1 Samuel2chapter 2

1 Samuel 2:12

“The sons of Eli were sons of Belial - They were perverse, wicked, profligate men; devil’s children. They knew not the Lord. “They know! nor would an angel show Him; They would not know, nor choose to know Him.” These men were the principal cause of all the ungodliness of Israel. Their most execrable conduct, described 1Sa 2:13-17, caused the people to abhor the Lord’s offering. An impious priesthood is the grand cause of the transgressions and ruin of any nation; witness France, Germany, Spain, Ac., from 1792 to 1814.”

1 Samuel 2:12

“Though professionally engaged in sacred duties, they were not only strangers to the power of religion in the heart, but they had thrown off its restraints, and even ran, as is sometimes done in similar cases by the sons of eminent ministers, to the opposite extreme of reckless and open profligacy.”

1 Samuel 2:13

“The Law of Moses defined exactly what was to be the priest’s portion of every peace offering Lev 7:31-35, as it also gave express directions about the burning of the fat Lev 7:23-25, Lev 7:31. It was therefore a gross act of disobedience and lawlessness on the part of Hophni and Phinehas to take more than the Law gave them. Incidental evidence is afforded by this passage to the existence of the Levitical law at this time.”

1 Samuel 2:15

“Before they burnt the fat - They would serve themselves before God was served! This was iniquity and arrogance of the first magnitude. He will not have sodden flesh - He chooses roast meat, not boiled; and if they had it in the pot before the servant came, he took it out that it might be roasted.”

1 Samuel 2:15

“He was a fat heavy man ( ch. iv. 18 ), and therefore it is charged upon the whole family (though Hophni and Phinehas were principally guilty), You make yourselves fat with the chief of all the offerings. God gave them sufficient to feed them, but that would not suffice; they made themselves fat, and served their lusts with that which God was to be served with.”

1 Samuel 2:17

“The offering of the Lord - Minchah, here in the general sense of “gift or offering” to God (compare Mal 1:10-11; Mal 3:3). In its restricted sense, it is used of the meat offerings, the unbloody sacrifices, and is then coupled with bloody sacrifices, sacrifices of slain beasts. (See 1Sa 2:29.)”

1 Samuel 2:17

“Secondly, That religion suffered by it: Men abhorred the offerings of the Lord. All good men abhorred their management of the offerings, and too many insensibly fell into a contempt of the offerings themselves for their sakes. It was the people's sin to think the worse of God's institutions, but it was the much greater sin of the priests that gave them occasion to do so.”

1 Samuel 2:18

“Girded with a linen ephod - This the Targum translates אסיר כרדוט דבוץ asir cardut debuts, “Girded with a cardit of byssus, or fine linen.” The word cardut they seem to have borrowed from the Greek χειριδωτος, a tunic, having χειριδας, i.e., sleeves that came down to, or covered, the hands. This was esteemed an effeminate garment among the Romans. See Buxtorf’s Talmudic Lexicon.”

1 Samuel 2:18

“Ministered - That is, performed his ministration carefully and faithfully. Before the Lord - In God's tabernacle. Ephod - A garment used in God's service, and allowed not only to the inferior priests and Levites but also to eminent persons of the people, and therefore to Samuel, who, though no Levite, was a Nazarite, from his birth.”

1 Samuel 2:19

“A little coat - The robe of the ephod was also one of the garments worn by the High Priest (see Exo 28:31 note).”

1 Samuel 2:20

“Eli blessed Elkanah - The natural place of this verse seems to be before the 11th; after which the 21st should come in; after the 21st, perhaps the 26th should come in. The subjects in this chapter seem very much entangled and confused by the wrong position of the verses.”

1 Samuel 2:20

“As when Abraham had offered Isaac he received the promise of a numerous issue ( Gen. xxii. 16, 17 ), so did Hannah, when she had presented Samuel unto the Lord a living sacrifice. Note, What is lent to the Lord will certainly be repaid with interest, to our unspeakable advantage, and oftentimes in kind.”

1 Samuel 2:21

“When Hannah had once offered in the tabernacle the son whom she had vowed to God, she never took him back: for she thought it unbecoming that one who was to be a prophet should grow up in the same house with her who still desired to have other sons.”

1 Samuel 2:21

“And the Lord visited Hannah,.... In a way of mercy, approving and confirming the blessing of Eli; or rather granting the blessing he prayed for, by giving her power to conceive, bear, and bring forth children, as the following words explain it: so that she conceived and bare three sons and two daughters; whereby the prophecy of Hannah was fulfilled, 1Sa 2:5, and was no doubt matter of great joy to her, though of these children we nowhere else read, nor even of their names.”

1 Samuel 2:21

“Peninnah is now mortified and crest-fallen. The tradition of the Jews is that when Hannah bore one child Peninnah buried two. There are many instances both of the increase of families that were inconsiderable and the extinguishing of families that made a figure, Job xxii.”

1 Samuel 2:22-25

“Because their father [Eli] did not chastise them with enough severity … he moved the forbearance of God to wrath so great that foreign peoples rose up against them and killed those sons of his in war in one day. His entire nation, furthermore, was vanquished, and a considerable number of his people fell.”

1 Samuel 2:22

“They lay with the women that assembled - It is probable that these were persons who had some employment about the tabernacle. See the note on Exo 38:8, where the Hebrew text is similar to that in this place.”

1 Samuel 2:23

“He said, &c. - Eli's sin was not only that he reproved them too gently, but that he contented himself with a verbal rebuke, and did not restrain them, and inflict those punishments upon them which such high crimes deserved by God's law, and which he as judge and high-priest ought to have done, without respect of persons.”

