Samuel and the Loss of the Ark

At Shiloh, where the tent of meeting had been set up after the conquest (Joshua 18:1), the priest Eli served with his sons Hophni and Phinehas. Hannah, who was childless, vowed there that if she bore a son she would give him to the Lord. She named the boy Samuel and, once he was weaned, brought him to Eli to serve at the shrine (1 Samuel 1:2–3, 9–11, 20–28).

Eli’s sons took the worshippers’ sacrifices for themselves by force, and a man of God told Eli that his house would be cut off and both sons would die on one day (1 Samuel 2:12–17, 27–34). One night the boy Samuel, sleeping near the ark, heard a voice call him and three times went to Eli. Eli told him to answer, “Speak, Yahweh; for your servant hears.” The message he received confirmed the judgment on Eli’s house (1 Samuel 3:1–14). As he grew up, all Israel “from Dan even to Beersheba” came to know him as a prophet (1 Samuel 3:19–21).

The Philistines then defeated Israel near Ebenezer. The elders had the ark brought from Shiloh into the camp, but Israel was beaten again, the ark was captured, and Hophni and Phinehas were killed (1 Samuel 4:1–11). Eli, ninety-eight years old and blind, fell backward from his seat at the news and died (1 Samuel 4:15–18). His daughter-in-law named her newborn son Ichabod, saying, “The glory has departed from Israel” (1 Samuel 4:19–22).

The Philistines set the ark in the temple of Dagon at Ashdod, where the god’s image was found fallen and broken before it. Tumours broke out in Ashdod, then in Gath and Ekron as the ark was moved (1 Samuel 5). After seven months they sent it back on a cart drawn by two cows, with gold offerings, to Beth-shemesh (1 Samuel 6:1–15). From there it was taken to a house in Kiriath-jearim (1 Samuel 6:21–7:2).

Samuel called Israel to put away foreign gods. At Mizpah the Philistines were routed, and he set up a stone named Ebenezer (1 Samuel 7:3–12). He judged Israel for the rest of his life, on a yearly circuit from his home at Ramah (1 Samuel 7:15–17). The books of Samuel do not say that the ark ever returned to Shiloh. It was at Kiriath-jearim when David went to bring it to Jerusalem (1 Chronicles 13:5–6) (David Takes Jerusalem and Brings the Ark). In Acts, Peter counts the prophets “from Samuel” onward (Acts 3:24).

How this is dated

Traditional date. From later tradition or from internal biblical chronology, with no outside anchor.

Samuel ties these events to no outside record. It says that Eli judged Israel for forty years (1 Samuel 4:18), that twenty years passed with the ark at Kiriath-jearim before the assembly at Mizpah (1 Samuel 7:2), and that Samuel was old when Israel asked for a king (1 Samuel 8:1–5). Counted back from Saul’s accession about 1050 BC, itself an approximate date (Saul Becomes Israel’s First King), this puts the capture of the ark in the first half of the eleventh century BC. The year shown is a round figure.

The narrative does not say what became of Shiloh. Later texts speak of it as a place that God abandoned and made an example (Psalm 78:60–61) (Jeremiah 7:12–14). The excavators of Khirbet Seilun found that the settlement of this period ended in a fire, which they dated to the middle of the eleventh century BC (I. Finkelstein, S. Bunimovitz and Z. Lederman, Shiloh: The Archaeology of a Biblical Site, 1993); that date is itself debated.

In context

Samuel and the Loss of the Ark

How this is dated

Primary sources

Scripture

In context

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