The Living Bible (88 page)
Authors: Inc. Tyndale House Publishers
Tags: #BIBLES / Other Translations / Text
Meanwhile little Samuel was helping the Lord by assisting Eli. Messages from the Lord were very rare in those days,
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but one night after Eli had gone to bed (he was almost blind with age by now), and Samuel was sleeping in the Temple near the Ark,
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the Lord called out, “Samuel! Samuel!”
“Yes?” Samuel replied. “What is it?” He jumped up and ran to Eli. “Here I am. What do you want?” he asked.
“I didn’t call you,” Eli said. “Go on back to bed.” So he did.
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Then the Lord called again, “Samuel!” And again Samuel jumped up and ran to Eli.
“Yes?” he asked. “What do you need?”
“No, I didn’t call you, my son,” Eli said. “Go on back to bed.”
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(Samuel had never had a message from Jehovah before.
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)
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So now the Lord called the third time, and once more Samuel jumped up and ran to Eli.
“Yes?” he asked. “What do you need?”
Then Eli realized it was the Lord who had spoken to the child.
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So he said to Samuel, “Go and lie down again, and if he calls again, say, ‘Yes, Lord, I’m listening.’” So Samuel went back to bed.
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And the Lord came and called as before, “Samuel! Samuel!”
And Samuel replied, “Yes, I’m listening.”
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Then the Lord said to Samuel, “I am going to do a shocking thing in Israel.
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I am going to do all of the dreadful things I warned Eli about.
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I have continually threatened him and his entire family with punishment because his sons are blaspheming God, and he doesn’t stop them.
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So I have vowed that the sins of Eli and of his sons shall never be forgiven by sacrifices and offerings.”
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Samuel stayed in bed until morning, then opened the doors of the Temple as usual, for he was afraid to tell Eli what the Lord had said to him.
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But Eli called him.
“My son,” he said, “what did the Lord say to you? Tell me everything. And may God punish you if you hide anything from me!”
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So Samuel told him what the Lord had said.
“It is the Lord’s will,” Eli replied; “let him do what he thinks best.”
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As Samuel grew, the Lord was with him and people listened carefully to his advice.
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And all Israel from one end of the land to the other knew that Samuel was going to be a prophet of the Lord.
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Then the Lord began to give messages to him there at the Tabernacle in Shiloh,
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and he passed them on to the people of Israel.
At that time Israel was at war with the Philistines. The Israeli army was camped near Ebenezer, the Philistines at Aphek.
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And the Philistines defeated Israel, killing four thousand of them.
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After the battle was over, the army of Israel returned to their camp and their leaders discussed why the Lord had let them be defeated.
“Let’s bring the Ark here from Shiloh,” they said. “If we carry it into battle with us, the Lord will be among us and he will surely save us from our enemies.”
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So they sent for the Ark of the Lord of heaven who is enthroned above the angels. Hophni and Phinehas, the sons of Eli, accompanied it into the battle.
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When the Israelis saw the Ark coming, their shout of joy was so loud that it almost made the ground shake!
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“What’s going on?” the Philistines asked. “What’s all the shouting about over in the camp of the Hebrews?”
When they were told it was because the Ark of the Lord had arrived,
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they panicked.
“God has come into their camp!” they cried out. “Woe upon us, for we have never had to face anything like this before!
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Who can save us from these mighty gods of Israel? They are the same gods who destroyed the Egyptians with plagues when Israel was in the wilderness.
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Fight as you never have before, O Philistines, or we will become their slaves just as they have been ours.”
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So the Philistines fought desperately and Israel was defeated again. Thirty thousand men of Israel died that day, and the remainder fled to their tents.
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And the Ark of God was captured, and Hophni and Phinehas were killed.
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A man from the tribe of Benjamin ran from the battle and arrived at Shiloh the same day with his clothes torn and dirt on his head.
*
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Eli was waiting beside the road to hear the news of the battle, for his heart trembled for the safety of the Ark of God. As the messenger from the battlefront arrived and told what had happened, a great cry arose throughout the city.
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“What is all the noise about?” Eli asked. And the messenger rushed over to Eli and told him what had happened.
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(Eli was ninety-eight years old and was blind.)
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“I have just come from the battle—I was there today,” he told Eli,
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“and Israel has been defeated and thousands of the Israeli troops are dead on the battlefield. Hophni and Phinehas were killed too, and the Ark has been captured.”
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When the messenger mentioned what had happened to the Ark, Eli fell backward from his seat beside the gate and his neck was broken by the fall, and he died (for he was old and fat). He had judged Israel for forty years.
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When Eli’s daughter-in-law, Phinehas’ wife, who was pregnant, heard that the Ark had been captured and that her husband and father-in-law were dead, her labor pains suddenly began.
