Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 1 Samuel 28:1
And it came to pass in those days, that the Philistines gathered together their armies for warfare, to fight with Israel. And Achish said unto David, Know thou assuredly, that thou shalt go out with me to battle, thou and thy men.
Ch. 1Sa 28:1-2. David forced to join the Philistine army
1. in those days ] While David was at Ziklag, as related in the previous chapter.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
1Sa 28:1-25
The Philistines gathered their armies together for warfare, to fight with Israel.
Night preceding battle
As the flash of lightning reveals the hidden scenery around, so the reception of momentous news suddenly reveals character. Two such events we trace–the news of the terrible defeat brought to Saul, and the news of Sauls death brought to David. Leading his people to meet the Philistines, at whose number he is astonished and affrighted, we come upon Saul as his army is encamped on the slopes of Gilboa. We notice:–
I. Divine direction sought (1Sa 28:6). In all former difficulties Saul had sought Samuel. The prophets voice was hushed. Few estimate faithful advisers at their value. Saul had no Samuel now. He knew not God. His desolateness is indescribable. His own hand had closed the avenues along which the angel of mercy had been wont to come. Yet, as Cowper says, In agony nature is no atheist; so this desolate and moody man kneels to God! Self-will, pride, resentment lurk in his petition (1Sa 28:15). He has no wish to know Gods will, only how he may be successful! Complaints against Gods dealings–there is no prayer in such words! Is it ever any use coming thus to seek Gods help? Merely for our own selfish ends, asking the Divine One to become partner in our self-seeking purposes! Come, let us hold our prayers up to the light! Not everyone that saith, Lord, Lord, will enter into the Kingdom. Unable to bear the silence, Saul exhibits the–
II. Desperate defiance of disobedience. In those days when his vision was clear and his heart open to Divine teaching he abhorred this sin. Driven by fear, jealousy, and pride, refusing to humble himself before God, he sends his servant to find one that hath a familiar spirit (1Sa 28:7). Superstition takes the place of obedient faith. The four theories concerning this scene may thus be summarised–
(1) that Samuel actually appeared by the Divine will;
(2) that Saul was then granted a vision by Divine power, in which he saw, as in a dream, the prophet;
(3) that which attributes it to Satanic agency; and the last, that it was an imposture conceived and carried out by Abner and his mother. The narrative itself seems clearly to establish the fact of Samuels appearance. Samuels reply is a refusal! In solemn words Samuel reminds Saul of the removal of Gods favour: The Lord is on the side of thy neighbour (1Sa 28:16). The Lord keepeth His word, and hath rent the kingdom out of thine hand (1Sa 28:17). Death and disaster are thy portion (1Sa 28:18-19). Could a greater proof be given of Gods refusal to hear.
III. Disobedience ends in disaster. Did not our fathers fall in the wilderness through unbelief? Is that not why so many fail to enter the life of joy?
1. Disobedience produced direst misery. In the path of disobedience we become targets for the archers of Satan.
2. Disobedience culminated in suicide. The inhabitants of hell are surely suicides. O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself. Ye would not come unto Me, that ye might have life. (H. E. Stone.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER XXVIII
The Philistines prepare to attack the Israelites, and Achish
informs David that he shall accompany him to battle, 1, 2.
Saul, unable to obtain any answer from God, applies to a witch
at En-dor to bring up Samuel that he may converse with him on
the issue of the war, 3-11.
Samuel appears, 12-14.
He reproaches Saul with his misconduct, and informs him of his
approaching ruin, 15-19.
He is greatly distressed; but at the solicitations of the woman
and his own servants, he takes some food, and departs the same
night, 20-25.
NOTES ON CHAP. XXVIII
Verse 1. The Philistines gathered their armies together] Sir Isaac Newton conjectures that the Philistines had got a great increase to their armies by vast numbers of men which Amasis had driven out of Egypt. This, with Samuel’s death, and David’s disgrace, were no inconsiderable motives to a new war, front which the Philistines had now every thing to hope.
Thou shalt go out with me to battle] This he said, being deceived by what David had told him.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
The Philistines were encouraged by Samuels death, and Sauls degeneration, and Davids presence with Achish.
Thou shalt go out with me to battle: this he saith, partly to try his sincerity; and partly in confidence of Davids fidelity.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
1. The Philistines gathered theirarmies together for warfare, to fight with IsraelThe death ofSamuel, the general dissatisfaction with Saul, and the absence ofDavid, instigated the cupidity of those restless enemies of Israel.
