Yahweh Is King

1 Samuel 4–7

Main Idea: The ark narrative reveals the unrivalled authority and power of Yahweh, the King.

1. The Ark Captured and Returned
2. Who Do You Say That I Am?
3. Repentance and Victory
4. The Anatomy of Repentance
5. The Search for a Leader

Characterized as odd or “strange” (Doorly, The Religion of Israel, 60), this small story sounds almost too fantastic to believe—a tale to be told to little children or to adapt to a Hollywood movie. Just think about it: the journey of a mysterious golden box that holds the power of God! What a story! And Hollywood has capitalized on the story. Does anyone else remember Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)? In that movie the ark is described as a source of unrivalled power that Hitler and the Nazis want to co-opt for themselves. Once discovered, the “wrath” and “power” of Israel’s God would become a weapon for the Nazi war machine. Marcus Brody summarizes the ominous stakes for the one who holds the power of the religious artifact: “An army which carries the ark before it . . . is invincible.” The remainder of the film shows just how powerful the relic is: at the finale, the power of God wipes out the Nazis (by . . . ahem . . . melting their faces off or shooting lightning through them!), while Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenwood are saved.

The Ark Captured and Returned

It is no surprise that this narrative, often called the “ark narrative,” inspires wonder. The action of 1 Samuel 4–7 is indeed fantastic and proceeds as follows:

1. The people of God carry the ark before them into battle to defeat the enemy nation, the Philistines. They say: “Let’s bring the ark of the Lord’s covenant from Shiloh. Then it will go with us and save us from the hand of our enemies” (4:3).
2. The Philistines capture the ark, defeat Israel in battle, and the chief priest’s sons, Hophni and Phinehas, die (4:8-11).
3. The chief priest, Eli, hears of the capture of the ark, the defeat of Israel, and the death of his sons, and he keels over dead (4:18).
4. Eli’s daughter-in-law goes into labor, has a baby, and gives him a horrible name to commemorate the total disaster:

   She named the boy Ichabod, saying, “The glory has departed from Israel,” referring to the capture of the ark of God and to the deaths of her father-in-law and her husband. “The glory has departed from Israel,” she said, “because the ark of God has been captured.” (4:21-22)

5. The Philistines take the ark and put it in the shrine of their god, Dagon.
6. God’s power manifests in the shrine, lopping off the head and hands of the idol of Dagon before the ark (5:1-5).
7. While the ark is in their territory, God afflicts the Philistine people with tumors (5:6-12).
8. The Philistines send the ark back to Israel with a gift to Yahweh of five golden tumors and five golden mice as a restitution offering (6:1-18).
9. The ark enters the town of Beth-shemesh, and when 70 men look inside the ark (which is forbidden) they die (6:19-20).
10. The ark is taken to Kiriath-jearim, where it rests for 20 years (7:1-2).
11. Samuel rallies the people to worship Yahweh alone, and the Philistines try to surprise Israel while they worship Him at Mizpah, but God prevails and Israel defeats the Philistines (7:3-17).

So the content of the narrative has two major battles between the Philistines and Israel (chs. 4 and 7) and two major exhibitions of the power of God and the ark (chs. 5 and 6). Extraordinary!

Who Do You Say That I Am?

Through the progression of the narrative, a major theme emerges from the speech of the Philistines: Yahweh’s unrivaled royal power will be known among all nations. This is the theme of the ark narrative. Notice how the Philistines come to recognize the awesome, unrivaled authority of Yahweh in this narrative.

At first they believe the ark of Yahweh is special and even a religious power. But they mistake the ark as one of the other “gods” of the nations. In 4:6-8 the Philistines speak about Yahweh:

When the Philistines discovered that the ark of the Lord had entered the camp, they panicked. “The gods have entered their camp!” they said. “Woe to us, nothing like this has happened before. Woe to us, who will rescue us from the hand of these magnificent gods? These are the gods that slaughtered the Egyptians with all kinds of plagues in the wilderness.

Their response to the things of God is not unusual for most people. Modern people, like ancient people, tend to miss the true identity of the Lord. They have preconceived ideas about religion and use those notions as a grid by which to understand Israel’s God. We must understand that the peoples of the ancient world in which Israel lived were polytheistic. Israel most likely recognized that other gods existed (we would call these false deities “demonic powers” or “forces” today). These were not true gods at all because they are not the true God, Yahweh. However, the nations (and, all too often, Israel as well) treated many gods with value and respect.

For instance, notice how the Philistines worshiped Dagon. Who is Dagon? He was the principal Philistine god, with the others being Ashtoreth (Dagon’s wife or lover) and Baal-zebub. These three deities appear in other biblical texts and were worshiped by other people in Canaan and the ancient world.^[7]

Each nation worshiped a principal deity as the high god over all other gods (often the high god was known as El or Enlil), but then a patron deity protected individual cities (e.g., Baal-zebub was the patron deity for the Philistine city of Ekron). They believed that all deities, however, deserved honor. So the peoples would create temples and shrines in which various idols were housed.

