1 Samuel 4

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you've sinned and expected God's blessing on your actions? Have you ever faced a challenging period in your life and wondered where God's favor and power for living victoriously went? Join Dr. Marty Baker as he walks us through 1 Samuel 4:1-22 and encourages us to remember to seek God's guidance and follow His Word in times like these.

A young widower with two children once asked me for pastoral counsel. “Pastor Marty, I’ve been dating a young mother with several children, and I think she is the one God would have me marry.  My question in dating her relates to her husband. She is still married to him, but they have a terrible marriage. He is a police officer and an angry man who brings his anger home and directs it toward her. Since they are going to get a divorce soon, do you think it is all right for me to continue to date her?”

At first blush, I could not believe he even posed the question. Sin, however, has a way of obscuring your discernment. Have you ever had this happen to you? It happened to this widower. His passionate love for this woman clouded his thinking about what the Bible says about dating.

My response was direct, “No, I do not believe you should continue this relationship. She is still married, and dating her is adultery. You must end this relationship immediately, for it is sinful. Do not deceive yourself into thinking the Lord will bless it. He will not, for it is a relationship founded on sin.”

A few hours later, I had the same discussion with the object of the widower’s love and affection.

Did these believers heed my counsel? No, they did not. They persisted in their relationship, and she eventually obtained a divorce from her husband (on non-biblical grounds). They married soon after.  Was it a blissful union? Far from it. She discovered that her new husband had some of the same tendencies as her former husband, and he found out he could not get along with her. After a few tumultuous years, they divorced, leaving several innocent children with significant emotional baggage they still carry with them today.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you've sinned and expected God's blessing on your actions? Have you ever faced a challenging period in your life, like this couple did when they got married, and wondered where God's favor and power for living victoriously went? It's in these moments that we must remember to seek God's guidance and follow His word.

Israel did this in their walk with God, and it wound up costing them dearly when it should not have. Even though their priesthood was morally compromised as we have seen in chapter 2, verses 12-36, and everyone knew it, they still cluelessly thought God would bless their lives. They should have done some soul-searching to ensure they confessed their sins before attempting any new endeavors nationally or personally.  Because they did not, they learned the hard way that God definitively disciplines those who perpetually walk not with but against Him.  He does this to wake them up spiritually. He also does it to point them toward how they should live to secure blessed lives.

May we learn from Israel’s missteps so we can live wiser, more productive lives that God’s face shines on. We can begin to learn from Israel by studying the historical account of two military losses they experienced at the hands of their dreaded enemy, the Philistines.

The opening historical panel introduces us to what I call . . .

The Conflict (1 Sam. 4:1-2)

Contextually, the Lord had just given Samuel a specific prophetic word about the coming judgment on the morally and spiritually compromised priesthood under the failed and highly corrupt leadership of the High Priest, Eli, and his two sons, Hophni and Phinehas (1 Sam. 3:11-14).   God’s patience with these wicked Aaronic priests had finally run its course. In chapter four, we encounter the historical episode that verified Samuel as God’s prophet and revealed the sudden and sad prophesied termination of the priestly line of Ithamar because of unrepentant and flagrant sin.

¹ Thus the word of Samuel came to all Israel. Now Israel went out to meet the Philistines in battle and camped beside Ebenezer while the Philistines camped in Aphek. ² And the Philistines drew up in battle array to meet Israel. When the battle spread, Israel was defeated before the Philistines who killed about four thousand men on the battlefield. (1 Sam. 4)

In the events that were about to unfold, Israel would watch God’s prophetic word of divine discipline be realized in a breath-taking, jaw-dropping fashion.  Of course, these events would be so shocking that they would cause the ears of the people to tingle (1 Sam. 3:11), as prophesied, because what occurred was something they never dreamed would happen.

It all started with a battle. The Philistines camped at Aphek, located on the northern tip of their coastal country. On a modern map, Aphek would be situated just a few miles northeast of Tel Aviv. This is the first mention of this enemy that would plague Israel throughout the book of First Samuel.  These Aegean Sea people, skilled at warfare, defeated the Hittites around 1190 B.C. Shortly thereafter, they established their five main cities—Ekron, Ashdod, Gath, Ashkelon, and Gaza on the southern border of mighty Egypt.  When Ramesses III (1187-1157 B.C.)[1] effectively withstood their expansionist ways, they wasted no time seeking to dominate the land of the Israelites.  From Aphek, they could quickly attack the low-lying hills of Israel and work their way up the mountain to Jerusalem. Furthermore, you thought Israel’s fight with a foe in this modern era is something new. Think again.

