a son (as a builder of the family name) · conjunction + noun, common masculine plural construct
Eli
עֵלִ֖י'e.Li
H5941
Eli · proper noun, a man's name
sons
בְּנֵ֣יbe.Nei
H1121
a son (as a builder of the family name) · noun, common masculine plural construct
Belial
בְלִיָּ֑עַלve.li.Ya.'al
H1100
without profit · noun, common masculine singular absolute
knew
יָדְע֖וּya.de.'U
H3045
to know (properly · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person common plural
LORD
יְהוָֽהYah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · proper noun, a title
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Romans 1:28-30 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not con…
Jeremiah 2:8 The priests said not, Where is the LORD? and they that handle the law knew me not: the pastors also transgressed against me, and the prophet…
Judges 2:10 And also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers: and there arose another generation after them, which knew not the LORD, nor y…
Romans 1:21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foo…
2 Corinthians 6:15 And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?
Hosea 4:6-9 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest t…
John 17:3 And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
Malachi 2:1-9 And now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on 1 Samuel 2:11-26
In these verses we have the good character and posture of Elkanah's family, and the bad character and posture of Eli's family. The account of these two is observably interwoven throughout this whole paragraph, as if the historian intended to set the one over against the other, that they might set off one another. The devotion and good order of Elkanah's family aggravated the iniquity of Eli's house; while the wickedness of Eli's sons made Samuel's early piety appear the more bright and illustrious.
I. Let us see how well things went in Elkanah's family and how much better than formerly. 1. Eli dismissed them from the house of the Lord, when they had entered their little son there, with a ble…
THE SIN OF ELl'S SONS. (Sa1 2:12-17)
Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial--not only careless and irreligious, but men loose in their actions, and vicious and scandalous in their habits. Though professionally engaged in sacred duties, they were not only strangers to the power of religion in the heart, but they had thrown off its restraints, and even ran, as is sometimes done in similar cases by the sons of eminent ministers, to the opposite extreme of reckless and open profligacy.
Adam Clarke on 1 Samuel 2:12
The sons of Eli were sons of Belial - They were perverse, wicked, profligate men; devil's children. They knew not the Lord.
"They know! nor would an angel show Him; They would not know, nor choose to know Him."
These men were the principal cause of all the ungodliness of Israel. Their most execrable conduct, described Sa1 2:13-17, caused the people to abhor the Lord's offering. An impious priesthood is the grand cause of the transgressions and ruin of any nation; witness France, Germany, Spain, Ac., from 1792 to 1814.
John Gill on 1 Samuel 2:12
Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial,.... Not that Eli their father was Belial, a wicked man; but though they had so good a father, they were very wicked men, unprofitable abandoned wretches, that cast off the yoke of the law of God, and gave themselves up to all manner of wickedness:
they knew not the Lord; not that they had no knowledge of God in theory, or were real atheists, but they were so practically; they denied him in works, they had no love to him, nor fear of him, and departed from his ways and worship, as much as if they were entirely ignorant of him; so the Targum,"they did not know to fear before the Lord,''or serve him; or, as Kimchi,"they did not know the way of the Lord,…
The Church Fathers
Furthermore, the sons of Eli, sons of Belial, etc. The sons of the Jewish priesthood, sons of blind light, or without a yoke (for both Belial and Beliar mean this), were those who did not know the doctrine of Christ; not following the commands of the divine law but adhering to their own statutes and traditions.
Samuel bore with the wicked sons of Eli, his debased sons whom the people would not bear and who were thereupon accused by divine truth or disciplined by divine wrath; finally he bore with the people themselves in their pride and rejection of God.… Let them read who wish, and who can, the heavenly language. They will find that all the saints have had to tolerate among their own people those who were recognized as servants and friends of God.
