1 Samuel 3:1-10

CRITICAL AND EXPOSITORY NOTES.—

1 Samuel 3:1. “The child Samuel.” According to Josephus, Samuel was now twelve years old. “Precious,” i.e., rare. “The word was rare that came directly from the Lord by prophetic announcement to the people; the proper organs were lacking, persons who were filled with the Spirit of the Lord, that they might be witnesses of His word; there was lacking also in the people the living desire for the direct revelations of God in His word” (Lange’s Commentary). “No open vision,” lit. “no vision spread abroad.” “Here vision includes all the ways whereby God revealed Himself to men. Which He did then so seldom that, whatsoever revelation there might be privately to some pious persons, there was none then publicly acknowledged to be a prophet” (Patrick).

1 Samuel 3:2. “His eyes began to wax dim.” This mention of Eli’s dimness of sight is introduced parenthetically. It explains Samuel’s supposition that he had been called by Eli: the imperfect vision of the aged priest would make him dependent upon the services of an attendant, and these services Samuel was probably appointed to render” (Hobson). “The lamp of God,” i.e., the seven-branched candlestick. “This stood in the centre, on the left of the entrance, and is now mentioned for the last time. It was superseded in the reign of Solomon by the ten separate candlesticks, but revived after the captivity by the copy of the one candlestick with the seven branches, as is still seen on the arch of Titus. It was the only light of the Tabernacle during the night” (Dean Stanley). “Went out.” This indicates that the time was near morning. “Temple.” See on 1 Samuel 1:9. “The sanctuary was so encased with buildings as to give it the name and appearance of a house or temple” (Dean Stanley). “Samuel slept in the court, where cells were built for the priests and Levites to live in when serving in the sanctuary. See 1 Samuel 3:15. (Keil). “The high-priest was not in domestic residence at the temple, much less, therefore, at the tabernacle.… But Eli, who was now an aged man, with all his family grown up and settled in their own households, might, both from feeling and convenience, incline to reside constantly at his humble official lodge, under the shadow of the tabernacle. The proper place of Samuel would have been among the attendant Levites, but on account of his personal services to the high-priest, he rested not far from him” (Kitto). “The Lord.” Jehovah. “This name stands after the temple because it is the Covenant God who descends to His people, and dwells with them, that is brought before us. On the other hand, in connection with the lamp and the ark, Elohim is used in the sense of the Divine in general” (Lange’s Commentary).

1 Samuel 3:4. “The Lord called Samuel.” “Probably by a voice from the ark in the Holy of Holies” (Wordsworth).

1 Samuel 3:5. “He ran,” etc. “Which shows the great readiness and promptness of his obedience, which made him come, yea, run at his first call” (Patrick).

1 Samuel 3:7. “Did not yet know,” etc. “He had not the special knowledge of God which was given by extraordinary revelation” (Lange’s Commentary). “Revealed,” literally uncovered. “The metaphor is transferred in a certain way in 1 Samuel 9:15, where it is said (Hebrew) that the Lord uncovered the ear of Samuel. Our word revelation may be taken as including both these ideas” (Hobson). (See comments on 1 Samuel 3:21.)

1 Samuel 3:10. “Stood.” The voice becomes a vision. “A personal presence, not a mere voice, or impression upon Samuel’s mind is here indicated “(Bishop Hervey).

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 1 Samuel 3:1

THE VOICE OF THE UNSEEN

I. Special preparation qualifies for special revelation. “Samuel ministered unto the Lord before Eli.” In any branch of service, whether rendered to men or more directly to God, training is needed before a man is fit to fulfil its duties. Men to whom the voice of nature has spoken in any special manner are generally men who have been her students from their early years, and their long waiting upon her in her temple has made them capable of receiving special revelations from her. Newton and Faraday were made partakers of some of her secrets only after years of training in her school, and the same may be said of the poets and artists whose ears have been opened, or whose vision has been enlightened in an especial manner to hear her voice, or to see her beauties. David’s early days were spent in meditating upon the heavens that declared the glory of God and the firmament that showed the Divine handiwork. Doubtless this early training had much to do with his susceptibility to impressions from the works of God in nature in his after-life, and made him able to see God in all the things that He has made. God, by early training, fitted him to be not only a king and a soldier, but a poet. So Samuel was prepared, by early and special training, to receive special revelations from God.

