Samuel 3-5

Chapter 3: 

Samuel's trying to get some sleep but God keeps trying to send him a message

Samuel hears his name and assumes it is Eli calling to him. For three nights he gets up to see what his adopted priest father wants and during the first two nights, Eli doesn't know what Samuel is talking about and tells him to back to sleep. On the third night, it occurs to Eli, that maybe the fact that his adopted son is hearing voices in his head each night should be a cause for concern. 

"Then Eli realized that the Lord was calling the boy. So Eli told Samuel 'Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, 'Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.' "

The Lord comes, stands over Samuel, and calls his name and rather than freak tf out, as I would have done, Samuel lets Lord know that he is listening. Lord won't continue a conversation unless you signal that you're listening. Validation is very important to him. 

Lord informs little Samuel, in so many words, that he is going to kill his family. 

I think I figured out the connection in this meandering book of random characters and dropped story lines. It's all about Lord. It's a collection of short stories about this epic villain Lord starting off with good intentions and then just torturing everyone. At first we were kind of with him, seeing his intentions, characters talked to him more directly. Everyone disappointed him because they didn't love him enough and he runs away to his bat cave for awhile to think about stuff. Then he comes back worse than ever, to haunt children like the bogeyman and threaten their families. I wonder if anyone will be able to defeat him in the end. Or maybe someone will save him?

Eli asks Samuel what Lord said. Samuel is resistant at first to tell his adopted father that he and his whole family are going to die, but after some prodding, he passes on Lord's murder message. After that, Samuel is named a true prophet and becomes a celebrity at the expense of his dead family. 

Chapter 4: 

The Israelites and Philistines are fighting. The Israelites lose a battle and decide what they really need to win, is God's pokeball, the Ark of the Covenant. The Philistines are terrified, so terrified that they inspire each other to do better, win the battle against the Israelites, steal the Ark, and kill Eli's sons. 

Eli receives news of his dead sons and he takes it okay because he knew his sons were garbage but then they tell him that the Ark has been stolen and he falls back and cracks his head open. The pregnant wife of one of the dead sons receives news of her dead husband and the lost Covenant as she's giving labor...seems like they could have waited on that. She dies during labor, but not before she names her son:

"She named the boy Ichabod, saying 'The Glory has departed from Israel.'"

You remind us only of disappointment and failure.

Thanks mom.

Chapter 5:

The Philistines try to figure out where their new piece of god furniture should go. They start by putting it in the temple of one of their gods "Dagon." When they go to the temple the next morning, the statue of their god is kneeling before the Ark. That is some horror movie shit right there. 

They put the statue back and the next morning the statue is bowing again, only his head and hands have been broken off. 

God starts giving tumors to the people in the town surrounding the temple and the Philistines start to rethink the feng shui of where they put the Ark. They suggest sending it to another town, Gath, presumably because they hate them or the people of Gath are too poor to do much about it. 

Gath is no more tumor resistant than the last town, so they try to pass the pipeline Ark, onto Ekron. Ekron brings up that they are also not very tumor resistant, so the Philistines decide to give the Ark back to the Israelites.