Study Desk

and the clothes his mother made for him. She would bring new clothes every year, when she and her husband came to offer sacrifices at Shiloh.

But if anyone is left from your family, he will come to my priest and beg for money or a little bread. He may even say to my priest, "Please let me be a priest, so I will at least have something to eat."

When the Lord called out his name for the third time, Samuel went to Eli again and said, "Here I am. What do you want?" Eli finally realized that it was the Lord who was speaking to Samuel.

Eli was still sitting on a chair beside the wall of the town gate. And when the man said that the Philistines had taken the sacred chest, Eli fell backwards. He was a very heavy old man, and the fall broke his neck and killed him. He had been a leader of Israel for forty years.

The Lord caused a lot of trouble for the people of Ashdod and their neighbors. He made sores break out all over their bodies, and everyone was in a panic.

Finally, they said, "The God of Israel did this. He is the one who caused all this trouble for us and our god Dagon. We've got to get rid of this chest."

The people of Ekron called for another meeting of the Philistine rulers and told them, "Send this chest back where it belongs. Then it won't kill us." Everyone was in a panic, because God was causing a lot of people to die,

and those who had survived were suffering from the sores. They all cried to their gods for help.

After the sacred chest had been in Philistia for seven months,

"Don't send it back without a gift," the priests and fortunetellers answered. "Send along something to Israel's God to make up for taking the chest in the first place. Then you will be healed, and you will find out why the Lord was causing you so much trouble."

So make five gold models of the sores and five gold models of the rats that are wiping out your crops. If you honor the God of Israel with this gift, maybe he will stop causing trouble for you and your gods and your crops.

That is how the Philistines sent gifts to the Lord to make up for taking the sacred chest. They sent five gold sores, one each for their towns of Ashdod, Gaza, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron.

They also sent one gold rat for each walled town and for every village that the five Philistine rulers controlled. The huge stone where the Levites set the chest is still there in Joshua's field as a reminder of what happened.

and it stayed there for twenty years. During this time everyone in Israel was very sad and begged the Lord for help.

Then Samuel said, "Tell everyone in Israel to meet together at Mizpah, and I will pray to the Lord for you."

The Philistines were so badly beaten that it was quite a while before they attacked Israel again. After the battle, Samuel set up a monument between Mizpah and the rocky cliffs. He named it "Help Monument" to remind Israel how much the Lord had helped them. For as long as Samuel lived, the Lord helped Israel fight the Philistines.

Every year he would go around to the towns of Bethel, Gilgal, and Mizpah where he served as judge for the people.

Then he would go back to his home in Ramah and do the same thing there. He also had an altar built for the Lord at Ramah.

and said, "You are an old man. You set a good example for your sons, but they haven't followed it. Now we want a king to be our leader, just like all the other nations. Choose one for us!"

Samuel told the people who were asking for a king what the Lord had said: