Wesley Corpus

7. In order to put this matter beyond all possible dispute, I have chosen to speak from these words, which give a fair occasion of observing what the dealings of God in his Church have been, even from so early a period: For it is generally allowed that Eli lived at least a thousand years before our Lord came into the world. In the verses preceding the text we read, (1 Sam. 2:12, &c.,) "Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial; they knew not the Lord." They were wicked to an uncommon degree. Their profane violence, with respect to the sacrifices, is related with all its shocking circumstances in the following verses. But (what was a greater abomination still) "they lay with the women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation."(1 Sam. 2:22.) On both these accounts, "the sin of the young men was very great; and men abhorred the offering of the Lord." 8. May I be permitted to make a little digression, in order to correct a mistranslation in the twenty-fifth verse In our translation it runs thus: "They hearkened not unto the voice of their father, because the Lord would slay them." Ought it not rather to be rendered, "Therefore the Lord was about to slay them" [1 Sam. 2:25] As if he had said, "The Lord would not suffer their horrid and stubborn wickedness to escape unpunished; but because of that wickedness, he slew them both in one day, by the hand of the Philistines." They did not sin (as might be imagined from the common translation) because God had determined to slay them; but God therefore determined to slay them, because they had thus sinned. 9. But to return: Their sin was the more inexcusable because they could not be ignorant of that dreadful consequence thereof, that, by reason of their enormous wickedness, "men abhorred the offering of the Lord." Many of the people were so deeply offended, that if they did not wholly refrain from the public worship, yet they attended it with pain; abhorring the Priests while they honoured the sacrifice.