aroused from his sleep by the approach of the Philistines to seize him, he thought to put forth his wonted power and destroy them all; but his listless arms refused to render him their wonted service, and he knew, too late, that "Jehovah had departed from him."

The Philistines took and bound him; and, to complete his disablement, put out both his eyes a mode of rendering a public enemy or offender incapable of further offence, of which this is the first historical instance, but which has ever since been much resorted to in the kingdoms of the East.* They then took him down to Gath, and binding him with fetters of brass, employed him to grind in the prison-house.

countrywomen, makes her a Philistine. The Philistines themselves took an anxious interest in all the movements of Samson, and were soon acquainted with this new besotment, of which they prepared to take advantage. A deputation, consisting of a principal person from each of the five Philistine states, went up the valley to the place where he was. And now, we observe, it was not their object to get possession of his person while he retained all his strength, but to ascertain how that strength might be taken from him. They were well persuaded that a strength so greatly exceeding all they knew or had ever heard of, and to which that possessed by the few descendants of Anak who lived among them could not for an instant be compared, Nothing could more clearly than this depmust be supernatural — the result of some rivation evince the miraculous nature of the condition which might be neutralized, or of superhuman strength with which Samson had some charm which might be broken. They been for special purposes invested. Samson therefore offered Delilah the heavy bribe of himself had known this before; but now, eleven hundred shekels of silver from each weak, blind, bound, "disglorified," and deof their number (amounting altogether to graded to a woman's service, † he had occa6877.) to discover the secret of his great sion and leisure to feel it; and in his strength, and to betray him into their hands," prison-house" he probably learned more that they might bind and afflict him. Sam- of himself than he had known in all his son amused her by telling her of certain processes whereby the weakness of other men would be brought upon him; but each time the imposition was detected, by her putting the process to the proof. Then she continued to worry him by such trite but always effective reproaches as, How canst thou say 'I love thee,' when thy heart is not with me? for thou hast deceived me these three times, and hast not told me wherein thy great strength lieth." Thus day by day she pressed him and urged him, until "his soul was vexed unto death," and at last he told the whole truth to her that he was a Nazarite from his birth, and that if he left that state by cutting off his hair, which had never yet been shorn or shaven, his extraordinary strength would depart from him. Delilah saw by his earnestness that he had this time told her the truth. Accordingly, she sent for a man, who, while the hero slept with his head upon her lap, shaved off the luxuriant tresses of his hair. His strength departed from him: but he knew it not; and when

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* This barbarous infliction is, however, now -under the operation of those humanizing influences which are insensibly pervading the East -in the course of being discontinued. It was formerly more common in Persia than in any other country; but it became comparatively rare

previous life. Nor was this knowledge unprofitable. He felt that although he had begun to deliver Israel, this employment of the gifts confided to him had rather been the incidental effect of his own insensate passions, than the result of those stern and steady purposes which became one who had so solemnly been set apart, even before his birth, to the salvation of his country. Such thoughts as these brought repentance to his soul; and as by this repentance his condition of Nazariteship was in some sort renewed, it pleased God that, along with the growth of his hair, his strength should gradually return to him.

Fatally for the Philistines, they took the view that, since the strength of Samson had been the gift of the God of Israel, their triumph over him evinced that their own god, Dagon, was more powerful than Jehovah. This raised the matter from being a case between Samson and the Philistines, to one between Jehovah and Dago; and it thus became necessary that the divine honor should

under the late king; and we believe that no instance has yet occurred in which the present monarch has resorted to it.

+ Grinding is almost invariably performed. by women in the East.

simple a weapon, did they not join in pursuit of the rest? So true was the prediction of the angel to his mother, that he should only begin to deliver Israel.”*

It scarcely appears that Samson exercised

any authority in the tribes; but to carry on the historical time, he is counted as one of the judges, and his administration is computed at forty years, ending by his death, in the year 1222 B. C.

CHAPTER XV.

ELI. DEFEAT OF ISRAEL.

SAMSON Was the last of the military heroes stirred up to deliver Israel from its oppressors. The two that followed, Eli and Sainuel, were men of peace the one a priest, and the other a Levite.

ADMINISTRATION OF SAMUEL.

noticed in the history of the Judges. From Phineas, the grandson of Aaron, to Eli, a high-priest is not mentioned on any occasion, nor would even their names be known but for the list in Chronicles (1 Chron. vi. 4-16, 50-52), where the order is thus given:- Abishua, Bukki, Uzzi, Zerahiah, Meraioth.