So when an enemy nation was defeated, it meant their god defeated a rival god. To avoid offending the rival deity now defeated, the nation victorious in battle would bring the idol or relic or talisman of the defeated nation into their temple or shrine. In short, they would “add” the defeated deity to their pantheon of gods. For this reason we can understand why the Philistines captured what they thought was Israel’s deity (the ark) and brought it into the temple of Dagon. They believed the Philistine god Dagon defeated Israel’s deity (Yahweh). They simply viewed Yahweh as one of the many “gods” of the nations around them. But they did not understand who Yahweh truly is.

It would be easy to call these people “primitive” or “unenlightened.” But let us not forget how common it is for us to miss the true identity and power of God. Consider how people in Jesus’ day missed the reality of His identity. Jesus boldly asked His disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (Matt 16:13). The disciples informed Him of the popular views of the day: Jesus is John the Baptist come back, Elijah come back, Jeremiah come back, or one of the other prophets. The general view of the day, then, was that Jesus was a prophet—one like the prophets of old. And Jesus was a prophet: the true Prophet!

But Jesus turns the prophetic expectation on its head: “But you,” He asked them, “who do you say that I am?” (Matt 16:15). Peter’s confession reveals the true identity of Jesus. Peter proclaimed Jesus as the Messiah of Israel and the Son of the living God! Jesus is a prophet but more than a prophet. He is a priest but more than a priest. He is a king but more than just a king. He is the Prophet, Priest, and King. As the suffering King, Jesus bears our sin and forgives it. He pays the debt of sin, and our slate of sin is wiped clean by His blood, which He freely gives as payment. He gives us hope and life. He makes us fully human. This is who Jesus is. But the Gospels tell us more. Jesus the Messiah is also God in human flesh.

People missed Jesus’ true identity in His day, and people still miss His identity today. Just think about the Easter or Christmas holidays as they roll into our lives. Is it not true that people all too often speak of Jesus as a “wise sage” or a “good example” or a “guru” figure? Or they speak of Him as a good person, someone of great inspiration and religious zeal. These portraits of Jesus may hold some truth, but to stop there is to miss the Savior completely.

C. S. Lewis captures our tendency to miss the true identity of Jesus.

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. (Mere Christianity, 52)

These are strong, strong words, but so true. If Jesus was not the person He claimed, then no matter how one cuts it, Jesus is a madman at best or a deceptive phony at worst. If someone today went around calling himself or herself the son of God or the Messiah, or if he or she proclaimed the ability to heal diseases or forgive peoples’ sins, we would probably have that man or woman locked up for lunacy, megalomania, or a messiah complex! But if he did what he did and claimed what he claimed and knew he was misleading people, then he would be a liar of epic proportions!

Jesus claimed to be divine, to heal disease, and to have risen from the grave. He claimed to offer forgiveness of sin, to provide peace and life, and to be the essence of what it means to be human. He claimed these things because He was God and what He said was true. Either He is who He says He is, and He is Lord, or He is lunatic or liar. We must learn to recognize Jesus for who He truly is.

Unfortunately, we are like the Philistines or the people of Jesus’ day, missing the identity of the Lord again and again. The Philistines did not recognize the God of Israel for who He is. For them He was one of the “gods” but not the God of creation, the King of Israel, and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He was a god but not the true God.

However, as the narrative progresses in 1 Samuel 5–6, the Philistines go on a journey of discovery. Although seemingly captured and subjected to their idol, Yahweh exerts His magnificence in the Philistine sanctuary, humbling the Philistines, humiliating their false deity, and exalting Himself in a moment. When their false god, Dagon, is humiliated by Yahweh (5:1-6), the people of the Philistine city of Ashdod exclaim: “The ark of Israel’s God must not stay here with us, because His hand is strongly against us and our god Dagon” (5:7). They go on to ask: “What should we do with the ark of Israel’s God?” (5:8). Notice how the Philistines’ language about Yahweh changes as they come to realize His authority. At first He was one of the “gods” (4:7-8), but after Yahweh defeated the pagan Philistine deity, Dagon, the Philistines describe Him as the God of Israel.

As the story progresses, Yahweh afflicts the Philistines with plagues of tumors. They come to know Israel’s God as the same One who afflicted the Egyptians with plagues. The people of Israel also come to recognize Yahweh’s royal power both in their defeat and in their sin. In both ways human beings come face-to-face with Yahweh, the unrivaled power and Lord of all nations.

Repentance and Victory

Through His power God helped His people get the ark back; but in the journey to bring the ark back home, some Israelites (not priests) touched the ark (6:18-20). That was a big problem because only God’s appointed priests were to touch God’s ark and even then only in a specified manner (see Lev 16:2; Num 4:15). As a result God struck them dead. God’s people mourned this terrible occurrence, and they carefully moved the ark to a place called Kiriath-jearim and left it there for about 20 years. God’s people mourned the Philistine capture of the ark, the death of the Israelite people, and the fact the ark wasn’t where it was supposed to be for two decades.

