“I will raise up for myself a faithful cohen who will do what I want and what I intend. I will make his family faithful, and he will serve in the presence of my anointed one forever.”-1 Samuel 2:35
Ever had a bad day when you experienced a series of disasters one after another?
Like you woke up one morning…
And there was no milk in the fridge for your morning cereal…
You got in your car to go to work but the darn vehicle wouldn’t start…
You arrived late to the office where your boss chewed you out…
Afterwards you went to check your emails…
And received bad news about some deal that didn’t go through.
And so on and on…
Well, a similar thing was about to happen to Israel…
But on a much more devastating level…
Israel’s current High Priest Eli was about to lose all of his authority.
The Israelites were about to go to war against the Philistines.
During this battle, Eli’s two sons would be killed…
30,000 Hebrew soldiers would lose their lives.
And Israel would lose possession of their precious Ark of the Covenant…
After all of the dust had cleared and settled…
Eli’s descendants would end up poverty-stricken and forced to beg for their bread just to stay alive.
The Lord had TAKAN or “weighed” the deeds of Eli’s family…
And reversed their fortunes and fate per His justice.
True to Hannah’s prayer…
God took the powerful and made them weak…
And He took the weak and made them strong.
Finally, the Lord prophesied…
“I will raise up for myself a faithful cohen
who will do what I want and what I intend.
I will make his family faithful,
and he will serve in the presence
of my anointed one forever.”
-1 Samuel 2:35
Now there’s some confusion about who the Lord was specifically referring to here.
Some folks assume it’s Samuel because he was the one who rose to power afterwards.
The only problem with this interpretation is that Samuel was not a legitimate High Priest.
Sure, he did wear many hats…
And served as a priest, judge or prophet depending on the situation.
But at the end of the day, he simply was NOT a priest.
So this faithful COHEN who God would raise up could not have been Samuel.
It had to be someone else.
But who?
Most Jewish commentary say this faithful priest was ZADOK…
This makes sense because he was from the legitimate line of Eleazar.
We’ll talk about this some more the next time we meet.
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