3. Supply "were." For who else are the sons of Eli, if not the Israelites according to the flesh, who knew the Sacred Scripture published by the fathers, and yet did not know the one whom Scripture had promised? Whom indeed Truth itself rebukes in the Gospel, saying: "Abraham rejoiced to see my day; he saw it, and was glad" (John 8:56). And again: "If you believed Moses, you would certainly believe me also, for he wrote about me" (John 5:46). Therefore they did not know the Lord, who spurned the Redeemer coming in our flesh. Whence He complains through Isaiah, saying: "The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master's manger; but Israel has not known me" (Isaiah 1:3). As if to say: I opened to him the ways of my incarnation long before through the prophets, and yet he did not accept what I had promised when it was presented. For this reason he also did not know the duty of the priests toward the people. For he would have recognized the priestly office if he had preached that the one who had been promised by the law and the prophets had already come for the redemption of the human race. Because indeed he not only did not believe in Him, but even raged in persecuting Him, he neither knew the Lord nor the duty of the priests toward the people. Yet his malice would have been less if he who refused to benefit the lesser ones by preaching the coming of the Redeemer had at least feared to do harm. It follows therefore, and says: 67 (Verses 13, 14.) But whenever anyone had offered a sacrifice, the servant of the priest would come while the flesh was being cooked, and he had a three-pronged fork in his hand, and he would thrust it into the basin, or the kettle, or the pot, or the cauldron, and whatever the fork brought up, he would take for the priests.
Dictionary and topics
Belial — Worthlessness, frequently used in the Old Testament as a proper name. It is first used in Deut. 13:13. In the New Testament it is found only in 2 Cor. 6:15, where it is used as a name of Satan, the…
Fast — The sole fast required by the law of Moses was that of the great Day of Atonement (q.v.), Lev. 23:26-32. It is called “the fast” (Acts 27:9). The only other mention of a periodical fast in the Old…
Hannah — Favour, grace, one of the wives of Elkanah the Levite, and the mother of Samuel (1 Sam. 1; 2). Her home was at Ramathaim-zophim, whence she was wont every year to go to Shiloh, where the tabernacle…
Hophni — Pugilist or client, one of the two sons of Eli, the high priest (1 Sam. 1:3; 2:34), who, because he was “very old,” resigned to them the active duties of his office. By their scandalous conduct they…
Phinehas — Mouth of brass, or from old Egypt, the negro. (1.) Son of Eleazar, the high priest (Ex. 6:25). While yet a youth he distinguished himself at Shittim by his zeal against the immorality into which the…
Poetry — Has been well defined as “the measured language of emotion.” Hebrew poetry deals almost exclusively with the great question of man’s relation to God. “Guilt, condemnation, punishment, pardon,…
Samuel — Heard of God. The peculiar circumstances connected with his birth are recorded in 1 Sam. 1:20. Hannah, one of the two wives of Elkanah, who came up to Shiloh to worship before the Lord, earnestly…
Songs — Of Moses (Ex. 15; Num. 21:17; Deut. 32; Rev. 15:3), Deborah (Judg. 5), Hannah (1 Sam. 2), David (2 Sam. 22, and Psalms), Mary (Luke 1:46-55), Zacharias (Luke 1:68-79), the angels (Luke 2:13), Simeon…
Children, Wicked · Know not God — Know not God
Covetousness · Exemplified: Eli’s sons — Exemplified: Eli’s sons
Samuel the servant of the Lord under Eli. Ungodliness of the sons of Eli. - Sa1 2:11 forms the transition to what follows. After Hannah's psalm of thanksgiving, Elkanah went back with his family to his home at Ramah, and the boy (Samuel) was serving, i.e., ministered to the Lord, in the presence of Eli the priest. The fact that nothing is said about Elkanah's wives going with him, does not warrant the interpretation given by Thenius, that Elkanah went home alone. It was taken for granted that his wives went with him, according to Sa1 1:21 ("all his house"). את־יחוה שׁרת, which signifies literally, both here and in Sa1 3:1, to serve the Lord, and which is used interchangeably with יי את־פּני…
scoundrels (Hebrew sons of Belial): See study note on 1:16. • had no respect for (literally did not know) the Lord: Although they were priests among God’s people, they did not acknowledge God or seek to abide by his will (cp. Jer 2:8).
Rashi on 1 Samuel 2:11
Served Adonoy in the presence of Eili the kohein. From here [our Sages conclude] that "whoever serves before a Torah scholar is considered as though he had served before the Divine Presence."8Talmud Yerushalmi Eruvin 5:1. The reason being that a Torah scholar cleaves to ‘ה in his thoughts at all times so that even his physical activities are holy.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Gluttony
· .
— .
Hophni · Sin of — Sin of
Judge · .Eli’s — .Eli’s
Offence · Exemplified: Sons of Eli — Exemplified: Sons of Eli
Titles And Names Of The Wicked · Sons of Belial — Sons of Belial
Worldliness · .Eli’ s — .Eli’ s
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
