1 Samuel 2:33

33 Yet I will keep one of your descendants alive, and he will serve me as priest. But he will become blind and lose all hope, and all your other descendants will die a violent death.

1 Samuel 2:33 Meaning and Commentary

1 Samuel 2:33

And the man of thine
. Of his family, which should spring from him: whom I shall not cut off from mine altar: from serving there: who though he shall not be an high priest, but a common priest, as all the descendants of Aaron were,

shall be to consume thine eyes, and to grieve thine heart;
that is, the eyes and heart of his posterity; who though they should see of their family ministering in the priest's office, yet should make so poor a figure on account of their outward meanness and poverty, or because of their want of wisdom, and intellectual endowments, or because of their scandalous lives, that it would fill their hearts with grief and sorrow, and their eyes with tears, so that their eyes would fail, and be consumed, and their hearts be broken:

and all the increase of thine house shall die in the flower of their
age;
or "die men" ^F11; grown men, not children, when it would not be so great an affliction to part with them; but when at man's estate, in the prime of their days, perhaps about thirty years of age, the time when the priests entered upon their office to do all the work of it; the Targum is,

``shall be killed young men:''

it is more than once said in the Talmud ^F12, that there was a family in Jerusalem, the men of which died at eighteen years of age; they came and informed Juchanan ben Zaccai of it; he said to them, perhaps of the family of Eli are ye, as it is said, ( 1 Samuel 2:33 ) .

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FOOTNOTES:

F11 (Myvna wtwmy) "morientur viri", Montanus, Tigurine version; "morientur virile aetate", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator; so V. L.
F12 T. Bab. Roshhashanah, fol. 18. 1. & Yebamot, fol. 105. 1.

1 Samuel 2:33 In-Context

31 Listen, the time is coming when I will kill all the young men in your family and your clan, so that no man in your family will live to be old.

32 You will be troubled and look with envy on all the blessings I will give to the other people of Israel, but no one in your family will ever again live to old age.

33 Yet I will keep one of your descendants alive, and he will serve me as priest. But he will become blind and lose all hope, and all your other descendants will die a violent death.

34 When your two sons Hophni and Phinehas both die on the same day, this will show you that everything I have said will come true.

35 I will choose a priest who will be faithful to me and do everything I want him to. I will give him descendants, who will always serve in the presence of my chosen king.

Footnotes

• [a]. [One ancient translation] he; [Hebrew] you.