Catholic Commentary
Israel's Idolatry and the Abandonment of Shiloh (Part 2)
64Their priests fell by the sword, and their widows couldn’t weep.
Psalms 78:64 recounts the death of Israel's priests during the battle of Ebenezer, when the sons of Eli fell by the Philistine sword following Israel's covenant unfaithfulness. The verse frames their deaths as divinely permitted judgment, resulting from both their own priestly corruption and the nation's idolatry and infidelity.
When priests fall into corruption, they don't only betray their own souls—they bring the entire covenant structure down with them.
Narrative Flow Within the Psalm: Verse 64 is the penultimate blow in a sequence of collapses: the fire of God (v. 63), the sword on the priests (v. 64), the weeping widows (v. 64b — though not in this cluster). The accumulation creates a picture of total social and liturgical ruin. Nothing is left standing. This total devastation sets the stage for the psalm's surprising turn in vv. 65–72, where God "wakes as from sleep" and raises up David — a shepherd boy, not a priest — to govern His people with integrity of heart.
Catholic tradition brings a distinctive double lens to Psalm 78:64: the theology of priesthood and the theology of judgment.
On Priesthood: The Catechism teaches that the ministerial priesthood is not merely a functional role but an ontological configuration to Christ the High Priest (CCC 1563). When priests fail in holiness and fidelity — as Hophni and Phinehas catastrophically did — the damage radiates outward to the entire People of God. The Church Fathers were acutely sensitive to this. St. John Chrysostom in his treatise On the Priesthood warns that a corrupt priest does not merely harm himself but "carries along with him to destruction those who trust in him." St. Gregory the Great's Pastoral Rule opens with the same anxiety: those who seek the office of pastor carelessly bring ruin upon those they were ordained to serve.
On Divine Judgment as Pedagogy: The Catechism (CCC 304–314) insists that God governs creation through providence, and that even permitted evils are ordered toward a greater good. The fall of Shiloh's priesthood is not divine abandonment but divine pedagogy — clearing the way for what Hebrews 7:11–12 calls a "change in the priesthood," ultimately fulfilled in Christ. St. Augustine in The City of God (Book XVII) reads the ruin of Eli's house as a foreshadowing of the old covenant giving way to the new.
Magisterial resonance: Presbyterorum Ordinis (Vatican II, §12) calls priests to pursue holiness precisely because their ministry is "a means of their own sanctification." The fate of the priests in Psalm 78 stands as a permanent canonical warning: the sacred office does not automatically protect its bearer from judgment; it intensifies the moral stakes.
Psalm 78:64 confronts contemporary Catholics with uncomfortable realities. The clerical abuse crisis of recent decades has made the image of priests "falling" by their own moral corruption painfully vivid. The verse refuses to let us sentimentalize the ministerial priesthood: the office is real, the responsibility is immense, and failure is possible — with consequences that devastate the faithful.
For lay Catholics, this verse invites a specific response: intercessory prayer for priests. The Church has never been more in need of priests who are genuinely configured to Christ the High Priest — men of prayer, fidelity, and sacrificial love. To pray daily for one's pastor, one's bishop, and priests by name is not pious decoration but a concrete act of ecclesial solidarity.
For those who are themselves priests or seminarians, this verse functions as a mirror: the sword that fell on corrupt shepherds was not arbitrary. Sacred office intensifies moral accountability. St. John Paul II's Pastores Dabo Vobis (§26) reminds priests that their whole life must become a "living sacrifice" — the alternative, as Psalm 78 shows with terrible brevity, is catastrophe for both shepherd and flock.
Commentary
Psalm 78 is a great historical-theological meditation — a maskil of Asaph — that rehearses Israel's repeated cycles of infidelity and divine judgment, culminating in God's rejection of the northern tribe of Ephraim and His election of Judah and David. Verse 64 arrives near the climax of this rehearsal, narrating the disaster that befell Shiloh, the ancient sanctuary where the Ark of the Covenant rested before its capture by the Philistines (1 Samuel 4).
Literal Sense — "Their priests fell by the sword": The immediate historical referent is the battle of Ebenezer (1 Sam 4:1–11), when the Philistines routed Israel and slew the sons of Eli — Hophni and Phinehas — who had accompanied the Ark into battle. These men were not incidental combatants; they were the serving priests of the Shiloh sanctuary, the sons of the High Priest. Their death by the sword is therefore no ordinary military casualty. In the Ancient Near Eastern worldview, the death of a god's priests was tantamount to the defeat of the god himself — yet the psalmist inverts this: it is Israel's own sin that has brought low those ordained to stand before YHWH. The sword here is implicitly wielded not merely by Philistine warriors but by divine permission. Earlier in the psalm (vv. 56–63), Israel is condemned for provoking God with high places, idols, and broken covenant loyalty. The sword that falls on the priests is the logical consequence: God has "delivered his strength into captivity, and his glory into the hand of the foe" (v. 61).
The Weight of Priestly Accountability: The fall of priests is not morally neutral in the psalmist's telling. The book of 1 Samuel makes clear that Hophni and Phinehas were wicked men who "had no regard for the LORD" (1 Sam 2:12), who extorted offerings and lay with the women who served at the tent of meeting (1 Sam 2:22). Their fall is therefore simultaneously a judgment upon the people (who needed priestly mediation and lost it) and upon the priests themselves (who had corrupted their sacred office). The brevity of Psalm 78:64a — just six English words — is devastating in its compression. The whole edifice of Israel's liturgical life, the priestly caste standing at the altar of God, is dispatched in a single clause.
Typological and Spiritual Senses: Patristic readers consistently read the failures of the Levitical priesthood typologically, seeing in their inadequacy the need for a new and perfect High Priest. St. John Chrysostom and the Letter to the Hebrews both emphasize that the Levitical priesthood was provisional, pointing beyond itself to Christ. When the sword falls on Israel's priests, it anticipates — in shadowed form — the moment when the Good Shepherd Himself will be struck (cf. Zech 13:7; Mt 26:31), not because of His own sin, but to bear the sins of all. The corrupt priests fall ; the Perfect Priest falls . The contrast is typologically electric.