40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 1 Samuel 3:19-4:22 (Episode 228)

Episode Date: August 7, 2020

Israel suffers a defeat at the hands of the Philistines. The people make a foolish and uncounseled decision to bring the Ark into battle. The things spoken to Eli come to pass. And God goes into exile. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network HWSS Livestream Signup 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. And while you're over there, check out the Here We Still Stand live stream link. That's right. The Here We Still Stand conferences go in digital. It's going to be all online this year due to COVID-19.

But, you know, initially we were kind of bummed. But I'm starting to get more and more excited as we figure out what we're going to do. We're going to try to make it a real good experience for everybody. So Chad's involved. All the plenary speakers are involved. and we're going to build something that we think will be enjoyable for you guys right from your living room or from your church. Hey, if you guys are getting together in small groups,

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live stream ironically we're talking about christian freedom so it's a good thing while you're feeling less free probably than you have in a while to know that the christian still free in christ the freedom that matters you still got it were you making a cultural reference there i was just saying that we're not free to assemble in that way right now uh i'm not saying that we should be free or not we shouldn't be free to assemble that way i'm not saying one way or the other i'm just saying the fact is you're not free to assemble 500 people in a conference center in california can't do that but you are free my friend and that's what we're going to be that's what we're talking about the the freedom that really matters chad it's always yeah it's always

a good idea to talk about freedom yeah in any context whatsoever but but certainly today and certainly in the christian context so yeah it's gonna it's gonna be good uh i'm uh well i've i've basically my my uh presentation is is ready it was ready for for germany and sweden yeah uh so uh just need to expand a little bit and we're ready to go yeah looking forward to it man so yeah make sure that you you join us tell your friends you know maybe some people that wish that they would come out to the conference with you or start you know listening to some of the material or hear some of this stuff well now you have opportunity for them to check out a bunch of stuff and it costs nothing so invite them over and watch it together all right chad we're uh here in first

samuel we got the we're at the very end of chapter three we we didn't quite finish it uh samuel's got his word from the lord samuel told that word to eli it's a tough word eli accepted that word as from the Lord, which was a pretty, uh, pretty faithful move on his part. And we're going to hear a little bit about Samuel and then we're going to leave him alone for a while. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. We're going to, we're going to hear about to him for about three and a half more verses. And then we're going to say adios for about three chapters. Yeah. So he's going to disappear from four, five and six and reappear in chapter seven, verse three, which, as we'll talk about in just a minute is actually quite quite explicit it's like his absence there

is is on purpose so we'll talk about the significance of that in just a second but let's let's wrap him up wrap up his story at this point so as you mentioned he's called now he's given his first word of the Lord to Eli it was a hard word but he said it and 19 through 21 which wraps up the chapter which wraps up chapter three is just more or less a summary of the impact that samuel started to have on israel so samuel grew and the lord was with him and let none of his words fail or as the esv has it let none of his words fall to the ground we've seen that expression before that'd be a nice thing to have said about you wouldn't it yeah that'd be pretty good epitaph yeah none of his words none of his words fell to the ground that's pretty good i feel like some of

my words have fell to the ground yeah yeah i feel like might have too and not in the positive sense of like seeds growing or something like that no there's some words that i prefer that they fall to the ground i think yeah well yeah i this just just popped into my mind but i i guess that our english expression like if we saw if someone gave a talk and it just you know it just didn't do didn't do well we might say something like uh you know that that presentation kind of kind of fell flat right it didn't stand upright in other words it's similar i suppose you you could say to this this hebrew idiom that uh none of his words fell to the ground so they they accomplished that for which they were sent to use a language of isaiah and it says that his

