1 Samuel 2:12-17

CRITICAL AND EXPOSITORY NOTES—

1 Samuel 2:12. “Sons of Belial.” See on Chapter 1 Samuel 1:16.

1 Samuel 2:13. They were not content with the portions assigned to them by the Levitical law, namely, the heave-leg and wave-breast (Leviticus 7:30), but robbed the offerer of that portion which belonged to him while he was preparing it to celebrate the feast of thanksgiving before the Lord.

1 Samuel 2:15. “The fat,” etc. This was the part of the animal which was to be offered to God (Leviticus 3:16; Leviticus 7:23; Leviticus 7:25, etc.). “This was high contempt of God to demand their portion before God had His”. (Patrick). “In the case of the peace offerings, the offerer slew the animal himself at the door of the tabernacle and the priest poured the blood and burnt the fat” (Biblical Commentary).

1 Samuel 2:17. “The young men.” “Not the servants of the priests (Keil) but the priests themselves, the sons of Eli” (Lange’s Commentary).

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 1 Samuel 2:12

THE SIN OF ELI’S SONS

I. Natural birth is not qualification for spiritual service. It does seem to fit men for some professions. The sons of sailors and soldiers often seem to be born with tendencies towards the profession of their forefathers, and very early give proof that they are intended by nature to enter a service which only requires natural gifts for its right fulfilment. But men do not inherit qualifications which fit them to be moral leaders and spiritual guides. It is not enough to possess the natural gifts which belong to holy progenitors, another and a higher law must be brought to exert its influence upon a man’s heart before he is fit to succeed his parent in spiritual service. If he succeeds to his father’s position merely because he is his son, it is a transgression of the law of God’s kingdom and must end in evil. If birth and blood and time-honoured custom could qualify men for a moral service, then Eli’s sons would have been fully fitted to succeed their father. They were born to a good social position—no man in the kingdom stood higher than Eli. They belonged to a family peculiarly honoured by God—no human being ever held a higher spiritual position than the High-priest of Israel. They could trace back their relationship to Moses, that man of God, whose name had for generations justly held the highest place in the history of his nation and was destined to become one of the most honoured in the kingdom of God. They were in this respect “Hebrews of the Hebrews”—members of its most honoured family—born representatives of the nation of which God was, in a special sense, the invisible king. Yet they were utterly unfit for their important office. They “knew not the Lord” and therefore they were His enemies although they were Eli’s sons.

II. When men thus throw away all the advantages of birth and education, they generally become sinners of a double dye. Although godliness does not come by inheritance there is everything in a pious ancestry to favour its growth. The swimmer who finds himself in the stream with both wind and tide in his favour to second his efforts, is doubly to blame if he neglects to use his advantages, and dies by his own deliberate choice if he throws away the opportunity he had of gaining the shore. Though time and tide waited not for him, yet they waited upon him, and he is verily guilty if he refused to take advantage of them. Some are born into this world to find themselves surrounded with social and spiritual influences which, like favourable winds and tides, wait to make the road to godliness easy to them. If they neglect to avail themselves of these good gifts of God they must become sinners of the blackest type, for they harden their hearts against the most softening influence, they sin against light and knowledge. Thus did the sons of Eli. They were launched into life upon a stream whose current was flowing towards that which was pure and holy—they were surrounded by influences which tended to make them worthy to be priests of the Most High God and true sons of Abraham. But they cast them all aside, and not only did not become spiritually fit for their service, but grew into monsters of iniquity, and turned the very tabernacle of God into a home of the grossest sin.

