and said: “O LORD, God of Israel, there is no God like You in heaven or on earth, keeping Your covenant of loving devotion with Your servants who walk before You with all their hearts.

The messenger answered, “Israel has fled before the Philistines, and there has been a great slaughter among the people. Your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, are both dead, and the ark of God has been captured.”

For a man seldom considers the days of his life, because God keeps him occupied with the joy of his heart.

Israel cries out to Me, “O our God, we know You!”

They will lick the dust like a snake, like reptiles slithering on the ground. They will come trembling from their strongholds in the presence of the LORD our God; they will tremble in fear of You.

“The God of the Hebrews has met with us,” they answered. “Please let us go on a three-day journey into the wilderness to sacrifice to the LORD our God, or He may strike us with plagues or with the sword.”

As soon as the ark of God was mentioned, Eli fell backward from his chair by the city gate, and being old and heavy, he broke his neck and died. And Eli had judged Israel forty years.

until the LORD gives rest to your brothers as He has to you, and they too have taken possession of the land that the LORD your God is giving them across the Jordan. Then each of you may return to the possession I have given you.”

God gives a man riches, wealth, and honor, so that he lacks nothing his heart desires; but God does not allow him to enjoy them. Instead, a stranger will enjoy them. This is futile and a grievous affliction.

Therefore now, O LORD, God of Israel, keep for Your servant, my father David, what You promised when You said: ‘You will never fail to have a man to sit before Me on the throne of Israel, if only your descendants guard their way to walk in My law as you have walked before Me.’

Now Eli’s daughter-in-law, the wife of Phinehas, was pregnant and about to give birth. When she heard the news of the capture of God’s ark and the deaths of her father-in-law and her husband, she collapsed and gave birth, for her labor pains overtook her.

One night at Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream, and God said, “Ask, and I will give it to you!”

And at that time I commanded Joshua: “Your own eyes have seen all that the LORD your God has done to these two kings. The LORD will do the same to all the kingdoms you are about to enter.