Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Samuel 4-7.

We generally think of Eli’s death being the result of God’s judgement because of the corruption of his sons.  However, we do not normally pay attention to the fact that he was 98 years old when he died.  I think that fact supports my claim from yesterday’s post that Eli had a faith in God worth noting.  Now let’s look at what I saw in today’s passage worth thinking about.  We often focus on the misbehavior of Eli’s sons as leading to the Israelite mistake of thinking that they could force God to support them in battle against the Philistines by bringing the Ark of the Covenant to the battle.  After the Ark was returned to Israel, with all that went along with that, the passage tells us that all of the people of Israel turned back to God.  It was only after they turned back to God that Samuel became the leader of Israel.  So, the people of Israel did not turn back to God because Samuel, a righteous man, was their leader.  Rather,  Samuel became Israel’s leader because the people turned back to God.  There is one more thing worth noting.  When the Philistines attacked the Israelites at the beginning of today’s passage, the Israelites tried to force God to help them by taking the Ark with them into battle.  At the end of today’s passage when the Philistines attacked the Israelites, the Israelites did not ask Samuel to lead them into battle and bring God with him.  Rather, they asked Samuel to cry out to God on their behalf asking Him to rescue them.

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