Twenty years pass after the ark reaches Kiriath-jearim, and the narrator compresses them into a sentence: 2"all the house of Israel lamented after the LORD." This is a nation homesick for a God it drifted from through years of small neglect. The ache makes repentance possible, though longing by itself is still only longing.
Samuel is specific. 3"If you are returning to the LORD with all your heart, then put away the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you." Every rival god Israel had kept in reserve has to go. The response takes one plain sentence: 4"So the people of Israel put away the Baals and the Ashtaroth, and they served the LORD only."
At Mizpah the nation gathers. They 6"drew water and poured it out before the LORD," a wordless gesture of emptying, and they fast. Then they say the sentence repentance has to say: 6"We have sinned against the LORD." This is a public act, done together, that could be seen and dated. There is no excuse in it, and no blame shifted onto the Philistines, or Eli's sons, or twenty years of silence.
This is exactly when the Philistines attack, while Israel is gathered for repentance and not for war. The people's response shows how far they have come since chapter four: 8"Do not cease to cry out to the LORD our God for us." No ark is carried into the field. There is Samuel, a nursing lamb, and a prayer.
9"The LORD answered him." While Samuel is still offering the sacrifice, 10"the LORD thundered with a mighty sound that day against the Philistines and threw them into confusion." Israel's part is almost embarrassingly small. They chase down an army that is already broken. The battle was won before their soldiers engaged.
Samuel takes a stone, sets it up, and names it Ebenezer, which means stone of help. The words "till now" reach back over everything: Egypt, the wilderness, the judges, Hannah's barrenness, Eli's collapse, the ark's long exile, all the way to this one battlefield. A single stone carries a history of grace. It also looks forward, since a memorial stone is meant to be standing and legible long after the people who raised it are gone.
Samuel spends the rest of his life judging Israel on a circuit from his home at Ramah, where he built an altar to the LORD (7:15-17), a steady ministry that keeps the stone's message alive for a while. The next chapter is sad. The same people who watched God win a battle they never fought will ask Samuel for a king 8:5"like all the nations." An Ebenezer is only as good as the memory that keeps it.
Every believer needs an Ebenezer, a fixed point to look back to and say, till now. The greatest one stands outside an empty tomb. Israel's victory at Mizpah followed a lamb offered and God's answer from heaven. Ours followed the Lamb himself, offered once, and God answered by raising him from the dead. Till now and beyond now, that is help enough for whatever lies ahead.
Prayer
Father, till now you have helped us, through every season we remember and many we cannot. Forgive us the Baals and Ashtaroth we quietly keep in reserve, the rival loves we have never fully put away. Direct our hearts to you and you only. When the enemy presses in as we turn back, thunder on our behalf as you did at Mizpah. We raise our Ebenezer today. In Jesus' name, amen.