1 Samuel 3:7

3:7 Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord; the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.

1 Samuel 3:21

3:21 Then the Lord again appeared in Shiloh, for it was in Shiloh that the Lord had revealed himself to Samuel ¹  through the word of the Lord. ² 

1 Samuel 3:1

The Call of Samuel

3:1 Now the boy Samuel continued serving the Lord under Eli’s supervision. ³  Word from the Lord was rare in those days; revelatory visions were infrequent.

1 Samuel 30:16

30:16 So he took David ⁴  down, and they found them spread out over the land. They were eating and drinking and enjoying themselves because of all the loot ⁵  they had taken from the land of the Philistines and from the land of Judah.

¹ 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.

² 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.

¹ tn Heb “before Eli.”

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

² tn Heb “because of all the large plunder.”