When he arrived, there was Eli, sitting on his chair beside the road and watching, because his heart trembled for the ark of God. When the man entered the city to give a report, the whole city cried out.
Tidings are here brought to Shiloh of the fatal issue of their battle with the Philistines. Bad news flies fast. This soon spread through all Israel; every man that fled to his tent brought it, with too plain a proof of it, to his neighbours. But no place was so nearly concerned as Shiloh.
Commenting on 1 Samuel 4:12-18
And when he came,.... To Shiloh; he either passed by Eli, who being blind could not see him, Sa1 4:15 or he came in at another gate of the city on the other side of it, as Abarbinel thinks; though the former seems more likely by what follows, he not choosing to deliver the bad news to Eli first, whom he knew it would very...
ELI HEARING THE TIDINGS. (Sa1 4:12-22) Eli sat upon a seat by the wayside--The aged priest, as a public magistrate, used, in dispensing justice, to seat himself daily in a spacious recess at the entrance gate of the city. In his intense anxiety to learn the issue of the battle, he took up his usual place as the most convenient for meeting with passers-by.