The tumultuous period of the judges was winding down to a close. Joshua had led the Israelites into the land of promise, but it was up to the various tribes to purge the pagan influences from their respective land allotments. That did not happen, and the fruit of this incomplete obedience was corruption, intermarriage and idolatry. When God allowed the enemies of Israel to overrun the Israelites, they would cry out, and God, in mercy would send a deliverer (a judge). But the judges were by and large leaders of defensive wars rather than true reformers. Seldom was there ever a long period of national repentance. One refrain echoed a number of times throughout the age, and, in fact, the book of Judges ends with that refrain: "In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit" (Judges 21:25).

Under the judges, Israel had no central government. The twelve tribes were only loosely federated. Eli was the priest at Shiloh, where the tabernacle was established and where the Ark of the Covenant rested. He seems a venerable enough character, but with one major flaw. He did not restrain his sons, also priests. Hophni and Phinehas bullied the worshippers at Shiloh, dishonored the worship decorum established by Moses and slept with the women that served at the tabernacle. It is a small wonder that revelation from God was rare in those days (I Samuel 2:1). No one was really on the same frequency with YAHWEH.

Finally, the Lord did begin to make Himself known through Samuel, who summoned the nation together to ward off the invading Philistines. In the first confrontation, 4,000 Israelites fell. Then, they recalled how in the days of Moses and Joshua, the Ark of the Covenant went before the armies of Israel, so they brought the ark down from Shiloh for the next battle, but 30,000 fell in that fray. And, to add insult to injury, the Philistines captured the ark.

Hophni and Phinehas died in that battle. When the news of their deaths and of the capture of the ark was delivered to Eli, the old man fell off his chair and broke his neck. Upon hearing all these bad tidings, the widow of Phinehas went into a premature labor that eventually took her life. Before she died, her attendant tried to encourage her by announcing that she had a son but she would not be consoled. She named the child Ichabod, which meant, "no glory." Ichabod’s mother attributed the departure of God’s glory to the capture of the ark and to the deaths of the nation’s leaders, but those things were just a scratch on the surface of Israel’s miserable spiritual condition.

Israel’s spiritual leader was only half-hearted in his devotion to God. When push came to shove, Eli loved (as the world understands love) his sons more than he loved God. The people had no sense of true worship at all. They exchanged a vibrant fellowship with their covenant God for a mocking and presumptuous superstition. Rather than turn in repentant faith and devotion to the God of the ark, they relied on the ark itself for a quick fix to a current dilemma.

God would continue to make His glory known in a strange way by bringing disaster on every pagan city where the Philistines attempted to park the ark. Eventually, the ark was returned and after a great celebration, a period of normalcy returned to Israel that lasted for as long as Samuel led Israel. But when Samuel grew old, and the people were making provision for the future, they looked to the nations all around them for their cue and demanded a king. God saw this as a desire by His people to be ruled by someone other than Himself.

When God resides on the periphery of the lives of His people, it is time to name a baby somewhere, Ichabod. When God is treated as an ace-in-the-hole in our time of trouble rather than given supremacy in our hearts, it is time to name a baby somewhere, Ichabod. When turning to God in true repentance and trusting Him is an option so deeply buried in a community’s collective minds that no one thinks of that before looking to the world around them for a lead, then it is time to name a baby somewhere, Ichabod. Let our prayer be, "Bring back the glory!" and let us understand that petition to be tantamount to inviting God to a place of centrality in our lives.

© 2003 by R. Karl Crouch, 551 Abbeyville Road, Lancaster, PA 17603