Every year, too, when his mother came with Elkanah to Shiloh to keep the Feast, she brought with her a little coat that she had made for Samuel to wear when he was not in the temple. She listened while he poured out to her all that had come about since last they had met. She rejoiced in his happiness and to see how every year he grew in stature and understanding, though her heart ached when the time came again to say good-bye. And Eli blessed Hannah and her husband for the most precious gift which it had been in their power to make. ‘May the Lord reward you! And for this child that you have lent to him may he give you many to be a comfort to you throughout your lives.’ And Hannah had other children, three sons and two daughters; but Samuel was her first-born, and she loved him very dearly.

Eli was now old and growing feeble, and in the last few years of his life when he should have been at peace with God and man, he was in misery and distress because of the evil reports that came to his ears concerning his two sons, Hophni and Phinehas. They lived in open and shameless sin, and were feared and hated by all who came to the temple. They cheated the poor and simple of their offerings and abused the helpless. But because they were priests of the Lord none dared to resist or to accuse them openly.

Eli alone had authority over them. But though he reasoned with his sons and rebuked them, his heart was divided between his love for them and his hatred of their wickedness. He pleaded with them, beseeching them to pay heed to him before it was too late.

‘If one man sin against another,’ he said, ‘God of his mercy may be appeased and bring peace between them. But if a man who is consecrated to his service sin against God himself, to whom then shall he fly for refuge? Who then shall intercede for him?’

But his sons only mocked at him behind his back, and went their own way from one wickedness to another. And Eli withdrew himself more and more into solitude with only Samuel to wait upon him.

There came at last to Eli a man of God who arraigned him face to face. ‘I am come by the will of the God of Israel,’ he said, ‘to declare his judgment against thee and against thy two sons, the abhorred of all Israel. In the days when the people languished in misery and slavery in Egypt did not the Lord choose from among them one to be his priest and his anointed, and to stand before him at his holy altar? As with him, the Lord’s chosen, so with his son that came after him, and so with thee thyself and with thy sons. They were consecrated and set apart in his service, and in that only. But where now is the honour and glory of the highest? Thy sons have brought shame and disgrace on the worship of the Lord. Their very name is a byword and a cause of loathing and hatred. Thou knowest it, and hast rebuked them; but hast done nothing.

‘Hearken, then: the dreadful day of reckoning draws near. They that honour the Lord, the Lord will honour; but they that despise him shall be forsaken. A time comes, and that soon, when of thine own blood and lineage there shall be left none honoured in Israel, and of those that come after thee not one shall survive the flower of his age. The Lord will abandon thee, and will chose a man faithful and true to be his priest in thy stead, and even thy memory shall be a shame. As for thy two sons, disaster and disgrace lie in wait for them; they shall die together on the same day, and thou shalt know it for a sign that what I have foretold will surely come about. Ay, and thy children’s children shall be outcasts, and shall come and crouch before the gates of the temple begging for but a morsel of bread and a pittance of silver to save them from starvation. Thus saith the Lord.’

And the man of God went out from the presence of Eli, leaving him alone. The old man sat on in the growing darkness, shaken and forlorn, striving to pray, but beset with horror and confusion.

He had been warned, he was sore afraid, and yet in his weakness of will he failed to give heed to it.

His eyes had now begun to grow dim, and his sight to fail him. And to Samuel was given the charge of trimming and filling with oil the seven lamps of the six-branched golden candlestick that stood before the