Where Is the Glory? Text: 1 Samuel 4:19-22
Introduction: The Weight of Glory
We live in a weightless age. Our culture is obsessed with the ephemeral, the trivial, the light and meaningless. We have celebrities famous for being famous, politicians who speak in focus-grouped platitudes, and churches that offer a feather-light gospel of self-improvement. Everything is slick, polished, and utterly devoid of substance. We have become experts in manufacturing hollow things. But the universe is not hollow. God is not hollow. Reality has weight. The central, heaviest, most substantial thing in the entire cosmos is the glory of God.
The Hebrew word for glory is kavod, and it comes from a root word that means heavy, or weighty. The glory of God is the manifestation of His infinite worth, His absolute reality, His utter significance. It is the most important thing there is. And when a nation, a church, or a family loses sight of this central reality, everything else begins to fall apart. When the center cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. The story before us today is a story of what happens when the glory departs. It is a dark story, a tragic story, but it is a story we must heed, because our generation is living in its long and terrible shadow.
The nation of Israel had come to a place of deep apostasy. The priesthood, under the high priest Eli, was corrupt to the core. His sons, Hophni and Phinehas, were treating the things of God with contempt, sleeping with the temple servants and stealing the best parts of the sacrifices for themselves. Eli's leadership was weak, flabby, and compromised. He rebuked his sons with the strength of a wet noodle, and honored them above God. And so, God brought judgment. In a battle with the Philistines, Israel is routed, Eli's sons are killed, and worst of all, the Ark of the Covenant is captured. The Ark was the symbol of God's presence, His throne on earth. Its capture was a national catastrophe of the highest order. It was as if the sun had been stolen from the sky.
Our text picks up in the immediate, tragic aftermath of this disaster. It focuses on one woman, the wife of the wicked priest Phinehas, as she processes this triple blow of grief. But her personal tragedy becomes a prophetic oracle for the entire nation. In her dying breaths, she names the central crisis of her time, and ours. She names the baby, and in doing so, she names the age.
The Text
Now his daughter-in-law, Phinehas’s wife, was with child and about to give birth. And she heard the report that the ark of God was taken and that her father-in-law and her husband had died, so she kneeled down and gave birth, for her pains came upon her. And about the time of her death the women who stood by her said to her, “Do not be afraid, for you have given birth to a son.” But she did not answer or pay attention. And she called the boy Ichabod, saying, “The glory has departed from Israel,” because the ark of God was taken and because of her father-in-law and her husband. And she said, “The glory has departed from Israel, for the ark of God was taken.”
(1 Samuel 4:19-22 LSB)
The Agony of Birth and Death (v. 19-20)
We begin with the collision of life and death, a moment of profound crisis.
"Now his daughter-in-law, Phinehas’s wife, was with child and about to give birth. And she heard the report that the ark of God was taken and that her father-in-law and her husband had died, so she kneeled down and gave birth, for her pains came upon her. And about the time of her death the women who stood by her said to her, “Do not be afraid, for you have given birth to a son.” But she did not answer or pay attention." (1 Samuel 4:19-20)
The scene is one of raw human suffering. A woman, on the very cusp of motherhood, receives the worst news imaginable. Her husband is dead. Her father-in-law, the high priest, is dead. And the Ark of God, the visible sign of Yahweh's presence and favor, has been captured by their pagan enemies. The shock of this news induces a traumatic, premature labor. The pains of childbirth and the pains of grief crash into her at the same moment. She is bringing a new life into the world at the very moment her own world is ending.
Notice the kindness of the midwives. In the middle of this national disaster, they are still doing their duty. They try to comfort her with the best news they have: "Do not be afraid, for you have given birth to a son." In that culture, the birth of a son was the highest blessing. It meant the family line would continue, the name would not be blotted out. They are offering her the standard, culturally-approved consolation. They are trying to point her to a silver lining.
But she is inconsolable. "She did not answer or pay attention." Why? Because she understood something that the other women, in their well-meaning piety, did not. She understood that a private blessing, the birth of a son, is utterly meaningless in the face of a public, covenantal catastrophe. What good is it to have a son if that son is born into a nation under God's judgment? What good is it to continue the family line if the glory of God has departed from the land? Her grief was not just personal; it was theological. She was not just mourning a husband; she was mourning the absence of God.
This is a sharp rebuke to our modern, privatized, sentimental Christianity. We think that as long as our personal lives are in order, as long as our families are healthy and our finances are stable, then everything is fine. We have our "personal relationship with Jesus" in a tidy little box, completely insulated from the broader cultural collapse. But Phinehas's wife knew better. She knew that you cannot have a healthy family in a dying culture. You cannot have a blessed son in a cursed nation. She had a theocentric worldview, not an egocentric one. The state of God's glory was more important to her than the state of her own womb.
Naming the Emptiness (v. 21)
In her final act, she gives her son a name that is not a blessing, but a lament. It is a sermon in a single word.
