Because he is the high priest of the temple of Shiloh, his mattress on the wooden platform is stuffed with wool, not straw. He pushes through the curtain and enters Eli’s chamber. “Samuel!” He flings aside his goat’s-hair blanket and hurries, almost runs, through the dark. Did Samuel forget to close the temple doors at sunset, did he allow one of the seven flames of the lamp to go out? But he remembers it well: pushing shut the heavy doors of cedar, visiting the sanctuary and replenishing the seven gold branches with consecrated olive oil so that the flames will burn brightly all night long. What’s wrong? Eli never calls his name in the middle of the night. He hears it again, clearly this time: “Samuel!” Eli is calling his name. He is twelve years old, according to Flavius Josephus, or he may be a year or two younger. What matters is that Samuel wakes suddenly in the night. We like such details, but they do not matter. A curtained doorway leads to the chamber of Eli, the high priest of the temple of Shiloh. Let’s say that he is lying in an inner chamber, close to the sanctuary, perhaps adjacent to it. Less certain is whether Samuel’s bed is in the sanctuary itself, where the Ark of the Covenant stands before a seven-branched oil lamp that is kept burning through the night, or in an adjoining chamber. Most commentators agree that the incident takes place inside the temple, rather than in a tent outside the temple doors, under the stars.
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