impact was not local but it was all over israel said all israel from dan even to beersheba knew that samuel was confirmed as a prophet of the lord this uh geographical designation of from dan to beersheba is pretty common throughout the old testament i guess we we would say something in america we would say something like from new york to california yeah something like that yeah so it's just grabbing the two cities on the northern and southern borders and using those as a designation for the entirety of Israel. So everybody, in other words, knew that Samuel had been called and confirmed as the Lord's new spokesman, which is significant in the big biblical picture because this means that another Moses has arisen. We haven't had another prophet

like this since the death of Moses. And quite some time has passed since the death of Moses. We've had a lot happen in Israel's history. And so now Samuel comes along and he's going to be Moses number two, not quite on the level of Moses, but at least another mega prophet in the list of prophets in the Old Testament. Yeah. I mean, in this sort of language of everyone accepting him is that that's a pretty unique position. I mean, even some of the other prophets, you don't see this sort of universal acceptance of them. I mean, sometimes these prophets are prophets and nobody wants to listen to them

and no one's paying any attention to them. It doesn't seem like it's that way with Samuel. It seems that when Samuel speaks, people are listening. Yeah, and they come to him and they want a king and a few more chapters. So they realize and they accept, more or less, that he indeed is the one that the Lord has chosen. as opposed to for instance uh just to contrast him with one prophet just think of poor jeremiah

yeah he didn't have this universal acceptance from uh dan to bersheba yeah yeah people weren't going around saying hey listen to jeremiah man he is the lord's prophet yeah let's go and quiet like no let me like throw that sucker in a pit you know we're tired of listening to him that's what that's what happened to poor jeremiah samuel uh samuel might have had the the greatest popularity isn't the best word but i guess we could say like universal acceptance as a prophet at a high approval rating at a high approval rating uh compared to a lot of the other the other prophets and then the closing verse of the chapter says the lord appeared again at shiloh because i love this language because the lord revealed himself to samuel at shallow by the

word of the lord it's just it's fascinating language we talked about this last time the that this devar yahweh the word of the lord which appeared to samuel wasn't just you know some voice that boomed out of the heavens like in a search for the holy grail or something this was uh the appearance the visible tangible appearance of god but in that context he's called the word of the lord then we discussed that last time as the as the son of god this is one of the ways in which he was revealing himself to his people of old but it's summarized beautifully in this closing verse by the lord revealed himself well how did he reveal himself well by the word of the lord so if we were to use new testament language we would say and the father revealed himself to samuel at

shiloh by his son yeah more or less that's that's what's the same way he does for us chad yeah yeah yesterday today and forever right well this is the thing it's interesting that you know for samuel it doesn't say that the you know that god revealed himself by the the writings of moses or the law or anything like that it just says that he was revealed by the word the word and this is the same way that he reveals himself to us. I mean, we can learn some stuff about God through other things. You can learn some stuff about God, or at least that there is a God, according to Paul. Just by looking around, you can know that there is one, but you can't know a whole lot about him. And you can go to the law, and you can learn a little bit about him, but you're not going to

really understand God the way that God wants you to understand him, apart from his word coming to you and that word of course as john wants to start out his gospel by establishing that word that that all through the old testament whether whether it's coming to moses or it's coming to samuel that word is jesus yeah yeah i mean the whole old testament basically prepares us for john chapter one right yeah the word of the lord came to samuel the word of lord came to moses the word of the lord came to this prophet or that prophet the word of the lord is always showing up and then all this was a preparation for the time he showed up and stayed yeah the time that he the time that he tabernacled among us right yeah yeah i assumed assumed our humanity and uh

did not just kind of unclothe himself of our humanity when he ascended into heaven he uh he still is fully human and will be will be for for all eternity yep i got all this i got all this like forefront of my mind because uh i'm i started a another book last week of course of course you did of course of course i did like i told you earlier i did take a one-week break that's good the end of the next but anyway i'm writing about uh this chapter that i'm writing now is about these various appearances of the word of the Lord, or the glory of the Lord, or the messenger of the Lord in the Old Testament. So, yeah, all this is at the forefront of my mind right now. All right, then we hear one more thing about Samuel, and this is the beginning of chapter four.

