And the king said to her, Be not afraid; but what didst thou see? And the woman said to Saul, I saw a god ascending out of the earth.
Saul has come to a woman at Endor who calls up spirits, and what rises is not what she trades in. Her answer to his question raises the two issues the chapter turns on: was this really Samuel, and whose power brought him up?
Fear struck her before she had done any of her usual work.
This was not the result she had expected from her sorcery. The spirit she knew had not come to dress itself in a false form, like the ones she had shown her followers. Before she can even call up the spirit, a person suddenly rises up in front of her and fills her with fear. This is not just another appearance but a divine reality, "a god coming up out of the earth" (v. 13) — someone over whom her spells have no hold. It is Samuel himself, recognised by the king before whom he had walked for so long. The woman does not recognise Samuel, but Saul does.
The text has a name for her trade. The Hebrew word behind that name points to what such people claimed, and to a voice from the ground.
The word is ob, which means "a leather bottle or skin." It is thought to imply that such people claimed to be filled with a spirit… The woman at Endor whom Saul consulted is an example: the text says she had a familiar spirit. Her profession, it seems, was to call up departed spirits… One striking mark of those who have a familiar spirit is that a voice appears to come "out of the ground." Isaiah 29:4.
If the usual deception had worked, she would have had nothing to scream about.
One who calls up the dead claims to really bring a dead person into contact with a living person. This is deception, because in reality a familiar spirit impersonates the dead person. King Saul asked the witch of Endor to bring up Samuel (1 Sam. 28:11), but the sight of Samuel terrified the woman (v. 12), because she was used to the deceit of a familiar spirit. But God intervened in this one case to make a striking exception.
The exception had a purpose. Saul had asked God and received silence; here God speaks, but not as comfort.
When Saul wanted the mind of God, he could not get it. God had left him, because he had first set himself in open opposition to God… Saul, who had openly turned from God, got his answer from the aged prophet of God. God met the unhappy man in this way, and did not allow a demon to impersonate His servant. It was Samuel whom Saul saw. It was an unusual sight the woman beheld. She admitted it when she told Saul she saw gods coming up out of the earth. Her familiar spirit was unable to act, for God Himself had taken up the matter against Saul.
This was God's act, not the woman's. So no one can copy it, and no believer needs to fear it.
A believer who walks with God, and keeps far from all tampering, meddling or curiosity, has no reason at all to be alarmed by an event like this one… The devil has no power to bring up the spirits of either the lost or the blessed. Only God can do that. And, needless to say, He does it only when He judges the circumstances enough for Him to step right outside His ordinary ways. This was such an occasion. But we must not be quick to imagine cases of this kind.
Saul had once enforced the ban on this trade himself.
He knew well that it was an unholy source, forbidden by God. He had himself once cut out of the land those who had familiar spirits and wizards. The woman at Endor reminded him of this — a last warning, had he taken it, to stop on his downward road. Death was the penalty for the sin of consulting such people (Lev. 20:6). In Saul's case that penalty fell on him (1 Chron. 10:13).
Saul recognises the figure and falls on his face — the reverence he never gave the prophet while Samuel was alive.
Yes, he bows himself now before the spirit of the prophet; but too late. He had refused the prophet's warnings while Samuel was alive, and now from the grave he must hear his final doom pronounced.
- Silence — Saul had turned from God in the open. When he wanted God's mind, he could not get it.
- Source — so he went to a trade he had once banned himself. The penalty for it was death.
- Substitution — a medium's usual work is a familiar spirit pretending to be the dead person.
- Surprise — the woman screamed because no spirit played the part. God had taken up the matter against Saul, and sent Samuel himself.
- Sentence — Saul bowed at last, but too late. His one answer was his doom, not guidance — and not an open door to the dead.
And he said to her, What is his form? And she said, An old man comes up; and he is covered with a mantle. And Saul knew that it was Samuel, and he stooped with his face to the ground, and bowed himself.
Saul has come by night, in disguise, to a woman at Endor who claims contact with the dead. He asked for Samuel, the prophet who had told him his reign was over, and her sparse description is enough: Saul knows him and falls on his face.
The woman names one thing: a robe. Writers describe this garment and list who wore it:
The MANTLE, or ROBE (meil) is described as "a large tunic, worn over the common one, but without sleeves." Priests wore it, Ex. 28:31; 1 Sam. 28:14; Ezra 9:3, 5; so did kings and princes, 1 Sam. 18:4; 1 Sam. 24:4, 11; men of rank, Job 1:20; Job 2:12; and women, 2 Sam. 13:18.
Saul never says he saw anything; he asks, and then he knows. Commentators hold that God Himself stepped in, and that the prophet was there in person:
Clearly God steps in, and permits Samuel to reappear to Saul. We do not press for the details. But there can be no question that the prophet was personally present. He made himself visible to the woman, and she described him to Saul as an old man, whom Saul perceived to be Samuel.
The woman's own dismay shows who was in control that night:
He tells her to bring up Samuel to him; and to the woman's own dismay Samuel really appears. This was beyond her art, and shows her plainly a higher power overpowering it. The "keys of hades" were in no witch's hand. He appears to her alone, to her distress, yet he speaks directly to Saul, while Saul hides his face from him. In brief judicial words he announces his doom as near at hand.
Saul's face to the ground looks like reverence. The problem is when it comes:
Yes, he bows himself now before the spirit of the prophet; but too late. He had refused his warnings while Samuel was alive, and now from the grave he is to hear his final doom pronounced.
