Eli

Eli is an Israelite priest who served at the sanctuary of Shiloh during the period of the judges, remembered in Scripture chiefly as the old priest who blessed Hannah and raised the boy Samuel, and as the head of a priestly house whose corruption brought a sentence of judgment.

The text first presents him as the priest Hannah meets at Shiloh, where the ark was kept (1 Samuel 4:4). He sends her away with a blessing — “Go in peace; and may the God of Israel grant your petition that you have asked of him” (1 Samuel 1:17) — and she goes her way, eats, and is no longer sad (1 Samuel 1:18). When she returns the child, she says she has given him to Yahweh for as long as he lives (1 Samuel 1:27–28), and the narrative goes on to describe Samuel ministering to Yahweh before Eli (1 Samuel 3:1). Linguistically, the Hebrew name is of uncertain derivation: it is commonly connected either with ʾel, “god,” or with a root meaning “to go up,” and scholars have not settled the question.

Much of Eli’s story in Scripture is a record of loss. His sons Hophni and Phinehas are called wicked men who did not know Yahweh (1 Samuel 2:12); Eli rebukes them with the argument that a sin against Yahweh leaves no one to intercede (1 Samuel 2:25), but they do not listen to him. A prophetic word against his house recalls the priestly privileges once granted — to go up to the altar, burn incense, and wear an ephod (1 Samuel 2:28) — and announces the reversal of the promise of a lasting priesthood: “those who honor me I will honor, and those who despise me will be cursed” (1 Samuel 2:30). It ends with survivors of his house bowing for a piece of silver and a loaf of bread, begging to be put into one of the priests’ offices (1 Samuel 2:36). His two sons carry the ark into battle and are slain when it is captured (1 Samuel 4:4, 11).

Christian and Jewish readings differ over where the oracle against Eli’s house finds its fulfillment. In Christian interpretation it is often read as pointing beyond Eli to a faithful priesthood ultimately fulfilled in Christ; Jewish interpretation generally locates the restoration of a lasting priesthood in the Zadokite line of the Jerusalem temple. The sentence rendered “God will judge him” in 1 Samuel 2:25 is also translated “the judges shall judge him” in some versions, since the Hebrew word elohim can bear either sense. Eli is called simply “the priest” in the narrative, though later writers in several traditions commonly describe him as high priest because of his role with the ark at Shiloh.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.