Hophni & Phinehas Part II

Hello :

 I made it to Austrailia, thank you so much for your prayers.   I had quite a challenge getting here all the way from an emergency landing due to smoke in the cockpit  which caused me to miss my original flight thereby staying in LA for a day then my luggage did not make the connecting flight and I had to wear the same clothes for three days but through it all, I was so calm and peaceful about it all.   All was well.  So thanks again for your prayers.

Okay,  did you do your homework?

Here’s our text that we’re studying just for review purposes.

I Samuel 1: “Now there was a certain man of Ramathaimzophim, of mount Ephraim, and his name was Elkanah, the son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zuph, an Ephrathite: 2 And he had two wives; the name of the one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah: and Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children. 3 And this man went up out of his city yearly  to worship and to sacrifice unto the LORD of hosts in Shiloh. And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, the priests of the LORD, were there.”  (KJV)

Okay, if you did the history then you will find that the reference to Hophni and Phinehas puts us in the period of the Judges.   During this particular season, Israel was ruled as a theocracy (GOD RULED). 

There were 13 judges and the bible teaches us that the children of  Israel would do what was evil in the sight of the Lord and God would allow the enemy to punish them.  The children of Israel would cry out for help and God would send a deliverer in the form of a Judge to fight against the enemy.  The judge would lead the people into victory and the land would have rest.  The people would do evil again, God would punish, they would cry out for help, and God would deliver and the land would once again have rest.  This type of behavior was typical throughout the period of the Judges.    Also, during this period the phrase was coined “And everyone did what was right in their own eyes.”  There is a story in Judges the 19^th chapter that gives you an idea of how evil the times were.  The story teaches us that there was a certain Levite who took to him a concubine and this concubine played the whore against him and she went to her father’s house for four months.  The Levite decides to go after her and when he finds her she agrees to come back home with him.  While they are traveling back home an old man offers his home to them so they could get out of the streets for their journey had gone into the night. 

During the middle of the night the men of the city came and beat against the door demanding that the old man send out the man that he had brought into his house to be used for sexual purposes.  The old man refused and ended out throwing out the man’s concubine to them. 

The text goes on to say that they raped this woman all night long.  Early the next day, they let her go and she crawled back to the house where she was staying. When the Levite went to the door to begin his journey again, He saw the woman at the door and she was dead.  The Levite took a knife, and laid hold on his concubine, and divided her together with her bones into twelve pieces, and sent her into all the coasts of Israel and it was so that all that saw it said, There was no such deed done nor seen from the day that the children of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt unto this day.   I gave you this story to share with you the mind frame and the times in which this Hannah story was created.  People had lost God consciousness and were defining their own truth.   In the midst of this something so amazing is happening.   A season when people were turning away from God, and people were teaching their own truths, and did what felt right to them (sound familiar).  It was in this season, this atmosphere that our story develops.    Okay, enough history for today, tomorrow we will  continue our study of Hophni and Phinehas.   

Stay encouraged..

Don’t forget to pray and read God’s word daily,

This entry was posted on 20. April 2009 at 09:03 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.