Board index ‹ Specific Bible verses, texts, and passages ‹ 1 Samuel

[Mel B]

In the story of Samuel and Eli, when Samuel heard from God, was Eli‘s faith and not rewarded based on his response? It seems like Eli knew that he could not fight what God was going to do, but by faith , he excepted his response.

I feel like a lot of stories in the Bible touch on how people’s faith was rewarded, despite their sinful past. However, it seems to be a different story for Samuel so I’m a little confused.

[jimwalton]

It’s not that Eli’s faith was not rewarded based on his response, but rather that Eli had a long history of corruption, disobedience, and blasphemy ((1 Sam. 2.27-35; 3.12-13). God has already pronounced judgment on him for his faithlessness. The fact that he shows a smidgeon of faith here in chapter 3 doesn’t undo all of his corruption and disobedience. It’s like a child trafficker wanting to make a donation to an orphanage. Of course the orphanage needs money, but this one good deed doesn’t undo the years of evil this person is causing, so the gift should be rejected.

As to the text as a whole, and with any text, more important than what the characters do is what the narrator is doing with the characters and, even more important, what God is doing through the characters.

The narrator is not teaching us about the characters, he is teaching us about God. That’s where the authority of the text is found. Consequently, we should not be mining the narratives for role models—that is not why the author has given us this material. The stories are not recounting tales of the heroes and villains of the Bible. We must not reduce the Bible to being an ancient version of Marvel comics.

The text is about God. God is working out His plans and purposes through Samuel and David. This is Samuel’s call to prophetic ministry, which is important because Samuel has to be a legitimate prophet and priest if he’s going to be the one anointing a legitimate king, David. So for David to be the real deal, Samuel has to be the real deal, so this text is showing us that God called Samuel to prophetic ministry.

Therefore the message for us is that God is working out His plans and purposes through Samuel and David. Samuel responds with obedience and faith, something we didn’t see, except for glimpses, in Eli. God rewards Samuel’s obedience and his godly heart. We also discover that God is able to do His work even through confused or flawed people, like Eli and David. So the text is about God: He has a plan and a purpose, and He will bring that plan to fruition and accomplish his purposes. He rewards faithful obedience, and is not stopped by faithlessness and disobedience. His plan to bring a godly king to Israel that will result eventually in the Messiah, Jesus, will not be thwarted. He is able to use even seriously flawed people.