Knowing the situation, it’s easy to see why Eli was so slow to recognize the call of God as Samuel reported it. On the night when this story takes place, we are told that the lamp of God had not yet gone out: this was a lamp that burned in the Temple all night and was extinguished at sunrise, so this story, of Samuel’s Epiphany, takes place in that profound darkness, just before the dawn of a new day for God’s people. This was a dark time in Israel’s history, one of the darkest, perhaps. No wonder the spiritual life of the nation was so unhealthy that visions from the Lord were rare: nobody was watching for them.
Eli knew of their wickedness but he made little effort to stop them, and they paid absolutely no attention to the old man. Eli’s two sons, also priests, were notorious for their corruption and brutality: our translation calls them scoundrels.
Eli’s tenure as a national spiritual leader had been undistinguished, to say the least, including accusing an innocent woman (who happened to be Samuel’s mother) of being drunk, because her lips were moving as she was praying. We read of Eli, the aged priest in charge of the Temple at Shiloh, a religious center in the middle of Israel. In the first book of Samuel, we read of another dark time, a time when a lazy and inept man was about to face the consequences of his abuse of power. Ireland and Palestine share the distinction of having been abused and divided by the English, of course, so perhaps it’s not surprising to find similar reflections on dark times. However, it was also observed, in the 19 th century, to be a phrase used by the Irish peasantry. If you Google the phrase, “It’s always darkest just before the day dawns”, you’ll find that the phrase was first committed to print by a 17 th century theologian called Thomas Fuller, in the context of his Holy Land travelogue.
Second Sunday after Epiphany, January 17, 2021
0 kommentar(er)