It says, thus the word of Samuel came to all Israel. Now, I suspect that this is another false chapter division. So that first sentence in chapter four probably should have been the last sentence of chapter three, but be that as it may, that's going to be the last time that we hear about Samuel. Chapters four, five, and six are usually called the arc narrative. There are some, I don't buy this, but there are some more critical scholars who believe that this actually existed independently as its own narrative at some point which is like incorporated into into first samuel i suppose it's possible it is kind of a standalone story but i don't think it's it's in any way necessary to believe that uh this is this is crafted as a standalone story

within the context of of samuel because it is what you might call the a mini exodus story this story is going to be all about the exodus or the exile of the ark or you could also say the exile of god for israel and i mean you you do need it i mean you need this story to have them have things make sense later on it would be weird if it if you didn't have this context yeah there's a lot in here which is going to prepare the way for everything that we're going to read about in the rest of Samuel. This is a fascinating case, and we'll get more into the details as we go along with the story, especially in the chapters five and six. But this is a great example of what we've seen a lot of different ways so far in the Old Testament, but I don't

think we always make it explicit. There's various ways to describe what's going on here, just from a biblical perspective. Sometimes it's called intertextuality. Sometimes it's called interbiblical exegesis. There's different names that are used for it, but more or less what's going on is you have a recycling of an older story that's told in a new sort of way. So this is a retelling of the Exodus story. You see this repeatedly in the scriptures where something will happen, say an exile will happen, or something like a river crossing or a sea crossing, which then gets used and then reused and then reused. So the basic elements of the narrative get adopted into a later narrative. We saw this in the case of Abraham's exile and return to Egypt being the

paradigm for Israel's exile and return from Egypt. And we're going to see it here because what is more or less going to happen is there's going to be an exile, except this time it's not Israel, it's God and his ark going into exile. And there's even language which is explicitly referring back to what happened in Egypt. In fact, the Philistines talk about what happened when Israel was in Egypt. So the Philistines know the story of the Exodus, and they're going to talk about it in chapter 4 and then in chapter 6. God is going to plague these people who have taken him captive, and eventually they're going to let him go, and he's going to return with their gifts. So the whole structure, basically, of the Exodus story is going to be duplicated here. Now, the

reason this is so important is because, as I said earlier, this happens in a lot of different ways, and it stretches all the way into the New Testament. So time and time again, when you're reading the story, you're going to be like, when you're reading the biblical story, you'll be like, man, this really seems familiar to me. Well, there's a reason it does. It's because this is an old story told in a new way. And then you get to the New Testament,

and all of this becomes abundantly clear because you have story after story connected with Christ, which is more or less him using an Old Testament paradigm, in order to do his ministry or to teach in a certain way to get it to get a point to get a point across so anyway this is uh one example of this intertextuality interbiblical exegesis where the exodus story is going to serve as a paradigm for what is what's before us so what happens well the israelites and the philistines are are going to have a couple of different battles the first one starts out like this it says israel went out to meet the philistines in battle and

and they camped beside Ebenezer while the Philistines camped in Aphek. And the Philistines drew up in battle array to meet Israel. And when the battle spread, Israel was defeated before the Philistines, who killed about 4,000 men on the battlefield. So we've been dealing with the Philistines for a while now. They have emerged as the dominant threat to Israel, and they're going to remain the dominant threat to Israel until finally David takes care of them once and for all.

