1 Samuel 2:33

To consume thine eyes and to grieve thine heart. — The Speaker’s Commentary well refers to 1 Samuel 2:36 for an explanation of these difficult words. “Those who are not cut off in the flower of their youth shall be worse off than those who are, for they shall have to beg their bread.”

And all the increase of thine house shall die. — In the Babylonian Talmud the Rabbis have related that there was once a family in Jerusalem the members of which died off regularly at eighteen years of age. Rabbi Jochanan ben Zacchai shrewdly guessed that they were descendants of Eli, regarding whom it is said (1 Samuel 2:33), “And all the increase of thine house shall die in the flower of their age; “and he accordingly advised them to devote themselves to the study of the Law, as the certain and only means of neutralising the curse. They acted upon the advice of the Rabbi; their lives were in consequence prolonged; and they thenceforth went by the name of their spiritual father. — Rosh Hashanah, fol. 18, Colossians 1.