In It For The Money? September 23, 2015
The Sons of Belial
1 Samuel 2:12 – 36 Page 1
We have been introduced to Hannah and her family
We know all about Samuel being dedicated to the Lord and being at the Tabernacle
We also met the High Priest in Chapter One
How is he doing about raising up the next generation?
How is the Priesthood doing after being in the land for 200 years?
1 Samuel 2:12
Now the sons of Eli were worthless men; they did not know the LORD…
Not the best way to start off finding out about someone
The sons of Eli, ______, men of God, who must know the Law and fulfill the exacts requirements of it, have not met the very first requirement
They are______, or perhaps, something worse
1 Samuel 2:12
Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial; they knew not the LORD. (KJV 1900)
1 Samuel 2:12
The sons of Eli were wicked men. They did not recognize the LORD’s authority. (NET)
1 Samuel 2:12
Now the sons of Eli were worthless men who did not know the LORD. (ISV)
The Hebrew in verse 12 actually does say they are sons of______
Some reckless or lawless persons were termed sons of Belial, which simply means a worthless person (cf. 1 Samuel 2:12; 25:17, 25).
C. Fred Dickason, Angels: Elect & Evil (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1995), 63.
Belial is especially well-attested as the proper name of the Devil, the powerful opponent of God, who accuses people and causes them to sin.
S. D. Sperling, “Belial,” ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst, Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (Leiden; Boston; Köln; Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge: Brill; Eerdmans, 1999), 170.
Thou, O Belial, dragon, apostate, crooked serpent, rebel against God, outcast from Christ, alien from the Holy Spirit, exile from the ranks of the angels, reviler of the laws of God, enemy of all that is lawful, who didst rise up against the first-formed of men, and didst drive forth [from obedience to] the commandment [of God] those who had in no respect injured thee; thou who didst raise up against Abel the murderous Cain; thou who didst take arms against Job: dost thou say to the Lord, “If Thou wilt fall down and worship me?” Oh what audacity! Oh what madness! Thou runaway slave, thou incorrigible slave, dost thou rebel against the good Lord? Dost thou say to so great a Lord, the God of all that either the mind or the senses can perceive, “If Thou wilt fall down and worship me?”
Pseudo-Ignatius of Antioch, “The Epistle of Ignatius to the Philippians,” in The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, vol. 1, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 119.
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Common Hebrew noun meaning “baseness,” “worthlessness,” “wickedness,” or “lawlessness.” Belial, however, is often rendered as a proper noun. Thus such translations as “sons of Belial” appear (KJV Jgs 19:22; 1 Sm 2:12), “daughter of Belial” (1 Sm 1:16), or “children of Belial” (Dt 13:13; Jgs 20:13).
Walter A. Elwell and Barry J. Beitzel, Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988), 276.
2 Corinthians 6:15
Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever?
The two sons of Eli were so bad, that Samuel, as he writes of them, calls them, literally, sons of Belial, or in so many words, ______
The last time we saw this term was in the Book of Judges
Judges 19:22
While they were celebrating, behold, the men of the city, certain worthless fellows, surrounded the house, pounding the door; and they spoke to the owner of the house, the old man, saying, “Bring out the man who came into your house that we may have relations with him.”
Judges 20:13
“Now then, deliver up the men, the worthless fellows in Gibeah, that we may put them to death and remove this wickedness from Israel.” But the sons of Benjamin would not listen to the voice of their brothers, the sons of Israel.
This term was used of those who were involved in the gang rape of the Levite’s concubine which resulted in the near destruction of the tribe of Benjamin
These two sons are compared, by the use of that term, to them
This is a warning to us
What we have learned to this point in the Scriptures is many of the moral failures of the past continue on today…this is one of them
2 Peter 2:1–22
But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. Many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned; and in their greed they will exploit you with false words; their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep. For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter; and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds), then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires and despise authority. Daring, self-willed, they do not tremble when they revile angelic majesties, whereas angels who are greater in might and power do not bring a reviling judgment against them before the Lord. But these, like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, reviling where they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed, suffering wrong as the wages of doing wrong. They count it a pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are stains and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, as they carouse with you, having eyes full of adultery that never cease from sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed, accursed children; forsaking the right way, they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness; but he received a rebuke for his own transgression, for a mute donkey, speaking with a voice of a man, restrained the madness of the prophet.
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These are springs without water and mists driven by a storm, for whom the black darkness has been reserved. For speaking out arrogant words of vanity they entice by fleshly desires, by sensuality, those who barely escape from the ones who live in error, promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved. For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment handed on to them. It has happened to them according to the true proverb, “A DOG RETURNS TO ITS OWN VOMIT,” and, “A sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire.”
Jude 3–16
Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints. For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. Now I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe. And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. Yet in the same way these men, also by dreaming, defile the flesh, and reject authority, and revile angelic majesties. But Michael the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against him a railing judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!” But these men revile the things which they do not understand; and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed. Woe to them! For they have gone the way of Cain, and for pay they have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam, and perished in the rebellion of Korah. These are the men who are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam; wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever. It was also about these men that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones, to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.” These are grumblers, finding fault, following after their own lusts; they speak arrogantly, flattering people for the sake of gaining an advantage.
