Bible Synapse
Could only priests at the tabernacle offer sacrifices, when Samuel offered them elsewhere?
Hard question · The law of Moses · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
An Israelite who kills an ox, lamb or goat must bring it to the door of the tabernacle, to the priest, as an offering to the Lord.
And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto Aaron, and unto his sons, and unto all the children of Israel, and say unto them; This is the thing which the Lord hath commanded, saying, What man soever there be of the house of Israel, that killeth an ox, or lamb, or goat, in the camp, or that killeth it out of the camp, And bringeth it not unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, to offer an offering unto the Lord before the tabernacle of the Lord; blood shall be imputed unto that man; he hath shed blood; and that man shall be cut off from among his people: To the end that the children of Israel may bring their sacrifices, which they offer in the open field, even that they may bring them unto the Lord, unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, unto the priest, and offer them for peace offerings unto the Lord.
Aaron and his sons alone are to serve at the altar; “the stranger that cometh nigh shall be put to death”.
And I, behold, I have taken your brethren the Levites from among the children of Israel: to you they are given as a gift for the Lord, to do the service of the tabernacle of the congregation. Therefore thou and thy sons with thee shall keep your priest’s office for every thing of the altar, and within the vail; and ye shall serve: I have given your priest’s office unto you as a service of gift: and the stranger that cometh nigh shall be put to death.
Elkanah, of Mount Ephraim, goes up every year to worship and sacrifice at Shiloh, where Eli’s sons are priests.
Now there was a certain man of Ramathaim–zophim, 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: 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. 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.
At Mizpeh Samuel offers a sucking lamb as a burnt offering and cries to the Lord, who answers with thunder against the Philistines.
And when the Philistines heard that the children of Israel were gathered together to Mizpeh, the lords of the Philistines went up against Israel. And when the children of Israel heard it, they were afraid of the Philistines. And the children of Israel said to Samuel, Cease not to cry unto the Lord our God for us, that he will save us out of the hand of the Philistines. And Samuel took a sucking lamb, and offered it for a burnt offering wholly unto the Lord: and Samuel cried unto the Lord for Israel; and the Lord heard him. And as Samuel was offering up the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to battle against Israel: but the Lord thundered with a great thunder on that day upon the Philistines, and discomfited them; and they were smitten before Israel.
The objection
Leviticus says that every sacrifice must be brought to the door of the tabernacle, to the priest, and Numbers that only Aaron’s sons may serve at the altar, on pain of death. Yet Elkanah, called an Ephrathite of Mount Ephraim, sacrificed every year, and his son Samuel offered a burnt offering at Mizpeh, away from the tabernacle, and God answered him. Who was allowed to offer sacrifice, and where?
The answer
Elkanah did exactly what Leviticus 17 required. He went up “out of his city yearly to worship and to sacrifice unto the Lord of hosts in Shiloh”, where the tabernacle stood and where “the priests of the Lord” served (1 Samuel 1:3). In the Bible a worshipper is often said to ‘offer’ the sacrifice he brings, while the priest does the work at the altar: the next chapter speaks of the priests’ custom “when any man offered sacrifice” (2:13). Nor, on the Bible’s own account, was the family outside the tribe of Levi. 1 Samuel does not name Elkanah’s tribe, and ‘Ephrathite’ is usually taken to describe where he lived, in the hill country of Ephraim, where Levites of the clan of Kohath had towns (Joshua 21:20). Chronicles traces Elkanah and Samuel back to Kohath, son of Levi (1 Chronicles 6:22-28, 33-38).
Samuel’s sacrifice at Mizpeh came at an exceptional time. The Philistines had captured the ark, and when it came back it stayed at Kirjath-jearim for twenty years (1 Samuel 4:11; 7:1-2). The psalm says that God “forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh” (Psalm 78:60), and Jeremiah later pointed to Shiloh as a warning (Jeremiah 7:12). Moses had tied worship at one chosen place to the time when God gave Israel “rest from all your enemies round about” (Deuteronomy 12:10-11), and the earlier law of the altar spoke of worship “in all places where I record my name” (Exodus 20:24). Samuel was the Lord’s prophet, known as such by all Israel (1 Samuel 3:20). He acted in a national emergency, the people asked him to cry to the Lord for them, and the Lord answered him that same day (7:8-10). Keil and Delitzsch explain Samuel’s later altar at Ramah (7:17) in the same way, as called for by these extraordinary circumstances.
The text does not say whether Samuel, a Levite but not a son of Aaron, laid the lamb on the altar himself. Hebrew, like English, often says that a man did what he had others do for him, and Gill reports the suggestion of the Jewish commentator Gersonides that Samuel offered it through a priest. Either way, Samuel’s sacrifice is shown as an exception, in an emergency, by God’s prophet. It is not presented as setting aside the law of the priesthood.
Other answers Christians give
A prophet’s warrant
Gill and others compare Gideon, who built an altar and offered a burnt offering at God’s command (Judges 6:25-26), and Elijah on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:30-38). On this view a direct word from God could authorise what the general law did not provide for.
Still open
Many critical scholars hold that the rule confining sacrifice to Aaron’s sons came late, and that Chronicles made Samuel a Levite to explain his sacrifices. Christians who hold to the unity of Scripture accept the genealogy in Chronicles, which gives the line twice in different forms (1 Chronicles 6:22-28, 33-38). How far the law of the one sanctuary could be kept in the troubled years between the loss of the ark and the building of the temple is also debated.
From the classic commentators
Which he might do by a priest, as Ben Gersom suggests, he being only a Levite; though he being a prophet, and an extraordinary person, and this an extraordinary case, he might do it himself, as Gideon and others, as well as offer it in another place than where the tabernacle wasJohn Gill, Exposition of the Bible: 1 Samuel 7 (1746–1763), at Bible Hub