I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Samuel 1-3.

    In her prayer for a son, Hannah vows that if God gives her as son she will dedicate him to God’s service and his hair would never be cut. Some manuscripts suggest that she also vowed that he would never consume wine, thus dedicating him to the vow of the Nazirite which was described in Numbers 6:1-21. However, Samson’s parents were instructed that his hair should never be kept as a sign of his dedication to God. So, it seems like there was a tradition among the Israelites of not cutting their hair as an act of dedicating an individual to God. I do not know if this was a variation of the Nazirite vow, or a separate tradition, but I suspect that the writer, both here and in the story of Samson, intended for us to make the connection to the Nazirite vow. I, also, believe that the writer intended for us to think of Samson when we thought about Samuel’s birth. I am firmly convinced that the writer of the Book of Judges was setting the stage for the rise of kings in Israel and explaining why they were necessary. It seems to me that the Samuel 1 and 2 continue that theme.

    Eli had failed as a father to his biological sons. We cannot know if that was because he had done something wrong or because his sons refused to follow his godly lead, but we can be sure that any godly father whose sons turned out as Eli’s did would consider themselves to have failed. However, he did not fail in raising Samuel. The first steps in that success were his recognition that God was calling Samuel in the night and his acceptance of God’s judgment on his sons and himself. I said that we do not know if Eli did anything wrong in raising his sons, and that is true, but once their sinful behavior was revealed Eli failed to remove them from positions of authority. Eli may have done nothing wrong as a father, but as a priest he failed in his duty to remove his sons from their priestly duties. That responsibility was not because he was their father but because he was the high priest. Eli’s sin was to allow his sons to continue to function as priests after he became aware of the sins they committed while filling that role.