Let us pursue the parallel in this chapter between Eli and Samuel. Eli continues in his downward path, whereas Samuel grows until all Israel knows that the Lord has established him as a prophet.
In 1 Samuel 3:1, Samuel is depicted in the same way as at the beginning of his career: “The boy Samuel ministered to Jehovah before Eli” (cf. 1 Sam. 2:11). There is no progression in this passage: the Spirit of God once again lays the basis of what is to follow.
In 1 Samuel 2, the consequence of Samuel’s service was to ascribe to him certain attributes of the priesthood which was soon to be removed from Eli. In a time of ruin, the functions of the house of God are not as clearly defined as in a time of spiritual prosperity. Such is the case today too with regard to gifts in the church. As all the members of Christ are not fulfilling the functions which have been apportioned to them, the Lord often confides to a single member capacities which, in a normal state of things, He would have distributed among many members. In no way am I here speaking of the principle of the clergy which pretends to amass on one man’s head gifts acquired by study and confirmed by examinations.
In our chapter, Samuel’s service leads him to prophecy. Through service one acquires a good degree (cf. 1 Tim. 3:13). If we do as Samuel who did not go out of the sanctuary, so to speak, God will entrust other services to us. When, like Samuel, one serves the Lord from his youth, and when one grows in His presence, one may then be usefully employed for the benefit of His people.
Nevertheless two things were still lacking in Samuel’s spiritual development, without which there can be no public testimony: “Samuel did not yet know Jehovah, neither had the word of Jehovah yet been revealed unto him” (1 Sam. 3:7). The point here is personal knowledge of the Lord, for Samuel belonged to Him, served Him, and worshipped Him from his infancy, but he had not yet met the Lord face to face. It may happen in our Christian career that we joy in the finished work of the cross on our behalf without knowing the Lord personally. Knowing salvation and knowing the Author of salvation are two different things. Now, there is no power for testimony in one who does not know the person of Christ. The secret that would allow the Corinthians to he the epistle of Christ, known and read by all men, lay in the contemplation of the glory of the Lord with unveiled face.
“Neither had the word of Jehovah yet been revealed to him.” Often in times of ruin the revelation of the mind of God is hindered by the enemy. Just so it is said in 1 Samuel 3:1: “The word of Jehovah was rare in those days; a vision was not frequent.” But although hindered, the word had not been stopped, for grace provides for the needs of each era, and most consolingly, it is often in the darkest days of decline that God gives the most new light in order to guide and encourage His own. In a time when the vision was not widespread, God raises up the first prophet, properly speaking, in Israel. Through the priesthood’s unfaithfulness the ordinary means established by God for approaching Himself were at the point of being lost, but the grace of God could not leave His people without help and without a means of communicating with Himself. He gives Samuel, that is to say prophecy, through which in sovereign grace He approaches man and communicates His mind. Samuel is the first of this long line of prophets who transmit God’s word to a people whose unfaithfulness, without this provision, would have left them without resource (Acts 3:24; 2 Chron. 35:18; Jer. 15:1).
Thus God reveals Himself personally to Samuel and makes him the depository of His word. This young boy is raised to the dignity of a friend of God and, like the man of experience and of faith which Abraham was, God hides nothing from him of what He was about to do. Until that moment Eli’s teaching had instructed Samuel concerning the way to enter into communication with God (1 Sam. 3:9); now he is in direct relationship with the Lord who is entrusting His secrets to him. Samuel proves himself faithful respecting this trust and, like Paul with the Ephesians later (Acts 20:20), he kept back from Eli nothing that was profitable to him. Poor Eli—set aside and obliged to receive God’s thoughts from the mouth of a young boy! What a humiliation for this aged man, whose path is sinking lower and lower, whereas the path of his pupil is rising and reaching regions that the feet of the high priest never attained!
In 1 Samuel 1, Eli lacked discernment; in 1 Samuel 2, he lacked the moral courage to separate himself from evil; here, his eyes are dim and he cannot see, and nevertheless the lamp of God had not yet gone out—a striking image of his moral condition. And what is more, this leader of the simple proves himself to be dull of understanding. It is not until the third call that “Eli perceived that Jehovah was calling the boy.” Yes, “dull of hearing”: that is exactly what he had become. Samuel was simply ignorant, which is a thousand times better. When there is godliness, God remedies ignorance. If the new-born babe desires “the pure mental milk of the word,” he will not be refused. Here on earth we know only in part and we will never know otherwise than only in part. That we are not responsible for; but it is a question of growth: “That by it ye may grow” (1 Peter 2:2), and our responsibility is to seek, to this end, spiritual food.
Here we find a feature of Eli’s spiritual weakening that is not mentioned in the first two chapters: “For the iniquity which he hath known, because his sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not” (1 Sam. 3:13). Eli knew the evil, and he had authority to repress it in his sons, but he did not use it. What profit was it to him that this authority had been entrusted to him by God? How often the spiritual weakening of the head of a family stems from his slackness when he should have maintained order and discipline in the sphere where his authority was meant to function? This is a great cause of ruin. Without doubt, like Lot, Eli was “distressed with the abandoned conversation [manner of life] of the godless,” but like him, he displayed a sad forgetfulness of what was due to the Lord’s holiness.
Samuel was holy in all his conduct. God entrusts a revelation to him; he administers this trust faithfully; and this is the means by which he receives a new revelation. So, we are told: Samuel grew; he continued to grow (1 Sam. 2:21; 3:19). His spiritual development followed a walk which was gradually rising. “And Jehovah was with him, and let none of his words fall to the ground.” Thus, all Samuel’s words were preserved by Him who witnessed his speech. And so Samuel was God’s organ to express His mind, and he spoke “as oracles of God” because God was with him to preserve him. Thus he acquired the reputation of prophet in the presence of all Israel. One revelation leads to another: the Lord continued to appear to him at Shiloh and revealed Himself to him by His word (1 Sam. 3:21). So, Samuel grew both in personal knowledge of the Lord and in the knowledge of His revealed word.
As for Eli, how comforting it is to see at our chapter’s close, the humble submission of this aged man to the judgment which he had merited. “It is Jehovah: let Him do what is good in His sight” (1 Sam. 3:18). God’s will is good and his soul bows to it. May God grant us Eli’s spirit in the presence of His discipline: the humility which precedes recovery, a broken heart which does not rise up against the will of God in an effort to resist it, but which accepts His will with all its consequences, because it is indeed “that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”
Samuel, Judge and Prophet -1 Samuel 4-8