I Samuel 3:1-20 focus on the complicated process of discerning that the Lord was calling Samuel. The story qualifies as a spectacular account of the calling of one of the key transitional figures in the Old Testament. Such stories can do more harm than good for modern readers. Many such specular stories have a disturbing, taking the person apart dimension, before it puts the person back together to fulfill their calling. Yet, for many of us, such spectacular accounts of a divine call set the bar so high that leaves most people what want to find the purpose of God in their lives feeling like they have come up short.[1] A call from the Lord can seem strange. I think of several movies that have this theme, such as Field of Dreams, O God, Bruce Almighty, and Evan Almighty. In a humorous way, such movies make a serious point. As philosophers like Martin Buber would put it, human reality is dialogical. We are always people whom a preceding Thou addresses. This Thou, someone other than ourselves, some external other whose presence and address to us summons us forth, forms us into beings who are more human than we would have been without the address. This Other is different from us, but also inescapable; in conversation with us, yet free from us. We are not alone. This is the greatest divine gift, our greatest human attribute, and always our great problem. The call of Samuel involves such an address. It comes at a transitional moment in early Israel. The period of the tribal federation, dominated by the Mosaic pattern of covenant that binds a loosely confederated group of tribes, has failed. The House of Eli is the culmination of that failure among the priestly class. However, Joshua and Judges record the steady decline. Samuel will represent the best of the old prophets, religious leaders, and judges. He will also be the transitional figure to the long period of sacral kingship. His birth and his call highlight his importance in the early period of the history of Israel.
We learn immediately that Samuel has become obedient and had dedication to his position as he works with Eli at the shrine, for 1Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. Yet, we also learn that the word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread. The call Samuel is to hear from the Lord is unexpected because it had not happened in such a long time. The moral state of the family of Eli and the degeneration of spiritual life at Shiloh makes this result understandable. The writer presents Samuel as innocent and separate from such spiritual sickness. Further, the word of the Lord is not a reality in the same way that an object of sense perception is a reality. Matters quantifiable by math or science, even psychological explorations of the psyche, are real in the sense that they have a universal quality. In contrast, the word of the Lord is an event connected to a specific time, place, and people. This explains why it can become rare. In good Israelite tradition, the guiding of Samuel by the Lord begins with an event of the word.[2] We learn 2 At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, simply indicating that he is growing old. A new generation is getting ready to replace him. The time is ripe for the young Samuel to step into the shoes of aging Eli. Samuel was lying down in his room, in the nave with the door closed. Eli is in the vestibule. Further, 3the lamp of God had not yet gone out. Lamps in the sanctuary were to burn from evening until morning. Exodus 27:20-21 refers to the command for lamps in the Tent of Meeting, but outside the curtain behind which was the Ark of the Covenant. Thus, the call from the Lord takes place before dawn. The lamp had not yet consumed its oil, indicating the evening was not too far along. It is late enough to be quiet and reflect. Samuel was lying down where the ark of God was. The Ark was in the back of the nave in the inner sanctuary. We do not know why Samuel slept there, but it may have related to his fulfilling a ritual function. Some interpreters go in for some symbolic meaning to these phrases, but I would urge a closer connection to what the author has said. It keeps the story simple and focuses on the main point, which will come soon enough. We as readers know that 4 Then the Lord called, “Samuel! Samuel! This call comes from the Ark. The summons is direct and personal, urgently calling him by name. It does not frighten him. He assumes a familiar source. Thus, since no one has had a divine communication for a long time, Samuel does not recognize the origin of the voice. Samuel does not know the voice when he responds Here I am! We see another example of the obedience and faithfulness of Samuel. He assumes Eli is calling, 5 and so without hesitation ran to Eli, his master, and said, Here I am (declaring his presence), for you called me (declaring his eagerness to serve). However, Eli tells him that I did not call; lie down again. Samuel is obedient, for he went and lay down. 6The Lord called again, and we see the incident repeated a second time. The writer informs us that Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the Lord had not yet revealed the word of the Lord to Samuel. Samuel does not know the Lord now in the way he shall know the Lord. The Lord is the author of the content of the prophetic word Samuel shall receive. Here, the word goes out from the Lord, with the coming disclosure or revelation in a way that shows the indirectness of revelation. What we have in this call is not so much self-disclosure as a content or message that comes from the Lord.[3] 8The Lord called Samuel again, a third time. The repeated pattern of three is typical of Hebrew literature. This time, however, Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. 9Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. Eli still knows the proper way to respond to a call from the Lord and can help Samuel do so. His guidance, along with the faithful and obedient service Samuel renders, will become a pattern that many who hope to hear a call from the Lord will follow. Eli shows that the first step in becoming a prophet is a listening ear. One will need to become quiet, a difficult practice for many of us. Samuel is becoming open to his unique encounter with the Lord, even as each of us has our unique encounter with the Lord. So the obedient and faithful Samuel went and lay down in his place. On the fourth time, 10 Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, Samuel! Samuel! Again, we find Samuel obedient and faithful in his service as he responds with the words of Eli, “Speak, for your servant is listening.” This communication from the Lord is both a vision and a voice. The content of the message refers to 2:27-28 and the fall of the house of Eli. 11 Then the Lord said to Samuel, “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle. 12 On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. The author of this history of Israel, the Deuteronomist, makes it clear that Eli shall receive punishment: 13 For I have told him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. 14 Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or offering forever.”According to Leviticus 4:3-12, priests atone for their sins by the offering of a bull. The offending priest is to lay hands on the bull before slaughtering before the Lord at the Tent of Meeting. The anointed priest is to take some of the blood to the Tent of Meeting and sprinkle it seven times in front of the curtain of the sanctuary and the altar. With this sin offering, the priest shall remove the fat, kidneys, and liver and burn them upon the altar. The priest shall bring the rest outside the camp for burning. In this prophetic word to Samuel, we learn that Eli has been making this offering, but the Lord will no longer accept it. The Lord is getting ready to overthrow the old order represented by the priest, evoked by the failure of the priestly family, which had been greedy and disobedient. We also see the persistence of the Lord in working with this family. 15 Samuel will lay there until morning. Then, he opened the doors of the house of the Lord. Understandably, Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. 16 But Eli called Samuel and said, “Samuel, my son,” He said, “Here I am.” 17 Eli said What was it that the Lord told you? Do not hide it from me. May God do so to you and more also, if you hide anything from me of all that he told you.” So again, Samuel is obedient and faithful in his service, 18 So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. The response of Eli seems clueless: Then he said, “It is the Lord; let him do what seems good to him.” Eli seems dull here, in contrast to the guileless responsiveness of Samuel. In Chapter 1, Eli could not tell the difference between prayer and drunkenness. In this chapter, he does not recognize the voice of the Lord. He becomes a tragic-comic dramatic figure. The divine assertion marks the delegitimation of the dominant priestly family, and with it, the delegitimation of the entire symbolic sacrificial system on which Israel relied. The account begins and ends with reference to the word of the Lord.
The passage ends with commenting on 19 As Samuel, grew up recognizing that the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. 20 And all Israel knew that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet (nabi, one called to duty by the Lord) of the Lord. Samuel will also show himself to be priest, warrior, judge, and governor.
Yes, the call of the Lord is mysterious. It can come in the darkness of faith. It can be so subtle that we must be in the deepest silence within us in order to hear it.[4] The first sign of faith may well be a matter of taking the first step up when you do not see the whole staircase.[5] Becoming open to the call of the Lord upon your life may begin, for some persons, when they are so tired and fed up with what they have done with their lives that go on to something they believe will be better, namely, responding to what they hear as the call of the Lord.[6] Yet, we must take care. This text lets everyone off the hook by identifying the call as a word of the Lord. As such a word, it requires a certain type of response. While true, we need to be discerning people. We may hear something as a call from the Lord when a discerning response might view it as something else. Responding to a call from the Lord is a matter of responding to the “Thou” who addresses us, but in a way that walks a line between being excessively submissive and excessively resistant.[7] It will always require some time in discernment. In fact, much of life is a process of knowing when to assert and when to yield to the Other who gives our lives significance. If we do not know when to assert, we will submit to the Thou of the crowd and thus to harried conformity. Yet, not knowing when to submit will lead to arrogant self-indulgence and graceless self-sufficiency that never receives the gifts of life. The growth of our sense of self, who we are and why we are, depends upon the unsettling nature of our encounter with the Thou. The persistent work of humanity is between our desire for a protective embrace and a desire for heroic self-assertion.[8] I am not sure, but this entire sense of calling is a sense of the poignant rightness of our lives. Due to the inevitable call from Thou, we intuitively sense that Thou and I must find each other. In the finding is our peace and harmony. Until they find each other, we might also sense that the disharmony we experience must be temporary. This encounter will penetrate us in a loving way. Some will find the surprise that the encounter is far more about joy than fear. Our sense of incompletion, frustration, purposelessness, and wandering, will give way to completion, harmony, and home.[9]
[1] In spired by Barbara Brown Taylor, in her article “True Purpose,” (Christian Century, February 21, 2001)
[2] Barth, Church Dogmatics I.1 [5.3] 158.
[3] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 1, 202.
[4] Carlo Carretto, Letters from the Desert (Orbis, 1982), xv.
[5] Martin Luther King Jr.
[6] Eugene H. Peterson.
[7] (Walter Brueggemann, The Covenanted Self, [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999], p. 2).
[8] D. W. Winnicott and his object relations theory.
[9] - Leslie Weatherhead, "The Inevitable Encounter," Steady in an Unsteady World: Sermons by Leslie Weatherhead, Stephen A. Odom, ed., Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1936, pp. 103-105
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