“Yahweh … endows his king with power,
he exalts the horn of his Anointed”
(1 Sam 2:10, The Jerusalem Bible)
At this point we know that Israel was considered a covenant people for the duration of the Old Testament. There is also a specific assignment given to them, to spread the news of the true God, YAHWEH, to the other tribes. In Jer 31:31-34 we do however find that God reveals that in the future this covenant will change, and that a new covenant will be established – “Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
According to Daniel’s prophecy in Dan 9:24-26 this new covenant clearly entails an Anointed, “a Messiah” (KJV). This term is used for the first time in the book of Leviticus, where there are four references to a Messiah within the context of the priesthood of the Old Covenant. Then in the song of Hannah (1 Sam 2:1-10), which she sang as she was bringing Samuel to the temple, as she had promised God she would do, a completely different connotation is added to this word. Hannah ends her song (verse 10) with a specific prophecy about a new priesthood which God will bring about in a New Covenant, of which Samuel is the first prototype – “The LORD will judge the ends of the earth. “He will give strength to His king, and exalt the horn of His anointed.” The prophetic implications of this passage become clear in certain other translations, such as the God’s Word-translation which speaks of “his Messiah”, as well as the 1899 Douay-Rheims Bible which translates it into Greek as “his Christ”!
Then, in 1 Sam 2:35, after the prophecy about the death of Eli’s two unfaithful sons, the priests Hophni and Phinehas, God makes a promise to Samuel (keep in mind that he prototypically represents the priesthood of the New Covenant) – “Then I will raise up for Myself a faithful priest who shall do according to what is in My heart and in My mind. I will build him a sure house, and he shall walk before My anointed forever.”
This “anointed” should actually be spelled with a capital letter, as is seen in the 1833 Webster Bible and the Jerusalem Bible (quoted above). The new priesthood will follow the Anointed, Jesus the Christ, and will be a faithful priesthood schooled in the promptings of God’s heart.
- Sela: Explain to someone how the focus shifts when moving from the Old to the New covenant.
- Read: Num 17 (verse 8 being especially important within the context of this teaching); Dan 8; Ezek 18
- Memorize: Ezek 18:32