Achish said to David, Knowthou assuredly, that thou shalt go out with me to battleThiswas evidently to try him. Achish, however, seems to have thought hehad gained the confidence of David and had a claim on his services.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And it came to pass in those days,…. That David was in the country of the Philistines:
that the Philistines gathered their armies together: out of their five principalities or lordships:
for warfare to fight with Israel; with whom they were continually at war, and though sometimes there was a cessation of arms, yet never any settled peace; and the Philistines took every opportunity and advantage against them, as they now did; when David was among them, and so had nothing to fear from him, but rather expected his assistance; and Samuel was dead, and Saul in a frenzy:
and Achish said unto David: who seems to have been at the head of the combined armies of the Philistines:
know thou assuredly that thou shall go with me to battle, thou and thy men; against Israel; which was a trying thing to David, and whereby he was like to be drawn into a dilemma; either to fight against his country, which he could not do conscientiously; or be guilty of ingratitude to Achish, and incur his displeasure, and be liable to be turned out of his country, or treated in a worse manner, even he and his men, to be seized on and cut to pieces by the forces of the Philistines, should he refuse.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
“ In those days,” i.e., whilst David was living in the land of the Philistines, it came to pass that the Philistines gathered their armies together for a campaign against Israel. And Achish sent word to David that he was to go with him in his army along with his men; and David answered (1Sa 28:2), “ Thereby (on this occasion) thou shalt learn what thy servant will do.” This reply was ambiguous. The words “what thy servant will do” contained no distinct promise of faithful assistance in the war with the Israelites, as the expression “ thy servant ” is only the ordinary periphrasis for “ I ” in conversation with a superior. And there is just as little ground for inferring from 1Sa 29:8 that David was disposed to help the Philistines against Saul and the Israelites; for, as Calovius has observed, even there he gives no such promise, but “merely asks for information, that he may discover the king’s intentions and feelings concerning him: he simply protests that he has done nothing to prevent his placing confidence in him, or to cause him to shut him out of the battle.” Judging from his previous acts, it would necessarily have been against his conscience to fight against his own people. Nevertheless, in the situation in which he was placed he did not venture to give a distinct refusal to the summons of the king. He therefore gave an ambiguous answer, in the hope that God would show him a way out of this conflict between his inmost conviction and his duty to obey the Philistian king. He had no doubt prayed earnestly for this in his heart. And the faithful God helped His servant: first of all by the fact that Achish accepted his indefinite declaration as a promise of unconditional fidelity, as his answer “ so ( , itaque , i.e., that being the case, if thy conduct answers to thy promise) “ I will make thee the keeper of my head ” (i.e., of my person) implies; and still more fully by the fact that the princes of the Philistines overturned the decision of their king (1Sa 29:3.).
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| The Philistines Make War on Israel. | B. C. 1055. |
1 And it came to pass in those days, that the Philistines gathered their armies together for warfare, to fight with Israel. And Achish said unto David, Know thou assuredly, that thou shalt go out with me to battle, thou and thy men. 2 And David said to Achish, Surely thou shalt know what thy servant can do. And Achish said to David, Therefore will I make thee keeper of mine head for ever. 3 Now Samuel was dead, and all Israel had lamented him, and buried him in Ramah, even in his own city. And Saul had put away those that had familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land. 4 And the Philistines gathered themselves together, and came and pitched in Shunem: and Saul gathered all Israel together, and they pitched in Gilboa. 5 And when Saul saw the host of the Philistines, he was afraid, and his heart greatly trembled. 6 And when Saul enquired of the LORD, the LORD answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets.
Here is, I. The design of the Philistines against Israel. They resolved to fight them, v. 1. If the Israelites had not forsaken God, there would have been no Philistines remaining to molest them; if Saul had not forsaken him, they would by this time have been put out of all danger by them. The Philistines took an opportunity to make this attempt when they had David among them, whom they feared more than Saul and all his forces.
II. The expectation Achish had of assistance from David in this war, and the encouragement David gave him to expect it: “Thou shalt go with me to battle,” says Achish. “If I protect thee, I may demand service from thee;” and he will think himself happy if he may have such a man as David on his side, who prospered whithersoever he went. David gave him an ambiguous answer: “We will see what will be done; it will be time enough to talk of that hereafter; but surely thou shalt know what thy servant can do” (v. 2), that is, “I will consider in what post I may be best able to serve thee, if thou wilt but give me leave to choose it.” Thus he keeps himself free from a promise to serve him and yet keeps up his expectation of it; for Achish took it in no other sense than as an engagement to assist him, and promised him, thereupon, that he would make him captain of the guards, protector, or prime-minister of state.
III. The drawing of the armies, on both sides, into the field (v. 4): The Philistines pitched in Shunem, which was in the tribe of Issachar, a great way north from their country. The land of Israel, it seems, was ill-guarded, when the Philistines could march their army into the very heart of the country. Saul, while he pursued David, left his people naked and exposed. On some of the adjacent mountains of Gilboa Saul mustered his forces, and prepared to engage the Philistines, which he had little heart to do now that the Spirit of the Lord had departed from him.
IV. The terror Saul was in, and the loss he was at, upon this occasion: He saw the host of the Philistines, and by his own view of them, and the intelligence his spies brought him, he perceived they were more numerous, better armed, and in better heart, than his own were, which made him afraid, so that his heart greatly trembled, v. 5. Had he kept close to God, he needed not have been afraid at the sight of an army of Philistines; but now that he had provoked God to forsake him his interest failed, his armies dwindled and looked mean, and, which was worse, his spirits failed him, his heart sunk within him, a guilty conscience made him tremble at the shaking of a leaf. Now he remembered the guilty blood of the Amalekites which he had spared, and the innocent blood of the priests which he had spilt. His sins were set in order before his eyes, which put him into confusion, embarrassed all his counsels, robbed him of all his courage, and produced in him a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation. Note, Troubles are terrors to the children of disobedience. In this distress Saul enquired of the Lord, v. 6. Need drives those to God who in the day of their prosperity slighted his oracles and altars. Lord, in trouble have they visited thee, Isa. xxvi. 16. Did ever any seek the Lord and not find him? Yes, Saul did; the Lord answered him not, took no notice either of his petitions or of his enquiries; gave him no directions what to do, nor any encouragement to hope that he would be with him. Should he be enquired of at all by such a one as Saul? Ezek. xiv. 3. No, he could not expect an answer of peace, for, 1. He enquired in such a manner that it was as if he had not enquired at all. Therefore it is said (1 Chron. x. 14), He enquired not of the Lord; for he did it faintly and coldly, and with a secret design, if God did not answer him, to consult the devil. He did not enquire in faith, but with a double unstable mind. 2. He enquired of the Lord when it was too late, when the days of his probation were over and he was finally rejected. Seek the Lord while he may be found, for there is a time when he will not be found. 3. He had forfeited the benefit of all the methods of enquiry. Could he that hated and persecuted Samuel and David, who were both prophets, expect to be answered by prophets? Could he that had slain the high priest, expect to be answered by Urim? Or could he that had sinned away the Spirit of grace, expect to be answered by dreams? No. Be not deceived, God is not mocked.
