The second episode of the fourth season of the Retelling the Bible Podcast is posted today (February 26, 2020). You can listen to the episode right now and subscribe to the podcast by following one of these links or by searching for the podcast on your favourite platform:

Show Notes

The story of Ichabod and of his uncle and father, Hophni and Phinehas, is found in 1 Samuel where it is interwoven with the story of the boy Samuel. It is actually the beginning of a longer tale, the story of the loss and recovery of the Ark of the Covenant, but that is a great story in and of itself and so I have largely ignored the presence of the Ark in this story. Perhaps that’s an episode for another time.

Trigger warning: The story contains references to rape and sexual abuse that come straight from the biblical text.

Sacrifices in ancient agricultural societies

I believe that modern people do not understand how sacrifices worked in ancient societies. We tend to think of sacrifice as a barbaric and wasteful practice in which animals were burnt up whole in order to placate angry gods. But whole burnt offerings, called holocausts by the Greeks, were actually not the most common form. Most animal sacrifices were intended to be consumed in the greatest part by the worshippers.

Of course the appropriateness of eating meat is a major ethical discussion in the modern world with many opting to avoid the practice altogether for various reasons. Many who do choose to eat meat today seem to prefer to do it in a mindless fashion; they don’t want to think about where their meat comes from. They don’t want to know what happens in the slaughterhouse and they don’t want to know how the sausage gets made.

Such oblivion is a modern luxury that ancient people could not afford. They lived in close proximity with the animals that they ate and they were generally present when they were slaughtered. But they still knew the benefits of eating meat, even though they did so quite rarely. It is not surprising that they would have come to see the act as sacred. When one living thing gives its life for the sake of another, you actually have to work pretty hard not to see that as a sacred event.

Priesthood

As modern hunting societies, such as the indigenous peoples of North America, have shown us, it is likely that there were certain rituals to be performed when hunted animals were killed and eaten by ancient peoples, but the development of agriculture and domesticated animals created new challenges around the consumption of meat and it is at this phase of human development that we see the evolution of an institutional priesthood.

Whatever else he was (and I use the male pronoun because this kind of priesthood seems to have been an exclusively male domain), the ancient priest was an expert at slaughtering and butchering meat and at safely disposing of any portions that were not eaten. These were all vital tasks that served to keep people from falling sick or dying. But, where we would understand such things in terms of food safety and infection control, ancient peoples understood this in exclusively spiritual terms: the priests protected the people from the wrath of the gods.

Because they carried the expert knowledge that allowed them to fulfill these functions, the priests enjoyed certain privileges including power, authority and fair payment for their services. The story of Hophni and Phinehas and of their father Eli is a story about priests who abused those privileges.

Paying the priests

The priests’ portion. An illustration by Illustrated by Gerard Hoet (1648-1733)

The Bible is quite clear that it was only right that a priest should be paid for his work and expertise. There is some conflicting biblical information as to what the priests might expect to receive, which may indicate that there were different traditions a different sanctuaries. Payment was normally to be in the form of a portion of the meat.

In the story of Hophni and Phinehas, it is not entirely clear what the tradition was at the sanctuary of Shiloh. For narrative purposes, I decided that the custom of taking a portion of meat from the pot as it boiled was the long-standing tradition that the young priests broke by demanding raw meat with fat. I would just like to mention that the text does not make it clear at all what tradition the brothers were violating.

The point of the narrative is clear however. The young priests abused their power and authority, not only by demanding a greater portion than they were allowed but also by raping and sexually abusing those who were in their power. Sadly, a story of religious authorities abusing their power in such ways is still a relevant story for today.

MUSIC IN THIS EPISODE

“AhDah” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

“Sad Trio” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Acknowledgements:

Thank you to Gabrielle McAndless for reading this chapter. It just needed a voice like hears. Gabrielle is a budding music producer and sound engineer. I look forward to watching the amazing career that awaits her. Listen to her music here.