1 Samuel 7:1, commentary and pictures

The verse belongs to a time when the word of the Lord was precious and there was no open vision, when sin shut out the Holy Spirit from Eli and his sons while the child Samuel remained true, so the Lord passed by Eli to commune with a child and entrust Samuel with the message of condemnation on the house of Eli as his commission as prophet. After the Philistines returned the ark of the Lord, the people of Beth-shemesh sent messengers to Kirjath-jearim announcing its return and asking them to come down and fetch it up. The men of Beth-shemesh had been slain for looking into the ark from idle curiosity. More than fifty thousand died for looking into it out of curiosity. After the judgment the people of Beth-shemesh were afraid of the ark and regarded it with superstitious fear, asking to whom it should go from them, and they were eager to be free from its presence yet did not dare remove it themselves, so they asked the men of Kirjath-jearim to take it away.

The men of Kirjath-jearim welcomed the sacred chest with great joy and solemn gladness, knowing it was the pledge of divine favor to the obedient and faithful. They brought it into their city into the house of Abinadab, a Levite, and sanctified and appointed his son Eleazar to keep it. The ark remained there many years, its place after Shiloh was ruined until David later brought it to Jerusalem. It remained there through twenty years in which the Hebrews stayed under the power of the Philistines. During that time the Hebrews were greatly humbled and repented of their sins, received Samuel's intercession, found God merciful to them again, and when the Philistines made war with them the Lord worked in a miraculous manner for Israel so they overcame their enemies.

While the ark rested at Kirjath-jearim apart from the tabernacle, there were no services in the tabernacle and sacrifices were for the time offered elsewhere. The cities of the priests and Levites, where the people resorted for instruction, were chosen for this purpose, and the highest points in these cities were usually selected as the place of sacrifice and were hence called the high place. This belonged to the time under Samuel when the worship of God was maintained throughout the land and the people showed an interest in religious services. In Samuel's day Kirjath-jearim, where the ark rested, was the site of one of the two schools of the prophets founded by Samuel, the other being at Ramah, the home of Samuel. At those schools companies of pious, intelligent, studious young men called the sons of the prophets were gathered to search deeper into the word of God and seek wisdom from above that they might become teachers in Israel, to serve as a barrier against widespread corruption and to provide for the moral and spiritual welfare of youth and the future prosperity of the nation by furnishing men qualified to act in the fear of God as leaders and counselors.