This aspect of the “black arts” was one of the things the Israelites copied from the original inhabitants of Canaan but the Mosaic command respecting those who practiced these arts is clear and decisive: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” ( Exodus 22:18 Leviticus 20:27). This well-known female at Endor, introduced to Saul by his servants, had a “familiar spirit,” that is, the supposed possession of a gift to induce or compel a departed spirit to revisit the world and submit to questioning. Whether this is true or not, certainly this witch of Endor has a distinction all her own in that she had a king of Israel for a consulter, and a prophet of God for an apparition.
Jewish tradition affirms that the nameless spiritualist medium was the mother of the great Abner. He then leaves God to consult a witch for any ray of hope she may be able to bring about by producing the departed spirit of Samuel whose past counsel Saul had spurned.
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Although full of dread, there was no sign of repentance in Saul and thus when he cried to the Lord, “the Lord answered him not.” By his dark sins he had severed himself from all divine influences, and as a last desperate resort disguised himself in the garb of a common soldier. “Saul had put away those that had familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land.” But what fearful pathos there is about Saul driven by despair, hastening to consult “the crooked crone who peeped and muttered in the caves on the height of Endor.” As he looked at the huge camp of the Philistines “he was afraid, and his heart trembled greatly,” and his fear was a premonition of his approaching doom. He had issued orders that all who seek to traffic with the dead should be destroyed. Like a drowning man trying to clutch a straw, Saul came to countenance what he had so strongly condemned. But he cried to heaven in vain for God would not answer the doomed ruler “by Urim, by prophets, or by dreams.” Driven by despair, Saul sought the ghost of the prophet who by his prudence and piety had prevented the ruin of Israel during Saul’s reign. At last, facing the hosts of Philistines, Israel’s ancient foes, Saul was scared and felt that his hour of retribution was near and that unless help came from God he must perish. But corrupted by power, sin and murder and jealousy reduced this wonderful specimen of a man to a physical and spiritual wreck. In God’s portrait gallery there is no more tragic figure than Saul, the son of Kish who, in his early days was “the glory of Israel.” What physique and personality were his! Physically and morally he was head and shoulders above his fellowmen, and when anointed by Samuel as the first king of Israel, the people had high hopes of his prosperous reign. The actors of the cast are Saul the king, the witch, and Samuel the prophet-surely a most unusual trio! Saul about to join the dead the Witch and her traffic with the dead Samuel, brought back from the dead.
It beats all the ghost scenes I have ever read. I have always thought this the finest and most finished witch scene that ever was written or conceived, and you will be of my opinion if you consider all the circumstances of the actors of the case, together with the gravity, simplicity and density of the language. Lord Byron said of the narrative of the Witch of Endor. Here is a startling record unparalleled in the creations of the greatest masters of fiction. Samuel was dead and buried ( 1 Samuel 28:3), yet he reappeared to seal Saul’s doom. Without doubt, this is one of the most mysterious and difficult chapters in the Bible to deal with.