Hophni and Phinehas had every advantage a religious life could offer. They were priests, born into the work, serving at the sanctuary where the LORD was worshiped. The narrator still gives his verdict in six words: 12"they did not know the LORD." Their office was legitimate. Their knowledge of God was absent.
Their corruption was specific. Priests were entitled to a portion of each sacrifice, but these two sent a servant with a three-pronged fork to take whatever came up out of the pot, and demanded raw meat before the fat had been burned for the LORD. Anyone who objected was threatened with force. The narrator sums it up: 17"the men treated the offering of the LORD with contempt." Worshipers came to bring God a gift and went home robbed by the men who stood between them and him.
Eli knew. He 22"kept hearing all that his sons were doing," and he finally asks the right question. Then he stops. No removal from office follows, and no discipline. When the man of God arrives, the charge against Eli is that he has honored 29"your sons above me." Eli chose peace with his sons over obedience to God, and he ate well from what they took. His silence was a decision. A father who sees sin clearly and will not act on it has already taken a side, and the worshipers at Shiloh paid for that choice.
Between these dark scenes the narrator keeps returning to a boy. 18"Samuel was ministering before the LORD." Hannah brings him a little robe every year. Nothing dramatic happens to him in this chapter. He keeps growing, 26"in favor with the LORD and also with man," quietly, in a house coming apart around him. It is the same sanctuary and the same altar, with two lives heading in opposite directions.
Then comes the sentence that governs the chapter: 30"those who honor me I will honor, and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed." God had promised Eli's house a place before him forever, and here he takes that promise back. An office is a trust, and the people who hold it can forfeit it.
Yet God adds a promise of his own: 35"I will raise up for myself a faithful priest, who shall do according to what is in my heart and in my mind." The New Testament shows where that hope lands. Jesus "learned obedience through what he suffered" (Hebrews 5:8), and Luke says of the boy Jesus what this chapter says of Samuel, that he grew "in favor with God and man" (Luke 2:52). Where every earlier priest failed, he honored the Father all the way to the cross.
Standing near holy things is different from knowing the God they belong to. Ask where a habit of prayer, Scripture, or church has become something you handle, and where you have honored someone you love above the God you serve.
Prayer
Father, we can stand at your altar every day and still not know you. Guard us from that. Where we have grown comfortable with the forms of faith while our hearts wander, call us back. Thank you for Christ, the faithful priest who honored you to the end. Let us grow quietly and faithfully in your favor. In Jesus' name, amen.