V. The mention of some things that had happened a good while ago, to introduce the following story, v. 3. 1. The death of Samuel. Samuel was dead, which made the Philistines the more bold and Saul the more afraid; for, had Samuel been alive, Saul probably thought that his presence and countenance, his good advice and good prayers, would have availed him in his distress. 2. Saul’s edict against witchcraft. He had put the laws in execution against those that had familiar spirits, who must not be suffered to live, Exod. xxii. 18. Some think that he did this in the beginning of his reign, while he was under Samuel’s influence; others think that it was lately done, for it is spoken of here (v. 9) as a late edict. Perhaps when Saul was himself troubled with an evil spirit he suspected that he was bewitched, and, for that reason, cut off all that had familiar spirits. Many seem zealous against sin, when they themselves are any way hurt by it (they will inform against swearers if they swear at them, or against drunkards if in their drink they abuse them), who otherwise have no concern for the glory of God, nor any dislike of sin as sin. However it was commendable in Saul thus to use his power for the terror and restraint of these evil-doers. Note, Many seem enemies to sin in others, while they indulge it in themselves. Saul will drive the devil out of his kingdom, and yet harbour him in his heart, by envy and malice.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
First Samuel – Chapter 28
Israelite-Philistine War Renewed, vs. 1-6
When David had been in the Philistine country for sixteen months Achish and the other four lords of the Philistines determined to renew the centuries-long conflict with Israel. They had successfully ousted Israel from the coastal areas and were continually making incursions into the hill country and mountains of Israel, trying often with success, to extort tribute.
By this time Achish was fully persuaded of the loyalty of David to him, and informed him that he and his men would surely accompany him into battle against Israel. David replied with ambiguity, that Achish would see what David could do. It might have been interesting to know just what David would have done had he been allowed to carry through with Achish’s purpose. Achish promised to make David the keeper of his head for ever, which means to make David the guardian of his life. One might speculate that David had also been the keeper of Goliath’s head, and might perhaps have eventually kept the head of Achish in like manner (see 1Sa 17:54).
At verse 3 the scene shifts back to Israel in premonition of the final battle of Saul and his desperation before his death. The reader is reminded that Samuel has been sometime dead and honorably buried by the mourning Israelites in his own city of Ramah. Thus he was no longer available to advise and encourage the people or king against the Philistines. Furthermore consultation of the occult was also difficult, for Saul in his false piety had put to death the mediums and wizards, so that any remaining alive had gone underground.
When therefore the Philistines invaded the land of Israel with a mighty host Saul was terribly afraid, and his heart almost failed him. It appears he had a premonition of the end. Saul tried to inquire of the Lord, but he was long since out of favor with Him. God was not on speaking terms with the disobedient and rebellious king. So Saul had no prophet, got no dream, and received no answer through the Urim of the priests, the chief of whom he had killed (1Sa 22:6 ff).
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
SPIRITISM OR DEALING WITH THE DISEMBODIED
1Sa 28:1-25.
SEVEN lessons are suggested in this incident of Sauls life:
SPIRITISM IS NOT A MODERN PHILOSOPHY
There are those among us, Athenians in disposition, who vainly imagine that in this term they have discovered something new; and because novel, interesting and attractive.
They have been told that spiritism originated near Rochester, N. Y., in 1847, when the door of one Michael Weekman was disturbed by rappings. Afterward Mr. and Mrs. Fox, and all the little foxes, lived in that same house and heard those same sounds, and reduced the rappings to a system, and got into communication with the spirit-world, and from that center it began to spread in America, and there were folks foolish enough to fondle it as a new faith, and suppose they had something very fine. All of which reminds one of the story of that widower who went to another state and wooed, and wedded a woman of uncertain years. He took her to his home and upon his arrival called his small boy, saying, Eddie, come right in here and let me introduce you to your new mother. But the bad urchin beckoned his father into the other room, and getting him to bend down his ear, said, Youre sold; youre sold, sure, Pop. She aint new, shes old.
Spiritism was a very common faith at the time of Saul, 3,000 years ago, and the medium named in the text was enough like some of those on Hennepin Avenue to make it seem that she might have just moved over from Endor to Minneapolis. And it was by no means confined to Palestine, or its neighboring peoples. It was known in Egypt, and we are told by Maximus Tyrius that there was a place near Lake Avernus in Greece, called the prophetic cavern. Persons were in attendance there who called up ghosts. Anyone desiring it came thither, and having killed a victim and poured out libations, summoned whatever ghost he wanted. The ghost came, very faint and doubtful to the sight, but vocal and prophetic, and having answered the questions, went off; and according to Ammonius Marcilinus, tables and planchettes were employed by the ancients among the Brahmins and Chinese as skilfully as they are manipulated by any modern believer in spiritism. Even old Horace had to ridicule those who gave heed to spirit manifestations, and Christ Jesus met spirits in the tombs of Gadara and in the valley whence He came after His wonderful Sermon on the Mount. The truth is that spiritism dates back to the fall of man. The first materialization of spirit that ever occurred came in connection with that event, when Satan manifested himself in the serpent and said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die.
SPIRITISM REQUIRES A MEDIUM FOR ITS MANIFESTATION
When Saul wants to speak to Samuel, he cant go direct to that prophet with whom he had often had communication, but must seek a woman that hath a familiar spirit, and enquire of her.
Have you ever been impressed with the fact that while Gods Prophets are men, almost without exception the mediums of spiritism are women? Two things ought to be remembered in connection with that fact. One is that the nervous system of women is the most susceptible; and another is that their affectional and impressional natures render them more easily deceived. So Satan tempted our first mother rather than our father, and, through her, effected the fall.