1 Samuel 2:25

“The law prohibits priests in the case of certain sins from offering a sacrifice to gain people forgiveness for the transgressions for which sacrifices are made. For though the priest has authority to make an offering for certain inadvertent sins or transgressions, nevertheless he does not offer a burnt offering and a sin offering for adultery, deliberate murder, or any other graver fault.”

1 Samuel 2:25

“Who shall compound that difference? None can or dare do it, and therefore he must be left to the dreadful, but righteous judgment of God. They had now sinned away their day of grace.”

1 Samuel 2:26

And the child Samuel ... - The account of our Lord’s growth Luk 2:52 is very similar; “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” The literal version of the passage before us is, “The child Samuel advanced and grew and was good (or acceptable), both with the Lord, and also with men.”

1 Samuel 2:27

“A man of God - See Jdg 13:6 note. The sudden appearance of the only prophet of whom mention is made since Deborah, without name, or any notice of his country, is remarkable.”

1 Samuel 2:27

“The message is sent to Eli himself, because God would bring him to repentance and save him; not to his sons, whom he had determined to destroy. And it might have been a means of awakening him to do his duty at last, and so to have prevented the judgment, but we do not find it had any great effect upon him. The message this prophet delivers from God is very close.”

1 Samuel 2:28

“And I gave to the house of your father all things, etc. All things from the sacrifices of the people, whatever the priests ought to receive, to the sons of Aaron your father, because I chose them into the priesthood, I provided.”

1 Samuel 2:28

“He advanced him to the priesthood, entailed it upon his family, and thereby dignified it above any of the families of Israel. He entrusted him with honourable work, to offer on God's altar, to burn incense, and to wear that ephod in which was the breast-plate of judgment.”

1 Samuel 2:29

“Wherefore kick ye at my sacrifice, and at mine offering, which I have commanded in my habitation,.... To be offered in the tabernacle, where the Lord had his dwelling; which they might be said to kick and spurn at, despising them, as if there were not enough of them, nor the best of them given to them for their maintenance; a metaphor taken from cattle well fed and fat, which kick and spurn with their feet at even the owners and feeders of them.”

1 Samuel 2:29

“They had all shared in the gains of the sacrilege. It is to be feared that Eli himself, though he disliked and reproved the abuses they committed, yet did not forbear to eat of the roast meat they sacrilegiously got,”

1 Samuel 2:30

“Should walk before me for ever - See Exo 29:9; Exo 40:15; Num 25:10-13, where it is positively promised that the priesthood should be continued in the family of Aaron For Ever. But although this promise appears to be absolute, yet we plainly see that, like all other apparently absolute promises of God, it is conditional, i.e., a condition is implied though not expressed. But now - be it far from me - You have walked unworthily; I shall annul my promise, and reverse my ordinance. See Jer 18:9, Jer 18:”

1 Samuel 2:31

“I will cut off thine arm ... - A strong phrase for breaking down the strength and power, of which the arm is the instrument in man (compare Zec 11:17). See 1Sa 2:33.”

1 Samuel 2:31

“Arm - That is, I will take away thy strength, or all that in which thou placest thy confidence, either, 1. the ark, which is called God's strength, Psalm lxxviii, 61, and was Eli's strength, who therefore was not able to bear the very tidings of the loss of it.”

1 Samuel 2:32

“Thou shalt see an enemy in my habitation - Every version and almost every commentator understands this clause differently. The word צר tsar, which we translate an enemy, and the Vulgate aemulum, a rival, signifies calamity; and this is the best sense to understand it in here. The calamity which he saw was the defeat of the Israelites, the capture of the ark, the death of his wicked sons, and the triumph of the Philistines. All this he saw, that is, knew to have taken place, before he met with his own tragical death.”

1 Samuel 2:33

“The meaning is explained by 1Sa 2:36. Those who are not cut off in the flower of their youth shall be worse off than those who are, for they shall have to beg their bread. (Compare Jer 22:10.) Thine eyes ... thine heart - For a similar personification of the tribe or family see Jdg 1:2-4.”

1 Samuel 2:34

“This shall be a sign unto thee,.... A confirming one, that all which had been now said would be fulfilled: that shall come upon thy two sons, Hophni and Phinehas; which Eli would live to see fulfilled on them; and when it was, he might be assured the rest would be most certainly accomplished, and it was this: in one day they shall die both of them; as they did in battle with the Philistines, 1Sa 4:11.”

1 Samuel 2:35

“Zadok is meant rather than Samuel. The High Priesthood continued in the direct descendants of Zadok as long as the monarchy lasted (see 1Ch 6:8-15). Mine anointed - in its first sense obviously means the kings of Israel and Judah Psa 89:20; Zec 4:14. But doubtless the use of the term MESSIAH (Χριστὸς Christos) here and in 1Sa 2:10, is significant, and points to the Lord’s Christ, in whom the royal and priestly offices are united (Zec 6:11-15: see the marginal references).”

1 Samuel 2:35

“Raise a priest - Of another line, as it necessarily implied by the total removal of that office from Eli's line. The person designed is Zadok, one eminent for his faithfulness to God, and to the king, who, when Abiather, the last of Eli's line, was deposed by Solomon, was made high-priest in his stead.”

1 Samuel 2:36

“Shall come and crouch to him - Shall prostrate himself before him in the most abject manner, begging to be employed even in the meanest offices about the tabernacle, in order to get even the most scanty means of support. A piece of silver - אגורת כסף agorath keseph, translated by the Septuagint, οβολου αργυριου, an obolus of silver. The Targum translates it מעא mea, which is the same as the Hebrew gerah, and weighed about sixteen grains of barley. A morsel of bread - A mouthful; what might be sufficient to keep body and soul together.”