Tragic News Kills Eli

When the army went out to battle, Eli had tarried at Shiloh. With troubled forebodings he awaited the result of the conflict, “for his heart trembled for the ark of God.” Outside the gate of the tabernacle he sat by the highway day after day, anxiously expecting the arrival of a messenger from the battlefield.EP 424.3

At length a Benjamite, “with his clothes rent, and with earth upon his head,” rushed to the town and repeated to eager throngs the tidings of defeat. The sound of wailing and lamentation reached the watcher beside the tabernacle. The messenger was brought to him, and the man said, “Israel is fled before the Philistines, and there hath been also a great slaughter among the people, and thy two sons also, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead.” Eli could endure all this, terrible as it was, for he had expected it. But when the messenger added, “and the ark of God is taken,” a look of unutterable anguish passed over his countenance. The thought that his sin had dishonored God and caused Him to withdraw His presence from Israel was more than he could bear. He fell, “and his neck brake, and he died.”EP 424.4

The wife of Phinehas feared the Lord. The death of her father-in-law and her husband, and above all, the terrible tidings that the ark of God was taken, caused her death. She felt that the last hope of Israel was gone; and she named the child born in this hour of adversity, Ichabod, or “inglorious,” with her dying breath mournfully repeating the words, “The glory is departed from Israel: for the ark of God is taken.”EP 425.1

But the Lord had not wholly cast aside His people, and He employed the ark to punish the Philistines. The divine presence, invisible, would still attend it to bring terror and destruction to the transgressors of His holy law. The wicked may triumph for a time as they see Israel suffering chastisement, but the time will come when they too must meet the sentence of a holy, sin-hating God.EP 425.2