______are still alive and well today, and we must all be continually on the watch for them
Remember what Hannah said as part of her prayer?
1 Samuel 2:3
“Boast no more so very proudly, Do not let arrogance come out of your mouth; For the LORD is a God of knowledge, And with Him actions are weighed.”
One of the ways to identify a prophet is many times they will speak to something that will take place in the______prior to speaking about something in the______
Eli’s sons______know the Lord
But the Lord______Eli’s sons
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However, verse 12 is meant to shock us. This was Israel, the nation chosen by God out of all the earth to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6). This was Shiloh, the place, for the time being, where the holy tabernacle was set up as God’s dwelling place among his people. These young men were priests, with the solemn duty to teach the people God’s Law and offer sacrifices for the atonement of the people’s sins. Therefore the scandal that the young priests at Shiloh were “sons of belial” who repudiated knowledge of the Lord was appalling.
John Woodhouse, 1 Samuel: Looking for a Leader, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008), 54.
The presence of God was visible on a daily basis over the Holy of Holies
God was with His people, but we have arrived at the problem with professional priests
These are professionals,______
This is a continuing problem today
…the pressure to “professionalize” the pastorate has morphed and strengthened. Among younger pastors, the talk is less about therapeutic and managerial professionalization, and more about communication or contextualization. The language of “professionalization” is seldom used in these regards, but there is a quiet pressure felt by many pastors: Be as good as the professional media folks, especially the cool anti-heroes and the most subtle comedians.
Daniel L. Akin et al., Still Not Professionals: Ten Pleas for Today’s Pastors (Minneapolis, MN: Desiring God, 2013).
So how bad was it under Eli and his sons?
1 Samuel 2:12–17
Is this the appropriate format?
Is this what the priests were supposed to be doing, or is this something they have taken to doing as the surrounding society became more and more Canaanized?
Leviticus 7:31–34
“The priest shall offer up the fat in smoke on the altar, but the breast shall belong to Aaron and his sons. You shall give the right thigh to the priest as a contribution from the sacrifices of your peace offerings. The one among the sons of Aaron who offers the blood of the peace offerings and the fat, the right thigh shall be his as his portion. For I have taken the breast of the wave offering and the thigh of the contribution from the sons of Israel from the sacrifices of their peace offerings, and have given them to Aaron the priest and to his sons as their due forever from the sons of Israel.”
Leviticus 10:14–15
“The breast of the wave offering, however, and the thigh of the offering you may eat in a clean place, you and your sons and your daughters with you; for they have been given as your due and your sons’ due out of the sacrifices of the peace offerings of the sons of Israel. The thigh offered by lifting up and the breast offered by waving they shall bring along with the offerings by fire of the portions of fat, to present as a wave offering before the LORD; so it shall be a thing perpetually due you and your sons with you, just as the LORD has commanded.”
Deuteronomy 18:3–4
“Now this shall be the priests’ due from the people, from those who offer a sacrifice, either an ox or a sheep, of which they shall give to the priest the shoulder and the two cheeks and the stomach. You shall give him the first fruits of your grain, your new wine, and your oil, and the first shearing of your sheep.”
The priests had gone beyond that and now were______
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They had servants now too
They were taking their portions before it was even offered up to the Lord
They were totally dishonest in the Lord’s work. They were running one of the first ______
J. Vernon McGee, Thru the Bible Commentary: History of Israel (1 and 2 Samuel), electronic ed., vol. 12 (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1991), 24.
This was the work to be done by the priests,______of the priests
They were holding themselves out to be too “holy” to be doing this work and they had servants doing their stealing for them
Today we see many driven away from the Church as a result of those who are involved in false teaching
The behavior of the Eli’s sons also was one more reason people were turning away from God
Luke 17:1–2
He said to His disciples, “It is inevitable that stumbling blocks come, but woe to him through whom they come! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea, than that he would cause one of these little ones to stumble.”
Such conduct as this on the part of the young men (the priests’ servants), was a______in the sight of the Lord, as they thereby brought the sacrifice of the Lord into contempt.
Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, vol. 2 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996), 385–386.
Numbers 15:30
“But the person who does anything defiantly, whether he is native or an alien, that one is blaspheming the LORD; and that person shall be cut off from among his people.”
Eli’s sons are______
1 Samuel 2:18–21
In contrast to the sons of Eli, we have Samuel
There has also been a progression, before he was ministering under Eli’s direction
1 Samuel 2:11
Then Elkanah went to his home at Ramah. But the boy ministered to the LORD before Eli the priest.
Now he is ministering all on his own
1 Samuel 2:18
Now Samuel was ministering before the LORD, as a boy wearing a linen ephod.
Just as his mother knew there was no other besides the Lord, Samuel too knew this