Who were Hophni and Phinehas?

Son of Eli the priest. He and his brother Phinehas also acted as priests; but their sin was very great both respecting the offerings of the Lord and as to their moral conduct. Their father reproved them, but did not restrain them. They accompanied the ark to the war with the Philistines and were both slain. 1 Sam. 1:3; 1 Sam. 2:34; 1 Sam. 4:4-17.

The sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, although they were priests of the temple, were wicked men who pleased not the Lord, for He was unknown to them. They exacted for themselves the best portions of the Lord’s sacrifices, and ‘the sin of the young men was very great before the Lord’. Being forceful and demanding, they so conducted themselves before their aged father, who spoke reprovingly to them, but restrained them not (1 Sam. 2:12–17).

But I have sad news to tell. Eli the priest had two grown up sons, Hophni and Phineas; they were by birth “priests of the Lord,” but, instead of serving the Lord as priests, they served Satan. They behaved very wickedly. They led the people into sin, and did not teach them the right way. Their father, Eli, was a good man himself, and he heard of all the wicked actions of his two sons: and he rebuked them, but “he restrained them not.” Had Eli honoured the Lord in this matter, and thrust from the priesthood his wicked sons (see Neh. 13:28-29) this would have pleased the Lord. (See Deut. 33:9.) But Eli allowed his two wicked sons to remain priests, and they went on in their evil way, adding sin to sin, until the Lord became very angry, not only with them, but with their father Eli also. How nice it is that we know that the child Samuel did not follow their bad example. We read, “And the child Samuel grew on, and was in favour both with the Lord, and also with men.” While these sinful men displeased the Lord, the child Samuel pleased Him. “My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not.”

There were two things that were forbidden in the Offerings of the LORD made by fire, viz. leaven and honey. Leaven typifies evil. To mix up the holy things of the Lord and evil is abomination to God. This was seen in the case of Eli's sons, Hophni and Phinehas. These two men were "priests of the LORD," that was their office, and yet in their practice they were described, "The sons of Eli were sons of Belial; they knew not the LORD" (1 Sam. 2:12). There followed a most tragic breakdown in the history of Israel. Eli fell dead, his two sons killed in battle, and the Ark of the LORD taken by the Philistines.

This, too, seems to be the probable reason why she felt specially moved in prayer while at Shiloh. The sights about the tabernacle doors stirred her devoted heart mightily — the debauchery of the daughters of Belial, the shameless licentiousness and rapacity of Hophni and Phinehas, told a repulsive tale of wickedness, and that before the sanctuary! Sin was flaunted in the very face of Israel's God; "men abhorred the offering of the Lord," and by their transgressions the people were encouraged to lawlessness! Eli himself, who should above all others have understood, and been low in the dust before God for this shameful condition of things, seemed little exercised, and as a "good and easy man," sat tranquilly at the temple entrance not to watch and correct his corrupt sons, but to observe, misinterpret, and rebuke the conduct of a saintly woman at prayer! Oh, where was the nation? Where their highest priest and judge when such a condition could prevail, and none, seemingly, but "a woman of sorrowful spirit" to lay it to heart, and sigh and weep and pray for better things? "She spake in her heart," but Eli only marked her mouth; he judged after the "outward appearance," and adjudged she had been drunken!

Israel added to the evil by bringing amongst them Hophni and Phinehas. These vile men were in charge of the sacred vessel, an affront which an indignant God was not slow to avenge.

Israel's shout of exultation when the ark arrived, and the dismay of the Philistines when they heard of it, testified that neither the one nor the other had any sense of the reality of having to do with God. The Philistines said, "God is come into the camp." They forthwith reminded themselves how Israel's mighty God had broken the might of the Egyptians, and they nerved themselves to fight as they had never fought before. But upon their own showing they were now going to fight God! In their superstitious ignorance they mistook a symbol for the very Deity itself! Only Israel's frightful condition explains the second victory, when "there was a very great slaughter: for there fell of Israel thirty thousand footmen." Philistine defiance would have met its just due had not God's own people needed to be taught a terrible lesson. The ark in which they trusted was taken, "and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were slain." In Asaph's 78th Psalm, it is recorded, He "delivered His strength into captivity, and His glory into the enemy's hand" (verse 61). The disaster was overwhelming. Could Moses and Aaron ever have believed that "the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth" (Joshua 3:11) could have become the spoil of a pagan foe?

Hophni, too, while there is no historical connection with his name, seems to answer to it only in an evil way. "My hands," seems to be the meaning, which some have thought to suggest "fighter." But the root with which it is connected is used for describing the hands as capable of holding, rather than of striking. Very noticeably it is applied to the priest entering the holiest on the day of atonement, "with his hands full of sweet incense" (Lev. 16:12). It would thus be a good priestly name, and fitting companion for Phinehas. "Hands full" of incense and an unyielding testimony. Alas, the hands of Hophni were full, but not of the materials of praise. They were filled with ill-gotten gain and the fat of the Lord's offerings appropriated to his own use. The sin of these men was twofold, the one resulting from the other. In the judgment of the world they would not have seemed equally heinous. They were guilty of sacrilege and of gross immorality, the latter a fitting consequence of the former.

They brought the ark of the covenant into the camp. They looked not to God; but to a symbol, to save them. They looked to outward orthodoxy and ignored moral condition. Hophni and Phinehas—its two custodians—were acting in a shameless way, causing men to abhor the offering of the Lord.

"Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial; they knew not the Lord." Yet they were the officials of Shiloh! Is it possible to be so now? We do not ask, is it possible for a true Christian to fail, to fall? Alas! every true Christian knows and owns it is. But is it possible for evil to be practised by those who are in the true place, on true ground, as they say, and that by those who know not the Lord? Yea, and for the very same motive as that of the sons of Eli. Ah! it is what they can get. It is "the pan, or kettle, or cauldron, or pot; all that the flesh-hook, brought up the priest took for himself. So they did in Shiloh," &c. (Ver. 14.) Wickedness was practised at the very doors of the tabernacle at Shiloh.

The commencement of the story presents a God-fearing Levite with two wives; one fruitful and the other barren. The barren woman mourns her condition before the Lord and is persecuted by the fruitful wife. Elkanah goes up yearly to worship and to sacrifice before the Lord at Shiloh. There we find Hophni and Phinehas, two wicked men, as we know from 1 Samuel 2:12, officiating as priests of the Lord. Eli, the high priest, with much personal piety, comes before us as an enfeebled old man sitting by a post of the temple (verse 9) and mistaking the exercises of a godly soul for the vagaries of a drunken woman (13). Sitting where God had provided no seat would indicate a lack of spiritual energy; his mistake in regard to Hannah, a lack of spiritual discernment.