CHAPTER SUMMARY
The Jews go to war
against the Pelishtim, and, on the first
day, are routed. Distressed at their loss,
they conceive a plan that, they feel, is
sure to bring them victory—they will bring
the Aron, the Ark that contains the Tablets
that Moshe brought down from Sinai, to the
war. Surely, the presence of the Ark (which,
for them, probably meant the presence of
God, as we will see in a moment) would
change the tide of the war. When the Aron
comes, so do Hofni and Pinhas, Eli’s sons.
When the Aron arrives at
the camp, the Jews all shout for joy. The
Plishtim, hearing, the cries, correctly
assume that the Aron had arrived and,
indeed, fear its power deeply. They bewail
their chances to succeed against this might
God, the God that had struck down the
Egyptians in the desert. Fortifying
themselves for what they assume is a doomed
mission, they throw themselves at the Jews,
and the Jews are once again routed, this
time with the death of Hofni and Pinhas and
the Aron’s being taken by the Plishtim.
When news of this makes
its way back to Shiloh, it first is told in
the town, where Eli (who, at 98, can no
longer see), hears great anguished cries.
When the messenger arrives to tell him what
had transpired, including the loss of the
Aron, Eli falls backward in horror, breaking
his neck and ending his life. His pregnant
daughter in law, hearing about the loss of
the Aron and the deaths of her husband and
father-in-law, goes into labor, giving birth
to a boy. Instead of being cheered by the
news, she calls the child I kavod
(lack of honor), since these tragedies had
exiled all honor from the Jewish people.
DOES GOD LURE US TO OUR
DEATHS?
The first words of this
chapter read "va-yehi devar Shemuel
le-kol Yisrael, and the word of Shemuel
was [went out] to all of Israel," and
then mentions that Israel went out to war
against Plishtim. An obvious question is the
connection between the two phrases- did
Shemuel tell the Jews to go to war, or are
they unconnected? Rashi reads those first
words as simply mentioning that the things
Shemuel had said to Eli came to pass, and
this is the way it happened. In his reading,
Shemuel had, some number of years previously
(Hazal think that Shemuel was 39 before Eli
died, so this would be quite some years
after his origianl nevuah).
Radak, however, believes
that Shemuel had a nevuah telling the
people to go to war, which means that God is
ordering the Jewish people to take an action
that will end up hurting them (or, at least,
bring them to the punishment that they
deserve). Since the people were obligated to
listen to Shemuel, a confirmed prophet of
God, Radak’s view forces us to reevaluate
what we mean when we assume that God’s
commands always lead us in a positive
direction.
To the extent that
receiving the punishment we deserve clears
our lives for moving away from past errors,
this, too, can be seen as a positive
direction. It is similar to the positive
value of occasional forest fires to sweep
away underbrush—without them, the brush
accumulates and the next fire becomes a
raging wildfire. That may be Radak’s sense
of good, but I am not sure that casual
readers would have assumed that.
THE POWER OF
SELF-DECEPTION AND OVERCONFIDENCE
When the people are first
defeated, they come back to the elders, and
are puzzled—why would God have made them
lose (or not helped them win)? Malbim (verse
3) understands their question as reflecting
their self-image as perfectly righteous,
despite their worshipping idols and engaging
in witchcraft. Particularly around Rosh
haShanah time, it is worth considering how
we (like the Jews) might fool ourselves into
a better self-picture than reality allows.
The people then decide to
bring the Aron—the real Aron Kodesh, the
one with the Tablets that Moshe brought down
from Sinai—out to the site of the war.
Malbim makes two interesting points. First,
he notes that the people assume that there
is no way that God would let them lose when
the Aron is in their midst—they see the
Aron itself as the source of salvation, when
salvation really comes from the covenant
represented by and in that Aron. He also
notes that the decision to bring the Aron
was made without consulting either Shemuel
or the Urim ve-Tumim (the Kohen Gadol’s
breastplate, which also communicated God’s
Word, as we will see in future chapters).
Especially for Radak, who
thought that they went to war at Shemuel’s
behest, but even for Rashi and Malbim who
only see Shemuel as having been a generally
recognized navi, the people’s
actions are surprising. Given avenues to
talk to God, would we not think to avail
ourselves of those before simply taking
action on our own? As we have mentioned
before, this symptomizes the people’s
fundamental disconnection from God (showing
how different Elkanah was from the people of
his time) and from sources of God’s Word
and advice.
DESPERATION AS A SOURCE OF
DEPRESSION OR HEROISM
When the Aron comes—and
I would note that the navi does not
record any protest against this use of the
Aron on the part of Hofni and Pinhas (who
actually accompany it to the battlefield) or
Eli. For Hofni and Pinhas, this would seem
to provide an opportunity to consolidate
their prestige and power among the people, a
stance about the priesthood that had led to
the promise of punishment we have discussed
in previous chapters. For Eli, who was
extremely nervous about the Aron’s leaving
(see verse13), it would seem to constitute a
final example of his inability to prevent
courses of action that he finds
inappropriate.
