12. A Benjaminite fled from the battlefield and reached Shiloh that same day, with his clothes torn and his head covered with dirt.
13. When he arrived, Eli was sitting in his chair beside the gate, watching the road, for he was troubled at heart about the ark of God. The man, however, went into the city to announce his news; then the whole city cried out.
14. When Eli heard the uproar, he wondered why there was such commotion. Just then the man rushed up to inform him.
15. Eli was ninety-eight years old, and his eyes would not focus. So he could not see.
16. The man said to Eli: “I have come from the battlefield; today I fled from there.” He asked, “What happened, my son?”
17. And the messenger answered: “Israel fled from the Philistines; in fact, the troops suffered heavy losses. Your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead, and the ark of God has been captured.”
18. At this mention of the ark of God, Eli fell backward from his chair into the gateway; he died of a broken neck since he was an old man and heavy. He had judged Israel for forty years.
19. His daughter-in-law, the wife of Phinehas, was pregnant and about to give birth. When she heard the news about the capture of the ark of God and the deaths of her father-in-law and her husband, she crouched down in labor, and gave birth.
20. She was about to die when the women standing around her said to her, “Do not be afraid, you have given birth to a son.” Yet she neither answered nor paid any attention.
21. She named the child Ichabod, saying, “Gone is the glory from Israel,” referring to the capture of the ark of God and to her father-in-law and her husband.
22. She said, “Gone is the glory from Israel,” because the ark of God had been captured.