III. No bond arising from social position or rank is strong enough to prevent the manifestation of the sin which is in the heart. A tree may at present seem to be in a healthy condition, but if there is that in the root beneath the ground that is enough to kill the tree, nothing can prevent the fact from becoming evident in that part of the tree which is above the surface. Leaves and branches will, bye-and-bye, tell the tale. Nature is a symbol, and an expounder of moral truth in this matter as in many others. There is nothing morally bad that is hidden in a man’s heart that will not manifest itself in his life, though his reputation and his rank call upon him to conceal it. The secret sin will ere long become too strong to continue secret, although loss of position and influence may be the result of its being made public. Social prestige is a garment too narrow to conceal from view the hidden man of the heart, however desirable it may be to do so. If the tree is corrupt, the fruit will be corrupt also (Matthew 12:33). Eli’s sons had every temporal advantage to gain from preserving an outward decency of conduct—they must have been fully aware that only by so doing could they command in any degree the respect which was usually accorded to men in their position. But sin in the human heart is like pent-up water, which after being held back for a time rushes forth with a force that breaks down every dam, and sweeps away every obstacle, and carries desolation where-ever it goes. Even the restraint of the office of the priesthood was not strong enough to hold back Hophni and Phinehas from the grossest crimes, and their lust and greed broke down every social barrier, and spread moral desolation all around them.

IV. Those who are both irreverent and licentious poison human nature in its highest and lowest relations. The sin of licentiousness is a sin against the animal part of man; it defiles his body, and causes the race to degenerate physically. It makes all animal ties, which are intended to bring blessings to men, sink below those of the brute creation. The Lord is for the body (1 Corinthians 6:13), and He has proved that He cares for man’s physical well-being by the strictness with which He has fenced him round in this respect. He who transgresses God’s laws in this matter poisons the source of man’s physical well-being, and degrades his nature below the lowest animal. A river, while it flows within its appointed channel, carries fertility and beauty wherever it goes, but when it bursts its banks it obliterates all the beauty of the landscape, and spreads destruction all around. So with men’s animal passions. While they keep within the limits prescribed for them they are instruments of enjoyment and of blessing, but when the boundary is broken down and they flow beyond their lawful channel, they leave nothing but a curse behind them. Eli’s sons were guilty of thus defiling the body, and by so doing they poisoned one of the ordained streams of social blessing in their own families and in that of many others in Israel. They were also guilty of the grossest irreverence, and in this they sinned against man’s higher nature. Their conduct tended to dislodge from the mind all conceptions of the holiness and purity of God. This they did by the place in which they committed their most open crimes. The hospital is the place where men hope to receive healing medicine. If those who are expected to dispense remedies give poisonous drugs instead of healing, where shall the sick turn for help? The house of God is the place where men ought to find that which will conduce to moral health. If there they find only moral corruption, where shall they look? What higher crime can men be guilty of than that of turning the house of spiritual healing into a moral pest-house. Of what greater act of irreverence could the sons of Eli have been guilty than that whereby they corrupted the chastity of the women who frequented the tabernacle? They also tended to lower men’s conception of God by profaning His service. If a man constantly takes the name of God upon his lips in a light and careless manner he educates those about him to think lightly of the Divine Being. This is a tribute that a child of the wicked one is expected to pay to his father the devil, that thereby the name of the holy God may be lightly esteemed in the world. But if profanity of speech tends to dishonour God in the minds of men, much more does profanity of action. The sons of Eli were profane doers, and were therefore profane in a manner more calculated to produce irreverence in others than men of profane speech merely. They took God’s name in vain in their actions, and despised the holy name by which they were called by despising the offerings which were made to God according to His appointment. By open disobedience to Gods plain command, by robbing the Lord, and by robbing those who came to worship Him, those whose special function it was to hallow Him before the nation caused His offering to be abhorred. It is treason to speak or act against the king in any part of his dominion, but to defy him in his throne-room would surely be the most aggravated form of the crime. The whole earth is the Lord’s, and to act with irreverence towards Him in any part of His dominion is a sin, but to profane His holy ordinances in the palace of the Great King, is a sin of the blackest hue. The body-guard of a monarch is especially bound to render him loyal and faithful service; if it betray its trust, where is he to look for faithful servants? God’s ministers in all ages are the body-guard of the Eternal King; if they prove themselves renegades and unworthy of the high honour that He has put upon them, others will find in their unfaithfulness a licence to set Him at defiance. (For a parallel case in the modern history of the Church, see Froude’s “Annals of an English Abbey Short Studies,” vol. iii).

