Eli at Shiloh
Sight lost and not given back. Sight not restored. 1 Samuel 3:1-18; 1 Samuel 4:12-18.
What led up to it
Eli is the priest at Shiloh, where the ark of God is kept. He has raised the boy Samuel in the house of the LORD. His own sons, also priests, have abused their office, and Eli has not stopped them. A man of God has already told him that judgment is coming on his family.
What happens
In the night the LORD calls Samuel three times, and each time the boy runs to Eli. It is Eli who works out who is calling and tells Samuel how to answer. In the morning he insists on hearing the message, though it is a judgment on his own house, and accepts it. Later, at ninety-eight, he sits by the road waiting for news of the battle. He hears the city cry out, hears that his sons are dead and the ark is taken, falls from his seat, and dies.
In their shoes
Twice the text places Eli by what he can and cannot do. In the night he cannot see, yet he is the one who recognizes the voice of God when the sighted boy does not. At the gate he sits "watching" with a fixed gaze, and everything reaches him by sound: first the outcry of the city, then the runner's words. He has to ask what the commotion means. Waiting for news that everyone else can already see on a messenger's torn clothes is its own kind of helplessness.
How much could he see?
Samuel says Eli's eyesight had grown so dim that he could not see, and later that at ninety-eight he could not see. Dim is the Bible's word for sight going, so Eli likely passed through years of low vision before this. The page reads him as he is described at the end. See what blind means here.
The place and the time
What the old books and the archaeologists can add. Each paragraph names its source.
Shiloh, where Eli served, lay in the hill country of Ephraim north of Bethel, east of the road from Bethel to Shechem. Smith's dictionary calls it one of the earliest and most sacred Hebrew sanctuaries: the ark was kept there from the last days of Joshua until Samuel's time. After the ark was lost in the battle that killed Eli, Shiloh "sank into insignificance."
Source: Smith's Bible Dictionary (1884 edition), entry "Shiloh."
Eli was a descendant of Aaron through his son Ithamar and, according to Smith's, the first of that line to serve as high priest. He was also Israel's judge, which the Bible says he had been for forty years when he died at ninety-eight.
Source: Smith's Bible Dictionary (1884 edition), entry "Eli"; 1 Samuel 4:18.
Josephus tells Eli's death in a sentence: when he heard that the ark had been taken, he fell from his seat and died, having lived ninety-eight years and governed for forty. Josephus does not mention his eyes.
Source: Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews (Whiston translation), Book V, chapter 11.
The passage
1 Samuel 3:1-18
1 And the boy Samuel ministered to the LORD before Eli. Now in those days the word of the LORD was rare, and visions were scarce.
2 And at that time Eli, whose eyesight had grown so dim that he could not see, was lying in his room.
3 Before the lamp of God had gone out, Samuel was lying down in the temple of the LORD, where the ark of God was located.
4 Then the LORD called to Samuel, and he answered, “Here I am.”
5 He ran to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you have called me.” “I did not call,” Eli replied. “Go back and lie down.” So he went and lay down.
6 Once again the LORD called, “Samuel!” So Samuel got up, went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you have called me.” “My son, I did not call,” Eli replied. “Go back and lie down.”
7 Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD, because the word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him.
8 Once again, for the third time, the LORD called to Samuel. He got up, went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you have called me.” Then Eli realized that it was the LORD who was calling the boy.
9 “Go and lie down,” he said to Samuel, “and if He calls you, say, ‘Speak, LORD, for Your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place.
10 Then the LORD came and stood there, calling as before, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel answered, “Speak, for Your servant is listening.”
11 Then the LORD said to Samuel, “I am about to do something in Israel at which the ears of all who hear it will tingle.
12 On that day I will carry out against Eli everything I have spoken about his house, from beginning to end.
13 I told him that I would judge his house forever for the iniquity of which he knows, because his sons blasphemed God and he did not restrain them.
14 Therefore I have sworn to the house of Eli, ‘The iniquity of Eli’s house shall never be atoned for by sacrifice or offering.’”
15 Samuel lay down until the morning; then he opened the doors of the house of the LORD. He was afraid to tell Eli the vision,
16 but Eli called to him and said, “Samuel, my son.” “Here I am,” answered Samuel.
17 “What was the message He gave you?” Eli asked. “Do not hide it from me. May God punish you, and ever so severely, if you hide from me anything He said to you.”
18 So Samuel told him everything and did not hide a thing from him. “He is the LORD,” replied Eli. “Let Him do what is good in His eyes.”
1 Samuel 4:12-18
12 That same day a Benjamite ran from the battle line all the way to Shiloh, with his clothes torn and dirt on his head.
13 When he arrived, there was Eli, sitting on his chair beside the road and watching, because his heart trembled for the ark of God. When the man entered the city to give a report, the whole city cried out.
14 Eli heard the outcry and asked, “Why this commotion?” So the man hurried over and reported to Eli.
15 Now Eli was ninety-eight years old, and his gaze was fixed because he could not see.
16 “I have just come from the battle,” the man said to Eli. “I fled from there today.” “What happened, my son?” Eli asked.
17 The messenger answered, “Israel has fled before the Philistines, and there has been a great slaughter among the people. Your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, are both dead, and the ark of God has been captured.”
18 As soon as the ark of God was mentioned, Eli fell backward from his chair by the city gate, and being old and heavy, he broke his neck and died. And Eli had judged Israel forty years.