Why should he not continue, as a custom, an experiment that was successful? But whether the medium be by one sex, or another, the medium must exist. The poor spirits of the other world are shut up to the necessity of getting at their friends through haggard-faced wizards, a most unfortunate fact for the spirits, dont you think?
I have always had the profoundest sympathy with Samantha Allen when she said, It do seem to me that if my father and mother sot out from heaven to come down to this boardin house, that theyd rather come to me than a passel of strangers. They would as leave come to my room as into some wizards, I do believe that if God wanted to speak to a human soul, He could get His voice to the ear of that soul without any extra performances and foolishness.
It seems at least queer that the God who used to speak directly to His people by the lips of angels and prophets, and in the plainest and most significant human speech, should, in these latter times, be shut up to chests and beds, and scratchings and drummings. I could believe that Satan would descend to this sort of business, and I doubt not that he does. But that my God has anything whatever to do with such trumpery, seems to me to call into question His common sense, not to speak of His dignity and wisdom. There are people who have passed out of the world who, while they were here, always engaged in little business; and I can imagine that they might request of Satan to let them come back to some darkened room and rap on some tables and rattle doors, and cause a general consternation to the novices, and give delight to those delivered over to Satan.
SPIRITISM IS NOTED FOR ITS GOOD GUESSES, AND ITS MONSTROUS MISTAKES
You may search seances the world around, and in all ages, and you will find this story of First Samuel a perfect representative of them all, at this point. The guesses went well at the first, and for a very evident reason. This medium, crying out with a loud voice, and looking at Saul with distended eyes and dishevelled hair said, Why hast thou deceived me? for thou art Saul (1Sa 28:12). Good guess, but who could not have made it? Saul was taller than all the people, from his shoulders and upward, the one gaint of the land, and no matter what clothes he put on, his height was as if he called his name. But, some one says, this woman lived at Endor, outside of Sauls territory, and had never seen him. I answer, Not so fast. In the third verse we read, And Saul had put away those who had familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land, and that this woman was one of those he had banished seemed evident from the fact that Sauls servants were familiar with her, and told him at once where she could be found (1Sa 28:7). The next good guess she made was as to Samuel, the dear old Prophet whom she had seen many a time, and I can easily imagine her starting back with a cry saying, I saw gods ascending out of the earth (1Sa 28:13), and in answer to Sauls question, What form is he of? replying with a picture of the man he had asked for. An old man cometh up; and he is covered with a mantle (1Sa 28:14). Guessing is not hard work, if only one knows enough about the subject of his guesses.
I read a little while ago a statement of a colored man who said, Does I bleeb in dem trance mejums? Deed I does! Didnt I go to see one o dem to fin out how de policy numbahs wuz to come a-runnin? What did dat trance mejum say? Why, chile, he jes close he eyse an say: youz had trouble. Youz been cused of lrceny. Yo keep fo dawgs, Youz unlucky at craps. Yo like chicken, fried! Yo carries a razzer but yo doan shave. Yo lubs a yaller gal! What if dem numbahs didnt win! Dy mus be sumpin in de trance mejum business, wen dey reads yo kahactah an de inmos secrits ob yo haht like dat. Now yo lissen to me!
But the mistakes here, like those of the modern mediums, are as much in evidence as good guesses. She represented Samuel as saying to Saul, To morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me. But Saul did not die next day, and when he died, he did not go to be with Samuel.
The mistakes of mediums are none the less multitudinous now; some of them ludicrous, others of them extremely serious.
You know that Charles Dickens attended a number of seances, and was almost convinced and ready to become a spiritist, when at a certain one he asked the medium to speak with Lindley Murray, and a spook appeared and Dickens said, Are you Lindley Murray? and the spook replied, I are! Excuse me, said Dickens, Lindley may have his faults, but he is a good grammarian, and so he departed to have no more to do with spiritism.
The bad spelling of the dear spirits would seem to indicate that either the mediums are poor mediums for expression, or else that our departed loved ones are fast losing their knowledge of language. Would that all their mistakes were of so little importance, but alas, it is not so! as Dr. Talmage said when, some years ago the steamer Atlantic left Europe for the United States, and broke her machinery in mid-ocean, and floundered for week after week. When a month had gone by, friends of those who had shipped aboard her were fast losing hope. In some of the Eastern cities spiritism was then at its climax, and multitudes went to their mediums and inquired as to the fate of that vessel. The spirits were called up, the rappings were interpreted and the answer was, The Atlantic is lost with all on board. Many women went raving mad and were carried away to lunatic asylums. After a short time a gun was heard off quarantine, flags were hoisted, church bells were rung, newsboys cried Extra! The Atlantic is safe! Sane friends went to the dock and received their long-lost with overflowing affection. But some passengers alighted to ask, Where is wife, where is daughter? and to be answered, In the lunatic asylum, where this cheat of infernal spiritism had sent them.
Saul came near losing his life this day because of the deception of this medium. We read, Then Saul fell straightway all along the earth, and was sore afraid, * * because of the words of Samuel: and there was no strength in him (1Sa 28:20). It was only after this woman and others worked with him for hours, we may believe, that he arose from the earth and sat upon the bed and eventually gaining strength, went away (1Sa 28:21-23).
I learn another lesson from this incident
SPIRITISM SUCCEEDS BETTER IN DARKNESS THAN IN DAYLIGHT
And Saul disguised himself, and put on other raiment (because he was ashamed to be seen going to her) and he went, and two men with him, and they came to the woman by night (1Sa 28:8), and in the 25th verse (1Sa 28:25) we read, Then they rose up, and went away that night; so all was done in the dark.
It is no compliment to any people that the religion which they profess prefers darkness. It suggests too strongly what Christ said,
Every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither comet k to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God (Joh 3:20-21).
Of Christs whole ministry it was said, This thing was not done in a corner. Of the mystery of mediums it must always be said, This thing is done in a corner, and a dark one at that.
