1 Samuel 3:14-21

3:14 Therefore I swore an oath to the house of Eli, ‘The sin of the house of Eli can never be forgiven by sacrifice or by grain offering.’”

3:15 So Samuel lay down until morning. Then he opened the doors of the Lord’s house. But Samuel was afraid to tell Eli about the vision. 3:16 However, Eli called Samuel and said, “Samuel, my son!” He replied, “Here I am.” 3:17 Eli 1  said, “What message did he speak to you? Don’t conceal it from me. God will judge you severely 2  if you conceal from me anything that he said to you!”

3:18 So Samuel told him everything. He did not hold back anything from him. Eli 3  said, “The Lord will do what he pleases.” 4  3:19 Samuel continued to grow, and the Lord was with him. None of his prophecies fell to the ground unfulfilled. 5  3:20 All Israel from Dan to Beer Sheba realized that Samuel was confirmed as a prophet of the Lord. 3:21 Then the Lord again appeared in Shiloh, for it was in Shiloh that the Lord had revealed himself to Samuel 6  through the word of the Lord. 7 

1 tn Heb “he”; the referent (Eli) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

2 tn Heb “So God will do to you and thus he will add.” The verbal forms in this pronouncement are imperfects, not jussives, but the statement has the force of a curse or warning. One could translate, “May God do to you and thus may he add.”

3 tn Heb “he”; the referent (Eli) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

4 tn Heb “what is good in his eyes.”

5 tn Heb “and he did not cause to fall from all his words to the ground.”

6 tc The LXX has a lengthy addition here: “And Samuel was acknowledged to be a prophet of the Lord in all Israel, from one end to the other. Eli was very old and, as for his sons, their way kept getting worse and worse before the Lord.” The Hebraic nature of the Greek syntax used here suggests that the LXX translator was accurately rendering a Hebrew variant and not simply expanding the text on his own initiative.

7 tn The chapter division at this point is inappropriate. 1 Sam 4:1a is best understood as the conclusion to chap. 3 rather than the beginning of chap. 4.