1 Samuel 2:18 Commentary and Bible Study

Samuel here in this narrative could be anything from ten to eighteen. The Hebrew word goes quite a long way up the scale. When David fought Goliath, the same word is used of him – a boy – and he obviously was a mid to older teenager at the very least. You can glean that from the narrative – the way he conducts himself, discusses things, proceeds. You would not have a little child attempting a suit of armour. So although ‘child’ appears here and we form the impression that he is still a very small child, times has passed and he is probably a teenager. ‘But Samuel ministered before the Lord’, being a boy, girded with a linen ephod. What a privilege for Eli to have given him the priestly vest, a smaller version of it. He was a Levite not a priest, but so earnest and sincere was he, and so well accepted, that he clothed him as a priest as he functioned before the Lord. We should not see that as an irregularity, but as a tremendous commendation of Samuel. Eli would have taught him carefully about all the duties of the priest in the temple and all that had to be done to fulfil the ceremonial law. He would have given him a spiritual interpretation of the sacrifices, for he was himself a spiritual man.