Today, we will be looking at verses 7-8 from our passage, 1 Samuel 2:1-10. I will begin with summarizing verses 6-10 and then verse 7. Please join me in meditating on God’s Word.
III. God gives and takes away all life, wealth, honor, and power; declaring those against Him destroyed, those with Him protected, and the Messiah King exalted (verses 6-10).
B. God sovereignly takes away and brings low and sovereignly gives wealth and exalts (verse 7).
7 “Yahweh makes poor and He makes rich; He brings low and He lifts up.”
In verse seven, God makes people rich just as He is the one who makes people poor. God’s control of all wealth is absolute. He is not as the weak god of Marxism (to which some professing believers hold) who cannot further his designs to distribute earthly wealth evenly. The distribution of wealth is already as God wills for it to be, in all times and places. God is sovereign over all wealth, choosing some to be rich and measuring wealth out to them, and choosing some to be poor and measuring little wealth out to them. This, of course, does not mean that people should not seek to gain wealth for themselves, since that is not what this verse is claiming (earning wealth through diligence and hard work is often a blessing for that hard work). Rather, God ultimately controls the flow of all wealth, regardless of how it is sought by men. He makes poor and He makes rich in accordance with His good pleasure and providence.
A good illustration of God “bringing low” is God allowing Satan to test Job. Through God’s permission, all of his children died and he lost virtually all of his wealth in a day (Job 1-2). His body was even afflicted. Likewise, because of his pride, God caused Nebuchadnezzar to become as an animal for a time, during which he forfeited all that he had as king of Babylon (Daniel 4:28-37). Just as God had taken away from these two men, so He restored to them even greater riches than they had before. Both of them glorified God for His sovereignty over all. In these examples, “bringing low” and “lifting up” referred to taking away and giving not only monetary and material wealth, but one’s sanity (in Nebuchadnezzar), family, personal health, friends, office, honor, and everything else that can be related to a man except for his life (God’s taking and giving of life was addressed in verse 6). Hence, God is not only sovereign over monetary or material riches, but also over everything that can be given or taken away from a man. No part of the human life, then, is outside of God’s control. He is sovereign over every aspect of life, and His providence is absolute.
In all of this, God, having total control of wealth, puts it to use towards His ends. Poverty can be a good schoolmaster to bring people to good service for Him, eliminating the temptation to rely on riches instead of on God. The apostle Paul even called the love of riches the root of all kinds of evil (1 Tim. 6:10), and Jesus said that it is hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God (Matt. 19:23-24). For this reason, God preventing some from becoming rich can also be viewed as a divine providence. In fact, many of God’s best spokesmen (especially His prophets) had very little on the side of possessions, while the wicked can often be portrayed as owning many things in which they trust. In those cases, by God keeping them from wealth, they have been led to rely solely on God, while the giving of wealth to the wicked has solidified the wicked in their wickedness. Verse seven, then, is more dynamic than simply claiming that the righteous become rich and the wicked become poor. Rather, God’s sovereignty towards those ends is what is being highlighted. Likewise, since God is sovereign, He is also in control of the riches in the next life. While many of the righteous have needed relative poverty as a schoolmaster, God promises them great riches in the next life (Matthew 5:12). However, the wicked have nothing to look forward to but their own judgement and destruction, not being able to take anything with them to the grave (Ps. 49:17). Obeying God is the only way to obtain lasting riches (Matt. 6:19-20).
C. Since God has all power over the whole earth, He also can and does raise and honor the poor and needy according to His good pleasure (verse 8).
8 “He raises the poor from the dust; He raises up the needy from the ash heap to seat them with princes and makes them inherit a throne of honor; for to Yahweh are the pillars of the earth, and He puts on such the habitable world.”
Verse eight seems to give further explanation of verse seven, regarding the poor. God makes people rich in the sense of raising the poorest of the poor to sit with princes and in honor. Clearly, a fuller sense of “riches” is meant in this verse than to what is just monetary or material, showing that the poor and needy are being lifted up in a full sense of the term. Truly, one cannot get poorer than to live in the dust (Isaiah 47:1), and one cannot get lower or needier than to be in an ash heap. All that such poor owned was dust, and their residence in the ash heap shows their destitution and mourning of their lowly estate (ashes was a symbol of mourning and, depending on the context, repentance). This verse has the poor go from the lowest position that a person could hold to perhaps the highest, except from being king himself. A king can hardly honor a person more than to give him the status and possessions suitable to one of the king’s own sons. This contrast of God raising and lowering is of the highest degrees, meaning that there is no low that is too low to bring a person down and there is no high that is too high except for God’s position as Absolute King. His sovereignty covers all possible positions for men.
It is clear from the general lack of earthly position or honor that God’s servants generally hold in this life that this verse likely has prophetic significance. Just as verse seven detailed the fact that God is sovereign over all riches, taking them to His desired ends, and that such has application in the next life, so does this verse apply honor to His servants who suffer in the present time. Very few of God’s servants, although held in low esteem while they were living, had “thrones of glory” with princes in the most literal sense of this verse. In fact, if one was low, it would usually take a very dramatic event for such a person to receive the honor of a prince. Such occurrences were quite rare. This fact helps to solidify the idea that a future time was in view when all of those who were low in worldly honor would inherit the glory of sons of the King. In fact, that is the exact promise from Christ for all those who would have salvation in Him (Luke 20:35-37). In that passage, those who are the “sons of God” are “sons of the resurrection” (ESV). That is when all of God’s lowly will “inherit a throne of honor.”
When we get to the “pillars of the earth,” we can see that they are being used idiomatically.[1] The idiom comes from how houses were built upon pillars (Judges 16:26), pointing towards the fact that God is sovereign over all creation and over maintaining it as it is (He bears up the earth in the sense that He sustains the universe by His power). God’s house, so to speak, is all of creation, and he maintains His house (He places His house on its pillars). He alone possesses the power to do with the earth as He pleases. Another dimension of God’s sovereignty is thus described by Hannah’s song. Not only does God have sovereignty over every aspect of life and death (and even beyond death), but He also sustains and controls the whole created world (which, by extension, includes the whole universe). God can thus be said to control and maintain the narrow conditions uniquely required for life on earth. He ensures that the moon is carefully placed and maintained in its orbit to providentially change the tides and bring life to crops. He even ensures that the physics of the universe remain constant, cohering to certain laws fashioned and put in place by Him. In all of this, the universe itself is God’s servant, molded and shaped by His hands for His good pleasure.
Another usage of “pillars” is to refer to the kings and rulers of the earth (Jer. 1:18; Rev. 3:12), because they maintain order in the world as God ordained them (Prov. 8:15-16).[2] Romans 13:1-7 is explicit on this point, even saying of governing institutions, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God” (Rom. 13:1 ESV). Submitting to the governing institutions of the earth, then, is submitting to God (as far as they do not require trespass against God’s law). Both of the above uses work, since God is sovereign over all creation, and, by extension, sovereign over rulers, kings, and all governing institutions, through which He carries out His own designs. The work of all ruling authorities, then, is a part of His sustaining grace. He allocates power to them to help bring order to the world. Absolute sovereignty over all of creation is what is in view, and this can be used for the humbling and exalting of men.
Next time we will be looking at verse 9.
[1] “Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges,” Bible Hub, https://biblehub.com/commentaries/cambridge/1_samuel/2.htm.
[2] “Matthew Poole’s Commentary,” Bible Hub, https://biblehub.com/commentaries/poole/1_samuel/2.htm.