"And she called the boy Ichabod, saying, 'The glory has departed from Israel,' because the ark of God was taken and because of her father-in-law and her husband." (1 Samuel 4:21)
The name Ichabod literally means "no glory" or "where is the glory?" It is a question that hangs in the air. It is a public declaration of spiritual bankruptcy. This woman, in her agony, becomes a prophet. She correctly diagnoses the core of Israel's problem. The problem was not the Philistine army. The problem was not a bad military strategy. The problem was that the kavod, the heavy, weighty, manifest presence of God, had been lifted. Israel had treated the Ark like a magical good-luck charm, a talisman to be manipulated for their own purposes. They thought they could drag God onto the battlefield to bless their corrupt enterprise. But God will not be manipulated. His glory is not a tool to be used; it is a reality to be submitted to. And when His people treat His presence with contempt, He withdraws it.
She lists the reasons for her lament, and the order is telling. First, "because the ark of God was taken." Second, "because of her father-in-law and her husband." She gets the priorities right, even in her grief. The loss of the Ark was a greater tragedy than the loss of her family. The departure of God's glory was a heavier blow than the death of the men she loved. This is what it means to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. It means His honor is more precious to you than your own life, or even the lives of your family.
We must ask ourselves if we have this same sense of priority. When we look at the state of the Western world, what grieves us most? Is it the economic downturn? The political corruption? The moral decay? Or is it the fact that the glory of God has been treated so lightly for so long in the very places that once honored Him? Is it that the church has become a laughingstock, a place of entertainment and therapy rather than a pillar and buttress of the truth? Do we feel the weight of Ichabod over our land?
The Final Verdict (v. 22)
The narrative concludes by repeating her lament, driving the point home with the force of a hammer.
"And she said, 'The glory has departed from Israel, for the ark of God was taken.'" (1 Samuel 4:22)
The repetition is for emphasis. This is the final verdict. This is the headline of the day. The glory is gone. The story of Ichabod is a stark warning that God's presence is not to be taken for granted. It is not unconditional. God enters into covenant with His people, and covenants have terms. The terms are faithfulness, obedience, and holiness. When the leadership of God's people becomes corrupt, when worship becomes a hollow ritual, and when sin is tolerated and even celebrated in the camp, the glory will depart. It may not happen all at once. It may be a slow fade. But the departure is certain.
We see this pattern throughout Scripture. Ezekiel sees the glory of God departing from the Temple in Jerusalem step by step before the Babylonian invasion (Ezekiel 10-11). Jesus Himself declares to the corrupt leadership of His day, "Behold, your house is left to you desolate" (Matthew 23:38). He was pronouncing "Ichabod" over the second Temple. The book of Revelation warns the churches of Asia Minor that if they do not repent, their lampstand, the symbol of Christ's presence, will be removed (Revelation 2:5).
The great temptation for us is to think this cannot happen to us. We are America. We are the West. We have a Christian heritage. But a heritage is not a guarantee. Israel had a far greater heritage, and the glory departed from them. The churches of North Africa were once the vibrant heartland of Christianity, producing giants like Augustine, and today they are a distant memory. God is not a respecter of persons, or of nations.
The Return of the Glory
Is this, then, the final word? Is Ichabod the end of the story? Thanks be to God, it is not. This story of the departure of the glory is the necessary backdrop for the even greater story of the return of the glory. The Ark would eventually be returned to Israel, but that was just a shadow of the true return.
Centuries later, in a humble stable in Bethlehem, a baby was born. And the apostle John tells us who He was: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). The Greek word for "dwelt" is skenoo, which means to pitch a tent, or to tabernacle. Jesus Christ is the true Tabernacle. He is the true Ark of the Covenant. He is the glory of God made flesh. Where the Ark was a wooden box containing the law, Jesus is the living Word who is the lawgiver. Where the Ark was the place of God's presence, Jesus is Immanuel, "God with us."
The name Ichabod means "Where is the glory?" And the gospel answers, "He is here." Jesus Christ is the glory of God returned to His people. But just like the first time, the people in charge did not recognize Him. The corrupt priesthood of His day, the spiritual sons of Hophni and Phinehas, rejected Him and crucified Him. They tried to extinguish the glory. But on the third day, He rose again, in a blaze of glory that makes the sun look like a flickering candle.
And the story gets even better. Through faith in this glorious Christ, we who were once "Ichabod," we who were without glory, without God and without hope in the world, are now filled with that very glory. Paul says that Christ in you is "the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27). The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of glory, now makes His tabernacle not in a tent or a temple made with hands, but in the hearts of His people. The church is the new temple, and we are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit (Ephesians 2:22).
The lesson of Ichabod is not a lesson of despair, but a call to repentance and faith. It forces us to ask the hard questions. Have we been treating the presence of God lightly? Have we tolerated sin in our midst? Have we honored men more than God? Have we substituted religious machinery for the real, weighty presence of the living God? If so, we must repent. We must turn from our idols and our compromises and cry out to God not to remove His lampstand from us. We must plead with Him to restore His glory to His church. For He is our only hope. The glory has a name, and that name is Jesus. And He has promised that where two or three are gathered in His name, He is there in their midst. Let us therefore gather not as those who have lost the glory, but as those who are filled with it, and who long for the day when the whole earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.