Israel experienced life when it went badly. As the narrative progresses, we see that their sin was not isolated to improperly handling the ark. Notice Samuel’s words in 7:3:

“If you are returning to the Lord with all your heart, get rid of the foreign gods and the Ashtoreths that are among you, dedicate yourselves to the Lord, and worship only Him. Then He will rescue you from the hand of the Philistines.”

The verse is significant because it reveals that Israel’s sin lay not only in handling lightly the things of God; it also lay in worshiping other gods.

In the Western world it seems silly to worship other deities, especially ones made out of metal, stone, or wood. But it is not silly at all. Baal was a male storm deity. Ashtoreth was a female fertility deity. When the two would copulate, it would produce crops from the ground. At least this is what the ancient people thought. That may seem strange to us until we understand this was an agrarian society that needed appropriate rain at the appropriate time for food, life, and security.

Today we depend on different gods, but they are no less gods. For instance, we trust a retirement account or a monthly paycheck to provide food and security for our lives. We think a job, relationship, or position will provide the hope we need to survive. Jobs and money, relationships, and retirement are not necessarily bad. They are good gifts but terrible gods. The gods we worship today are still deified as things that will provide us health and security. Samuel’s words in verse 3 reminded the people that only Yahweh would provide the security and life they needed and desired. All other gods are empty and useless and so must be “put away.”

In the midst of their mourning and sin, Samuel called Israel to a fresh start. Who does not need a fresh start in life? We all do at some point or another. And how do we gain a fresh start in life? Fresh starts begin with repentance.

The Anatomy of Repentance

What is “repentance,” and what does it mean in practical terms? What is the anatomy of this theologically laden term? We see a beautiful picture of repentance in 1 Samuel 7:3-6. Repentance has the following characteristics:

1. Hearing what is wrong: actually listening to the sin in our lives
2. Recognizing what is wrong in our lives: owning our sin and not deflecting or blaming it on others
3. Realizing that God is right: affirming God is in the right when He exposes sin
4. Confessing where we got it wrong: verbally acknowledging sin to God and confessing that it is wrong and displeasing to Him
5. Turning to God and living for Him: turning away from sin and toward the Lord

Repentance is a choice. God’s people choose to put away idols and embrace Yahweh. Repentance is a decision we make to honor and value the Lord more than anything else. Repentance is our loving response to God, who loved us first.

Victory followed repentance (7:7-11). These verses are powerful because they show that as we turn to God, God is no longer our adversary but our emissary. Instead of coming against us, He goes out on our behalf. That is what happened with the people of God. They experienced the power of God against the Philistines.

We love the phrasing in verse 10. As God’s people worshiped the Lord in repentance and faith, the Philistines went in to wipe them out. But as they worshiped, the text reads that “the Lord thundered loudly against the Philistines that day and threw them into such confusion that they fled before Israel.” Some of us need to hear that the Lord “thunders” on our behalf. As we turn to God and start fresh with Him, He “thunders” out for us. He is a stone of help (“Ebenezer,” v. 12).

The Search for a Leader

A subsequent focus of the narrative in 1 Samuel 7 is to show the importance of true and faithful leadership among God’s people. The failure of Israel’s leadership at the beginning of the narrative is counterbalanced by the fidelity of Samuel at the end of the narrative. The narrative abruptly shifts away from the character of young Samuel in chapter 4, leading the reader to see a subtle shift away from the appropriate, divinely chosen leader for God’s people. Moreover, Eli and his house fall away in chapter 4, leaving a vacuum of leadership of sorts. Who would lead? God raises up His faithful leader in Samuel in chapter 7, who leads God’s people to repentance and faith.

Yahweh is the king God’s people need, and out of His goodness Yahweh will provide for Himself a leader to represent them to Him. Remember what Yahweh said of Samuel: “Then I will raise up a faithful priest for Myself. He will do whatever is in My heart and mind” (2:35). When God’s people respond to Him faithfully, led by the true priest and prophet (in this narrative, Samuel), then good things follow. When they follow corrupt leaders and do not respond faithfully to their God, then horrible things follow! But the true hero of the story is neither the people nor Samuel but rather God Himself. In the ark narrative God assures for Himself that all peoples will know that He is King, powerful and worthy of worship.

Reflect and Discuss

1. What does this passage help you understand about God?
2. How does this passage of Scripture exalt Jesus?
3. Why did the Philistines capture the ark?
4. Why did the Philistines send the ark away?
5. What mistake did the Israelites make in handling the ark?
6. When do you find yourself mishandling sacred things? Why do you do this?
7. Repentance is key in 1 Samuel 7. What stands out to you when you work through the anatomy of repentance? Why does that stand out for you?
8. How do you miss the identity of Jesus or take Him for granted?
9. What are the key barriers that stand in the way of your living a life of repentance?
10. How does this narrative reveal the role of appropriate leadership for God’s people?