Israel assembled troops at Ebenezer, some two miles northeast of Aphek.  Interestingly, Ebenezer in Hebrew means “stone of help.” Ironically, a place where the Israelite army thought they would secure a military victory became a place of utter defeat. We do not know who fired the first shot, and it does not matter for the purposes of the overall story. What we do know is that after the battle, the Israelites had 4,000 soldiers dead on the battlefield.

The Battle of Elsenborn Ridge, part of the Battle of the Bulge in WWII, cost the U.S. 5,000 soldiers over a bloody ten-day period. I present this to establish that the loss of 4,000 soldiers in hand-to-hand combat is not out of the question. It was a tremendous loss that negatively impacted, I am sure, many families in a small nation like Israel.

Logically, this brutal defeat left the Israelite leaders with one question: How did we, God’s people, lose? Their question, as we see in verse 3, however, is more of a complaint wrapped up in a different type of question:

The Complaint (1 Sam. 4:3a)

After a loss of this nature, it was prudent for the commanders and leaders to debrief what just happened so it never happened again. In their debrief, mark well the question they posed:

³ When the people came into the camp, the elders of Israel said, "Why has the LORD defeated us today before the Philistines? (1 Sam. 4)

For these seasoned military men, the battlefield loss was not related to their military ability but to God permitting it to happen.  Interesting. I wonder why they formulated this conclusion. Could it have been that after hundreds of years, first in the Conquest and then in the period of the Cycles (the Judges), they had learned that military defeats came from God’s hand? After all, He had helped them defeat the Egyptians in 1446 B.C. He had given them victories over fortresses like Jericho (Josh. 6), and He had gone before them when they engaged the well-trained and equipped northern forces allied with the king of Hazor during the Conquest period (Josh. 11).  They had also lived to see defeats, like the one at Ai (Josh. 7), that was caused by the sin of one disobedient Israelites named Achan, who willfully disobeyed God and took war booty from Jericho that did not belong to him.  Their complaint, therefore, seemed well-founded.  Yes, it appeared they were heading in the right direction to understand how their collective sin had turned God against them, as Moses warned them would occur (Lev. 26:39; Deut. 28:25).  Yet, in the next historical panel, we discover they drew a completely different conclusion.

The  Counsel (1 Sam. 4:3b-5)

Instead of asking, “What major sin or sins are present among us to cause God to allow our enemies a terrible victory over us as His covenant people,” they, like the young widower, made an illogical, biblically eye-popping decision to solve their problem:

³ 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."

Talk about a terrible decision.  They did not ask God why they were defeated or ask Him to show them sins they needed to confess so His anger would be turned away.  On the contrary, they turned and made hasty plans to bring the Ark of the Covenant to their location. Think of the magnitude of this sinful decision.  They, who were not priests and were therefore not qualified to deal with the Ark, pressured the priests of the Ark to bring it to them, pronto, so they could defeat the Philistines.

That’s precisely what they did without warning from the clueless High Priest, Eli.

⁴ So the people sent to Shiloh, and from there they carried the ark of the covenant of the LORD of hosts who sits above the cherubim; and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were there with the ark of the covenant of God.

God did not tell them to move the Ark. The military leaders told the priests to bring the Ark to their location. How sinful. How illogical. How utterly risky. And which two priests carried the Ark? Hophni and Phinehas.  How ironic. Their names are purposefully placed in the Hebrew text at the end of the final clause to create a dramatic statement. These two priests, of all priests, dared to bring the holy ark to the battlefield:

^{‎ 4}  וַיִּשְׁלַ֤ח הָעָם֙ שִׁלֹ֔ה וַיִּשְׂא֣וּ מִשָּׁ֗ם אֵ֣ת אֲר֧וֹן בְּרִית־יְהוָ֛ה צְבָא֖וֹת יֹשֵׁ֣ב הַכְּרֻבִ֑ים וְשָׁ֞ם שְׁנֵ֣י בְנֵֽי־עֵלִ֗י עִם־אֲרוֹן֙ בְּרִ֣ית הָאֱלֹהִ֔ים חָפְנִ֖י וּפִֽינְחָֽס׃

The two sexual predators who had violated many Israelite women who came to worship and who had gorged themselves, along with their father, Eli, on the best sacrificial meat reserved for God, carried the holy Ark.  These two men, ironically, were THE reason Israel lost 4,000 men on the battlefield. However, they were the ones who brought the Ark to the soldiers. What could go wrong? A lot.

