a day (as the warm hours) · noun, common masculine plural absolute
come
בָּאִ֔יםba.'Im
H935
to go or come (in a wide variety of applications) · verb, qal active participle, masculine plural absolute
off
וְגָֽדַעְתִּי֙ve.ga.da'.Ti
H1438
to fell a tree · conjunction + verb, qal sequential perfect, 1st person common singular
arm
זְרֹ֣עֲךָ֔ze.Ro.'a.kha
H2220
the arm (as stretched out) · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine singular
arm
זְרֹ֖עַze.Ro.a'
H2220
the arm (as stretched out) · noun, common feminine singular construct
father’s
אָבִ֑יךָ'a.Vi.kha
H1
father · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine singular
house
בֵּ֣יתbeit
H1004
a house (in the greatest variation of applications · noun, common masculine singular construct
man
זָקֵ֖ןza.Ken
H2205
old · adjective, masculine singular absolute
house
בְּבֵיתֶֽךָbe.vei.Te.kha
H1004
a house (in the greatest variation of applications · preposition + noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine singular
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
1 Samuel 22:17-20 And the king said unto the footmen that stood about him, Turn, and slay the priests of the LORD; because their hand also is with David, and…
1 Kings 2:26-27 And unto Abiathar the priest said the king, Get thee to Anathoth, unto thine own fields; for thou art worthy of death: but I will not at thi…
1 Samuel 4:11-20 And the ark of God was taken; and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were slain.
1 Samuel 14:3 And Ahiah, the son of Ahitub, I-chabod’s brother, the son of Phinehas, the son of Eli, the LORD’s priest in Shiloh, wearing an ephod. And th…
1 Samuel 4:2 And the Philistines put themselves in array against Israel: and when they joined battle, Israel was smitten before the Philistines: and they…
1 Kings 2:35 And the king put Benaiah the son of Jehoiada in his room over the host: and Zadok the priest did the king put in the room of Abiathar.
Job 22:9 Thou hast sent widows away empty, and the arms of the fatherless have been broken.
Psalms 37:17 For the arms of the wicked shall be broken: but the LORD upholdeth the righteous.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on 1 Samuel 2:27–end
Eli reproved his sons too gently, and did not threaten them as he should, and therefore God sent a prophet to him to reprove him sharply, and to threaten him, because, by his indulgence of them, he had strengthened their hands in their wickedness. If good men be wanting in their duty, and by their carelessness and remissness contribute any thing to the sin of sinners, they must expect both to hear of it and to smart for it. Eli's family was now nearer to God than all the families of the earth, and therefore he will punish them, Amo 3:2. The message is sent to Eli himself, because God would bring him to repentance and save him; not to his sons, whom he had determined to destroy. And it might…
I will cut off thine arm, and the arm of thy father's house--By the withdrawal of the high priesthood from Eleazar, the elder of Aaron's two sons (after Nadab and Abihu were destroyed, [Num 3:4]), that dignity had been conferred on the family of Ithamar, to which Eli belonged, and now that his descendants had forfeited the honor, it was to be taken from them and restored to the elder branch.
Adam Clarke on 1 Samuel 2:31
I will cut off thine arm - I will destroy the strength, power, and influence of thy family.
John Gill on 1 Samuel 2:31
Behold, the days come,.... Or, are coming (g); and will quickly come, in a very little time the things, after threatened, began to take place, even in the days of Eli's sons, and the whole was accomplished in about eighty years after:
that I will cut off thine arm, and the arm of thy father's house: that is, the strength of him and them, as the Targum, the strength of a man for doing business lying in his arm; meaning by it not long life, as Kimchi, who concludes this sense from what follows; but rather power and authority, or the exercise of the office of high priest, which gave him and his family great esteem and power; or it may be best of all, his children, which are the strength of a m…
The Church Fathers
Hence I beg you to offer a hand to our children lest we ourselves become liable for what is committed by them. Are you not aware of what happened to old Eli for not properly correcting his sons' shortcomings? I mean, when a disease requires surgery, it rapidly becomes incurable if the physician is bent on treating it with skin ointments and does not apply the appropriate remedy. In just the same way it behooved that old man to take appropriate action regarding his sons' failing, but by being guilty of excessive tolerance he too shared in their punishment.