II. Early religious training fits men for great and important work in after life. From his very early days Samuel dwelt in the sanctuary of the Lord, and was in daily attendance upon the services of His house. Corrupt as were some of those who ministered in holy things, there were doubtless some good and elevating influences around him which would accustom him to the thought of the God of his fathers, and tend to prepare him for the special work to which he was destined. The comparatively easy and pleasant ministry unto the Lord within His house prepared him for the sterner service he was to be called to render without the courts in a more public capacity. The sailor’s child is first taught to handle an oar in the sheltered cove before his father’s cottage, in sight of home and within reach of his mother’s eye. But this easy exercise is to fit him in after years to move out into the wide ocean and face the perils of the storm, and with a skilful hand pilot his vessel safely over a dangerous sea. The home-life of every well-trained child is a calm and peaceful bay, in which, encircled by loving laws and gentle words, he is being fitted to fight the difficulties and temptations of life outside the charmed circle. In due time he moves out into the vast sea of life, and finds himself in a world altogether different from his childhood’s home; but the holy influences that were around him there have fitted him for taking his place and doing his work in the world, so as to glorify God and bless himself and others. So it ought to be with every member of a godly household, so it was with Samuel. The “gentleness of God” (2 Samuel 22:36) as he experienced it in the comparatively calm and peaceful atmosphere of his early days, made him fit to fulfil the arduous mission to which he was afterwards called, and strengthened him to fulfil all the Divine commands even to the terrific one of “hewing Agag in pieces before the Lord” (1 Samuel 15:33). What a contrast was the last-mentioned stern service to the gentle ministry of his early days, but obedience to the will of God was doubtless the motive power in both. This habit of obedience is the one which above all others, perhaps, fits men bravely and faithfully to fulfil their duties to God and men. If a child has been accustomed from a sense of duty to render obedience to his human father or guardian he will come more readily to subject his will to his Divine Father. Submission to the lesser and imperfect being prepares the way for submission to the Almighty and Perfect One. We see from Samuel’s ready response to what he supposed was the call of Eli, how accustomed he was to render implicit obedience to him who stood to him in the place of his earthly father, and this submission to a human will and authority was one of the most important elements in his early training to fit him in after life to render unhesitating obedience to the word of the Lord, and to shrink from no service which He called upon him to perform.

III. God speaks when His speech is most needed. Rain is never so precious as when famine has set in from lack of it. When the clouds have for long ceased to yield refreshment to the earth, then every drop is as precious as gold. When there is lack of the rain of heaven, then there is dearth, and disease, and death. So is it in the spiritual world when there is a lack of spiritual teaching. From this soul-famine there springs apace all kinds of spiritual diseases, and souls perish for lack of bread. In Israel, at this period of its history, there was such a soul-famine, and with few exceptions its whole “head was sick, and its heart was faint” in consequence, and “wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores” broke out in the lives of those who ought to have been fit mediums for the descent of that spiritual rain which makes glad the wilderness and the solitary place, and causes the spiritual desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose. In this time of great need God broke the long silence, and in this word coming to Samuel there was “a sound of” that “abundance of rain” which was to be poured down upon this highly-favoured people almost unceasingly until the time of Malachi. This voice of God, coming to the youthful Samuel in the night watches, was to be the beginning of a long series of “open visions,” and of an abundant revelation of the mind and will of God. But the first drops of the shower fell in a time of spiritual drought, and famine, and disease.

IV. God speaks through spiritually qualified instruments. A coloured glass is not a fit medium to transmit the pure white light of the sun. A blackened glass almost entirely shuts out his rays; light can hardly find any entrance through such a medium. God’s silence had been of so long continuance because those who ought to have been fit mediums to transmit His word were utterly incapable even of receiving it. Neither Eli nor his sons were qualified instruments by which God could reveal His will to the people. Even the high-priest himself was not one whose spiritual nature was sufficiently awake to render him capable of receiving visions of God. And he who would reveal to others the word of the Lord must be able first to see and hear for himself. But Samuel was of an entirely different nature. His ear had been rendered susceptible to spiritual voices, his eyes were fitted to discern spiritual realities, and his will was so far in harmony with the will of God—his desire to serve the Lord was so far single and unbiassed,—as to render him a fit medium through which the light of the Divine word could be transmitted.

V. The unseen world is as real as that which is seen. The personality of Eli in the tabernacle was one that could be seen—it was within the reach of Samuel’s bodily senses. But he came to be conscious of a Person, quite as real, though ordinarily beyond the reach of his vision. He who spoke to Samuel in his sleep was as real an existence as was the priest to whom he at first attributed the voice. That Samuel at first mistook the voice of the invisible God for the voice of the visible Eli shows how strongly he was assured of the reality of the person who spoke to him—how certain he felt that the voice belonged to a real and actual existence. That which is unseen by our mortal eye is as real, and is as near to us, as that which our bodily vision can apprehend, and it only needs God to awaken our spiritual senses to make us conscious of this. Many a man can testify from his own experience that communion with God is quite as much a reality as any communion with man. Samuel, during his minority, had many a conversation with the aged Eli, and had doubtless received some good impressions from his intercourse with the old priest. But the intercourse which he held from this time forth with a person who spoke to him from the invisible world was as real and far more impressive than any he had ever had with the person before whom he had so long ministered to the Lord. So real was it, and so strong an impression did it make upon him that he could afterwards reproduce the words that had been spoken to him, and felt that communion with Him whose dwelling is not with flesh, was a more influential fact of his life than any intercourse with men. He had been conversant with many facts concerning Jehovah before this time, but he now awoke to such a personal consciousness of His existence, and such an abiding sense of His nearness, that up to this crisis in his history it is said of him that he “knew not the Lord.”

