2. iSamiul\^ Cull. — In this waj' his childhood was passed. It was while thus sleeping in the tabernacle that he received his tirst prophetic call. The stillness of the night, the sudden voice, the cliildlike miscon- ception, the venerable Eli, the contrast between the terrible doom and the gentle creature who has to an- nounce it, give to this portion of the narrative a uni- versal interest. It is this side of Samuel's career that has been so well caught in the well-known picture of Sir Joshua Reynolds. The degeneracy of the people at this time was extreme. The tribes seem to have adminis- tered their affairs as independent republics ; the national confederacy was weak and disunited; and the spirit of public patriotic enterprise had been worn out by con- stant turmoil and invasion. The theocratic inlluence was also scarcely felt, its peculiar ministers being with- drawn, and its ordinary manifestations, except in the routine of the Levitical ritual, having ceased. The " word of the Lord was precious in those days ; there was no open vision" (1 Sam. iii, 1). The young de- votee, " the child Samuel," was selected by Jehovah to renew the deliverance of his oracles. According to Jo- sephus {AnI. v, 10, 4), he w'as at this time twelve years old. As he reclined in his chamber adjoining the sa- cred edifice, the Lord, by means adapted to his juvenile capacity, made known to him his first and fearful com- munication— the doom of Eli's apostate hous^. Other revelations speedily followed this. The frequency of God's messages to the young prophet established his fame, and the exact fulfilment of them secured his reputation. The oracle of Shiloh became vocal again through the youthful hierophant (1 Sam. iii, 19-21). From this moment the prophetic character of Samuel was established. His words were treasured up, and Shi- loh became the resort of those who came to hear him (iii, 19-21). The fearful fate pronounced on the head and family of the pontificate was soon executed. Eli had indulgently tolerated, or leniently palliated, the ra- yvacity and proHigacyof his sons. Through their extor- tions and impiety "men abhorred the offering of the Lord," and Jehovah's wrath was kindled against the sacerdotal transgressors. They became the victims of their own folly, for when the Philistines invaded the land an unworthy superstition among the Hebrew host clamored for the ark to be brought into the camp and into the field of battle. Hophni and Pliinehas, Eli's sons, indulging this vain and puerile fancy, accompa- nied the ark as its legal guardians, and f ( 11 in the terri- ble slaughter which ensued. Their father, whose sin seems to have been his easiness of disposition, his pas- sive and ((uiescent temper, sat on a sacerdotal throne by the wayside, to gather the earliest news of the battle, for his "heart trembled for the ark of (iod ;" and as a fugitive from the scene of conflict reported to him the sad disaster, dwelling with natural climax on its mel- ancholy jiarticulars — Israel routed and fleeing in pan- ic, Hoplini and Phinehas both slain, and the ark of (iod taken — this last and overpowering intelligence so shocked him that he fainted and fell from his seat, and in his fall, from the imbecile corpulence of age, "brake his neck and died" (iv, 1.S). In the overthrow of the sanctuary we hear not wliat became of Samuel. Ac- cording to the Mussulman tradition, Samuel's birth was granted in answer to the prayers of the nation on the overtlirow of the sanctuary and loss of the ark (D'Her- belot, s.v. Aschmouyl). This, though false in the letter, is true to tlie s])irit of Samuel's life.
3. .Stiwmrs Ciril Admiiiistriition. — When the feeble administration of Eli, who had judged Israel forty years, was concluded by his death, Samuel was too young to succeed to tlie regency ; and the actions of this earlier portion of liis life arc left unrecorded. The
ark, which had been captured by the Philistines, soon vindicated its majesty, and, after being detained among them seven months, was sent back to Israel. It did not, however, reach Shiloh, in consequence of the fear- ful judgment upon Beth-shemesh (1 Sam. vi, 19), but rested in Kirjath-jearim for no fewer than twenty years (vii, 2). It is not till the expiration of this period that Samuel appears again in the history. Perhaps, during the twenty j'ears succeeding Eli's death, his authority was gradually gathering strength ; while the office of supreme magistrate maj' have been vacant, each tribe being governed by its own hereditary phylarch. This long season of national humiliation was, to some ex- tent, improved. "All the house of Israel lamented af- ter the Lord;" and Samuel, seizing upon the crisis, is- sued a public manifesto, exposing the sin of idolatry, urging on the people religious amendment, and prom- ising political deliverance on their reformation. The people obeyed, the oracular mandate was effectual, and the principles of the theocracy again triumphed (1 Sam. vii, 4). The tribes were summoned by the pro])het to assemble in Mizpeh; and at this assembly of the Hebrew comitia, Samuel seems to have been elected regent (vii, 6). Some of the judges were raised to political power as the reward of their military courage and talents; but Samuel was raised to the lofty station of judge, from his prophetic fame, his sagacious dispensation of jus- tice, his real intrepidity, and his success as a restorer of the true religion. His government, founded not on feats of chivalry or actions of dazzling enterprise, which great emergencies only call forth, but resting on more solid qualities, essential to the growth and development of a nation's resources in times of peace, laid the foun- dation of that prosperity which gradually elevated Is- rael to the position it occupied in the days of David and his successors. This mustering of the Hebrews at ]Mizpeh on the inauguration of Samuel alarmed the Philistines, and their "lords went up against Israel." Samuel offered a solemn oblation, and implored the im- mediate protection of Jehovah. With a symbolical rite, expressive, partly of deep humiliation, partly of the libations of a treaty, the people poured water on the ground; they fasted; and they entreated Samuel to raise the piercing cry for which he was known in supplication to God for them. It was at the moment tliat he was offering up a sacrifice, and sustaining this loud cry (compare the situation of Pausanias before the battle of Platiea, Herod, ix, 61), that the Philistine host suddenly burst upon them. He was answered by pro- pitious thunder, an unprecedented phenomenon in that climate at that season of the year (comp. 1 Sam. xii, 18 : Josephus says [Ani. vi, 2, 2] that there was also an earthquake). A fearful storm burst upon the Philis- tines; the elements warred against them. "The High- est gave his voice in the heaven, hailstones and coals of fire." The old enemies of Israel were signalh' de- feated, and did not recruit their strength again during the administration of the prophet-judge. Exactly at the spot where, twenty years before, they had obtained their great victory, a stone was set up, which long re- mained as a memorial of Samuel's triumph, and gave to the place its name of Eben-ezer, "the Stone of Help," which has thence passed into Christian phraseology, and become a common name of Nonconformist chapels (1 Sam. vii, 12). The old Canaanites, whom the Philistines had dispossessed in the outskirts of the Jiidivan hills, seem to have helped in the battle; and a large portion of territory was recovered (ver. 14). This was Sam- uel's first, and, as far as we know, his only, military achievement. Put, as in the ease of the earlier chiefs who bore that name, it was apparently this which confirmed him in the office of "judge" (comp. xii, 11, where he is thus reckoned with J(rul)l)aal, Pedan. and Jephthah, and Ecchis. xlvi, 15-18). From an inciden- tal allusion (1 Sam. vii, 14), we learn, too, that about this time the Amorites, the Eastern foes of Israel, were also at peace with them — another triumph of a gov-