1. the word of the LORD was rare . . . vision was not spread about. The “word of the LORD” is often a technical term referring to oracular message. Inquiring of the oracle would have been a priestly function, and so there is an intimation here of some sort of breakdown in the professional performance of the house of Eli. But the same phrase also is used to announce prophecy, and “vision” is a prophetic term: the whole episode concerns the transition from priestly to prophetic authority.

2. he could not see. Eli’s blindness reflects not only his decrepitude but his incapacity for vision in the sense of the previous verse. He is immersed in permanent darkness while the lad Samuel has God’s lamp burning by his bedside.

3. The lamp of God had not yet gone out. Since the sanctuary lamp would have burned through most of the night, this may be an indication, as Kyle McCarter Jr. has proposed, that the scene occurs close to dawn. But the symbolic overtones of the image should not be neglected: though vision has become rare, God’s lamp has not yet gone out, and the young ministrant will be the one to make it burn bright again (see verses 19–21, plus 4:1a). The actual lamp would have been a concave earthenware vessel filled with oil.

5. he ran to Eli and he said, “Here I am.” These words make clear that the previous “Here I am” is not a direct response to God but rather the boy’s calling-out from the inner chamber of the sanctuary to Eli in the outer room, thinking that it is Eli who called him. Samuel’s thrice-repeated error in this regard reflects not only his youthful inexperience but, as the sixteenth-century Hebrew exegete Yosef Karo has proposed, the general fact that “the word of the LORD was rare,” revelation an unfamiliar phenomenon.

6. “Samuel!” In an intensifying pattern, as the folktale structure of three repetitions with a final reversal unfolds, God’s address is now represented more immediately in dialogue instead of indirectly as in verse 4. The third time, God will say, “Samuel, Samuel!”

I did not call, my son. Until this point, we have been told nothing about Eli’s relationship with Samuel. The introduction of this single term of affection, “my son,” reveals the fondness of the blind and doomed Eli for his young assistant. His own biological sons have of course utterly betrayed his trust.

9. Speak, LORD, for Your servant is listening. This is virtually a formula of deferential response to superior authority. When Samuel repeats these words in verse 10, he omits “Lord,” perhaps, as Shimon Bar-Efrat has suggested, in diffidence about addressing God.

12. all that I have spoken concerning his house. This clause, and the one beginning “I have told him” in the next verse, refer back to the prophecy of doom pronounced by the man of God in chapter 2.

13. his sons have been scorning God. The Masoretic Text reads, “his sons have been scorning for themselves [lahem],” but the last Hebrew word has long been recognized as a tiqun sofrim, a scribal euphemism for ʾelohim, God—that is, the scribes were loath to write out so sacrilegious a phrase as scorning, or cursing, God. The verb here is commonly used in the sense of “to damn” or “to express contempt.” In this case, the sons’ contempt would have been expressed by their snatching of choice portions from the sacrificial meat.

he did not restrain them. The Hebrew kihah occurs only here as a transitive verb in the piʿel conjugation, although it is fairly common as an intransitive verb in the qal conjugation, meaning “to grow weak,” “to become dark,” or, as with the eyes of Eli in verse 2, “bleary.” The transitive sense of the verb would then be something like “to incapacitate,” to prevent someone from doing something. Its unusual usage in this sentence is obviously meant to align Eli’s failing in parental authority with the failing of his sight.

11–13. It is noteworthy that God’s first message to Samuel is a prophecy of doom. Its content not only indicates the overthrow of the priestly authority of the house of Eli and the implicit move to a different sort of authority to be embodied by the prophet Samuel, but also adumbrates the rather dour and dire role Samuel will play as leader, in relation to both Israel and to Saul.

15. And Samuel lay until morning. The verb does not necessarily imply that he fell asleep again after this riveting revelation, and if in fact the whole scene takes place close to dawn, there would be little time before the first light roused him.

he opened the doors of the house of the LORD. He resumes his usual business as faithful temple ministrant, almost as though he wanted to shrug off the divine revelation that implied a more portentous role for him than that of priestly acolyte.

Samuel was afraid to tell the vision. The divine message is called a vision though it was conveyed through words rather than images. The term used here, marʾeh, is different from ḥazon, the word that occurs in verse 1, though both refer to sight, the faculty Eli lacks.

17. Thus and more may God do to you. This is a set idiom for abjuration: may terrible things befall you if you fail to perform what I require of you.

18. What is good in His eyes let Him do. Old Eli’s response is pious resignation to the prophecy of doom. He of course is aware of his sons’ misdeeds and of his own failure to intervene successfully.

19. He let not fall to the ground any of his words. The antecedent of “his” is ambiguous, but since the point of the narrative report is to confirm Samuel’s prophetic authority, the more likely reading is that God did not allow any of Samuel’s words to go awry but fulfilled all of His prophet’s predictions.

20. from Dan to Beersheba. That is, from the far north, near Phoenician territory, to the Negeb in the south.

stalwart. Or, “faithful.” That is, Samuel’s authority as prophet was recognized by all Israel.

21. And the LORD continued to appear . . . the LORD was revealed. This emphatic indication is an obvious counterpoint to the first verse of the chapter: instead of being withheld, divine communication is now regular and repeated through the person of Samuel.

4:1a. Although the conventional chapter division attaches this brief clause to the next episode, it is clear that it is actually a final summary of Samuel’s new authority at the end of his dedication story. The next words of the text (chapter 4:1b) in fact refer to a military initiative undertaken by the Israelites without Samuel’s authorization.