- except that the name Elihu, Tohu, and Zuph, are given as Eliab, Nahath, and Zophai in the first instance, and Eliel, Toah, and Ziph (according to the Chethibh) in the second, - various readings, such as often occur in the different genealogies, and are to be explained partly from the use of different forms for the same name, and partly from their synonymous meanings. Tohu and Toah, which occur in Arabic, with the meaning to press or sink in, are related in meaning to nachath or nuach, to sink or settle down.
Chap. 1
Verse 1
From these genealogies in the Chronicles, we learn that Samuel was descended from Kohath, the son of Levi, and therefore was a Levite. It is no valid objection to the correctness of this view, that his Levitical descent is never mentioned, or that Elkanah is called an Ephrathite. The former of these can very easily be explained from the fact, that Samuel's work as a reformer, which is described in this book, did not rest upon his Levitical descent, but simply upon the call which he had received from God, as the prophetic office was not confined to any particular class, like that of priest, but was founded exclusively upon the divine calling and endowment with the Spirit of God. And the difficulty which Nägelsbach expresses in Herzog's Cycl., viz., that “as it was stated of those two Levites (Jdg 17:7; Jdg 19:1), that they lived in Bethlehem and Ephraim, but only after they had been expressly described as Levites, we should have expected to find the same in the case of Samuel's father,” is removed by the simple fact, that in the case of both those Levites it was of great importance, so far as the accounts which are given of them are concerned, that their Levitical standing should be distinctly mentioned, as is clearly shown by Jdg 17:10, Jdg 17:13, and Jdg 19:18; whereas in the case of Samuel, as we have already observed, his Levitical descent had no bearing upon the call which he received from the Lord. The word Ephrathite does not belong, so far as the grammatical construction is concerned, either to Zuph or Elkanah, but to “a certain man,” the subject of the principal clause, and signifies an Ephraimite, as in Jdg 12:5 and 1Ki 11:26, and not an inhabitant of Ephratah, i.e., a Bethlehemite, as in 1Sa 17:12 and Rth 1:2; for in both these passages the word is more precisely defined by the addition of the expression “of Bethlehem-Judah,” whereas in this verse the explanation is to be found in the expression “of
