Adding to their sins, these wicked men committed acts of immorality with the women who served at the tabernacle, so that all Israel came to know about it. And the report of their terrible desecration of God’s sanctuary came to the ears of Eli.​—1 Sam. 2:22.

Herein lay Eli’s greatest failure. As father of Hophni and Phinehas and, with great seriousness, as God’s anointed high priest of Israel, Eli should have taken immediate disciplinary action by removing those two men from their priestly offices and ejecting them from serving at the sanctuary. Moreover, they should have been punished according to the law for their crimes. Instead, Eli merely said to them:

No, my sons, because the report is not good that I am hearing, that the people of Jehovah are causing to circulate.