Chapter 3

Revelation to Samuel. ¹ During the time young Samuel was minister to the Lord under Eli, the word of the Lord was scarce and vision infrequent. ^2 [a]One day Eli was asleep in his usual place. His eyes had lately grown so weak that he could not see. ³ The lamp of God was not yet extinguished,^[b] and Samuel was sleeping in the temple of the Lord where the ark of God was.^{(A) 4} The Lord called to Samuel, who answered, “Here I am.” ⁵ He ran to Eli and said, “Here I am. You called me.” “I did not call you,” Eli answered. “Go back to sleep.” So he went back to sleep. ⁶ Again the Lord called Samuel, who rose and went to Eli. “Here I am,” he said. “You called me.” But he answered, “I did not call you, my son. Go back to sleep.”

⁷ Samuel did not yet recognize the Lord, since the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. ⁸ The Lord called Samuel again, for the third time. Getting up and going to Eli, he said, “Here I am. You called me.” Then Eli understood that the Lord was calling the youth. ⁹ So he said to Samuel, “Go to sleep, and if you are called, reply, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” When Samuel went to sleep in his place, ¹⁰ the Lord came and stood there, calling out as before: Samuel, Samuel! Samuel answered, “Speak, for your servant is listening.” ¹¹ The Lord said to Samuel: I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears it ring.^{(B) 12} On that day I will carry out against Eli everything I have said about his house, beginning to end. ¹³ I announce to him that I am condemning his house once and for all, because of this crime: though he knew his sons were blaspheming God, he did not reprove them.^{(C) 14} Therefore, I swear to Eli’s house: No sacrifice or offering will ever expiate its crime.^{[c] 15} Samuel then slept until morning, when he got up early and opened the doors of the temple of the Lord. He was afraid to tell Eli the vision, ¹⁶ but Eli called to him, “Samuel, my son!” He replied, “Here I am.” ¹⁷ Then Eli asked, “What did he say to you? Hide nothing from me! May God do thus to you, and more,^[d] if you hide from me a single thing he told you.” ¹⁸ So Samuel told him everything, and held nothing back. Eli answered, “It is the Lord. What is pleasing in the Lord’s sight, the Lord will do.”

Samuel Acknowledged as Prophet. ¹⁹ Samuel grew up, and the Lord was with him, not permitting any word of his to go unfulfilled.^{(D) 20 (E)}Thus all Israel from Dan to Beer-sheba came to know that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of the Lord. ²¹ The Lord continued to appear at Shiloh, manifesting himself to Samuel at Shiloh through his word. Samuel’s word spread throughout Israel.

Chapter 4

Defeat of the Israelites.^{[e] 1} At that time, the Philistines gathered for an attack on Israel. Israel went out to engage them in battle and camped at Ebenezer, while the Philistines camped at Aphek. ² The Philistines then drew up in battle formation against Israel. After a fierce struggle Israel was defeated by the Philistines, who killed about four thousand men on the battlefield. ³ When the troops retired to the camp, the elders of Israel said, “Why has the Lord permitted us to be defeated today by the Philistines? Let us fetch the ark of the Lord from Shiloh that it may go into battle among us and save us from the grasp of our enemies.”^(F)

Loss of the Ark. ⁴ So the people sent to Shiloh and brought from there the ark of the Lord of hosts, who is enthroned upon the cherubim.^[f] The two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, accompanied the ark of God.^{(G) 5} When the ark of the Lord arrived in the camp, all Israel shouted so loudly that the earth shook. ⁶ The Philistines, hearing the uproar, asked, “What does this loud shouting in the camp of the Hebrews mean?” On learning that the ark of the Lord had come into the camp, ⁷ the Philistines were frightened, crying out, “Gods have come to their camp. Woe to us! This has never happened before. ⁸ Woe to us! Who can deliver us from the power of these mighty gods?^[g] These are the gods who struck the Egyptians with various plagues in the desert. ⁹ Take courage and act like soldiers, Philistines; otherwise you will become slaves to the Hebrews, as they were your slaves. Fight like soldiers!” ¹⁰ The Philistines fought and Israel was defeated; everyone fled to their own tents.^[h] It was a disastrous defeat; Israel lost thirty thousand foot soldiers. ¹¹ The ark of God was captured, and Eli’s two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, were dead.^(H)

Death of Eli. ¹² A Benjaminite fled from the battlefield and reached Shiloh that same day, with his clothes torn and his head covered with dirt.^{(I) 13} When he arrived, Eli was sitting in his chair beside the gate, watching the road, for he was troubled at heart about the ark of God. The man, however, went into the city to announce his news; then the whole city cried out. ¹⁴ When Eli heard the uproar, he wondered why there was such commotion. Just then the man rushed up to inform him. ¹⁵ Eli was ninety-eight years old, and his eyes would not focus. So he could not see. ¹⁶ The man said to Eli: “I have come from the battlefield; today I fled from there.” He asked, “What happened, my son?” ¹⁷ And the messenger answered: “Israel fled from the Philistines; in fact, the troops suffered heavy losses. Your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead, and the ark of God has been captured.” ¹⁸ At this mention of the ark of God, Eli fell backward from his chair into the gateway; he died of a broken neck since he was an old man and heavy. He had judged Israel for forty years.