Samuel's robe appears in an earlier scene too. Saul had laid hold of it to keep the prophet from leaving. What he hears now echoes that day:
Samuel goes on speaking. Jehovah had at last taken the case into His own hands. After all these years of patience, and with no repentance from Saul, the original word now comes true. The language is very like what the prophet used years before. Then Saul had laid hold of his mantle and tried to keep him back. As then, he declares, "Jehovah has torn the kingdom out of your hand and given it to your neighbour," who is now named.
God broke in here. That says nothing in favour of mediums, and one writer presses the warning hard:
We most surely believe that all these things we have named are of the devil. This may sound harsh and severe; but we cannot help that. We are thoroughly persuaded of this. When people give themselves to the awful business of bringing up the spirits of the departed, in any way, they hand themselves over to the devil. He will deceive them and delude them with his lies. These people hold in their hands a perfect revelation from God. What do they want with table-turning and spirit-rapping? Surely nothing.
- Robe — One detail is given: a mantle, the sleeveless over-tunic worn by priests, kings, princes and people of rank. It is enough for Saul to know who has come.
- Real — God stepped in and let Samuel reappear. The prophet was personally present, and he made himself visible to the woman.
- Overruled — The appearance was beyond the woman's art. The keys of hades were in no witch's hand; a higher power overpowered hers.
- Reversed — Saul once grabbed that robe to hold the prophet back. The robe returns now, and with it the old sentence: the kingdom torn out of his hand and given to his neighbour.
- Too late — Saul bows to the prophet he ignored while Samuel lived. The posture is right; the moment is gone. And Endor is no invitation to seek the dead: that road puts a person into the devil's hands.
And Samuel said to Saul, Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up? And Saul said, I am sore distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and God is departed from me, and answers me no more, neither by prophets nor by dreams; therefore I have called thee, that thou mayest make known to me what I shall do.
Saul stands at night in a medium's house, in disguise. He is asking a dead prophet for guidance he could no longer get from God. His own words explain why he is there. The Philistines are pressing, God has withdrawn, and heaven has gone silent. They also raise the hardest question in the chapter. How does a man reach the point where God will not answer him?
Saul's cry is not a sudden discovery. It is the end of a long road. God gives a similar warning elsewhere about a people He finally leaves alone.
He tried to get through to God for counsel and help — the God whom he had so badly slighted throughout his reign. But "the LORD did not answer him, either by dreams, or by Urim, or by prophets." He wailed that God had turned away from him and would answer him no more. This reminds us of Hosea 4:17: "Ephraim is joined to idols; leave him alone." It is a serious thing for anyone to refuse to hear the voice of God, for even His patience has limits.
Saul complains that no prophet answers him. No one owed him this. God had spoken to him for years, and Saul had ignored it.
At every important moment of his life, Saul had met the prophet. The prophet came so that Saul might know God's thoughts, orders, counsels, and judgments. No doubt he had not listened to them, but he had been able to hear them. To have God's word within reach is an immense privilege and an immense responsibility. Saul had enjoyed this privilege... Now these prophets themselves were no longer answering.
Saul's visit to a medium exposes a contradiction that is not unique to him.
Earlier in his reign Saul had tried to stamp out this appalling evil, though it seems it was still practised in secret. What an inconsistent thing is poor flesh! It can grow angry at one form of wickedness and work hard to stamp it out. At the same time it freely indulges in other forms that offend God just as much. Even God's true saints are not free from this danger. Samuel told Saul after his disobedience over Amalek, "rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry." Why? Because it puts something in the place of God. Saul kept doing this all through his self-pleasing career.
Samuel asks why Saul disturbed him and brought him up. What power could do such a thing? Not the medium's craft.
The reality is that a demon puts itself at the disposal of the medium; the illusion is that she is able to call up the dead. The demon only clothes itself with a shadowy appearance. Jesus holds the keys of death and of Hades, and no power but His own can open its doors. Satan himself cannot call up the dead... God alone, by making an exception, can permit Samuel to come out from the invisible world and appear.
Samuel's first words are a rebuke. They also tell Saul about the world beyond death, which he never asked about.
Samuel was dead, but he had not ceased to exist. Saul would die too, but he would be with Samuel in the place of departed spirits, called hades in the New Testament... But this at least is clear: the prophet was better off there than here. He had no desire to come back to earth. Being brought up had disturbed him. Two points about the other world are, then, made clear here. Death is not the end of any man's existence. And the righteous dead have no wish to come back onto the stage of this world.
Saul asks the very voice he had spent his reign refusing: tell me what to do.
Poor wretched man! He asks advice now from the one whose counsels he had until now refused to obey.
Notice also what is missing from the verse: he names his fear and his abandonment, but not his sin.
Saul exposes his distress, his abandonment, his isolation, and the anguish of his soul (v. 15). It is too late. The measure is full. God has forgotten nothing. Now He has become the enemy of Saul, who has both God and the Philistines against him. And why? Saul did "not obey the voice of the LORD" nor "carry out His fierce wrath against Amalek."
- Refused — Saul had God's word within reach for years and would not listen. Such a privilege carries a matching responsibility.
- Silenced — Saul had slighted God all through his reign. Now God gave no answer. Even His patience has limits.
- Substituted — Saul fought this evil in others, then ran to it himself. Rebellion always puts something in God's place.
- Overruled — no medium holds the keys of death; God alone, as an exception, sent Samuel that night.
- Sentenced — Saul named his anguish but never his sin. The answer he got only confirmed a judgment already spoken.