The more humbuggery one has, the less of light he can afford to have; and while, as I have already expressed myself, I believe in the possible communication of spirits with men, I am perfectly convinced, as spiritists themselves have many a time, and especially, in the last few months acknowledged, that much of that which wears their name is humbuggery, pure and simple.
Dr. Talmage did not put it much too strongly when he said 999 out of every 1,000 achievements on the part of mediums are arrant and unmitigated humbugs.
We have a right to assert this when so many of the deceits have been uncovered.
The mysterious red letters that mediums have had come out on their arms have been proven to be the result of a pressure that did not break the skin, but disturbed the blood. Those who have in anywise familiarized themselves with the history of spiritism have not forgotten the Philadelphia seance, where hands appeared shining like phosphorous, and seeming to be detached from all bodies. It took Mr. Owen and Dr. Childs a long time to discover the deceit, but at last this Katie King affair was shown to be a fraud, effected by a very simple device.
Dr. Lorimer once reminded the public of that experience in London where a French clairvoyant, called Alexis, fell into the scientific hands of Drs. Carpenter and Forbes in 1844, and had his occult arts exploited, while Houdini uncovered and exposed their every trick.
A little while ago, in our own Tremont Temple, Boston, Rev. Arthur A. Waite challenged mediums to a seance promising to duplicate every performance possible to them.
When the trials came off, his adversary found his sorcery set into the light and retreated in confusion.
SPIRITISM IS THE RELIGION THAT JEHOVAH BANISHED FROM HIS REALM
If we go back in this same Scripture, to the 3rd verse (1Sa 28:3), we read, Now Samuel was dead, and all Israel had lamented him, and buried him in Ramak even in his own city. And Saul had put away those that had familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land.
You may say, But Saul banished, not God. But the reason why Saul did so is evident.
In the Book of Exodus, Exo 22:18, Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live; in the Book of Leviticus, God had said,
Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the Lord your God (Lev 19:31).
And again,
A man also or a woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them (Lev 20:27).
And again in Deu 18:9-12, God had said,
When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations.
There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch,
Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.
For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord: and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee.
If there is one thing against which the Lord has so declared Himself that there can be no question, it is the ghost of spiritism; and He says again,
The soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, to go a whoring after them, I will even set My face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people (Lev 20:6).
Remember that, as Saul, when we choose our ghosts we have departed from the living God.
SPIRITISM IS THE RESORT OF THE SADDENED AND GOD-FORSAKEN
There was a time in Sauls experience when he would have made his appeal unto the Lord, but he has sinned away that day of grace, and God has departed from him, and such a sorrow as he has not seen is now overwhelming him.
Dr. Talmage says, He had enough trouble to kill ten men. He had grieved away the Spirit of God, and he saw nothing else to do than resort to the same wizards he had recently driven from his realm. My observations lead me to say that most of the people who go to spiritists, go because some sorrow has overtaken them, and they have not kept their faith in God sufficiently to feel that He is for them a protecting strength in every time of need.
Consumptives, men and women of unsettled nervous systems, subjects of domestic broils, sinners who doubt, sinners who are saddened by some awful violation of Gods law, and would like to believe that they can escape judgment, souls over whom have rolled one unspeakable sorrow, or on whom rests an avalanche of lesser ones, are those that make their way to mediums; together with love-stricken but disappointed young men and maidens, and friends who consent, out of idle curiosity, to see a seance.
I honestly doubt if any man or woman has ever gone to spiritists earnestly seeking a true philosophy of life by which to control conduct, develop character, obtain the salvation of the soul, and eventually see God.
Surely that was not the purpose of Saul, and if it had been, he must have been disappointed.
I have seen an illustration of this point in the person of one in whom I was deeply interested. Inveigled first of all by an idle curiosity into a seance, she held a frivolous interest and supposed it all to be a manipulation. Afterwards she began to experiment and made discovery of unsuspected experiences. Then she adopted for a short time, spiritism as her faith. Today her condition is unspeakably sad. For months she has known no rest. The day is as dark to her as the night, save for the single circumstance that the devils distress her most in the latter time. On Friday she said to me she believed deliverance must come from the Lord, or else insanity would be the eventual result. By the memory of her words, and the sad eloquence of her face, I beg of you to let this Satanic science alone as one into which only the God-forsaken should fall.
Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times, some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;
Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron * *
If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine, whereunto thou hast attained.
But refuse profane and old wives? fables, and exercise thyself rather unto godliness (1Ti 4:1-2; 1Ti 4:6-7).
SPIRITISM HAS ONLY DESPAIR AND DEATH FOR ITS DISCIPLES
This medium said to Saul, Tomorrow thou shalt die (1Sa 28:19), and while she was mistaken about it, her words produced despair, and Saul, having forsaken the living God, and sought out familiar spirits was set for destruction. You need never expect to hear from wizards any words of wisdom on the way of salvation; any genuine counsel as to accepting Christ. If these words were given, the purpose would be to deceive, for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light (2Co 11:14).
The very woman to whose sad case I have referred was advised by the spirit which now distresses and drives her to frenzy, to believe God and unite with the church, but that counsel was given for an ulterior purpose, if indeed it was given, as she supposes; and that purpose was to deceive that he might destroy. It used to be of interest to me, pathetic, sad interest it was, to see the sort of men and women that crowded to hear Mr. Ingersoll when he came to Chicago. The lowest theatres of the city assembled exactly such a congregation; bloated, blear-eyed, pencil-browed. Infidelity was sweet to their taste because it said, You can sin and escape judgment. It is a pathetic sight to study the patrons of spiritism. There is no light of Heaven in the face of those congregations; no Shekinah glory in connection with its seances; no evidence of salvation for its subjects; despair and death! I do not mean to say that in the early experiences with this faith there are not some most delightful moments when one is led to believe that she talks with the darling who has gone before, or holds converse with him whom she loved better than life, or is sweetly counseled by a sacred mother. But when the veil is lifted and the deceiving spirits have done their work, only doom can be the result. Be not deceived by the early pleasures. The man who begins to drink finds his body stimulated, his mental faculties rendered acute, his heart made merrier by the wine-cup, but At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. I sat one day and watched a beautiful canary touched with the gold that God had given it, and marked as from the pencil of an artist, fluttering in the air near the ground; and I wondered what the wee thing was about. Going nearer I saw that it was fascinated by the oscillations of a spotted serpent, and in its playful movements came nearer and nearer to this attractive thing until suddenly it was between the fangs, and the poison of death had begun.