Behold, the days are coming, and I will cut off your arm, etc. These days are present, no priest is now chosen from the stock of Aaron; but the boast of the legal priesthood has been cut off, not only in Eli alone, but in the entire succession of the Levitical lineage; so much so that not even a priest of the lesser order, who are called presbyters in Greek, that is, elders, is considered to be sought there. Whence the Septuagint interpreters have more clearly translated: And there shall not be an elder in my house for you, because indeed many from that tribe age in body, but in the house of the Lord they are not endowed with the rank of presbyters.
32. Now he is without an arm, because he who lost the temple and the tabernacle does not extend his hand for the offering of the old sacrifice. And because He was speaking to Eli, that is, to the chief priests of the Synagogue, He threatens to cut off not only his arm but also his house, so that He might clearly indicate the universal destruction of the old rite, and so that we might perceive that what we now see accomplished in the new age was ordained in ancient times. Therefore the Lord cut off both his arm and his house, because He utterly removed both the high priests of Judea and the lesser priests from the old sacrifice. Whence it is fittingly added: 'So that there shall not be an old man in your house.' By old men we should understand priests, whose office, because it is carried out with the weight of great dignity, is emptied of no childish levity by the burden of religion. His arm, therefore, and the house of his father were so cut off that there is no old man in his house, because the rite of the old priesthood so vanished that absolutely no one remained who could any longer sacrifice according to the old custom. For after the Redeemer of the human race offered Himself for our sins in the new manner of sacrifice, being a priest according to the ancient custom ceased. But he who suffers the losses of a forfeited priesthood bears the torment of a greater punishment from the pain of envy. Wherefore it is added: (Verse 32.) 'And you shall see your rival in the temple, in all the prosperity of Israel.'
Dictionary and topics
Abiathar — Father of abundance, or my father excels, the son of Ahimelech the high priest. He was the tenth high priest, and the fourth in descent from Eli. When his father was slain with the priests of Nob, he…
Eli — Ascent, the high priest when the ark was at Shiloh (1 Sam. 1:3, 9). He was the first of the line of Ithamar, Aaron’s fourth son (1 Chr. 24:3; comp. 2 Sam. 8:17), who held that office. The office…
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…
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,…
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…
Abiathar · .Thrust out of office by — .Thrust out of office by
Eli · Prophecies of — Prophecies of
High Priest, The · Family of Eli degraded from office of, for bad conduct — Family of Eli degraded from office of, for bad conduct
Announcement of the judgment upon Eli and his house. - Sa1 2:27. Before the Lord interposed in judgment, He sent a prophet (a "man of God," as in Jdg 13:6) to the aged Eli, to announce as a warning for all ages the judgment which was about to fall upon the worthless priests of his house. In order to arouse Eli's own conscience, he had pointed out to him, on the one hand, the grace manifested in the choice of his father's house, i.e., the house of Aaron, to keep His sanctuary (Sa1 2:27 and Sa1 2:28), and, on the other hand, the desecration of the sanctuary by the wickedness of his sons (Sa1 2:29). Then follows the sentence: The choice of the family of Aaron still stood fast, but the deepest d…
that your branch of the tribe of Levi would always be my priests: See Exod 29:9; Num 25:13. God would honor another of Aaron’s descendants (see study note on 2:35) and despise Eli’s family, removing them from the priesthood (2:31-35).
Rashi on 1 Samuel 2:31
I shall cut off your arm. I.e., the power which you exert in My House, for you say, "or else I will take it by force."
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
— Sin of
Judgments · Eli’s house — Eli’s house
Parents · Involved in children’s wickedness — Involved in children’s wickedness
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).
