Scripture Daily

Context No. 2399 of 4322 · 1 Kings

Context · Reflection

1 Kings 2:25-29: in context

25King Solomon sent Benaiah the son of Jehoiada; and he fell on him, so that he died. 26To Abiathar the priest the king said, “Go to Anathoth, to your own fields, for you are worthy of death. But I will not at this time put you to death, because you bore the Lord GOD’s ark before David my father, and because you were afflicted in all in which my father was afflicted.” 27So Solomon thrust Abiathar out from being priest to the LORD, that he might fulfill the LORD’s word which he spoke concerning the house of Eli in Shiloh. 28This news came to Joab; for Joab had followed Adonijah, although he didn’t follow Absalom. Joab fled to the LORD’s Tent, and held onto the horns of the altar. 29King Solomon was told, “Joab has fled to the LORD’s Tent; and behold, he is by the altar.” Then Solomon sent Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, saying, “Go, fall on him.”

Solomon is securing his throne, and the narrator pauses on one detail. When he removes Abiathar from the priesthood, the text notes that this fulfilled the word the LORD had spoken against the house of Eli at Shiloh, generations earlier. A judgment announced long before, when Eli's sons were desecrating the sanctuary, finally comes to pass in a palace transition no one would have connected to it.

The point is the long fuse of God's word. Ages had passed since that warning; anyone might have assumed it had lapsed, forgotten, overtaken by events. Instead it arrives exactly, through ordinary political machinery, at the appointed time. God's spoken word does not expire because it is slow. It waits, sometimes across lifetimes, and then it is quietly fulfilled. What he has said stands, whether or not we are still watching for it.

Have I written off something God has said as expired, simply because it has been a long time coming?

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