Samuel
Typological treatment in the corpus
Samuel is used by Noordzij as a type of the new priestly people — the sons of God — who are brought forth at the end of the age as the “male child” of Rev. 12:5. His birth from Hannah’s prayer contrasts with the dying priesthood of Eli’s house (type: Ichabod).
Biblical Anchoring
| Reference | Context |
|---|---|
| 1Sam. 1:1-28 | Hannah’s prayer and the birth of Samuel as a Nazirite of God |
| 1Sam. 7:8-12 | Samuel as prophet succeeding the priesthood of Eli’s house |
| Rev. 12:5 | The male child born from the heavenly Woman |
| Rom. 8:19 | The revelation of the sons of God |
Typological Interpretation per Author
C. en A. Noordzij
Noordzij introduces Samuel in the context of his exposition of Rev. 12: the bringing forth of the new priesthood amid the resistance of the old system:
“We can expect that along with the birth pangs of the heavenly ‘Woman’ to bring forth this ‘Son’ (see Rev. 12), there will also be the birth pangs of an ‘old,’ dying priesthood that also wants to bring forth a ‘son.’ An image of this we find in 1Sam. 1-4, concerning the births of Samuel and Ichabod.”1
The typological structure Noordzij constructs here is deliberately symmetrical: two births, two outcomes, two orders. The “birth pangs” are doubly literal — the heavenly Woman (Rev. 12) brings forth a Male Child, while simultaneously the “old, dying priesthood” attempts to produce a “son” of its own. In the historical type, these are the lawless sons of Eli — Hophni and Phinehas — who fall on the same day the ark is captured by the Philistines. Eli dies upon hearing the news; dying in childbirth, Phinehas’s wife delivers a son and names him Ichabod: “the glory has departed.” Over against this dying system stands Samuel’s birth: borne through prayer, consecrated as a Nazirite, appointed by God to succeed the declining house. Noordzij summarizes the typological core: “earthly-minded Christianity may try whatever it likes, but it only produces Ichabods — without glory.” The simultaneity of the two births is structural for Noordzij: the emergence of the new priesthood is always surrounded by the death throes of the old system.
On Samuel himself:
“First Samuel. Hannah prayed to God continuously and fervently for a son. She was barren and promised that if she received one, he would be a Nazirite of God all his life. God gave her a son and she called him Samuel (=asked of God). He would succeed the declining priesthood of Eli’s house as prophet (1Sam. 7:8-12).”1
Noordzij highlights three aspects that give Samuel’s birth its typological weight. First, Hannah is barren — God’s preference for the impossible as the birth canal of the new; continuing the line of Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel, this too proves that the new priesthood does not come from human fertility but from divine response to prayer. Second, the Nazirite vow is decisive: Samuel is set apart from before his birth, consecrated for his entire life — not a human career choice but a divine design for radical consecration. Third, the name Shemu’el (“asked of God”) itself carries the type: he is the embodiment of an answered prayer. Noordzij draws the line forward: the new priestly people at the end of the age are likewise “asked of God” — they arise in response to intercession and consecration, not institutional succession. The three aspects — barrenness reversed, lifelong consecration, name-as-embodiment — together form a theological pattern that Noordzij deliberately traces back to God’s working method throughout the entire biblical line.
The typological application follows immediately:
“God has appointed others: ‘Samuels.’ The prayers of God’s people are answered! ‘A male child’ will be born (Rev. 12:5).”1
The plural “Samuels” is not careless writing for Noordzij but a deliberate typological indicator: this concerns not one exceptional individual but a corporate reality — a people of God who together form the new priesthood. “The prayers of God’s people are answered!” connects directly to the Hannah pattern: the intercession of believers is the birth force of what is new. Noordzij places this within the frame of Rev. 12:5 — the “male child” is not a single person but a corporate manifestation of the overcoming body, united to Christ as Head. Set against the “Jeroboams” who prevent disciples from ascending to the heavenly Jerusalem, the “Samuels” emerge from the apparently impossible: prayer, barrenness reversed into birth, radical consecration. The antithetical tension between false and genuine priesthood is the typological backbone of Noordzij’s reading of 1Sam. 1-4. It is not the individual Samuel who counts, but the Samuel pattern: what God once did in response to prayer He repeats eschatologically in the corporate birth of the overcoming body.
This new priesthood is of a different order than the dying system it replaces. It is characterized not by human ability or ecclesiastical success, but by spiritual life:
“They are ‘royal priests’ of a different order, of the ‘order of Melchizedek’ (Heb. 6:20). That ‘new’ priesthood is imperishable, ‘by virtue of an indestructible life’ (Heb. 7:16).”1
Noordzij connects the Melchizedek priesthood to a decisive theological boundary: “everything temporal is of no use here.” Natural advantages, human abilities, ecclesiastical success, earthly descent — none of this has value in the Melchizedek order. It “has no record of father or mother, genealogy, beginning of days or end of life” (Heb. 7:3) — a priesthood that transcends biological succession, just as Melchizedek himself has no genealogy in the biblical text. Crucial for Noordzij is the notion of a “process of becoming”: belonging to the priesthood is different from being a priest (cf. 1Pet. 2:9). The Feast of Tabernacles is the moment of revelation — when “what we shall be” is made manifest (1John 3:2). The name Samuel (Hebrew: Shemu’el = “asked of God”) remains the typological anchor: the new priestly people is not born from institutional hereditary right but from the power of an indestructible life and the intercession of believers. The Samuel type thus becomes for Noordzij the eschatological counterweight of all ecclesiastical systems built on earthly foundations: life against organization, prayer against hereditary right, the indestructible against the perishable.
Related Types
- Connected: Ichabod (contrast: dying priesthood versus new priestly people)
- Connected: Feast of Tabernacles (context: Rev. 12 and the feast of full glory)
- Connected: Melchizedek (the order of the new priesthood)