There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. Is it possible that Gods revelations are so incomplete that we must add to them in unintelligible rappings? Is it possible that the love that Jesus Christ had, when He died that you might be saved, and that I might be redeemed, is so insufficient that we must supplement it with tender messages from the invisible world? Is it possible that Christs words, He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, are so difficult to be understood, are so hard to measure up to, that we must seek to climb into heaven by some other way? Is it possible that the Christian life with all its hopes, holiness, happiness and heaven, cannot satisfy the soul of man, and he must needs seek some superior faith? Is it possible that through rappings, rattlings, materialization and conversation, our God can be improved upon, His way of salvation illuminated, His Word receive a needful addenda and immortal souls come into larger light, richer life, higher holiness, greater happiness, more blessed heaven? I do not believe it!
Dr. Lorimer tells the story of the three brothers who lived near the Black Sea, and who, in their dissatisfaction, set out in search of happiness. They imagined that behind the forest there was a mountain, and behind the mountain a great sea, and over the sea a fairy-land; so they saddled their good black horses, and took their lances and set off on the unknown journey. The Russian idyl leads the reader to understand that the oldest and one next are wandering still, but like Ponce de Leon they have found no land where happiness characterizes all, and is supreme. The youngest of the three shortly lost hope and retraced his steps. Arriving at the door of his house, he beheld a maiden at the threshold, spinning, and he asked the beautiful one, Who art thou? and she answered, as smiles stole from her brown eyes, I am happiness. And Lorimer commented, Ye restless ones, ye who would cross border-lands to worlds unknown, ye who are weary of earth and the wonders of a gracious providence, hear thisbeyond the phantom mountains youll not see ghostly cities, but sorrow instead, and be driven forever deeper and deeper into disappointment. But I bid you to come back, for at your door is one, fairer than woman, more radiant than angels. Her benign aspect is assuring; her hands are filled with works of beneficence, and in her eyes is the azure of heavens love. Who art thou? She answers, Christianity, the daughter of eternity, the sister of humanity, the mother of hope. I am happiness, peace that passeth knowledge and everlasting joy. Believe on my Christ and thou shalt live. Look to my heaven and there thy weary soul shall find rest and blessing forever more.
To know Christ is salvation. A. C. Dixon said, I know the English language, that is, I know the alphabet and a few books, but when I go into the Astor library, and look around, I feel that I know nothing of the English language, and what is more, with the time and capacity I have, I can never know much of it. It holds treasures I can never gain. I know the love of Christ, that is, I have learned the alphabet. I am a poor sinner and He is a great Saviour, and yet there are volumes in this love I cannot read. Through all eternity it will be unfolding.
What I ask tonight is, that we turn not unto darkness, when the Word is offered a lamp unto our feet and a light to our path; that we turn not to rappings, when the perfect revelation of His love is printed on an open page; that we seek no other medium than the Blessed Master who stands with outstretched arms saying, Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest, and whose gracious promise is, Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
CRITICAL AND EXPOSITORY NOTES
1Sa. 28:1. Know thou assuredly. Some expositors regard these words of Achish as designed to try David: others think they express the entire confidence which the king placed in him.
1Sa. 28:2. Surely thou shalt know, or Assuredly, or Therefore thou shalt know. Evidently David found himself in a dilemma and gives an ambiguous answer. Keeper of mine head, i.e., captain of my body-guardan office of great trust and high honour. (Jamieson.) The narrative here breaks off and is continued in chapter 29, the historian meanwhile turning aside to relate the effect which this Philistine invasion had upon Saul.
1Sa. 28:3. Saul had put away, i.e., long before the event about to be recorded. He had expelled them from his kingdom, but the Levitical law was, Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. (Exo. 22:18; Lev. 20:27.) The strong deuunciations uttered by God against these people seem to afford a strong proof that they were not simply deceivers of the people, but were really in direct and close communication with the spirits of evil.
1Sa. 28:4. Shunem. Now called Solam or Sulem, a village situated on the southern declivity of the so-called Little Hermon, which forms the northern boundary of the valley of Jezreel. Gilboa, a mountain range on the opposite side of the valley. The Philistines clung as usual to the plain, which was most suitable for those war chariots of which their military armament principally consisted, and they took up an advantageous position for the free and effective use of that force in action. That of the Hebrews was badly selected. (Jamieson.) The ground slopes down gradually from Shunem to the very base of Gilboa at the fountain, while the hillside rises steeply from the plain. The Philistine had all the advantage of the gentle descent in their attackboth front and flank of the Israelites were exposed to their onset, and the prospect of flight almost completely cut off by the steep hill behind. (Porter.)
