Repentance - 1st Samuel 7

The people of Beth-shemesh were terrified of the ark after the 70 people were killed by God for their mishandling of it and called for someone from Kirjath-Jearim to come and pick it up, and a man named Abinadab did just that and took it to his house. The fact that Abinadab was not killed by God for taking the ark to his house indicates to me that he was authorized to handle the ark in the way prescribed by God. Abinadab “sanctified Eleazar his son to keep the ark of the Lord.” So the son seems to have been given the job of looking after the ark and taking care of it and he did just that for 20 years. TB notes that it’s probable that there was no sacred place like Shiloh or the tabernacle to keep the ark in at that time due to the defunct nature of the priesthood at that point, and again, to me, the fact that no one else was killed while caring for the ark in his house for 20 years indicates to me that that was probably true.

Verse 2 says “all the house of Israel lamented after the Lord,” meaning that they knew He had pulled away from them because of their wickedness and they were sad about it, so Samuel tells all the house of Israel “If ye do return unto the Lord with all your hearts, then put away the strange gods and Ashtaroth from among you, and prepare your hearts until the Lord, and serve him only: and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.” This is how the house of Israel would be able to repair their relationship with God, obedience, and repentance.

The people must have known that the Philistines would have been humiliated by being forced to return the ark, and knew that they would probably attack them again because of that humiliation, especially because they won so handily before. Additionally, TB points out that it wasn’t that the Israelites had rejected God and replaced Him with idols, but rather, they had allowed other gods to be incorporated into their religious worship practices. So it wasn’t a rejection and substitution of God, but rather, an encroaching of other things into God’s space. And that’s common among all people, even us today.

Our idols don’t look like carved or graven gods but they are things that distract us from pursuing God with all our might, mind, and strength. And distraction doesn’t just come from taking away our attention because you can think about God and religion 24/7, there has to be a balance, especially since spiritual matters are so heavy and draining. Even Hugh Nibley said once that sometimes he has to take a break from spiritual matters because it’s boring to focus on just one thing all the time. But distraction also comes in the form of wanting or desiring things that aren’t for us right now, even if those desires aren’t bad. For instance, if I wanted a new house so that I would have more room for my family, then I could focus on a new house to the point that I wouldn’t be able to hear God’s instruction on the matter. I could want a spouse and even though that’s a righteous desire, a spouse often becomes an idol because everything is done to please them. And we become fixated on those desires and then if the answer is no, then we can’t let go of it, and that’s idolatry as well, if that makes sense.

I also watched a video the other day that said something to the effect of, there’s three steps to righteousness, and the first step is logical, the doctrine makes sense to you. I find myself here a lot because gospel doctrine is the only thing that makes sense to me, logically. But lots of people know things to be true and that doesn’t make them righteous. Laman and Lemuel knew angels were real because they saw one, but that didn’t make them righteous. The second step is believing something is true. This for me looks a lot like choosing to believe, instead of waiting for proof or some miraculous revelation of confirmation, it’s just acting as if, and believing. But again, belief doesn’t make someone righteous because there are a lot of people who believe the gospel is true but still find ways to justify sin. The Israelites knew about and believed in God’s power but they still had let almost complete apostasy destroy their religious lives. The third step is actively obeying God in what He commanded, and this is where the righteousness becomes real. It’s not enough to just know and believe something, you actually have to take steps in your life to become obedient that one can become righteous, and this is what Samuel is asking the people to do, not just believe it, but actually get rid of everything else that is not of God and worship Him only. And thankfully, the people did just that, they got rid of all their other idols and gods and practices, “and served the Lord only.”

Now that Israel is committed to serving God, Samuel calls “Gather all Israel to Mizpeh, and I will pray for you unto the Lord.” They gather at Mizpeh and have a water libation ritual and fasted and prayed saying, “We have sinned against the Lord.” Now when the Philistines heard that the people had gathered in one location, they figure it’s their time to exact revenge on Israel for the humiliation of having to return the ark. The people are scared, and that’s fair because being slaughtered by hand with pointy sticks is a most gruesome way to die, but Samuel assures them, “Cease not to cry unto the Lord out God for us, that he will save us out of the hand of the Philistines.” Samuel offers a burnt offering of a baby lamb and he prays to God and while he was sacrificing, “the Lord thundered with a great thunder on that day upon the Philistines, and discomfited them; and they were smitten before Israel.” TB notes, “Here it is likely that His thundering as not only in Heaven but also in the heavens. In other words it could have been the scariest noise (something like thunder) imaginable that sent these battle hardened Philistines running off in a panic. But the panic was also supernatural in nature and we see these occasionally in the bible were the Lord ‘panics’ the enemy. Sometimes there is a physical phenomenon that has been supernaturally ordered that causes the panic, but at other times it is that the Lord instills an overwhelming terror into the enemy and they cower and/or flee in horror, virtually unable to control themselves. Some combination of the two seems to be happening here.” I really like the concept of making the enemy panic supernaturally, I think it’s really great, it’s one of my favorites I think, and I don’t know why. Maybe because there is no other way to attribute it than to the power of God directly. It would be like watching a swarm of invisible bees descend and drive the enemy away, just wild to watch.

As the Philistines run away in terror for some invisible reason, the Israelites pursue them and “subdued” them and they left Israel alone for a long time, and in fact, they gave back some of the cities that they had won from Israel previously, from Ekron to Gath “and the coasts thereof did Israel deliver out of the hands of the Philistines.” And not only that, but “there was peace between Israel and the Amorites.” TB notes that the Philistines and the Amorites were bitter enemies so the Amorites weren’t really messing with Israel that much because they were kind of a buffer state between them and the Philistines, but once the Philistines lost to Israel and left them alone, Israel didn’t have to fight a two front war and could focus their military attention on the Amorites in a deterrent manner, so the Amorites were incentivized to leave Israel alone at that point as well. And Samuel judges Israel for the rest of his life, making a circuit every year between Beth-el, Gilgal, and Mizpeh to teach and judge the people there and ther rest of the time he spent in Ramah, which was his home town.