Samuel

This story about Samuel from I Samuel speaks of the boy's loneliness until he meets God. It offers accurate facts about the tabernacle not often communicated to children. The Bible says Samuel did sleep in the tabernacle and Eli may have also. There's no way to know that for certain.

© Jeannie St. John Taylor

Samuel settled onto his sleeping mat and spread his blue coat over him for nighttime warmth. Through a narrow opening in the thick linen curtain, he watched light flicker from the gold candle stand in the nearly-empty tabernacle behind him and dance across the Ark of the Lord just beyond the curtain. On the lid of the golden box, the cherubim’s wings of hammered gold seemed to move with the shimmering light. 

Sighing, Samuel pulled his knees to his chest and tugged his new coat up over his chin. He could still smell his mother’s scent on it. And he missed her, though not as much as he used to. When he was smaller, he cried himself to sleep every night for weeks after his family’s yearly visits to the tabernacle at Shiloh where he lived and worked with Eli the priest. Every time they returned home to Ramah without him, he would sleep near the ark and cuddle the new coat his mother had brought, tears dripping onto the floor beneath him.

Tonight, raw loneliness drove him to sleep near the ark for comfort once again.

Samuel knew God’s presence dwelt on the Ark of the Covenant between the cherubim—or at least it used to. Eli often told stories of God speaking from the ark many years ago when God’s children wandered through the desert. But no one had heard from him for a long, long time, not even Eli. And certainly not Samuel, though he longed for God’s voice.

“You belong to God, Samuel,” his mother told him each year when she saw him. Only this morning she had said, “You were my miracle baby,” as she lingered behind after his father and siblings started down the dirt road toward home. She stroked first one cheek then the other with the back of her hand. “For years I couldn’t get pregnant, but I begged God for a child and he gave you to me.” Her eyes gazed into his. “You are chosen. Special. The gift God gave to me. The gift I promised to give back to him. That’s why you live here with the priest. And God.”

Not God, Samuel had thought. God isn’t here.

She leaned forward and he felt her lips brush his forehead. Tears dropped onto the new coat, momentarily beading up on the tightly woven wool. She dabbed at the wet spot, then adjusted the coat over his linen ephod, the priestly garment that identified him with Eli and God instead of her. “I spun every thread in your coat with my own spindle. When I dyed it with pomegranate rinds, I didn’t care that it stained my hands blue. I wove my love into it.”

Smiling, she drew back and wiped her nose with the back of her hand, never taking her eyes from his face. “So handsome.” Her smile cut into his heart. He noticed that the top of his head already rose higher than her shoulder, but instead of the rush of pride he expected to feel, sadness enveloped him.

“Every time you slip your arms into your coat, feel my love wrap around you.” She turned abruptly and hurried down the road, never looking back until she caught up with the rest of the family and they turned to wave goodbye. Even from that distance Samuel could tell she was crying.

His heart twisted with longing, and suddenly he wondered: Why couldn’t he live with his family? Why had his mother had left him here for a God he’d never met?

As he lay on the floor tonight, tracing the carvings beneath the rim on the Ark of the Lord with his eyes, the questions still haunted him. Did God really care about him? Did God have a purpose for him? Did God even know where Samuel lived?  Did God know he slept alone in the tabernacle at night? The fragrance of sweet spices, resin and galbanum mixed with frankincense, drifted over from the incense in front of the ark. Samuel closed his eyes.

“Samuel!”

Awakened from a deep sleep, Samuel bolted upright, his heart racing.

“Samuel!”

“Yes?” Samuel answered. “What is it?”

No answer. Was something wrong with Eli? Samuel bounded from his mat and raced out to the old man’s bed. “Here I am. What do you need?”

Eli shifted his bulk and turned toward Samuel, his voice thick with sleep. “I didn’t call you.” Samuel noticed Eli didn’t bother opening his eyes. Nearly blind, he couldn’t have seen Samuel in the dim light anyway. “Go on back to bed.”

Samuel hesitated a moment, waiting for the sound of Eli’s regular breathing to resume. Then he walked back into the tabernacle, past the lamp stand with its seven hammered-gold almond blossoms holding seven oil lamps, past the knee-high table of pure gold with the twelve loaves of showbread arranged in two rows across top. He lay on his sleeping mat again watching the shadows cast by the ark’s two long carrying poles wiggle on the floor.

“Samuel!” the voice called again.

Surprised, Samuel leapt up and rushed to Eli again. “Here I am. What do you need?”

“I didn’t call you, my son.” Eli’s voice held an edge of confusion. “Go on back to bed.”

Once again, Samuel lay still on his mat. Wondering. If Eli hadn’t called him, who had? Eli acted as though he hadn’t heard the voice!

“Samuel!”

The voice seemed to come from inside the tabernacle. But he couldn’t see anyone. It must be Eli. The boy jumped up and ran to the old man again, who else could be calling? “Here I am. What do you need?”

Eli lay very still for a moment without answering. Then Samuel saw him clasp his hands and press them against his chest.  “Go and lie down again,” Samuel heard quiet awe in Eli’s voice, “and if someone calls again, say, ‘Yes, Lord, your servant is listening.’”

As always, Samuel obeyed. He stretched out on his mat, eyes closed, trembling, clutching his coat around him. What was happening?

“Samuel! Samuel!”

The voice came from behind the thick linen curtain with cherubim embroidered in rich gold, purple, and red. It came from between the hammered gold wings of the cherubim on top of the Ark of the Lord, just as it had in the stories from many years earlier. Samuel knew it without a doubt.

Samuel squeezed his eyes tighter. He didn’t want to look. He just wanted to to listen. To learn. To obey. Already he could sense a mighty Presence melting his loneliness, filling him with love greater than any he had ever felt from hugging his mother’s coat, or even from his mother’s kiss.

“Speak,” Samuel whispered, “your servant is listening.”