1 Samuel 3 · a question people ask
When Eli said "It is the LORD," was that faith, or giving up?
Eli asked to hear everything, and pressed Samuel with an oath: "God do so to you, and more also, if you hide anything from me of all the things that he spoke to you" (3:17). "Samuel told him every bit, and hid nothing from him" (3:18). Eli answered, "It is the LORD. Let him do what seems good to him" (3:18). The chapter records his words, not what was in his heart, and Christians read them in two main ways. Both agree that Eli didn't argue with the word, and that the chapter says no more.
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
Humble acceptance
Those who read it this way point to what Eli did and said. He was the one who told Samuel how to answer the LORD (3:9), and he asked for the whole message, not a softened one (3:17). His words leave the judgment with the LORD, as David's do later when he leaves Jerusalem: "here I am. Let him do to me as seems good to him" (2 Samuel 15:26).
1 Samuel 3:9 · 1 Samuel 3:17-18 · 2 Samuel 15:26
Resignation without change
Those who read it this way point to what the LORD said and what follows. The LORD said Eli's sons "brought a curse on themselves, and he didn’t restrain them" (3:13), and the man of God had asked Eli why he would "honor your sons above me" (2:29). The chapter records no change after Eli's words, and in the next chapter "the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were there with the ark of the covenant of God" (4:4).
1 Samuel 3:13 · 1 Samuel 2:29 · 1 Samuel 4:4
The verses
“He said, “What is the thing that he has spoken to you? Please don’t hide it from me. God do so to you, and more also, if you hide anything from me of all the things that he spoke to you.” Samuel told him every bit, and hid nothing from him. He said, “It is the LORD. Let him do what seems good to him.””