Israel loses the first battle, four thousand men on the field, and the elders ask the right question: 3"Why has the LORD defeated us today before the Philistines?" Then they answer it themselves without waiting for God. Bring the ark here from Shiloh, they say, 3"that it may come among us and save us." They never consult Samuel, whom God had just established as a prophet. They repent of nothing specific. They send for the box.
For a moment it seems to work. The ark arrives and the camp roars. The Philistines are frightened: 7"A god has come into the camp." Their fear is better theology than Israel's confidence. They remember what this God did to Egypt, and they fight anyway. Israel is routed a second time, thirty thousand foot soldiers fall, the ark is captured, and Hophni and Phinehas die on the same day, just as the man of God had said (1 Samuel 2:34).
The news reaches Eli, who has been sitting by the road 13"for his heart trembled for the ark of God." The messenger reports the army routed, his sons dead, and the ark taken, and it is the ark that breaks him: 18"As soon as he mentioned the ark of God, Eli fell over backward." He was ninety-eight, blind and heavy, and whatever else was wrong with his house, his last act was to care about the one thing that mattered most.
The final scene belongs to a woman the chapter never names, Phinehas's wife. She goes into labor on hearing that her husband, her father-in-law, and the ark are all gone in one day. The women attending her offer the comfort anyone would: "Do not be afraid, for you have borne a son." She does not answer. She names the boy 21"Ichabod," which means no glory, and says it twice in two verses, as though once could not carry the weight of it.
Israel did not lose a contest between gods. The next chapter shows the Philistine god Dagon on his face before the captured ark, twice, in his own temple. The glory withdrew because Israel had treated the ark like a lucky charm. Nobody had asked God what he wanted, and nobody had turned from the sin he had already named through the man of God. The form of his presence was still in the camp, and the presence itself was not there to be commanded.
Centuries later Ezekiel watched the glory leave the temple in Jerusalem, in stages, as if reluctant to go. And centuries after that, John wrote the answer to Ichabod: "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory" (John 1:14). "Dwelt" carries the sense of pitching a tent, and the tabernacle is behind the word. What Israel lost at Shiloh, God gave back in a person, walking among the very people it had once left.
It is easy to reach for the form of God's presence and skip the reality. Ask where you have trusted a habit, a building, or a name to do what only God can do.
Prayer
Father, forgive us for reaching for the form of your presence when we should have sought you. Thank you that the glory which left Shiloh came to dwell among us in Jesus. Keep us from mistaking the vessel for you. We want you yourself, far more than the things that carry your name. In Jesus' name, amen.