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Just before she died, the women who were attending her told her that everything was all right and that the baby was a boy. But she did not reply or respond in any way.
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Then she murmured, “Name the child ‘Ichabod,’ for Israel’s glory is gone.” (Ichabod means “there is no glory.” She named him this because the Ark of God had been captured and because her husband and her father-in-law were dead.)
The Philistines took the captured Ark of God from the battleground at Ebenezer to the temple of their idol Dagon in the city of Ashdod.
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But when the local citizens went to see it the next morning, Dagon had fallen with his face to the ground before the Ark of Jehovah! They set him up again,
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but the next morning the same thing had happened—the idol had fallen face down before the Ark of the Lord again. This time his head and hands had been cut off and were lying in the doorway; only the trunk of his body was left intact.
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(That is why to this day neither the priests of Dagon nor his worshipers will walk on the threshold of the temple of Dagon in Ashdod.)
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Then the Lord began to destroy the people of Ashdod and the nearby villages with bubonic plague.
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When the people realized what was happening, they exclaimed, “We can’t keep the Ark of the God of Israel here any longer. We will all perish along with our god Dagon.”
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So they called a conference of the mayors of the five cities of the Philistines to decide how to dispose of the Ark. The decision was to take it to Gath.
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But when the Ark arrived at Gath, the Lord began destroying its people, young and old, with the plague, and there was a great panic.
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So they sent the Ark to Ekron, but when the people of Ekron saw it coming they cried out, “They are bringing the Ark of the God of Israel here to kill us too!”
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So they summoned the mayors again and begged them to send the Ark back to its own country, lest the entire city die. For the plague had already begun, and great fear was sweeping across the city.
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Those who didn’t die were deathly ill; and there was weeping everywhere.
The Ark remained in the Philistine country for seven months in all.
2
Then the Philistines called for their priests and diviners and asked them, “What shall we do about the Ark of God? What sort of gift shall we send with it when we return it to its own land?”
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“Yes, send it back with a gift,” they were told. “Send a guilt offering so that the plague will stop. Then, if it doesn’t, you will know God didn’t send the plague upon you after all.”
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“What guilt offering shall we send?” they asked.
And they were told, “Send five gold models of the tumor caused by the plague, and five gold models of the rats that have ravaged the whole land—the capital cities and villages alike. If you send these gifts and then praise the God of Israel, perhaps he will stop persecuting you and your god.
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Don’t be stubborn and rebellious as Pharaoh and the Egyptians were. They wouldn’t let Israel go until God had destroyed them with dreadful plagues.
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Now build a new cart and hitch to it two cows that have just had calves—cows that never before have been yoked—and shut their calves away from them in the barn.
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Place the Ark of God on the cart beside a chest containing the gold models of the rats and tumors, and let the cows go wherever they want to.
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If they cross the border of our land and go into Beth-shemesh, then you will know that it was God who brought this great evil upon us; if they don’t but return to their calves,
*
then we will know that the plague was simply a coincidence and was not sent by God at all.”
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So these instructions were carried out. Two cows with newborn calves were hitched to the cart and their calves were shut up in the barn.
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Then the Ark of the Lord and the chest containing the gold rats and tumors were placed upon the cart.
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And sure enough, the cows went straight along the road toward Beth-shemesh, lowing as they went; and the Philistine mayors followed them as far as the border of Beth-shemesh.
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The people of Beth-shemesh were reaping wheat in the valley, and when they saw the Ark, they went wild with joy!
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The cart came into the field of a man named Joshua and stopped beside a large rock. So the people broke up the wood of the cart for a fire and killed the cows and sacrificed them to the Lord as a burnt offering.
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Several men of the tribe of Levi lifted the Ark and the chest containing the gold rats and tumors from the cart and laid them on the rock. And many burnt offerings and sacrifices were offered to the Lord that day by the men of Beth-shemesh.
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After the five Philistine mayors had watched for a while, they returned to Ekron that same day.
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The five gold models of tumors which had been sent by the Philistines as a guilt offering to the Lord were gifts from the mayors of the capital cities, Ashdod, Gaza, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron.
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The gold rats were to placate God for the other Philistine cities, both the fortified cities and the country villages controlled by the five capitals. (By the way, that large rock at Beth-shemesh can still be seen in the field of Joshua.)
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But the Lord killed seventy of the men of Beth-shemesh because they looked into the Ark. And the people mourned because of the many people whom the Lord had killed.
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“Who is able to stand before Jehovah, this holy God?” they cried out. “Where can we send the Ark from here?”
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So they sent messengers to the people at Kiriath-jearim and told them that the Philistines had brought back the Ark of the Lord.
“Come and get it!” they begged.