But if you remember from early in the Judges, we dealt with Ammonites, with Amorites, with the sons of the East, all different sorts of people. And then gradually the Philistines became the ones who were the main threat to Israel. The Philistines lived on the coast, on the Mediterranean coast. Of course, they had influence inland

toward the mountainous region of Israel. but their uh their five cities their pentapolis was there on the the mediterranean coast places like ashkelon and and gath and ekron anyway they they're they're drawing up in battle here against the israelites and this first battle they win kill 4 000 of men now what should israel have done at this point that's the question based on what we have just been talking about the whole first part this podcast. If you're going into battle and you get beat, probably, well, you should have done this even before the battle, but certainly now you should be doing it. The first order of business after you've been defeated by the Philistines should be to say, where is Samuel? Go get Samuel

because we need to talk to him. His words don't fall to the ground. He has been confirmed as a prophet of the Lord from Dan to Beersheba. So if there's any situation in which we need to get his advice, and not just his advice, but we need to hear from him directly what the Lord would have us do, well, that time is now. That's exactly what the Israelites should have done, but that is not what they did. So verse 3 says, when the people came into the camp, the elders said, why has the lord defeated us today before the philistines let us take to ourselves from shiloh the ark of the covenant of the lord that it may come among us and deliver us from the power of our enemies now this seems like something you definitely want to ask samuel about

yeah yeah that would have that would have been the kind of question that you should have put to put to samuel you're like what should we do and should we take the ark let's ask the guy that grew up sleeping near this thing yeah we should do this yeah it's like it doesn't even cross their mind uh i suppose and i'm not defending them at all i'm just trying to get into their heads but i suppose what they think is that you know what we remember that when our forefathers first came into this land and they were going to take on the city of jericho what did they do well they took the ark right they took the ark and they marched around the city and they did this for for seven days and then they had this great shout and down came the walls of jericho and we're we were able

to gain a victory well why don't we just do that again well there's definitely a pious interpretation of this where you could say and then one of these guys like i know what happened i know are we lost we didn't take the lord with us well now this sounds extremely pious we went we went out there without the lord and this is what happened so we have to redo it we'll take the lord with us and and everything will be all right this just tells you that don't get overly pious unless god tells you to right right yeah this uh this chapter is very very similar to i think it's jeremiah chapter 7. It's his famous temple sermon, and Jeremiah is taking the people to task because they're trusting merely in the presence of the temple, right? He's got this great line,

you know, don't be saying the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, as if the mere presence of the temple is somehow a guarantee of your safety and well-being, because god had made it explicit through jeremiah but he was going to bring the babylonians to destroy jerusalem and to destroy the temple along with it so these these israelites in this context are saying basically the ark of the covenant the ark of the covenant the ark of the covenant that's all that's all we need and we'll be we'll be fine this must not have been i guess the nazis and raiders of the lost ark didn't read this chapter when they were going after the covenant they're like if we just have the ark of the covenant we'll be unstoppable i'm like well that's not how the

ark works yeah yeah i have i have a feeling biblical literacy wasn't high among that apparently not yeah so as it turns out uh the ark does the israelites no good and when the philistines get a hold of it it does them not only no good but much harm so uh careful careful I guess Raiders of the Lost Ark got that one right. Yeah, yeah, they did. They at least got that one right. It's interesting, too, that when it's referred to all three times, so verse 3, verse 4, verse 5, it's called the Ark,

not just the Ark and not just the Ark of the Covenant, but the Ark of the Covenant of Yahweh. So 3 and 4 and 5 all refer to it that way. And I suspect what's going on here is sort of a jive at them because they're thinking, okay, we need to get the ark here. You know, the ark that's all about the covenant, the covenant that Yahweh made with us to be our God and to watch over us and to protect us. So if we have that, then everything's going to be okay. As we'll find out, it wasn't. And they not only brought the ark, but they also, verse four tells us that they brought the two sons of Eli.

