Now the sons of Eli were wicked men; they had no regard for the LORDNow the sons of Eli were wicked men. They didn’t know Yahweh.Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial; they knew not the Lord.Now the sons of Eli were base men; they knew not Jehovah.
3 sermons cite this verse
… and the prophet was Eli. And Eli had two sons, and I love this. Just studying this this week, it was pretty crazy seeing this verse, but in 1 Samuel 2 verse 12, Eli's sons were scoundrels. Can you believe that word's in the Bible? They were scoundrels and they had no regard for the Lord. And that was a problem because they were in charge of the worship of the people of God. They were in charge of the house of God. And the scripture tells us in these chapters, all the crazy stuff they did. Wicked guys running the church, if you will. And they got into a conflict with the Philistines. Now, you know the Philistines, the dreaded Philistines. Israel, Philistines are always going at each other. These idol worshipers and these God fearers who had lost the fear of God in the days of Eli's sons, Hophni and Phinehas. And they get into battle with the Philistines, they go to battle. I'll speed up the story. And 4,000 Israelites are killed. …
… And Samuel is serving alongside him. And verse 12 says, now the sons of Eli were worthless men. Now a couple things here. This word now, it could really almost be translated but because it presents a contrast between what we just read about Samuel and what we read about these sons of Eli. And we're gonna see this contrast all throughout the passage. And the sons of Eli were like Eli's second in command. We find out later that Eli was pretty old by this point and most of the day-to-day duties for overseeing the tabernacle were being carried out by his sons. They were the ones leading out in the worship of God's people at the tabernacle. And they were worthless. Now, some of your translations might have the word wicked here. Just to give you a picture of how wicked they were, the last time we saw this Hebrew word describing men in the Bible was Judges 19.22 and Judges 20.13 when a gang of men violated and murdered a woman. …
6. Nineteen years ago, we considered this question in our public Conference at Leeds, — Whether the Methodists ought to separate from the Church; and after a long and candid inquiry, it was determined, nemine contradicente, that it was not expedient for them to separate. The reasons were set down at large, and they stand equally good at this day. 7. In order to put this matter beyond all possible dispute, I have chosen to speak from these words, which give a fair occasion of observing what the dealings of God in his Church have been, even from so early a period: For it is generally allowed that Eli lived at least a thousand years before our Lord came into the world. In the verses preceding the text we read, (1 Sam. 2:12.) “Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial; they knew not the Lord.” They were wicked to an uncommon degree. Their profane violence, with respect to the sacrifices, is related with all its shocking circumstances in the following verses. But (what was a greater abomination still) “they lay with the women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.”(1 Sam. 2:22.) On both these accounts, “the sin of the young men was very great; and men abhorred the offering of the Lord.” 8. May I be permitted to make a little digression, in order to correct a mistranslation in the twenty-fifth verse? In our translation it runs thus: “They hearkened not unto the voice of their father, because the Lord would slay them.” Ought it not rather to be rendered, “Therefore the Lord was about to slay them?” [1 Sam. 2:25] As if he had said, “The Lord would not suffer their horrid and stubborn wickedness to escape unpunished; but because of that wickedness, he slew them both in one day, by the hand of the Philistines.” They did not sin (as might be imagined from the common translation) because God had determined to slay them; but God therefore determined to slay them, because they had thus sinned. …