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Wherefore the Lord, the God of Israel saith,

I said indeed that thy house, and the house of thy Father,

Should walk before me for ever:

But now the Lord saith, Be it far from me;
For them that honour me, I will honour,

And they that despise me, shall be lightly esteemed.
Behold the days come, that I will cut off thine arm,
And the arm of thy Father's house;

And there shall not be an old man in thine house:

And thou shalt see the affliction of the tabernacle,
Instead of all the wealth which God would have given Israel :*
And there shall not be an old man in thine house for ever.
And the man of thine, whom I shall not cut off from mine altar,
Shall be to consume thine eyes, and to grieve thine heart,
And all the increase of thine house shall die in the flower of their age.
And this shall be a sign unto thee,

That shall come upon thy two Sons,
On Hophni and Phineas,

In one day they shall die, both of them!

And I will raise me up a faithful Priest,

That shall do according to all that is in mine heart and in my mind. And I will build him a sure house;

And he shall walk before mine anointed for ever.

And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left in thine house Shall come and crouch to him for a piece of silver, and a morsel of bread, And shall say, Put me into somewhat about the priesthood,

That I may eat a piece of bread!"

After such an awful, such a heart-rending premonition as this, surely some effect will follow. Eli must be roused. But, no! if he even said any thing, it was not deemed to be worth recording: that he did nothing seems but too evident, from the fact, that seven or eight years passed away before another mes

* This appears to be the true translation; and accordingly Eli did see the tabernacle deprived of the ark, which was its glory, and lived to hear that it was captured by the Philistines.

senger was sent to him. At last, then, since Eli has trifled so long with parental obligations, and since he will not positively "restrain" these children, even this child Samuel has been reared up before his eyes to rebuke him. God had spoken twice, nay thrice, yet he had not perceived. Now he shall be awaked from his slumbers three times in one night, and then left in awful suspense until the morning, as to what awaited him. A man of God had been sent to him years before, and now, after ample time and space for repentance, there is sent to him literally a child. Conscious, it seems, of his constitutional failing, and of the sad torpor of his mind, at last he is anxiously alive and in earnest. "And Samuel lay until the morning, and opened the doors of the house of the Lord. And Samuel feared to shew Eli the vision. Then Eli called Samuel, and said, Samuel, my son. And he answered, Here am I. And he said, What is the thing that the Lord hath said unto thee? I God do so to thee

pray thee hide it not from me: and more also, if thou hide any thing from me, of all the things that he said unto thee." Who will not admire the delicate sensibility of this child, in not saying a word till he is sent for; and his fidelity, in not concealing one word when he is questioned! For "Samuel told him every whit, and hid nothing from him." But what did he say? More awful language he could not employ than that which Eli had already heard. No, certainly; but to Eli's ear it must have been more awful, from its being at once the dreadful reverberation of a neglected warning, and an explicit testimony to the sufficiency of that warning. "And the Lord said to Samuel, Behold, I will do a thing

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in Israel, at which both the ears of every one that heareth it shall tingle."

In that day I will perform against Eli,

All which I have spoken concerning his house.

When I begin, I will also make an end.

For I have told him, that I will judge his house for ever

For the iniquity which he knoweth,

Because his sons made themselves vile,

And he restrained them not.

And therefore I have sworn unto the house of Eli,

That the iniquity of Eli's house

Shall not be purged with sacrifice nor offering for ever.

Yet, roused as Eli was at last to his criminal negligence, what did it avail? It is true, that nine or ten years are yet to elapse before he and his Sons die in one day; but there is a certain bound to imprudence and misbehaviour, which being transgressed, there remains no possibility of redressing the grievance. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heavens. "It is further very much to be remarked, that neglects from inconsiderateness,―want of attention,-not looking about us to see what we have to do, are often attended with consequences altogether as dreadful as any active misbehaviour from the most extravagant passion.' "'*

For nineteen years had Eli held the office of priesthood before Samuel was born: after this, a prophet had been sent to warn him in such terms, that one is astonished at his torpitude; for still he delays till Samuel is grown up, even to his twelfth year, before he is convinced and laid low for his remiss conduct! It now therefore only remains for the reader to mark

* Butler.

the inevitable and awful results of Parental remiss

ness.

Third, The ruin which ensued from the negligence and torpor of even a religious Parent.

As in many, if not in most cases, it does not comport with infinite wisdom and divine forbearance, that the punishment of neglect should follow immediately so now we are to see, that "the delay of punishment is no sort or degree of presumption of final impunity." Long indeed had the Almighty been of beginning, but now he tells Eli, and by the lips of a child, "When I begin I will also make an end." After such delay, too, it is observable, that vengeance comes not by degrees, but suddenly, with violence and at once. In one day, Hophni and Phineas are slain, and thirty thousand men with them; the ark of God itself is taken, and at this intelligence, before the sun is set, at the age of ninety-eight, Eli also expires! Even his daughter-in-law, the wife of Phineas, apparently a good woman, can live no longer. On the same day she also dies, leaving an orphan behind her, to look back on this as the day on which he was born! With her dying breath, too, she named him Ichabod, or where is the glory? for she said, "the glory is departed from Israel.”

Long, however, had Jehovah borne with Eli, and long will he continue to testify to his guilt and sin. Many, many years pass away, when" in one day” again, besides Abimelech, the great-grandson of Eli, not less than eighty-four priests of his house are slain, with their entire families! Neither man or woman, child or suckling, is spared by the cruel hand of Doeg the Edomite. "The sins of pious individuals

among Eli's posterity would be pardoned, through the sacrifice of Christ for their eternal salvation; but the Lord had determined that no number of sin-offerings or oblations should prevail with him to continue that family in the priesthood."* On this account, we find that even this slaughter was not the final testimony of his displeasure. On that awful day, David, in another part of Judea, was flying before the face of Saul, and though, in this case, he certainly did not deserve it, yet, fortunately for his comfort, one individual ran and escaped the edge of the sword. "And Abiathar shewed David that Saul had slain the Lord's priests. And David said to Abiathar, I knew it that day when Doeg the Edomite was there, that he would surely tell Saul. I have occasioned the death of all the persons of thy Father's house. Abide thou with me, fear not: for he that seek eth my life seeketh thy life: but with me thou shalt be in safeguard." Still the eye of the Lord must follow this descendant of Eli, and as a warning to Parents, so should theirs.

Eli's sin, let it be remembered, had consisted in honouring his Sons above the Lord-in despising the sacred character and obligations of the priesthood: and therefore, so far down as the days of Solomon, more than a hundred years after Eli's death, when the Jewish economy was about to shine out in all its glory; when the temple was going to be erected, and the ark, which Eli had so dishonoured, was to become stationary in that magnificent abode; then must the lineal descendant of Eli be brought into view;

* Scott.

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