Musings in Samuel (7)

No Glory

“And about the time of her death the women who stood by her said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, for you have given birth to a son.’ But she did not answer or pay attention. And she called the boy Ichabod, saying, ‘The glory has departed from Israel,’ because the Ark of God was taken and because of her father-in-law and her husband. She said, ‘The glory has departed from Israel, for the Ark of God was taken.’” (1 Samuel 4:20 – 22).

We are not told the name of Phinehas’s wife, but hers is the fourth death in Eli’s family on the day the Ark was captured and Israel was defeated. Her husband Phinehas and his brother Hophni were killed in battle. Her father-in-law Eli died when, reacting in shock to the news of the death of his sons and the capture of the Ark, he fell off his seat and broke his neck.

Phinehas left his wife a widow, and the widow left her son an orphan – all in one day. Rather than rejoicing in her newborn son and giving him a name to be proud of, a name to encourage him throughout life, the dying woman names him Ichabod – meaning “the glory has departed.”

Was it just then, just that day, that Phinehas’s unnamed wife realized that the glory of Yahweh had departed from Israel? Or was this day a confirmation of what she had known for years? Was this day the culmination of sin after sin in her husband’s family and in the people of Israel?

She must have been aware of how her husband and his brother had turned the priesthood into a licentious pleasure – palace for themselves. She must have seen Eli countenance the perversion of the priesthood. Did she look the other way? Did she grieve over the sin? Or was she insensitive to the perversion of the service and worship of Yahweh and not realize until the dreadful day recorded in 1 Samuel Chapter 4 that a Day of Accountability and Judgment had come upon her family and her people?

We don’t know the answer to these questions. Perhaps, like many of us, she went along to get along and was shocked when the Day of Reckoning swept over the land like a flashflood. Surely, she may have thought, God would never let anything really bad happen to His People – after all, they had the Ark and the Tabernacle.

What about us? We look to our past and we cherry pick highlights that make us look good and we think, “God will give our nation and the churches in our nation a pass.” We think about the National Archives in Washington, D.C. and know that within that Ark of the United States reside the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and we think, “That sacred place, those sacred documents, are holy; we are better than others and more high and exalted; God will protect us.” We do not want to consider the disconnect between those documents and our actual history. (Having grown up in the Washington City area I spent many days in and around the monuments and museums; I was raised to consider them “holy”.)

There was little glory in Israel before the Day of Reckoning in 1 Samuel Chapter 4. Perhaps the one flicker of glory was Yahweh speaking to Samuel, “And Yahweh appeared again at Shiloh, because Yahweh revealed Himself to Samuel at Shiloh by the word of the Yahweh,” (1 Samuel 3:21). As the glory of Yahweh dawned on Samuel, the glory of Yahweh departed from the priesthood of Eli and his sons.

Did Hophni and Phinehas see Samuel as a threat to their debauchery the way the religious establishment would later view Jesus? Perhaps not, because of both Samuel’s young age and because the priesthood was hereditary; they may have thought that Samuel could not threaten their hereditary positions. We don’t really know.

At least Eli realized that God was speaking to Samuel, at least Eli still had a sense of the True and Living God, at least there was some spark of Divine light within Eli – but then, to whom much is given much is required.

I am somewhat amused, in a sad way, when I hear professing – Christians indignantly talk about legislative and regulatory interference in churches and religious organizations. I am perplexed when I hear us rail against the removal of prayer and Bible reading in public schools – as if its return would sprinkle religious and moral fairy dust on our land. We complain about so many things but we do not repent. We think that if we have the equivalent of the Ark of the Covenant in our churches and our nation that we need not live lives of obedience to Jesus Christ – that our churches can remain our churches and not God’s Church. We do not want to belong to God, we want God to belong to us.

The glory of Christ has left us and we don’t know it. We conjure “glory” in so many ways – things that may have once been true and holy have been turned into merchandise, just as Hophni and Phinehas turned the priesthood into merchandise.

If we are honest in the light of the Scriptures, perhaps we should all join one denomination and call it Ichabod. (Yes, I know there are faithful Smyrnas and Philadelphias).

When Jesus Christ is no longer our glory, we have no glory.

Perhaps more on this in the next post.