“And the ark of God was captured; and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were slain” (1 Sam. 4:11).
Israel was defeated in battle against the Philistines, thirty thousand Israelites fell, the Ark of the Covenant was captured, and its two priests, the sons of the priest Eli, were among the dead. When Eli heard the news, he fell backwards in his chair and died. All this happened in fulfillment of the prophecy of the man of God who came to Eli and told him that God was going to punish him for the sins of his two sons, the priests of Shiloh, who disregarded the law of God, disrespected the offerings to the Lord (1 Sam. 2:27-34), and even “lay with the women who served at the entrance to the tent of meeting” (1 Sam. 2:22). This defeat of Israel and the loss of the Ark of the Covenant was God’s punishment “for the iniquity which he [Eli] knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them” (1 Sam. 3:13). Eli himself did nothing wrong. His fault was that he did not restrain his two sons, who were priests but did not live in a manner worthy of the priesthood. He should have restrained them, but because he let them do as they pleased, all Israel was punished, and the Ark of God was captured.
There is a lesson here, I believe, for us as well. We should not think that we have done all that God wishes of us if all we do is avoid sin. If there is sin and worldly living around us and we do not say or do anything to correct it, we ourselves are also at fault, and the whole people of God will be punished because we neither said nor did anything to correct the situation. We are the watchman for the people of God, as was Ezekiel, and “if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, so that the people are not warned, and the sword comes, and takes any one of them; that man is taken away in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at the watchman’s hand” (Ezek. 33:6).
We, therefore, have a responsibility to warn people of the error of their ways for
the good of the Church. How many people all around us today, for example, live as though they had never heard of the basic principles of Christian spirituality, living worldly lives of pleasure, completely ignoring the importance of evangelical poverty, simplicity, austerity, sacrifice, and fasting? How many have forgotten that “whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:35)? How many lose their lives in this world for the sake of Christ? They are the ones who will save their life. How many try to have an undivided heart in their love for God, not dividing their heart with the unnecessary delights of this world?
If we see this error all around us, what are we doing to rectify it? What kind of example and witness are we giving? What are we saying? What are we writing? What kind of life are we living? What kind of sermons do we preach? Are we like Eli, doing nothing; or like Ezekiel, serving as a watchman for the people?
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