He who brought the news answered, “Israel has fled before the Philistines, and there has been also a great slaughter among the people. Your two sons also, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead, and God’s ark has been captured.”
ExplanationCommentary
Verse 17. Taken. Every sentence expresses something more distressing to the aged judge and father; the flight and slaughter of his people, the ruin of his children, and the loss of the ark, which must have filled all Israel with a mortal gloom and terror, lest God should have abandoned them. So many dismal circumstances oppressing the heart of Heli, he fainted away, and falling backwards, expired. Bible.—The Scripture takes notice of his great age, that we might not think that he killed himself in despair. Salien.