The Ark Is Taken, and Shiloh Hears the News

Eben-ezer, “stone of help”, is named here by the name it will receive only in 7:12, so the place of this defeat will later become the monument of a victory. Aphek lay at the source of the Yarkon river, on the edge of the coastal plain, where the Philistines could use their chariots. The Greek adds that the Philistines gathered first.

“Joined battle” is literally “the battle spread out”, natash, as a fight scattered over broken ground. Four thousand dead is a heavy loss but not a rout; the army can still withdraw to its camp.

The elders ask the right question and do not wait for an answer. “It may save us” uses a masculine verb that can refer to the ark or to the LORD, and the ambiguity is the problem: Israel no longer distinguishes the two. The ark had gone before Israel at Jericho (Joshua 6), which may be the precedent they had in mind.

The ark’s full title is used for the first time in the Bible, “the LORD of hosts, which dwelleth between the cherubims”. The cherubim were the two gold figures whose wings formed the mercy seat, pictured as God’s throne (Exodus 25:22). Kings were carried; this king is fetched like baggage.

The shout is the teru’ah, the war cry and the trumpet blast of Jericho (Joshua 6:20), when the walls fell. “The earth rang again” is literally “the earth was in an uproar”, hum. Jericho’s shout came after a command; this one comes on Israel’s own initiative.

“Hebrews” is the name foreigners used for Israel, as in Genesis 39:14 and throughout Exodus; Israelites rarely use it of themselves. The Philistines hear before they see, and their first question echoes Eli’s in verse 14: “What meaneth the noise?”

“God is come into the camp” uses Elohim with a singular verb. The Philistines rightly take the ark as a divine presence and are right to be afraid, though what follows proves the fear misplaced for this battle.

The Philistines speak in the plural, “these mighty Gods”, as pagans would of a people’s deities. They also place the plagues “in the wilderness”, a confused memory. The Exodus had become a byword among Israel’s neighbours, as Rahab says of Jericho in Joshua 2:10.

“Quit yourselves like men” is 1611 English for acquit yourselves, bear yourselves as men. The Philistines fear becoming what Israel has been to them, slaves, which confirms that Philistine rule over Israel dated back to Samson’s day (Judges 13:1).

“Every man into his tent” means the army dissolves and each man goes home. Thirty thousand is more than seven times the first loss. The army is described as footmen; Israel had no chariots against a coastal enemy that did.

The verse is two short clauses in Hebrew, the capture of the ark first and the sons’ deaths second. The verb “was taken”, nilqach, returns in verses 17, 19, 21 and 22, the refrain every speaker in the chapter repeats.

A man of Benjamin runs about twenty miles from Aphek to Shiloh in a day. Torn clothes and earth on the head were the signs of mourning and disaster; the messenger to David in 2 Samuel 1:2 comes the same way. Jewish tradition identified this runner as the young Saul.

“Watching” is tsaphah, to look out as a sentry, which is cruel since Eli is blind. He sits by the road because he knows what has gone to war. The city cries out before Eli learns anything: he is the last to hear.

“Tumult” is hamon, the roar of a crowd. Eli’s question is almost the Philistines’ question in verse 6. The runner “came in hastily”, and the Hebrew verb says he hurried.

Ninety eight years; the Greek reads ninety. “His eyes were dim” is literally “his eyes stood”, fixed and unseeing, the same expression used of Ahijah the prophet in 1 Kings 14:4.

The runner repeats his news of flight twice, as if he is still out of breath. Eli calls him “my son”, as he called Samuel. The question “What is there done?” is literally “What was the word?”, dabar, the thing that happened.

The report falls into four parts, each worse than the last. In Hebrew the fourth item begins with the ark itself, set emphatically first in its clause: “and the ark of God is taken”.

“Heavy” is kaved, the root of glory, kavod, that gives the next verses their key word. Eli fell by the gate and broke his neck: the man who judged Israel from a seat dies falling from one. The Greek gives his judgeship as twenty years, the Hebrew forty.

“Bowed herself” is the posture of a woman giving birth, kneeling or crouching. The Book of 1 Samuel lists the causes in an order that begins with the ark, then her father in law, then her husband. Her labour comes suddenly, brought on by the news.

“Fear not” is what the midwife says to Rachel dying at the birth of Benjamin (Genesis 35:17), with the same news, a son. Rachel named him Benoni, “son of my sorrow”. This mother, too, names her child from grief, and does not answer the comfort.

I-chabod means “No glory” or “Where is the glory?”; kavod, glory, comes from the root for weight, the heaviness that killed Eli in verse 18. “Departed” is galah, to go into exile: the glory is pictured as a deportee.

She says it twice. The second time she drops the family and speaks only of the ark. The last word of the chapter is the ark’s capture, and the chapter’s last speaker is a dying woman whose name the Book of 1 Samuel never gives.