Here I raise my Ebenezer

Marking the place where God has helped us.

Years before, Israel had camped beside a place called Eben-ezer and lost — first the battle, then the ark of God itself (1 Samuel 4:1, 1 Samuel 4:10-11). Afterwards "all the house of Israel lamented after Jehovah" (1 Samuel 7:2). Samuel called them to put away their foreign gods and "serve him only," and gathered the nation at Mizpah to fast, confess their sin and pray (1 Samuel 7:3-6).

The Philistines heard of the gathering and marched on Mizpah, and Israel was afraid. The people begged Samuel to keep crying to the Lord for them. Samuel offered a burnt-offering and prayed, and "Jehovah answered him": he "thundered with a great thunder" on the Philistines, and Israel pursued them as far as Beth-car. Then Samuel set up a stone between Mizpah and Shen and named it Eben-ezer, "saying, Hitherto hath Jehovah helped us" (1 Samuel 7:12).

Eben-ezer is Hebrew for "stone of help." (The ASV writes it with a hyphen; the hymn, and most English speakers, write Ebenezer — it is the same name.) The stone gave God's help a name and a place. Israel could point to it and say: here, where we were afraid, the Lord fought for us. The victory did not come from Israel's strength — they were frightened and asked Samuel to keep praying — but from God answering prayer.

Samuel's words look both ways. "Hitherto" means "up to this point": God has brought us this far. It is thanks for what is past and quiet confidence for what lies ahead, because the God who helped then is the same God still. The narrator had already used the name Eben-ezer for the camp of the earlier defeat (1 Samuel 4:1); now it stood over a deliverance that followed repentance.

The phrase is familiar today mainly because of Robert Robinson's hymn "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" (1758), with its line "Here I raise my Ebenezer." Many who sing it do not know the word. It is Samuel's stone, and the hymn uses it much as Samuel did: to mark how far God's help has brought the singer.

Christians now speak of "raising an Ebenezer" for any marker of God's past help — a date written in a Bible, a remembered answer to prayer, a story told to children. That use is faithful to 1 Samuel 7 when it keeps Samuel's emphasis: the stone honors what God did, not what we achieved, and it looks back in order to trust him for what comes next. It drifts from the passage when the marker becomes a monument to our own progress, or an object valued for itself rather than a pointer to the Lord who helped.

Ebenezer

And the word of Samuel came to all Israel. Now Israel went out against the Philistines to battle, and encamped beside Eben-ezer: and the Philistines encamped in Aphek.

The same name marks Israel's camp before the defeat in which the ark was lost.

So the Philistines were subdued, and they came no more within the border of Israel: and the hand of Jehovah was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel.

The help Samuel named held: "the hand of Jehovah was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel."

that this may be a sign among you, that, when your children ask in time to come, saying, What mean ye by these stones? then ye shall say unto them, Because the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of Jehovah; when it passed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off: and these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children of Israel for ever.

Stones set up at the Jordan so that children would ask, and the story of God's help would be told.

Our help is in the name of Jehovah, Who made heaven and earth.

Israel's confession of where help comes from — the same Hebrew word for help that is in Eben-ezer.

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