LECTURE XVII. THE FALL OF SHILOH. To the crash of the Philistine Temple, and the silent burial of Samson, succeeds a blank in the Sacred history, such as well serves to indicate its fragmentary character. When we again take up the thread, the existing condition of the nation gives us a backward glimpse into some of the unrecorded incidents of the lost interval.1 The change hood. We find at the head of the nation a man, of whose rise nothing has been told: Eli, at once Judge and High Priest, already far advanced in years. This sudden apparition reveals, that, in the dark period preceding, there has been a change in the order of the Priesthood. Eli is not of the of the Priest- regular house of Eleazar,2 the eldest son of Aaron, in which the succession ought to have continued. There has been a transfer to the house of the younger and comparatively obscure Ithamar, which had struck such deep root, that it continued in spite of the agitations of the period, till its final overthrow in the reign of Solomon. The transfer had been made since the appearance of Phinehas, who is the last legitimate High Priest we can trace. The Rabbinical commentators allege that the change took place because of the share of Phinehas in the sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter. Can this be possibly some faint reminiscence of a tradition indicating the submersion of the house of Eleazar in the general disorder of the age, of which that dark event was Was this effected through undoubtedly a consequence? It appears, further, that the Philistines had been repulsed from the position which they had occupied in the time of Samson.1 some heroic deed of Eli's youth? the office of High Priest or of Judge? Such a supposition is rendered probable by the union of Warrior and Priest in Phinehas; and a like transference of the Pontificate from a like cause appears in the only other time of the history when it reaches to a like eminence,—when the priestly house of the Maccabees became also the rulers of their countrymen. Union of In the union of Judge and Priest in Eli we have a further step towards the consolidation of power in the monarchy. It was the only part of what is commonly called 'the 'Theocratic period,' in which the government was Priest. theocratic in the modern sense of the word—that of Priestly government, of ecclesiastical supremacy and independence such as has been occasionally advocated in the Christian Church. But this very peculiarity is not the culmination of the Mosaic period, so much as a temporary transition to the next stage of the history, when the powers of Priest and Ruler were indeed united, not however in the person of the High Priests,2 but of the Kings and Princes of Judah. The reign of Eli, therefore, combines in a remarkable manner the fall of the old and the rise of the new order. Shiloh. Of all portions of the Sacred history this is the one which most clearly sets before us, in the light which precedes its final overthrow, the sanctuary of Shiloh. The ancient tent of Shiloh-memorial of the old nomadic state, containing the Ark, the relic of Mount Sinai-has been already described. Tombs, which still remain in a rocky valley near the site of the ancient town, had been hewn in the steep sides of the hill. A city (as in the case of Micah's rival sanctuary, but here doubtless on a larger scale) had sprung up round it.3 The sanctuary itself was so encased with buildings, as to give 1 I Sam. iv. I. * See (in Hebrew and LXX.) 1 Kings vi. 14, 17, 18; 2 Sam. xx. 26; viii. 17, 18; Ps. 31 Sam. iv. 13. CX. I-II. As in it the name and appearance of ‘a house' or 'temple."1 Micah's sanctuary,2 there was a gateway with a seat inside the doorposts or pillars which supported it.3 It was 'the seat' or 'throne' of the ruler or judge, as afterwards in the Palace of Solomon. Here Eli sat on days of religious or political solemnity, and surveyed the worshippers as they came up the eminence on which the sanctuary was placed. The wor To this consecrated spot pilgrims and worshippers were attracted, as to the religious centre of their country, at the yearly feast, the chief feast of the year-that of 'the shippers. Bowers,' or 'Tabernacles,' which coincided with the Festival of the vintage. The sides of the valley in which Shiloh lay were clothed with vineyards, and in those vineyards the maidens of Shiloh came out to dance, and the whole population, pilgrims and inhabitants, men and women alike, gave themselves up to the usual merriment of eating and drinking.1 In this miscellaneous assemblage were to be seen worshippers of the most various characters. One group of fre quent occurrence, year by year, was that of Elkanah Elkanah. from the neighbouring hills of Ephraim, with his numerous family. He is a rare instance of polygamy amongst the common ranks of the nation. It may have been one of the results of the disordered state of the times. It may have arisen (as still in the Samaritan sect) from the barrenness of one of his two wives. His sacrifice on these occasions was looked forward to in his house as a grand feast in which every member of the family had a portion of the sacrificial offerings. But it is on one individual of the house that our attention is especially fixed: his best beloved but childless wife, who bears the Phoenician name which now first appears, 'Hannah,' 11 Sam. i. 9; iii. 3. 