¹⁹ His daughter-in-law, the wife of Phinehas, was pregnant and about to give birth. When she heard the news about the capture of the ark of God and the deaths of her father-in-law and her husband, she crouched down in labor, and gave birth. ²⁰ She was about to die when the women standing around her said to her, “Do not be afraid, you have given birth to a son.” Yet she neither answered nor paid any attention.^{(J) 21} She named the child Ichabod, saying, “Gone is the glory from Israel,” referring to the capture of the ark of God and to her father-in-law and her husband. ²² She said, “Gone is the glory from Israel,” because the ark of God had been captured.^(K)

Chapter 5

The Ark in the Temple of Dagon. ^1 [i](L)The Philistines, having captured the ark of God, transferred it from Ebenezer to Ashdod.^{(M) 2} They then took the ark of God and brought it into the temple of Dagon, placing it beside Dagon. ³ When the people of Ashdod rose early the next morning, Dagon was lying face down on the ground before the ark of the Lord. So they picked Dagon up and put him back in his place. ⁴ But early the next morning, when they arose, Dagon lay face down on the ground before the ark of the Lord, his head and hands broken off and lying on the threshold, his trunk alone intact. ⁵ For this reason, neither the priests of Dagon nor any others who enter the temple of Dagon tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod to this very day.

The Ark Is Carried About. ⁶ Now the hand of the Lord weighed heavily on the people of Ashdod, ravaging them and afflicting the city and its vicinity with tumors.^{[j](N) 7} On seeing how matters stood, the people of Ashdod decided, “The ark of the God of Israel must not remain with us, for his hand weighs heavily on us and Dagon our god.” ⁸ So they summoned all the Philistine leaders and inquired of them, “What shall we do with the ark of the God of Israel?” The people of Gath replied, “Let them move the ark of the God of Israel to us.” So they moved the ark of the God of Israel to Gath. ⁹ But after it had been brought there, the hand of the Lord was against the city, resulting in utter turmoil: the Lord afflicted its inhabitants, young and old, and tumors broke out on them. ¹⁰ The ark of God was next sent to Ekron; but as it entered that city, the people there cried out, “Why have they brought the ark of the God of Israel here to kill us and our kindred?” ¹¹ Then they, too, sent a summons to all the Philistine leaders and pleaded: “Send away the ark of the God of Israel. Send it back to its place so it does not kill us and our kindred.” A deadly panic had seized the whole city, since the hand of God lay heavy upon it. ¹² Those who escaped death were afflicted with tumors. Thus the outcry from the city went up to the heavens.

Resh

Chapter 5

The Healing of the Gerasene Demoniac. ^1 [a](A)They came to the other side of the sea, to the territory of the Gerasenes. ² When he got out of the boat, at once a man^[b] from the tombs who had an unclean spirit met him. ³ The man had been dwelling among the tombs, and no one could restrain him any longer, even with a chain. ⁴ In fact, he had frequently been bound with shackles and chains, but the chains had been pulled apart by him and the shackles smashed, and no one was strong enough to subdue him. ⁵ Night and day among the tombs and on the hillsides he was always crying out and bruising himself with stones. ⁶ Catching sight of Jesus from a distance, he ran up and prostrated himself before him, ⁷ crying out in a loud voice, “What have you to do with me,^[c] Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me!” ⁸ (He had been saying to him, “Unclean spirit, come out of the man!”) ^9 [d]He asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “Legion is my name. There are many of us.”^{(B) 10} And he pleaded earnestly with him not to drive them away from that territory.

¹¹ Now a large herd of swine^[e] was feeding there on the hillside. ¹² And they pleaded with him, “Send us into the swine. Let us enter them.” ¹³ And he let them, and the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine. The herd of about two thousand rushed down a steep bank into the sea, where they were drowned. ¹⁴ The swineherds ran away and reported the incident in the town and throughout the countryside. And people came out to see what had happened. ¹⁵ As they approached Jesus, they caught sight of the man who had been possessed by Legion, sitting there clothed and in his right mind. And they were seized with fear. ¹⁶ Those who witnessed the incident explained to them what had happened to the possessed man and to the swine. ¹⁷ Then they began to beg him to leave their district. ¹⁸ As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed pleaded to remain with him. ¹⁹ But he would not permit him but told him instead, “Go home^[f] to your family and announce to them all that the Lord in his pity has done for you.” ²⁰ Then the man went off and began to proclaim in the Decapolis what Jesus had done for him; and all were amazed.

Jairus’s Daughter and the Woman with a Hemorrhage.^[g]