1Sa. 28:6. Neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets. In the order of arrangements of these three vehicles of revelation there is a progression from the less to the greater, since in the Old Testament a subordinate position is certainly assigned to the dream as the medium of Divine influence on the inner life, which in sleep loses the power of self-manifestation, and sinks into a state of the extremest passivity. Urim is the abbreviation of Urim and Thummim (Exo. 28:30; Num. 27:21), which, as the high-priestly medium, of inquiring the Divine will, stands between the revealing dreams and the prophetic testimony. But since the murder of the priests in Nob, the external apparatus, the Ephod with the [Urim and Thummim had been in Davids camp (see 1Sa. 22:20; 1Sa. 23:6; 1Sa. 30:7), and nothing is anywhere said of another high priest than Abiathar, who had fled to David. Thenius thence concludes that this section contradicts the narrative of chap. 23 but after the catastrophe at Nob, Saul may well have had a new Ephod with Urim and Thummim prepared (Keil), and this is the more natural from Sauls independent mode of procedure in matters of religious service, and the probability that in his heated theocratic zeal he did not suffer the public service at the tabernacle to cease after the murder of the priests. Intercourse between Saul and the prophets had doubtless been broken off since the beginning of Sauls persecution of David (chap. 19), while it continued between David and the prophets so far as circumstances permitted (1Sa. 22:5 sq.) But in his anxiety and despair Saul had now again turned to them for aid. Proof that application was made to prophets not only in great theocratical matters, but also in personal affairs, is found in chaps. 1Sa. 9:6 sq.; 1Ki. 14:1 sq.; 2Ki. 1:3. (Erdmann.)
1Sa. 28:7. A woman that hath, etc.; literally a woman, a mistress of Ob, i.e., of a spirit by which the dead are conjured up. (Erdmann.) Ob signifies properly a leathern bottle, and is applied in several passages of Scripture to magicians, because, being possessed by an evil spirit, and swollen by inhalation of some gaseous substance, which made them pant and heave, they spoke with a soft hollow voice, as out of a leathern bottle. (Jamieson.) Endor. On the northern declivity of Little Hermon, so that the Philistine camp lay between it and Gilboa. Dr. Thomson remarks, Poor Saul! It was a fearful ride that dark night. He probably kept to the east of Jezreel, crossed the valley below Ain Jalh, and thence over the shoulder of this Jebel-ed-Dhy (Little Hermon) to Endor, but it must have been perilous in the extreme, and nothing could have induced Saul to venture thither but the agony of despair.
1Sa. 28:11-19. Biblical students take three different views of the event here narrated. Some regard the whole as a mere deception; others think that Samuel really appeared, while many believe that an evil spirit was permitted by God to assume the appearance of the prophet. We accept the latter view, but subjoin the arguments used in favour of the other two. Dr. Chandler says: The more thoroughly I consider it, the more thoroughly I am convinced that there was no appearance of any kind of spirit, or phantom, at all, and that Samuel was not consulted nor gave any answers indeed, there are so many marks of imposture and deceit, that may be observed throughout the entire relation, as that I have no doubt but that this conference was entirely carried on by Saul and the old witch, without the help of any spirit whatever. This affair was transacted by night, the time most proper to manage deceptions of this kindwhen persons are most liable to be impressed by fear and imposed on by their own imaginations. Also, even Samuel himself doth not seem to have known anything of Gods raising him from the dead, for he saith nothing about it but expressly blames Saul for disturbing him and bringing him up. If he had known that God had brought him up, he would not have complained of being disquieted by Saul. Now as Samuel knew, as well as Saul, that consulting the dead was absolutely unlawful, surely it became the prophet to reprove him for doing it, and to let him know that, though he appeared, it was not by virtue of her art, but by the immediate power of God. Instead of this, he shows himself displeased with Saul for doing it, and thereby excludes God from having any hand in it. Dr. Chandler further points out that no third person was apparently present at the interview between Saul and the woman, and that Saul himself saw nothing, and only concluded that it was the prophet from the description given by the woman, who had no doubt been acquainted with Samuels appearance during his life. He argues that she must have known who her visitor was before she consented to employ her incantations, and that she merely concealed her knowledge for a time in order that she might appear to have gained it from Samuel; also, that there was nothing in her reply to Saul that his own account of himself would not have suggested. Notwithstanding these and other objections, many modern expositors agree with Jewish commentators, and with Origen, Ambrose, and others, in supposing that Samuel did really appear to Saul This view, says Dr. Hengstenberg, is in harmony with the narrative. For
(1) the author says, in 1Sa. 28:14, that Saul perceived, not fancied, it was Samuel.
(2.) The words which are put into the mouth of the apparition are fully worthy of Samuel, and quite unsuitable for an evil spirit.
(3.) The appearing one foretells things which no human acuteness could have foreseen. Archbishop Trench, and others, in adopting this view, consider the appearance of Samuel in answer to enchantments as a fulfilment of the threat afterwards uttered, Everyone of the house of Israel which separateth himself from Me, and setteth up his idols in his heart, and putteth the stumbling-block of his iniquity before his face, and cometh to a prophet to enquire of him concerning Me, I the Lord will answer him, by Myself. (Eze. 14:7.) But notwithstanding the considerations which seem to favour this view, we agree with Luther, Grotius, and other theologians of the Reformation, in believing that it was Satan himself, or one of his agents, who appeared to the woman and spoke to Saul. For, as Dr. Erdmann remarks (though in support of a different opinion), it is expressly said in 1Sa. 28:6 that God answered Saul no more, and that for this reason, he turned from God to a sorccress. An immediate Divine miracle is assumed, which is to be brought into union with the anti-godly attempt of the sorceress and an open act of godlessness or God-forgetfulness on the part of Saul. Support would thus be given to the superstitious opinion that departed spirits may be summoned, while the fundamental view of the Old Testament everywhere is that a return of the dead to the land of the living is not possible. He further remarks that such an appearanceif God had really been willing to permit itcould no longer have had any religious ethical end, seeing that the means for rousing Saul to repentance were exhausted, nor any theocratic end, seeing that Sauls rejection as king had already been repeatedly announced. On the other hand there can be no doubt of the intimate connection between witchcraft or sorcery and the spirits of evil. The stern denunciations of God against it prove that it was not a fancy but a fact. The damsel who brought her masters much gain by soothsaying, mentioned in Act. 16:16, is said to have been possessed by an evil spirit, and miraculous deeds of a certain kind are, in the Bible, attributed to such servants of Satan, as in the case of the Egyptians (Exo. 7:11-22. In the New Testament it is said that Satan fashioneth himself into an angel of light (2Co. 11:14), and his working is declared to be with all power and signs and lying wonders (2Th. 2:9). The reproof given to Saul is no argument against the speaker being an evil spirit; we know the Devil can quote the Word of God to serve his purpose (Mat. 4:6), and he only did to Saul what many a wicked man has done to a fellow-creature whom he has tempted and brought to ruintaunted him with the fruit of his evil deeds. Neither to our mind does the fact that the Scripture narrative says Samuel spoke affect the argument, as Old Testament writers often simply describe things as they appear to be.