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS

1 Samuel 2:12. So were Jehoshua the high-priest’s sons (Ezra 10:18). Their parents, much employed about other things, are oft not so careful of well-breeding their children; and besides, they are apt to abuse their father’s authority and power to a licentious practice. Eli brought up his sons to bring down his house. They knew not the Lord. Apprehensively they knew Him, but not affectively; they had no lively light, their knowledge was not accompanied with faith and fear of God (Romans 1:21; Titus 1:16).—Trapp.

If the conveyance of grace were natural, holy parents would not be so ill suited with children. If virtue were as well entailed on us as sin, one might serve to check the other in our children; but now, since grace is derived from heaven on whomsoever it pleaseth the Giver, and that evil, which ours receive hereditarily from us, is multiplied, by their own corruption, it can be no wonder that good men have ill children; it is rather a wonder that any children are not evil.… If our children be good, let us thank God for it; this was more than we could give them; if evil, they may thank us and themselves, us for their birth sin, themselves for the improvement of it to that height of wickedness.—Bishop Hall.

1 Samuel 2:15. God may well call for the best of the best; but these liquorish Lurcos would needs be served before Him and be their own carvers. Boiled meat would not content them. But it ill becometh a servant of the Lord to be a slave to his palate. Christ biddeth His apostles, when they come into a house, “eat such things as are set before them.”—Trapp.

1 Samuel 2:17. It hath been an old saying, De templo omne bonum, de templo omne malum—all good or evil comes from the temple.—Chrysostom. Where the pastor is good, and the people good, he may say to them, as Paul to his Corinthians, “Are ye not my work in the Lord?” (1 Corinthians 9:1) Where the pastor is bad, and the people no better, they may say to him, Art thou not our destruction in the world? It is no wonder if an abused temple makes a disordered people. A wicked priest is the worst creature upon God’s earth; no sin is so black as that shall appear from under a white surplice. Every man’s iniquity is so much the heinouser as his place is holier. The sin of the clergy is like a rheum, which, rising from the stomach into the head, drops down upon the lungs, fretting the most noble and vital parts, till all the members languish into corruption. The lewd sons of Eli were so much the less tolerable by sinning in the tabernacle. Their sacrifices might do away the sins of others; no sacrifice could do away their own, Many a soul was the cleaner for the blood of those beasts they shed; their own souls were the fouler by it. By one and the same service they did expiate the people’s offences and multiply their own. Our clergy is no charter for heaven. Such men are like the conveyances of land: evidences and instruments to settle others in the kingdom of heaven, while themselves have no part of that they convey. It is no impossible thing for men at once to show the way to heaven with their tongue, and lead the way to hell with their foot. It was not a Jewish ephod, it is not a Romish cowl that can privilege an evil-doer from punishment. Therefore it was God’s charge to the executioners of His judgment, “Begin at mine own sanctuary” (Ezekiel 9:6); and the apostle tells us that “judgment shall begin at the house of God” (1 Peter 4:17); and Christ, entering into His prophetical office, began reformation at His Father’s house (John 2:15). Let our devout and holy behaviour prevent this, and by our reverent carriage in the temple of God let us honour the God of the temple.… If Christ, while he was upon the cross, saith Bernard, had given me some drops of His own blood in a vial, how carefully would I have kept them, how dearly esteemed them, how laid them next my heart. But now He did not think it fit to trust me with those drops, but He hath entrusted to me a flock of His lambs, those souls for whom He shed His blood, like whom His own blood was not so dear unto Him; upon these let me spend my care, my love, my labour, that I may present them holy saints to my dear Lord Jesus. But let Christians beware, lest, for the abuses of men they despise the temple of God. For as the altar cannot sanctify the priest, so neither can the unholiness of the priest disallow the altar. His sin is his own, and cannot make you guilty; the virtue and comfort is from God, and this is still able to make you holy. When we read that “the sin of the priests was great before the Lord, for men abhorred the offering of the Lord,” this, we all confess, was ill done of the priests, and I hope no man thinks it was well done of the people. Shall men, therefore, scorn the sanctuary, and cast that contempt on the service of God which belongs to the vices of men? This were to add our own evil to the evil of others, and to offend God because He was offended. Cannot the faults of men displease us, but we must needs fall out with God ?.… We say of the sacraments themselves, much more of the ministers—These do not give us what God doth give us by them.—T. Adams.