Chapter 6 ended with the ark handed on like an unwanted guest; chapter 7 opens with it parked in a private house for twenty years. The ark in fact stays at Kirjathjearim far longer, until David fetches it (2 Samuel 6); the twenty years are usually taken as the span until the lamenting of this verse ripened into the return of verse 3. The narrator cares less about the furniture than about the heart.

Lamented after the LORD — not merely mourned, but mourned toward Him, like a people following a departed friend. The glory had gone (4:21); the longing for it was itself the first sign of its return. God often begins a revival with an ache.

Samuel's first recorded public sermon has four parts: return with all your hearts, put away the foreign gods, prepare your hearts, serve him only — and a promise, he will deliver you. Deliverance follows repentance here; in chapter 4 Israel had wanted deliverance without it and lost the ark.

Ashtaroth — the goddesses of the Canaanite peoples, named alongside Baalim in verse 4 and in Judges 2:13. Israel had been lamenting after the LORD while keeping other gods in the house. Samuel will not let longing pass for repentance until the idols are actually carried out.

The pouring out of water before the LORD is not a rite prescribed in the Law, and its meaning is not explained. Many take it as an acted confession — a life poured out, nothing held back, as Hannah poured out her soul (1:15) and Lamentations bids Jerusalem pour out thine heart like water (2:19). Fasting and the plain words We have sinned complete the picture.

This is the first time in the book that Israel says we have sinned. In chapter 4 they asked wherefore hath the LORD smitten us? and reached for the ark; here they answer the question themselves. Samuel judged — his office as judge begins at a national confession, not a battle.

The Philistines read a religious assembly as a military muster (v. 7) and march; Israel, gathered to repent, suddenly needs rescuing. Their fear does not drive them back to the ark as a charm but to the prophet as an intercessor: cease not to cry unto the LORD our God for us. Twenty years have taught them something.

Cease not — Samuel will take up the phrase himself at the end of his life: God forbid that I should sin against the LORD in ceasing to pray for you (12:23). Intercession is the thread that ties his ministry together, from the lamb at Mizpeh to the farewell at Gilgal.

The battle is decided while the lamb is still on the altar. Israel does not strike until verse 11; the LORD strikes first, with a great thunder. Hannah had sung that out of heaven shall he thunder upon them (2:10) — the song of chapter 2 is fulfilled at Mizpeh, with her son holding the sacrifice.

The same field, perhaps the same Philistines, and the opposite result from chapter 4. There Israel shouted and brought the ark; here Israel confesses and a prophet prays. Nothing about the enemy had changed; everything about the worship had. The Hebrew word behind discomfited is used of the LORD's own fighting in Exodus 14:24 (KJV troubled) and Joshua 10:10.

The name is traditionally understood as stone of help; the text gives its meaning in Samuel's own words — Hitherto hath the LORD helped us. The place-name Ebenezer appears already in 4:1 as the field of Israel's defeat; readers have taken that either as the narrator using the later name in advance or as a different spot. Either way the irony stands: where the ark was lost, a stone of help is raised.

Hitherto — thus far, up to this point. It is a word that looks back with gratitude and forward with trust but without presumption. The stone does not say the Philistines are finished for ever; it says that every step to here has been the LORD's help. Memorials of grace are how a forgetful people keep faith.

The hand of the LORD — the phrase that was heavy on Ashdod, Gath and Ekron in chapter 5 — is now against the Philistines all the days of Samuel. The God who fought alone in their temples now fights with a repentant people in the field.

They came no more must be read with the rest of the book, where Philistine garrisons and raids reappear in Saul's day (10:5; 13:5). The sense most take is that the Philistines did not again overrun the land as they had, and that the restraint held while Samuel lived and prayed. Verse 14 adds restored cities and peace with the Amorites — a quiet summary of a judge's whole career in two verses.

Samuel's circuit — Bethel, and Gilgal, and Mizpeh (v. 16) — brings justice to the people instead of waiting for them to come to Shiloh. With the ark in a private house and the sanctuary at Shiloh silent, the prophet himself becomes the point where Israel meets her God.

He built an altar unto the LORD at Ramah, his birthplace (1:19). With no central sanctuary functioning, Samuel offers where he lives, as the patriarchs did. The book does not pause to justify the altar; it records that the man who judged Israel also worshipped at home. Public office and private devotion share one address.