Chapter 9: Thunder From Heaven

While Samuel was still offering the sacrifice, the Philistines reached Mizpah and prepared to attack. The people of Israel had no time to form ranks, no time to arm themselves. The Philistines had every advantage.

But that day, the Lord thundered with a mighty sound against the Philistines. The sky broke open, and the noise that came from heaven was so powerful that the Philistine soldiers were thrown into confusion. They could not hold their lines. They could not see clearly. They turned and ran.

The men of Israel came out of Mizpah and chased them down. They pursued the Philistines and struck them all the way from Mizpah to below Beth Car.

No general had organized the attack. No battle plan had been drawn. Samuel had not lifted a sword. He had lifted a prayer, and God had answered with thunder.

When the battle was over, Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He gave it a name.

SAMUEL“Thus far the Lord has helped us.”— 1 Samuel 7:12

He called the stone Ebenezer. The same name as the place where Israel had been destroyed twenty years earlier, where thirty thousand men had died and the Ark had been captured. The first Ebenezer was a place of defeat. This one was a place of rescue. Same ground, same enemy, but this time Israel had come with prayer instead of a trophy, and God had fought for them.