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Verse of the day Remembrance

A bearded man in a plain wool cloak and two younger men lever a rough standing stone upright on a bare hillside under clearing storm clouds, wet ground and scrub around them.
This image was made for EmberKeeper. It is an imagined scene, not a photograph of a biblical place, person or event.

Afterward, Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, “Thus far the LORD has helped us.”

1 Samuel 7:12 Berean Standard Bible

Ebenezer was already the name of a defeat, and "thus far" marks a point on the way, with the story still going.

The last time this book said the word Ebenezer, Israel was camped there before a battle. About four thousand men fell on the first day. The elders sent for the ark, as though it could go into the fight and save them, and in the next battle thirty thousand fell, the ark was captured and Eli’s sons were killed. The Philistines carried the ark away from Ebenezer to Ashdod.

Twenty years later Samuel sets up a stone and gives it that same name. Stone of help.

First, Samuel tells the people that if they are really returning to the Lord, the Baals and the Ashtoreths have to go, and they go. They gather at Mizpah, pour out water before the Lord, fast, and say it plainly: we have sinned. When the Philistines hear of the gathering and march up, the people are frightened and beg Samuel not to stop crying out for them. The rescue comes while he is still at the altar, in thunder.

Then the stone, and the sentence that gives it its meaning: thus far the LORD has helped us.

An odd phrase for a monument. The Hebrew can mean up to here, whether of a place or of a time. It marks a point on a road that keeps going, and the road did keep going. A couple of chapters later God tells Samuel that the man he is about to anoint will save Israel from the Philistines, and by chapter 13 there is not a blacksmith left in the land.

What Samuel claimed was help, and he set it down in the middle of the story, under a name people remembered for the worst day they had known.

Some of us carry names like that, a place or a date that still means the day it went wrong. God is able to set a stone there. Thus far. Which means there is more.

Why this passage

Context checked: in 1 Samuel 4:1 Israel camps at Ebenezer before the battle with the Philistines at Aphek; the defeat, the loss of the ark and the deaths of Eli's sons follow (4:10-11), and 5:1 has the ark carried "from Ebenezer" to Ashdod. Chapter 7 comes twenty years later (7:2): the people put away the Baals and Ashtoreths (7:4), gather at Mizpah, fast and confess, and the LORD thunders against the Philistines (7:10). Ebenezer means "stone of help." Whether Samuel's stone stood on the same ground as the earlier camp is uncertain; chapter 4 places it near Aphek, and the site of Shen is not known. The Hebrew for "thus far" can point to a place or a time. The Philistine threat returns under Saul (9:16; 13:19).

Scripture in English is from the Berean Standard Bible, which its publisher placed in the public domain on 30 April 2023.