Hophni and Phinehas, whose days are numbered. So they bring the ark and the priest and everybody, they come into the camp. There's this great shout, which again is reminiscent of what happened around Jericho. So, I mean, it's such a great shout. It says that the earth resounded. So the earth is shaking because everything is just, you know, everyone's so excited about the presence of the ark there. and the next section is fascinating to me because it records the reaction not of the israelites but the philistines when they hear this so verse six says the philistines

heard the noise of the shout and their camp you know relatively close to each other and they're like more or less what's going on you know what does what does the noise of this great shout in the camp of the hebrews mean and then somehow they figured out oh that this was the ark of the lord had come into the camp and the philistines are scared says they're they're they're afraid because they said god has come into the camp so the philistines for all their faulty theology they do make they do connect certain things that they they realize that the the ark is the the throne of god and so they understand that if the ark is there that god must be there that's the kind of the theological connections that they're making yeah and and that kind of confidence

is just intimidating by itself i mean the very least they're looking at these guys and if you look at someone and they seem dead certain that this is what's going on you also might be like well this isn't good like they they seem very certain that they have a game changer in their midst yeah and that kind of confidence is concerning right yeah yeah where i feel in this in this context i would be scared too i mean because you hear what's happening in the enemy camp and as we'll as we'll find out in just a minute they know the history of israel they know exactly what the god of the israelites has done in the past to the enemies of israel so they have every reason to be frightened about what might happen next i remember growing up there was a

i was a teenager i was i was playing basketball on some outdoor courts and there was this really little guy he got really upset and wanted to like wanted to fight me and he just was coming at me and was like what you know like let's go let's go right now and it freaked me out because he was so confident yeah it's uh i'd obviously because i had no reason to be afraid of this this guy except for the fact that i'm like what do you know that i don't know like why are you so why are you so ready to do this why are you so sure of yourself and it will put some doubt in you you're like are you like a you're like a black belt or something man like why right what's going on here yeah exactly there well there's something about that confidence it

can be unnerving yeah yeah that's uh that's precisely what it was happening here with the uh with the philistines are like what what do what do they know that we don't know yes and they even say uh woe to us this is verse seven woe to us for nothing like this has happened before so i mean they've gone against other you know i'm sure they've gone against uh other people besides the israelites and they had you know plenty of military experience under their belt but nothing like this they have nothing to compare to compare this to yeah it shows that the philistines too they know they know the hebrew history because i mean they are going to reference here and say i mean who's going to deliver us from the hands of these mighty gods now they don't know about

this sort of uh singular god they still are operating a little week a little week on monotheism a little weak on that but uh still they're like these are the gods uh who struck the egyptians with every sort of plague in the wilderness so they know they've heard of this stuff right so they're like these gods god gods uh are not to be trifled with no nothing to nothing to mess with yeah so you would think given everything they've just said the reactions that maybe at this point they'd be like we need to regroup and maybe uh we need to go back to the coast and get some more men or you know something in other words faced with this threat but instead they do quite the opposite here's what they say they say take courage and be men

oh philistines man up huh man up yeah take courage and man up lest you become slaves to the hebrews as they have been slaves to you therefore be men and and fight you almost expect uh you know one those Hebrew expressions. So gird up your loins, something like that. In other words, don't be cowards, be soldiers, be warriors, get ready to fight. Because if you're not ready to fight with all your heart and give it all you got, then there's a very high likelihood that the tables are going to be completely turned and we're going to be the slaves and the Israelites are going to be our our masters so evidently this uh philistine call for courage worked because everybody fought philistines go out the israelites go out and verse 10 tells us that uh as happened during the first

battle so in this one israel was defeated and it gets worse though it says every man fled to his tent the slaughter was very great for not 4 000 like the first battle but 30 000 foot soldiers of the israelites died and then we get to verse 11 and we hear the really bad news at least it seems like bad news it says the ark of god was taken and the two sons of eli hoffney and phineas died so i said it uh it seems like bad news and in many ways it is but this is sort of a this is like a this is a good friday kind of bad news if you know what i mean yeah so it looks like it's a terrible defeat. It looks like God has just lost, God's been taken, and darkness is going to settle over the land. We have death, we have defeat. Everything is not looking good,

