attention to darkness that is about to fall in the next chapter, when the chest leaves Shiloh, never to return. Samuel’s summons is more or less the beginning of the story of the prophets in Israel. The story has some prehistory; the Old Testament has referred to several people as prophets or as prophesying, but before Samuel “Yahweh’s word was rare; there was no vision spreading about.” The expressions are a bit odd, but they make the point that prophecy was something occasional. You were not regularly