When the Aron arrives, to
the people’s great joy, the Plishtim react
with dismay. Notice verse 8, where Plishtim
know God’s history with the Jewish people
remarkably well; this God, who has now come
to the camp, previously defeated the
Egyptians in the desert. Hundreds of years
later, in other words, God’s purpose in
taking the Jews out of Egypt be-koah
gadol u-ve-yad hazakah, with lots of
might and fanfare, had clearly been
fulfilled, in that other nations still
remembered those events and were afraid of
God’s Might.
What had gone wrong,
however, was that all of these people, the
Jews and the Plishtim, had come to believe
that the Aron represented God. When the
battle was just the Jews against the
Plishtim, the Plishtim had not worried; once
the Aron came, then they were afraid of the
God Who had beaten the Egyptians. In their
minds, then, God had become an idol like any
other (rahmana litslan), personified
by the Aron.
Plishtim’s reaction also
draws our attention to the different
reactions we can have to a hopeless
situation. Once Plishtim realize that God
has now come into the Jewish camp, from
their perspective, we might have expected
them to simply surrender. Instead, they
summon up their last bits of courage and
attack the Jews (and, of course, they win,
because God wants them to). The Aron is
taken captive, and Eli’s sons are
killed—wiping out the leaders who had
fostered or, at least, not fought the belief
that objects are more important than service
of God.
THE WORD COMES BACK TO ELI
The navi builds
some suspense up before we hear what happens
to Eli; we hear, first, that the messenger,
who had dirt on his head and torn clothes,
came to the city and told the people there.
Eli hears the cries of distress and already
is worried about them, when the messenger
comes to him. We then hear that Eli was 98
and blind, and then the introduction by the
messenger (who had to explain to Eli who he
was, since Eli could not see). The messenger
then gives him the bad news in bits and
pieces—the people had fled, many had been
killed, his two sons were killed, and the
Aron was taken by Plishtim. At that point,
the verse tells us, Eli, in horror at the
loss of the Aron, falls backwards and is
killed.
The suspense around
Eli’s being told about the events, I
suspect, is to allow us to see how deeply
the loss of the Aron was going to affect
Eli. He already had some warning that bad
news was coming, since he heard the cries of
the people. Once the messenger identified
himself to him, he would have known that the
bad news was from the battlefield. He then
absorbs without incident several sad pieces
of information-- the loss of the battle, the
numerous deaths, and the deaths of his own
sons. Theoretically, this should have
lessened the shock of what was about to
come. Nevertheless, when he heard about the
Aron (or so the verse says) he fell
backwards and broke his neck.
Eli’s shock, the depth
with which he feels the loss of the Aron,
suggests that he, too, might have become
caught up in the overemphasis on the Aron
that characterized the rest of the people.
Judging from the way the messenger phrased
his information, he also assumed that the
loss of the Aron would be harder for Eli to
hear than the loss of his own sons. We would
never accuse Eli, a judge of the Jewish
people, of the crass object-worship that the
Plishtim exhibited, but his concern for the
Aron, his willingness to allow it to the
battlefield, and his reaction at its loss,
do point to a lower-level experience along
similar lines. That might also explain why
he was unable to properly teach his
sons—he, too, (maybe) saw the sacrifices
as absolutely central to worship of God, and
saw priests as the masters of that ceremony.
While he would never abuse that power, he
did see it as a power of the priesthood,
when ideally, he should have seen it as a
responsibility of service rather than a
power.
THE DAUGHTER IN LAW AS
CONTRAST
That the navi had
some problem with Eli’s reaction seems to
be further supported by the story of his
daughter in law, recorded immediately after.
The verses tell us that she, pregnant, went
into labor upon hearing of her husband’s
and father in law’s deaths and the loss of
the Aron. When she gives birth to a boy, the
news does not cheer her, and she names him I
Kavod, for the honor of the Jewish
people had been lost, because of the loss of
the Aron, of her father-in-law and of her
husband. If we look at this story as
contrast to Eli’s story (which is the only
reason that occurs to me as to why it is
here), we might notice her ability to focus
on elements of this tragedy other than the
loss of the Aron. Certainly that was an
important loss to her—she repeats it again
in verse 22—but it did not completely
overshadow all the other losses. This may
not be the perfect reaction, but it at least
shows how narrow Eli’s focus was, a
narrowness that perhaps explains some of the
spiritual failings of his time.
Interestingly, however,
the loss of the Aron and the death of Eli
clear the way for the Jewish people to learn
important lessons about having God in
one’s life and for the leadership of
Shemuel, which is generally focused on that
lesson, as we will begin to see next week, be"H.
Shabbat Shalom