not looking good for Israel. And yeah, of course, there is certainly an element of bad news to this, just like there's an element of bad news to what happened on Good Friday. But of course, when you know the end of the story it gives a whole new meaning to what happens on good friday and when we know the ending to this particular story about what god is going to do during this time of his exile then we realize oh okay so god dude god did know what he was up to here because he is allowing himself to be taken in order that when he is taken he can just completely decimate his enemies so that's what this is a setup yeah god is fine on his own yeah yeah god god is fine on his own he doesn't he doesn't need the help of the israelites and uh he's uh he's

about to he's about to show them what he's able to accomplish what he's able to accomplish for them now this is a when you look at the entire story about what happens after this this is really an act of mercy on the part of God, unexpected mercy. Because what did Israel deserve? Well, Israel deserved, according to the curses, covenant curses way back in Deuteronomy 28, to go into exile themselves, right? That's one of the threats that God leveled against Israel. If you abandon the covenant, which clearly Israel had done, then I'm going to exile you to a far off country. You're going to be slaves to these foreigners. Well, what happens here is Israel doesn't go into exile. Instead, God himself goes into exile. He goes into exile with his art.

So he's going to exile on behalf of his people so that while he's there, he can do for them what they completely failed to do for themselves. They go out to battle twice and get defeated. god lets himself be taken in order that he could be victorious against his enemies yeah i've always thought about when when the when the art gets captured is it's like uh the the death of christ uh and what they're about to do with this you're about to if you want a picture of like what was going going on in the tomb uh when jesus goes down to hell well this is this you're going to get that picture yeah yeah that's precisely what's going on here so you're about to see a picture of holy saturday yes yeah yeah like first samuel chapter five could be could totally be titled

uh the old testament holy saturday yeah that's precisely what goes on so we will get to that uh we have more to cover because we have to we have we have to finish up what happens with with the israelites so uh verse 12 says that there's uh there was a runner uh from uh the tribe of benjamin the uh ancient armies they had messengers who were runners we'll hear more about those in other parts of first and second samuel so you had basically these these guys who came back and forth brought they brought the news from the battle or they would take news to the people who were in battle so this guy is a benjaminite he runs in the battle line and he comes to shiloh that same day with his clothes torn and dust on his head probably not what you want to see

on a messenger he's running up his clothes are torn and there's dust on his head because that is a sign of mourning i mean you want to see him running up with a smile on his face and no dust on his head. So the minute you see this guy running from where the battle had been with torn garments and a dirty head, you know the news is not going to be good. Well, there's Eli. Eli is, we're told in a few more verses, is a very old man. He's 98 years old. And at this point, he is sitting there on his throne by the road, eagerly watching. Sort of a, I wouldn't say it's an inside joke but it says he's eagerly watching but he can't see yeah yeah i mean he's just like he's a blind watchman in other words so he's watching but he can't see anything uh and it says his heart

was trembling for the ark of god he is not really worried about his sons at this point everybody everything in this story seems to say that the main concern that not only he but also other people have are what about the ark what's happened to the ark of god you know what you almost think that eli perhaps i mean we don't know but it seems like maybe eli didn't think this was a great idea and he's really worried about it yeah that's certainly the impression that you get that compounded with the fact that they've already been defeated once by the philistines so he knows that them taking the ark was uh was probably not a good move it's a huge gamble and uh but and also you know he's he's already received from two witnesses now an

unnamed prophet and then from samuel he's already been informed that everything is not going to go well with him and his sons right and he's been told his sons are both going to both going to perish. So chances are he has a pretty good suspicion that this is going to be a dark day for him and for his household. So the man came to tell it in the city. The whole city cried out when they heard the news, when they heard the bad news. Eli heard the sound of the outcry, but he wasn't close enough to hear what was going on. So he's like, you know, what's all the commotion about so the man the messenger came and told eli everything i guess that uh he had told the people it says that eli was 98 years old his eyes were were set so that he couldn't see