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS

1 Samuel 3:1. Since the extraordinary gifts stand in close connection with the ordinary, we must conclude that the latter also were sparingly dealt out, that among the masses there was a great deal of lukewarmness, and even open apostasy. The want of a reformation was urgent. That the extraordinary gifts, however, had not quite disappeared, we learn from the example of the man of God who comes to Eli to upbraid him with his sins and also to announce the Divine judgment. And with respect to the ordinary gifts, we are led to the conclusion that there was at that time a not inconsiderable ekloge, not only by the institution of holy women (see Critical Notes on 1 Samuel 2:21), but also by the custom of the Nazarite, of which we have two contemporaneous examples in Samson and Samuel, and must therefore have been pretty widely spread. Hence we infer that the spirit of piety was by no means dead, especially since an institution such as that of the Nazarites stands in close connection with the whole national tendency, and can only flourish when more or less supported by it.—Hengstenberg.

Faithful in little, and therefore entrusted with more, being the next famous prophet to Moses, and called the first (Acts 3:24; 2 Chronicles 35:18).—Trapp.

The time of Samuel’s appearance in Israel as prophet was a time of an internal judgment of God, which consisted in the lack of intercourse of God with His people by revelation. It was a theocratic interdict incurred by the continual apostasy of the people from their God … Such a judgment came upon Saul (1 Samuel 28:6; 1 Samuel 28:15).… The same law presents itself in all periods of the kingdom of God; men lose the source of life, God’s revealed word, by a Divine judgment, when they withdraw from intercourse with the living God, and will not accept His holy word as the truth which controls their whole life.—Lange’s Commentary.

1 Samuel 3:2. God lets old Eli sleep, who slept in his sin; and awakes Samuel to tell him what He would do with his master. He, who was wont to be the mouth of God to the people, must now receive the message of God from the mouth of another; as great persons will not speak to those with whom they are highly offended, but send them their checks by others.—Bishop Hall.

1 Samuel 3:4. He answered “Here am I.” A hearing ear is a sweet mercy; and a heavy ear, a grievous judgment (Isaiah 6:9).—Trapp.

1 Samuel 3:5. He would not have lain down to sleep had he thought that the Lord had spoken unto him. So, if men did but consider that God speaketh unto them by His ministers, they would hear and heed much better. How oft do we either turn a deaf ear to God’s call, or else mistake, and run another way, till He please to speak home to our hearts, and cause us to hear Him.—Trapp.

1 Samuel 3:10. For the first time Samuel stands with consciousness in the presence of the majesty of God—and immediately all the riddles of life begin to be solved for him, and the meaning of his own life to become clear. What he says bears the clearest stamp of a really begun communion with the Lord. Is it not the resolve to say and to do all that the Lord might show him of His lofty thoughts and ways—is it not this, and nothing but this, that is expressed in “Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth?” Has he not thereby once for all renounced self-knowing and self-will? That was the faithfulness as a prophet, which all Israel, from Dan even to Beersheba, recognised in him (1 Samuel 3:20). And that which thus first established a true communion with the Lord could also alone be the power that maintained it. The constant prayer, “Speak, Lord,” and the constant vow, “Thy servant heareth”—that is the hand which takes hold of God’s right hand, to be held fast by it with everlasting life. “Speak, Lord,” etc., a testimony of unconditional devotion to the Lord.

1. How such a testimony is reached (a), through the Lord’s awakening call; (b), through receptivity of heart for God’s word; (c) through the deed of self-denial in the renunciation of all self-knowledge and self-will.

2. What is therein testified and praised before the Lord—(a) humble subjection [speak, Lord]; (b) steadfast dependence on the Lord in free love [Thy servant]; (c) unconditional, joyful obedience to His will [Thy servant heareth]. Conditions of a blessed fulfilment of one’s calling for the kingdom of God—

1. The experience of the power of the Divine word: I have called thee by name.
2. The repeated call in prayer, “Speak, Lord.”
3. The fulfilment of the vow: “Thy servant heareth.”—Lange’s Commentary.