2 5 Judg. xviii. 16, 17. The word used in 1 Sam. i. 9 for 'post' is the same as that in Ex. xi. 7; xxi. 6; Deut. vi. 9, for 'doorpost.' This is on the supposition that the words are used with intentional exactness. They may, however, have been (like the phrase in 1 Sam. iv. 4) transferred from the later Temple. 1 Sam. i. 9; iv. 13, 18. Judg. xxi. 19-21; 1 Sam. i. 9, 13, 14. 5' Anna,' the sister of Dido. Hannah. or' Anna;' afterwards thrice consecrated1 in the Sacred story. She was herself almost a prophetess and Nazarite.2 Here is the first instance of silent prayer. Her song of thanksgiving is the first hymn, properly so called, the direct model of the first Christian hymn of 'the Magnificat,' the first outpouring of individual as distinct from national devotion, the first indication of the coming greatness of the anointed king,3 whether in the divine or human sense. To this group is at last added the child, who, though of no Priestly tribe, was consecrated to a more than Priestly office,1 with the offerings of three bullocks, flour, and a skin of wine, and who from his earliest years ministered in the sacred vestments within the Tabernacle itself, the future inaugurator of the new period of the Church. Samuel. Other pilgrims were there of a far other kind; and the eyes of others than the aged Eli were fixed upon them. Hophni Hophni and and Phinehas, his two sons, are, for students of Phinehas. ecclesiastical history, characters 'of great and in'structive wickedness.' They are the true exemplars of the grasping and worldly clergy of all ages. It was the sacrificial feasts that gave occasion for their rapacity. It was the dances and assemblies 5 of the women in the vineyards, and before the Sacred Tent, that gave occasion for their debaucheries. They were the worst development of the lawlessness of the age; penetrating, as in the case of the wandering Levite of the Book of Judges, into the most sacred offices. But the coarseness of their vices does not make the moral less pointed for all times. The three-pronged fork which fishes up the seething flesh is the earliest type of grasping at pluralities and church-preferments by base means; the open profligacy at the door of the Tabernacle is the type of many a scandal brought on the Christian Church by the selfishness or sensuality of its minis ters. An additional touch of nature is given by the close connexion of these Priestly vices with the weak indulgence of Eli and the blameless purity of Samuel. The judgment which falls on the house of Ithamar is the likeness of the judgment which has followed the corruption and the nepotism of the clergy everywhere. It was to begin with the alienation of the people from the worship of the sanctuary; it was to end in a violent revolution which should overthrow with bloodshed, confiscation, and long humiliation, the ancient hereditary succession and the whole existing hierarchy of Israel.1 'Men ' abhorred the offerings of the Lord.' . . . 'I said indeed that thy house and the house of thy father should walk before Me 'for ever. But now the Lord saith, Be it far from Me.' 'All 6 'the increase of thy house shall die "by the sword."' 'Every one that is left in thine house shall crouch to him for a piece of 'silver and a morsel of bread, and shall say, Put me, I pray thee, 'into one of the priests' offices, that I may eat a piece of bread.' The judgment, of which the earliest indication comes from some unknown prophet, is first solemnly announced from an unexpected quarter, and in a form which shows that the thunders and lightnings, the oracular warnings, of the older period, are about to be superseded by 'a still small voice' of a wholly different kind. The doom of It was night in the sanctuary. The High Priest slept in one of the adjacent chambers, and the attendant ministers in another. In the centre, on the left of the entrance, the house of stood the seven-branched candlestick,2 now menIthamar. tioned for the last time; superseded in the reign of Solomon by the ten separate candlesticks, but revived after the Captivity by the copy of the one candlestick with seven branches, as it is still seen on the Arch of Titus. It was the only light of the Tabernacle during the night, was solemnly lighted every evening, as in the devotions of the Eastern world, both Mussulman and Christian, and extinguished just before morning, when the doors were opened.3 I 1 1 Sam. ii. 17, 29, 30, 33, 36 (LXX.). 2 Ex. xxv. 31; xxxvii. 17, 18; Lev. xxiv. 3; 2 Chron. xiii. 11. |