so he's old he's blind and he's very heavy we also are told in a minute the man said eli i'm the one who came from the battle line indeed i escaped from the battle line today and then eli asked the loaded question how did things go my son the one who brought the news answered and said israel has fled before the philistines he said a whole new thing back here he just like lays it on the line so israel has fled from the philistines there's been a great slaughter among the people your two sons hoffney and phineas are dead and then saving the the worst for last he says the ark of god has been taken and when he mentioned that the ark of god when he mentioned the ark of god eli fell off the seat backward beside the gate and his neck was broken

and he died for he was old and heavy thus he judged israel 40 years now this is interesting that two things that kind of jump out here is one that it's at the mention of the ark that it almost sounds like that Eli had a physical reaction to hearing that the Ark was taken. I don't know, is it that he starts trembling so violently that he tips his chair over? That's what it seems like, is something like that. And then there's this other thing where you have this,

Eli had judged Israel for 40 years, which is sort of another transition piece Because we look at Eli as a priest But here it speaks of him as a judge Right We're very familiar with this language And we went through judges But this seems like

Eli was the transition From a judge to a prophet So he's sort of this priest Judge figure So I think you could say that Eli is sort of the last judge Of Israel Yeah I think you could say that too

His whole service is very characteristic what we've what we've seen in the book of judges you know with corruption and everything else that's it's going on and and so this is yeah this is a this is a huge transition point in more ways than one it's a transition from the period of the judges it's also a transition for the the tabernacle because after this after this moment the ark of god will never be inside the tabernacle again in fact uh we're not exactly sure what happened to the tabernacle at this point because there's going to be a destruction of shiloh we'll have to get to that uh uh in another podcast but there's gonna be a lot of things that are going on at this particular time in history which are marking a

transition so the judges are over and we're going to be having a king pretty soon the tabernacle will soon be over we're going to have a temple so this is a huge time of transition in israel's life so eli uh he uh he served for 40 years and uh now has met met his fate let's go and finish this out we've only got four more verses and we're told that uh there was only it was not just the one death that day but while all this was going on this is kind of hard to imagine but all this all this stuff is going on evidently the wife of phineas is just she's like full term uh she's ready to have her baby and all of this stuff happening probably just sends her into labor and she hears the she hears the the ark of god was taken and that her father-in-law just died

her husband died and so all this going on all of this news causes her to go into labor she gives birth, and she is about to die herself due to complications with labor, I'm assuming. And the women say to her, don't be afraid, for you have given birth to a son. It says she didn't answer or pay any attention. And then she called the boy, well, we used to say it Ichabod. In Hebrew, would be it's just e kavod so it's two it's basically two words the the e part which is written as an i in english and then the kavod is the word for glory and this can be translated a couple different ways it can mean that there it can mean no glory that little e particle on the very beginning can mean no in the sense of no glory no kavod or it can mean where it can mean

both those things. So Ichabod or Ichabod can mean no glory or where is the glory? But either way, the same message is being communicated that the glory has, well, my translation has departed from Israel. That could really be translated, the glory has been exiled from Israel. The verb is galah in Hebrew, which very frequently means go into exile. And that's the way that I would translate it based upon everything that we've been talking about so far and that is coming up next so the glory of the lord that is to say the the ark of the covenant and everything that it uh that it stands for has been exiled so then it wraps up the chapter by saying that quoting her saying the glory has departed from israel for the ark of god was taken so that wraps up chapter four and that

Brass up our 40 minutes. I guess we'll have to wait until next time to see everything that happens. Definitely listen next time because we've got some comedy coming up here. This is like exile comedy. Yeah, this is dark. It gets a little lighter next episode for sure. All right. Join us next week for Holy Saturday in the Old Testament.

It's going to be good. And sign up for the Here We Still Stand livestream. Link is in the show notes or you can go over to the website and find all the information there. Chad, I'll see you next week. All right. See you then.