled that the books of Samuel and Kings were separated and then again in the 1600s, Samuel was split into 1st and 2nd Samuel and Kings was split into 1st and 2nd Kings. I guess this make sense because all these books have a lot of chapters in them, so this makes for a nice ease of use. The way he does his lectures, I think, is that they do one lecture per week and each lecture can contain one chapter and that one chapter can be stretched out into multiple lectures, like I think chapter 2 takes 4 lectures to cover. So when he said that he was going to take the next two years covering just these four books, it made sense timing wise, but I hope it doesn’t take me that long. TB also notes that a main issue that arises with these 4 books is the translation issues and that there’s...
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Marriage - Ruth 4

Chapter 4 ends the book of Ruth and is very technical about ancient Israel land rights. Boaz sends Ruth home in the morning and promises to get this matter squared away in the morning, so when morning comes, Boaz parks himself at the city gate and waits for the kinsman that is nearer to Naomi than Boaz so they can talk business. When the guy shows up Boaz calls him over and also asks 10 “elders of the city” to listen as witnesses so this can be a formal legal meeting. Boaz explains that Naomi is trying to sell the land that belonged to her dead husband and this other guy has the first right of refusal, and does he want to redeem it himself? The guy answers, “I will redeem it.” Boaz says, “great, not only do you get to buy the land, but you have to marry Ruth and raise up a son in the name of her dead husband.” I bet Boaz knew that the guy would be interested in the land, but once you have to start talking about raising kids that aren’t your own, then people have to stop and think for a...
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Uncovering Feet - Ruth 3

Now that Ruth and Naomi have figured out that Boaz is a kinsman and a potential marriage possibility, they get to work. There’s a lot that goes into the kinsman redeemer concept that we discussed earlier in the Torah, and I don’t really want to go through it now but it has to do with buying and selling land that belonged to God but that the people used, and when a family sold their land, a close relative was obligated to buy it back for that family. Naomi was trying to sell the land her husband’s family had and Boaz, as a kinsman redeemer, was obligated to buy it to keep it in the family. Similarly, the tradition was the same for widows who did not have living sons to take care of them, a close relative was supposed to marry them, give them sons, and keep the land and bloodline in the family. That’s basically what the premise is here, I just thought that Boaz and Ruth got married because they loved each other and it was probably that too but according to tradition, he had an obligation...
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Boaz - Ruth 2

When Naomi and Ruth come back to Bethlehem, it’s right as the barley harvest was starting and they were hungry, so Ruth offers to go to the fields and start “gleaning” in order to get some food for them. I think it’s important to mention here that Ruth could have stayed in Moab and gone back to her parent’s house and lived a life without the responsibility of caring for Naomi, who had almost certainly no way to care for herself financially. It’s a testament to her character that, for whatever reason, Ruth decided to take on Naomi’s care as her responsibility when she didn’t have to. Verse 1 notes that Naomi’s dead husband had a kinsman “a mighty man of wealth,” who’s name was Boaz. The implication of this is that maybe Naomi came back to Bethlehem with the intention of Ruth marrying Boaz and him taking care of them but later verses make me think that wasn’t the case. Verse 3 says that when Ruth went to glean grain, “her hap was to light on a part of the field belonging unto Boaz.” Th...
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