Once the Ark arrived after its twenty-mile downhill journey, we read how the troops responded:

⁵ And it happened as the ark of the covenant of the LORD came into the camp, that all Israel shouted with a great shout, so that the earth resounded. (1 Sam. 4)

I do not know what all the excited shouting was about.  They had reduced God to a wooden box that contained the Ten Commandments, the rod of Aaron that had miraculously budded, and golden manna. God had made a covenant with Israel, and the Ark represented the covenant and that He would reside above the cherubim.  However, God never said He would overlook the perpetual sins of His leaders, especially the spiritual ones, which are far from it.  The leaders, therefore, should not have been shouting with joy.  They should have been bowed in confession before God’s holy presence.

Even in this spiritual chaos, God was at work.  He had prophesied the judgment on the House of Eli, and that judgment was about to unfold.  But before He moved to fulfill His Word, He first allows us to see how the Philistines responded to the presence of the Ark.

The Counter (1 Sam. 4:6-9)

Israel must have made quite a bit of noise in their camp because the Philistines heard it:

⁶ And when the Philistines heard the noise of the shout, they said, "What does the noise of this great shout in the camp of the Hebrews mean?" Then they understood that the ark of the LORD had come into the camp. ⁷ And the Philistines were afraid, for they said, "God has come into the camp." And they said, "Woe to us! For nothing like this has happened before. ⁸ "Woe to us! Who shall deliver us from the hand of these mighty gods? These are the gods who smote the Egyptians with all kinds of plagues in the wilderness. ⁹ "Take courage and be men, O Philistines, lest you become slaves to the Hebrews, as they have been slaves to you; therefore, be men and fight. (1 Sam. 4)

I find this all so ironic. Despite their recent battlefield victory, the Philistines were more fearful of Israel’s God than the Israelites were. They also remembered that Israel's fearsome, miracle-working God had wiped out the mighty Egyptian military machine 386 years prior (Israel left Egyptian bondage in 1446 B.C., and this battle occurred around 1060 B.C.). That, however, occurred because the people walked with God. Such was not the case in this situation. However, these non-believers must be credited with being very familiar with the story of Exodus. Too bad Israel, at this time, forgot about how that deliverance occurred.

Realizing they were up against powerful “gods,” which is how they viewed it, the brave Philistines surmised they had one course of action: fight no matter what. This second major battle is what I label as . . .

The Calamity (1 Sam. 4:10-11)

Things did not turn out how Israel had planned in their ill-founded, godless thinking:

¹⁰ So the Philistines fought and Israel was defeated, and every man fled to his tent, and the slaughter was very great; for there fell of Israel thirty thousand foot soldiers. ¹¹ And the ark of God was taken; and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, died. (1 Sam. 4)

Losing thirty thousand soldiers was some kind of loss.  That is more than half of the number of troops we lost in the entire Vietnam War.  Granted, there is scholastic debate about the meaning of the number eleph, viz., thousand, in Hebrew. For a detailed discussion about this, read the following by OT scholar John Wenham: “Large Numbers in the Old Testament,” Tyndale Bulletin 18 (1967), pp. 19–53.^[2]

The death of Hophni and Phinehas is essential to focus on here. The tension created in this story's opening with the elders wondering why they had lost the first battle is now answered. Because these two priests, who, as Kohathites, were responsible for the care and movement of the Ark of the Covenant (Num. 3:27-32), had abused their priestly roles for years, God, who is holy, was motivated to judge them definitively. He had prophesied through two prophets that this is precisely what He would do, and He finally pulled it off here. These priests, who were never near a hot battle zone, were suddenly exposed. And because they were there, God used the Philistine army as His agents of justice and judgment.

How interesting. These two wicked priests who had sinned heinously before God for countless years, who had the gall to carry the holy Ark to a battlefield when God had not given this command, had completely misjudged God and presumed upon His grace, mercy, and patience. As they had misjudged God’s inaction on not addressing their grievous behavior as a tacit approval, they misjudged the Ark by treating it like a magic talisman to be employed when necessary. How wrong they were. How wrong the nation was for permitting them to remain in office when everyone knew about their grotesque and godless behavior. They should have reminded themselves of Moses’s words in Numbers 32:23, “. . . be sure that your sin will find you out.” What about you? Are you misjudging God while involved in a sin that needs to be repented?

However, God was not finished fulfilling the prophetic word given to the unnamed prophet and Samuel. He always fulfills His word to the letter.

The Consummation (1 Sam. 4:12-18)

First, God judged the sons who Eli who had misjudged Him.  Now, the Lord will deal with the compromised High Priest:

¹² Now a man of Benjamin ran from the battle line and came to Shiloh the same day with his clothes torn and dust on his head. ¹³ When he came, behold, Eli was sitting on his seat by the road eagerly watching, because his heart was trembling for the ark of God. So the man came to tell it in the city, and all the city cried out. ¹⁴ When Eli heard the noise of the outcry, he said, "What does the noise of this commotion mean?"

