2. the Philistines drew up their lines . . . and the battle forces were deployed. Interestingly, the language of strategic deployment is attached only to the Philistines. “Battle forces” is, literally, “battle.” Although the precise indications of these terms are unclear, their use elsewhere in the Bible makes it evident that they had a technical military application.

the lines. The Hebrew, maʿarakhah, is a singular, with the sense of “battle formation” or “front line.”

3. Let us take to us. The addition of this seemingly superfluous personal pronoun suggests how the elders arrogate to themselves a sacred object for their own purposes, conceiving the Ark magically or fetishistically as a vehicle of power that they can manipulate for military ends.

the Ark of the Covenant of the LORD. This would have been a large case made of acacia wood, with carved cherubim on its top, containing the stone tablets of the Law given at Sinai. As the material residue of the defining encounter between God and Israel, these tablets were viewed as the most sacrosanct possession of the nation. Hence the horror at the end of this episode over the news that the Ark has been captured by the Philistines.

4. troops. The Hebrew has a collective noun, ‘am, “people,” which in military contexts refers to the ordinary soldiers.

the Ark of the Covenant of the LORD of Armies enthroned on the cherubim. This extravagantly full title is a kind of epic flourish reflecting the power that the elders of Israel attribute to the Ark. “Armies” (“hosts” in older translations) underscores the LORD’s martial nature. The cherubim are fierce winged beasts imagined as God’s celestial steeds, and so the carved cherubim on the Ark are conceived as the earthly “throne” of the invisible deity.

Hophni and Phineas. In an odd stylistic tie, each time the two sons are mentioned in this chapter, their proper names are stuck on at the very end of the sentence, as though their precise identity were being isolated for opprobrium.

6. the camp of the Hebrews. “Hebrews” is generally the designation of the Israelites when they are named by other peoples.

7. God has come into the camp. Here ʾelohim is the subject of a verb in the singular, but in verse 8, in proper polytheistic fashion, the Philistines use the same term but construe it grammatically as a plural, “gods.”

8. every blow. The Hebrew makah also means “plague,” an obviously appropriate sense here, but it is important that the writer uses the same word in verse 10, though with a military meaning, for a theological irony is intended in the pun: they feared the might of the LORD Who struck such terrible blows against Egypt, and then they themselves strike a blow against Israel, which actually does not have God in its midst, only His sacred paraphernalia. Here as elsewhere in the Bible, the national fiction is maintained that all the peoples of Canaan were intimately familiar with the Exodus story and deeply impressed by it.

9. Muster strength and be men. There may be a pointed antithesis in their speech between “gods” and “men.” In any case, they summon stirring rhetoric to rouse themselves from their fear of a supernatural adversary and to go out to do battle.

12. his garments torn and earth on his head. This disheveled appearance is not because of the fighting but reflects the customary signs of mourning.

13. Eli was seated in a chair by the road. Similarly, in chapter 1, he was seated in a chair in the temple—in both instances a token of his infirmity, his passivity or incapacity as leader. The Hebrew phrase behind “by the road” is textually problematic, as is the related phrase attached to the word “gate” in verse 18. Scholarly opinion differs as to whether Eli is sitting by the road, by the gate, or, like David in 2 Samuel 18, above the gate. The last of these possibilities would best explain his breaking his neck when he falls, but it is by no means the inevitable meaning of the Hebrew, and the Hebrew preposition in verse 18 actually indicates through the gate.

his heart was trembling over the Ark of God. Apprehension over the fate of his scurrilous sons is not mentioned.

14. What is this sound of uproar? Eli’s question pointedly, and ironically, parallels the question asked by the Philistines in verse 6 about the jubilant uproar from the Israelite camp. At the very end of the David story (1 Kings 1), the usurper Adonijah will ask virtually the same question about an uproar that spells disaster for him and his followers.

15. his eyes were rigid. The idiom for Eli’s blindness has a stark finality here that it does not have in 3:2. Presumably a good deal of time has elapsed since that moment of the young Samuel’s dedication as prophet, and the process of blindness is now complete. It is because Eli can see nothing that he must ask with particular urgency about the reason for all the shouting.

16. I am the one who has come from the lines, I from the lines fled today. This odd repetition may reflect a stammer of nervousness or confusion, as Shimon Bar-Efrat has proposed.

17. The report of the battle moves from a general indication of the defeat, to the admission of a rout, to the death of Eli’s two sons, and, finally, to what is assumed to be the worst catastrophe, the capture of the Ark. It should be noted that 1 and 2 Samuel are in part organized around a series of interechoing scenes in which a messenger brings ill tidings. The bearer of ill tidings to Adonijah at the very end of this long narrative also nervously repeats wegam, “what’s more” as he recounts the catastrophe.

18. And he had judged Israel forty years. This notice, with its use of the formulaic forty years, is odd because Eli certainly has not been a judge, either in the military-charismatic or the juridical sense. This sentence could be an attempt to establish a carryover from the Book of Judges, or it could be an inadvertent editorial repetition of the Judges formula.

19. big with child. The Hebrew says literally “was pregnant to give birth.”

she crouched down. In the ancient Near East, women generally gave birth in a kneeling position, leaning on a special birthing stone—examples have been uncovered by archaeologists—called in Hebrew a mashber.

21. Ichabod . . . Glory is exiled. The Hebrew name is conventionally construed to mean “Inglorious,” though Kyle McCarter Jr. has argued that the more probable meaning is “Where is glory?” or “Alas for glory!” In any case, it is a most peculiar name—the dying mother, overcome by the loss of the Ark (which affects her much more than her husband’s demise), inscribing the national catastrophe in her son’s name. Where one must agree unhesitatingly with McCarter is that the verb in this verse and the next should be rendered as “exiled” and not, as it is customarily translated, as “departed.” Exile is what it clearly denotes, and it is surely significant that this whole large sequence of stories that will provide an account of the founding of Israel’s dynasty and the crystallization of its national power begins with a refrain of glory exiled from Israel. It is also noteworthy that the term for “glory,” kavod, is transparently cognate with kaved, “heavy,” the adjective used to explain Eli’s lethal tumble from his chair—the leader who might be supposed to represent Israel’s glory exhibits only deadly heaviness.