The blood shall be for a token or sign to you upon [the doorposts of] the houses where you are, [that] when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall be upon you to destroy you when I smite the land of Egypt. [I Cor. 5:7; Heb. 11:28.]
Her gates have sunk into the ground; He has destroyed and broken her bars. Her king and her princes are [exiled] among the nations; the law is no more; her prophets also obtain no vision from the Lord.
Moreover, also I gave them My Sabbaths to be a sign between Me and them, that they might understand and realize that I am the Lord Who sanctifies them [separates and sets them apart].
Calamity shall come upon calamity and rumor shall be upon rumor, and they shall seek a vision of the prophet; and the law and instruction shall cease from the [distracted] priest and counsel from the [dismayed] elders. [Ps. 74:9; Lam. 2:9.]
Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but [a famine] for hearing the words of the Lord.
Therefore it shall be night to you, so that you shall have no vision; yes, it shall be dark to you without divination. And the sun shall go down over the false prophets, and the day shall be black over them.
And the seers shall be put to shame and the diviners shall blush and be confounded; yes, they shall all cover their lips, for there is no answer from God.
[Besides this evidence] it was also established and plainly endorsed by God, Who showed His approval of it by signs and wonders and various miraculous manifestations of [His] power and by imparting the gifts of the Holy Spirit [to the believers] according to His own will.
NOW THE boy Samuel ministered to the Lord before Eli. The word of the Lord was rare and precious in those days; there was no frequent or widely spread vision.