Interesting.  A man from the tribe of Benjamin was the one to give the bad news to the city and the High Priest. This is no accident, for it sets us up for Saul, Israel’s first king, who is from the same tribe. What we have here is a taste of God at work.  God will fulfill Samuel’s prophetic word by removing Eli, and he will cause it to ironically occur by a tribe from which Israel’s new king will arise. So, where there was doom and despair because of divine judgment, there was latent hope in what was yet to come.

Note how quickly the story reaches its zenith:

Then the man came hurriedly and told Eli. ¹⁵ Now Eli was ninety-eight years old, and his eyes were set so that he could not see.

Eli was as spiritually blind as he was physically. After forty years of inept, compromised, carnal leadership, God finally removed him. Note: God eventually removes those leaders who abuse their position and power. Psalm 2 shows this much.  Here God went to work on the evil line of Eli:

¹⁶ And the man said to Eli, "I am the one who came from the battle line. Indeed, I escaped from the battle line today."

Boom! The battle did not go as planned.

And he said, "How did things go, my son?" ¹⁷ Then the one who brought the news answered and said, "Israel has fled before the Philistines and there has also been a great slaughter among the people, and your two sons also, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead, and the ark of God has been taken."

Boom! We lost many soldiers, and you lost your two sons. With that, Eli must have had a heart attack:

¹⁸ And it came about when he mentioned the ark of God that Eli fell off the seat backward beside the gate, and his neck was broken and he died (1 Sam. 4)

Never before in Israel’s history had the Ark been seized by an enemy, but now it had. All of this was just too much for his old heart to process, so he fell backward, and his great weight caused his neck to break, which, in turn, caused him to die instantly. For forty years, this High Priest had misjudged God, thinking that his enjoyment of the sacrificial meat was not that big of a deal because God never did anything about it. Again, for forty years, God had put up with this corrupt leader and his compromised sons, but now God gave Israel and us a taste of life to come when all corrupt leaders will be removed when the true High Priest, Jesus, rules and reigns from His glorious throne (Psalm 2; Isa. 2; 9:6ff).

God judges those who misjudge Him, as seen in this sordid, sad story. But God also works out a plan of hope in the hopeless times. You might need to read this one more time. To those who worshipped the items of religion and not the God of religion, God taught them the error of their way. He was more significant than the Ark. His Ark was not some kind of magic good-luck charm but the place where He had promised to dwell among Israel.  They had cheapened Him, as we are prone to do. We, like the widower, can choose to live compromised lives while expecting God to bless us.  We can, like the widower, attend worship services, Bible studies, and prayer groups and wear crosses around our necks in a quest to secure God’s blessing despite our disobedience. God, on the other hand, is not fooled. He wants your inward obedience, not the form of obedience. Will you give it to Him?

I would love to tell you that this story ends on a positive, uplifting note but does not. We are left with what I label as . . .

The Contrasts (1 Sam. 4:19-22)

Permit me to read the closing words and then offer some salient observations.

¹⁹ Now his daughter-in-law, Phinehas' wife, was pregnant and about to give birth; and when she heard the news that the ark of God was taken and that her father-in-law and her husband had died, she kneeled down and gave birth, for her pains came upon her. ²⁰ And about the time of her death the women who stood by her said to her, "Do not be afraid, for you have given birth to a son." But she did not answer or pay attention. ²¹ And she called the boy Ichabod, saying, "The glory has departed from Israel," because the ark of God was taken and because of her father-in-law and her husband. ²² And she said, "The glory has departed from Israel, for the ark of God was taken." (1 Sam. 4)

The contrast here, although not explicitly stated, is between Hannah and the unnamed with of Phinehas. Hannah’s birth was one of joy. This one, not so much. Hannah brought Samuel into a loving, intact, godly family. Phinehas’ wife brought her child into a world where his father, grandfather, and mother died. This little baby boy was born an orphan, for all intents and purposes. Hannah’s boy had a favorable name that reflected one who hears God. Phinehas’ wife gave her boy a name no one would ever want: Ichabod, or “No glory.”

By including this final and tragic episode, I think the Holy Spirit wanted us to see that while the times did appear hopeless, they were not.  Why? There was still hope because God’s glory was not diminished because the Ark was in Philistine hands. The heavens cannot contain His glory. Hope still existed because there was a priest in the house who did not misjudge God but who walked closely and obediently with Him.  That, my friend, was just the kind of many Israel needed at this trying hour. The same type of saint is necessary in our trying hour.

[1] “Ramses III: King of Egypt,” Brintannica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ramses-III, accessed on October 17, 2025.

^[2] Quoted in John Woodhouse, 1 Samuel: Looking for a Leader, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008).