What does 1 Samuel 4:11 mean?

The arrival of the ark of the covenant at the battlefield failed to secure Israel's victory over the Philistines. Worse, God did not even keep the ark itself from being captured by the enemy. Less surprising is that God did not protect the two priests sent to shepherd the ark to the battlefield. Hophni and Phinehas, Eli's two sons, were killed as predicted (1 Samuel 2:34). The ark was taken by Israel's hated, pagan enemies.

According to worldview assumptions of the ancient Near East, Israel's god was defeated and proven to be weak, while the god of the Philistines would have been celebrated for his strength. However, the opposite was true. This outcome was the fulfillment of the Lord's prophecy that He would begin to remove the priesthood from Eli's household because of the old priest's tolerance for the sins of his sons in their role as priests (1 Samuel 2:27–36; 3:11–15). Further, it was consistent with God's working through certain objects, not being bound to them. The Lord was not surprised by Israel's defeat, the capture of the ark, or the death of its priests. This had been God's plan all along; possessing the ark will not end will for the Philistines (1 Samuel 5).

Through an unnamed prophet, the Lord had told Eli that all his descendants would die young and, perhaps, violently. To confirm this since Eli would not live to see it, the Lord told the old priest He would give Him a sign: "And this that shall come upon your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, shall be the sign to you: both of them shall die on the same day" (1 Samuel 2:34).

The Lord affirmed the prophecy of the unnamed prophet in his first revelation to Samuel as a boy: "On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. And I declare to him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them" (1 Samuel 3:12–13).