Today’s
Scripture Reading (February 9, 2019): 1 Samuel 1
Self-educated author and Pastor, A. W. Tozer argued that we should “listen
to no man who has not listened to God.” Tozer, known as a man who taught
extensively on prayer, was someone who believed that we should find the time to
get alone and pray, and that prayer was more than the words that we spoke, it
was also the time that we spend listening for his reply. Tozer was a man who knew the experience of Elijah on
the mountain waiting to hear that “still, small voice” of God. If we have
anything worth saying to others, if I write anything that is worth reading, it
is only because we have waited to hear the still, small voice of God, and we
have heard him whisper the important things about life.
Elkanah plays a minor role in the events that set up
the beginning of the tale of 1 Samuel, and for most of his only importance
might be that he is the father of the
last Judge of Israel, Samuel. But before we enter into the story of Samuel, it
might be important to take a moment to consider Samuel’s father, Elkanah.
The text of 1 Samuel is a bit misleading here. We
don’t know who wrote the book of Samuel. The two
competing theories are that Samuel wrote the first portion of the book, up
until his death in 1 Samuel 25:1, and then the rest of 1 Samuel and the entirety
of 2 Samuel was written by his disciples and followers. Or that the story of Samuel,
first and second, was a collection of the oral stories about this time in
Israel history, written down as a chronology of the important events of the
nation at a much later date. The first verse of the story might indicate
that the latter theory that the story was
written much later might be true. The problem is with the comment that
Elkanah was an Ephraimite. Technically, that is not true. Elkanah lived in the
land of the Ephraimites, but his ancestor Zuph was not an Ephraimite. Zuph was
a Levite, making Elkanah also a Levite. His presence in the territory of
Ephraim was intended to symbolize the presence of God throughout the land. And
as a Levite, Elkanah likely had certain rituals he was to perform in the Tabernacle at Shiloh, the Temple
still had not yet been built, at specified times of the year. Elkanah was a man
of God.
The Talmud, the central text for Rabbinic Judaism,
also list Elkanah as a prophet. Not only was Elkanah a man of God, with certain
ceremonial duties that he needed to fulfill, he was also a man who listened for
the voice of God and then went out and
spoke the truth that he had heard during his times of prayer to the people,
with the power of God.
Elkanah was a good man, who loved his two wives and
his children, his polygamy was one of Elkanah’s flaws, and who was faithful to
make his sacrifices to God at the appropriate times of the year. Samuel,
Elkanah’s son, would grow up in the house of the high priest Eli, but Samuel’s
spiritual heritage was probably more due to the faith of his father, Elkanah,
than it was a result of Samuel’s relationship with the spiritually weak high
priest, Eli; a man that Samuel would eventually replace. All of which makes Elkanah
more important to the story than we might, at first, consider him to be.
Tomorrow’s
Scripture Reading: 1 Samuel 2
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