Shift and Drift
Google Images The judgment has been pronounced. Eli, Shiloh’s priest, had not reined in his sons. As spiritual leaders they had failed miserably and God had announced, through the boy Samuel, that their dynasty would come to an ignoble end (1 Samuel 2:34-36). In 1 Samuel 4 we discover what that end was to be. The Philistines were pressing and Israel’s army was unable to get the upper hand against them. Eli’s sons, Hophni and Phinehas, thought that by taking the ark of the covenant out of the Tabernacle and taking it into battle with them, that this would guarantee success against the Philistines. Wrong. The end result was that the Philistines won the battle, the two sons were killed, the ark captured and Eli died of the shock. Even Eli’s daughter-in-law died in childbirth that same day, declaring as she passed, “ The glory has departed from Israel ” (4:21). In the midst of all this tragedy and all the lessons to be learned from it, I thought about the ark. It was a sy...