After the Storm
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The defenseless Israelites beheld the hand of the Lord.
“Having renounced their idols and confessed their departure from the Lord, in humiliation of spirit, they were to witness how readily God took them back under His protection, and demonstrated a heavenly Father’s love for the returning prodigal. God neither expressed bitterness nor held aloof. . . . Immediately He spread over them His protecting arm.” Realizing God had accepted their repentance, the Israelites took up the weapons of the fallen Philistines and pursued them. “Along the way they [the Philistines] were harassed by the assembled Israelites. And there, as Isaiah declared centuries later, God graciously gave them at once ‘beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning’ (Isa. 61:3).” Thus came about a complete reversal of the stunning defeat of twenty years prior that saw Israel defeated and the ark taken.
“It was the Lord’s purpose so to manifest his power in delivering Israel, that they might not take the glory to themselves. He permitted them, when unarmed and defenseless, to be challenged by their enemies, and then the Captain of the Lord’s host marshalled the army of Heaven to destroy the foes of his people.” “The Philistines were now so completely subdued that they surrendered the strongholds which had been taken from Israel and refrained from acts of hostility for many years. Other nations followed this example, and the Israelites enjoyed peace until the close of Samuel’s sole administration.
“That the occasion might never be forgotten, Samuel set up, between Mizpeh and Shen, a great stone as a memorial. He called the name of it Ebenezer, ‘the stone of help,’ saying to the people, ‘hitherto hath Jehovah helped us.’” God is ever our “Ebenezer”! In times of distress, it is comforting to recall instances of divine intervention in our past Christian experience and take heart.