In the absence of a person specially called and appointed to deliver and judge the people, the civil government, by the principles of the theocracy, devolved on In the person of Eli, a change in the line the high-priest, as the vizier of the great of succession to this high office took place, king, having access to his presence, and as he was the first of the race of Ithamar. being the interpreter of his will. It is not the second son of Aaron. But as the lin easy to see that Samson exercised the civil government over any of the tribes. And although, therefore, in order to carry on the succession of times, it is convenient to say that at his death the government devolved on the high-priest, yet, in fact, there is little reason to question that the highpriest exercised as much authority before as after. But, in such times as these, that authority was but small, and chiefly, as it would appear, judicial, particularly in adjusting disputes between persons of different tribes. The heads of the several tribes seem to have considered themselves fully competent to manage their internal affairs; and their divided allegiance to Jehovah involved the political evil, that the authority of the general government was proportionably weakened, and the cohesion of the tribes in the same degree relaxed. Subject to this preliminary observation, the high-priest may, for historical convenience, be considered the successor of Samson.

It is remarkable that functionaries so important in the theory of the Hebrew constitution, as the high-priests, are scarcely

* Hales ii. 108.

of his elder son Eleazar was not extinct, anl
as the cause of the change is not assigned,
some difficulty has been experienced in a
counting for it. The Jews, as we have seen,
suppose that it was because the existing pon-
tiff had not taken measures sufficiently active
to prevent Jephthah from sacrificing his daugh-
ter But if, in the absence of all positive
information, a conjecture might be hazarded,
we would suggest the probability that the
last pontiff of Eleazar's line died leaving no
son old enough to take the office, and that it
then (as afterward in the succession in the
kingdom) devolved on his adult uncle or
Such a
cousin of the line of Ithamar.
course resorted to in temporal successions, to
avoid the evils of a minority and regency,
must have been much more necessary in
the case of the high-priesthood. That the
change took place in some such natural
and quiet way seems to afford the most
satisfactory explanation of the silence of the
record on a matter of such importance.

Eli was a good and pious man, estimable in private life for his many virtues and the mildness of his character; but he was greatly wanting in those sterner virtues which became his public station, and which were

!

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This

indeed necessary for the repression of wicked- | voice calling him by his name. He supposed ness, and the punishment of the wrong doer. that it was Eli who had called; he hastened As he grew old, he devolved much of his to him, but found that it was not so. public duty upon his sons Hophni and Phin- was repeated three times; and at the third eas, two evil-disposed men, who possessed time, Eli, concluding that it was the Lord the energy their father lacked, without any who had called the lad, instructed him to of his virtues. Even in their sacred minis- answer, "Speak, Lord, for thy servant heartrations at the tabernacle, their conduct was eth." Samuel obeyed; and the Voicę then so shamefully signalized by rapacity and li- delivered to him, as an irrevocable doom, the centiousness, that the people, through their former denunciations against Eli's house, misconduct, were led to abhor the offering "because his sons had made themselves vile, of Jehovah. All this became known to Eli; and he restrained them not;" declaring but, instead of taking the immediate and that he would do a thing in Israel at which decisive measures which became his station, both the ears of every one that heareth it he contented himself with a mild and inef- shall tingle. In the morning, the lad, fective remonstrance. This weakness of Eli's being pressed by Eli, delivered to him the was justly counted a sin in that venerable message he had received. But even this person; and a prophet was commissioned to only gave occasion for the further manifestawarn him of the evil consequences, which tion of the passive virtues of his character. were no less than the exclusion of his race It is Jehovah," he said let him do from the pontificate to which he had been what seemeth to him good." advanced. But even this could not rouse the old man to the exertion which became his station; but he seems rather to have acquiesced in this judgment as a thing not to be averted.

The next reproof which this remiss judge received was through an unexpected channel. At the tabernacle, in personal attendance upon the high-priest, was a boy, a Levite, who having been the child signally granted in answer to the many prayers of Hannah, his previously barren mother, was by her consecrated from the womb, as a Nazarite, to Jehovah. In consequence of this, combined with his Levitical character, he had been left at the tabernacle as early as he could be separated from his mother's care, to render such services there as his tender years allowed. His name was Samuel: and as his pious mother came to Shiloh yearly with her husband to celebrate the passover (bringing with her a dress for her son), she had the delight of perceiving that he, growing up under the shadow of the altar, conducted himself with such propriety and discretion, that he stood very high in the favor of God and man. That he was thus, from his very infancy, constantly before the eyes of the people when they attended at the tabernacle, doubtless went far to prepare the way for that influence and station which he ultimately attained.

It was the thirty-first year of Eli's administration, when Samuel, then twelve years of age, lay on his bed at night, that he heard a

After this, matters went on for some time much as they had done. Eli's sons pursued their old courses, making themselves still more vile; and their father, though now well aware of the doom which hung over himself and them, took no measures in the hope to avert it. But as Samuel grew, the word of the Lord again came to him from time to time, and all Israel knew that he was established to be a prophet of Jehovah.

Thus passed ten years, at the end of which the threatened judgments began to be inflicted upon the house of Eli. At that time the Israelites rashly, and without consulting their Divine King, embarked in a war with the Philistines. In the forty years since the death of Samson, this people had recruited their strength, and recovered the courage of which they appear to have been for a season deprived by the astounding calamity which swept away so many of their chiefs and nobles. In the first engagement the Israelites were defeated, with the loss of four thousand men. On this they sent to Shiloh for the ark of the covenant, not doubting of victory under its protection. The two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phineas, attended it to the camp. On its arrival there, "all Israel shouted with a great shout, so that the earth rang again." On hearing this, and being apprised of its cause, the Philistines were filled with consternation; and the manner in which their alarm was expressed affords a very clear intimation of the effect which had been produced on their

and that the ark of

minds, by the wonders which Jehovah had | Phineas, were slain wrought for the deliverance and protection God was taken! No sooner had the last of Israel. Wo unto us!" they cried; words passed the lips of the messenger than who shall deliver us out of the hand of the high-priest fell backward from off his these mighty gods? These are the gods that seat; and, being old and heavy, his neck was smote the Egyptians with all the plagues of broken in the fall. Soon after the news of the wilderness. The procedure itself did all these calamities was carried to the wife not strike them as strange, for it was not of Phineas; on hearing which she was taken unusual among ancient nations to take their with the pains of labor, and died, after she gods to their wars; and the ark, with its had looked upon the son to whom she gave cherubim, the Philistines supposed to be the birth, and given him the sad name of Ichagod of the Hebrews. They did not ques- bod (Inglorious); for she said, "The glory tion the existence of that God, or his special is departed from Israel; for the ark of care for his people; neither did they deny JEHOVAH, the God of Israel, is taken." his power, of which, indeed, they were afraid. These incidents serve to evince the depth of They allowed Jehovah to be the god of the that astonishment and grief with which the Hebrews, in the same sense in which they loss of the ark was regarded. regarded Dagon to be their own god. It The Philistines soon found that they had was his universal and exclusive power that small cause to rejoice in the glorious trophy they denied, or rather did not recognize. they had won; and most convincingly was it Notwithstanding their alarm, the Philis-made known to them that the Israelites had

tines did not give way to despair; but like a brave people, which they were always, the imminence of the danger only stimulated them to the more strenuous exertions for victory. They cried to one another: "Be strong, and quit yourselves like men, O ye Philistines, that ye become not servants unto the Hebrews, as they have been to you! Quit yourselves like men, and fight!"

They fought and the victory was given to them, to punish the Hebrews for their misdoings, and for having engaged in this war without consulting their King, as well as to teach them that undue confidence in the ark itself was a superstition, if not an idolatry, apart from a due reliance on God himself, whose footstool only the ark was. Thirty thousand men of Israel fell in the battle and pursuit; the guilty sons of Eli were among the slain, and the ark itself was taken.

been defeated for the punishment of their sins, which rendered them unworthy of their God's protection, and not through his want The Philistines certainly of power to save. considered that they had taken captive the god of the Hebrews, and could, on the principles of pagan idolatry, hardly fail to attribute it to the superior power of Dagon, their own god. Yet they still must have had a very salutary dread of the God of Israel; and while they could not but regard the ark as the proudest of their trophies, it was probably more with the view of propitiating him, by associating him with their own god, than by way of insult, that they deposited the conquered ark in the temple of their Dagon at Azotus. But God disdained this dishonoring alliance; and twice the Philistines found their idol overthrown, and the second time broken to pieces, before the ark of God. And further to demonstrate Eli, blind and old, remained at Shiloh, his power in such a way as might include a anxiously expecting news from the camp; punishment for their idolatry and for the "for his heart trembled for the ark of God;" abominations connected with it, the Lord and that he might be in the way of receiv- smote the people of the place with hemoring the earliest rumors from the war, he sat rhoids, or the piles, with a mortal destruction. watching by the wayside. One day he The land also swarmed with jerboas, whereby heard an outery in the town, which had been the products of the fields were consumed. occasioned by the news brought by one of Attributing these calamities to the presence the fugitives from the battle. This man, with of the ark, they sent it to Gath, where it his clothes rent and dust upon his head, remained until the pressure of the same soon came before the high-priest and gave to inflictions compelled them to send it from him the tidings that Israel fled before the them. It was taken to Ekron, another of Philistines that there had been a great the five metropolitan cities of Philistia. slaughter — that his two sons, Hophni and The Ekronites received it with terror,