1Sa. 28:23. The bed. Rather the divana cushioned bench, extending along the wall of the room still found in the East.
1Sa. 28:24. She hasted, etc. The cookery was performed with singular despatch. But this was not uncommon (see Gen. 18:7-8; Jdg. 13:1; Luk. 15:27-29), and is still practised in the tents of the Bedouins. A sheep or calf is brought and killed in the presence of the guests, and then, having been thrust into a large cauldron swung over the fire, the contents are taken out and placed on an immense tray, and served up amid a mass of roasted corn, boiled rice, and curdled or sour milk. (Jamieson.)
1Sa. 28:1-2 will be considered with the next chapter.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.1Sa. 28:3-25
SAUL AND THE WOMAN OF ENDOR
I. The day of grace has its limits. It is a day. Our Lord spoke to the people of Jerusalem of a day, or a season, of God-given opportunity, which when He addressed them was gone to return no more (Luk. 19:42). When the rich man Lifted up his eyes and said, Father Abraham, have mercy upon me, the answer that came back to him was: Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed (Luk. 16:22-26). And some men by constant rejection of Divine commands and invitations create such a gulf on this side of deatha gulf only to be filled up by true repentance, for which, alas! they have no inclination.
Try what repentance can; what can it not?
Yet what can it when one cannot repent?
Saul was a man to whom God had given a grand opportunity to lead a noble and blessed life, by raising him to a high social position and endowing him with special gifts to discharge its duties; but he had now outlived the day of Gods gracious favour, and is an illustration of that most terrible of Divine threatenings: Because I have called and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought my counsel, and would none of my reproof; I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh etc. (Pro. 1:24-28).
II. If men refuse the light of Gods truth they will be given over to the darkness of spiritual delusion. The word of God and human history unite in declaring that he who does not become Gods free servant will, in some form, be enslaved by Satan. Saul had long ago, by disobedience to God, laid himself open to such a dominion of the evil one as showed itself in his malice towards David, and now, in inspired language, his deceived heart hath so turned him aside that he cannot deliver his soul nor say. Is there not a lie in my right hand (Isa. 44:20), and he seeks counsel and comfort through the instrumentality of a witch. Those who rejected the Incarnate Son of God, and the truth taught by His apostles, became an easy prey to the false messiahs and prophets who followed (Mat. 24:24; 1Jn. 4:1), and Paul tells us that God would send to those who believed not the truth strong delusion, that they should believe a lie (2Th. 2:11). This has been the portion of the rejectors of Gods revealed will, both in ancient and modern times. If Saul had taken heed to the Word of the Lord spoken by Samuel when the prophet was alive, he would not have desired or thought it possible to speak to him now by means which God had declared to be an abomination, (Deu. 18:10-12) and those who in modern times are willing to walk by the light of the same word spoken in these last days by the Son of God (Heb. 1:1.) do not feel any wish or need to receive instruction or consolation by means of spirit-rapping, and so become the dupes either of false men or lying spirits. To all such the message of God is Behold all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks; walk in the light of your fire and in the sparks that ye have kindled. This shall ye have of mine hand; ye shall lie down in sorrow. (Isa. 50:11.)
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
1Sa. 28:3-5. Even the worst men may sometimes make head against some sins. Saul hath expelled the sorcerers out of the land of Israel, and hath forbidden magic upon pain of death. He that had no care to expel Satan out of his own heart, yet will seem to drive him out of his kingdom. That we see wicked men oppose themselves to some sins, there is neither marvel nor comfort in it. No doubt Satan made sport at this edict of Saul: what cares he to be banished in sorcery, while he is entertained in malice? He knew and found Saul his, while he resisted; and smiled to yield thus far unto his vassal. If we quit not all sins, he will be content we should either abandon or persecute some.
Where there is no place for holy fear, there will be place for the servile. The graceless heart of Saul was astonished at the Philistines, yet was never moved at the frowns of that God whose anger sent them, nor of those sins of his which procured them.Bp. Hall.
1Sa. 28:7. This consulting with the witch of Endor on the part of Israels anointed king was probably as nearly the sin against the Holy Ghost as it was possible for one under the old covenant, and before the Day of Pentecost, to commit.Trench.
1Sa. 28:14. And he stooped with his face to the ground. This is what the devil aimed at; and it is well observed that every one that consulteth with Satan worshippeth him, though he bow not. Neither doth that evil spirit desire any other reverence than to be sought unto.Trapp.
1Sa. 28:16-19. I could wonder to hear Satan preach thus prophetically if I did not know that as he was once a good angel, so he can still act what he was. While Saul was in consultation of sparing Agag, we shall never find that Satan would lay any block in his wayyea, then he was a prompt orator to induce him into that sin; now that it is past and gone he can lade Saul with fearful denunciations of judgment. Till we have sinned, Satan is a parasite; when we have sinned, he is a tyrant. What cares he to flatter any more when he hath what he would? Now, his only work is to terrify and confound, that he may enjoy what he hath won. How much better it is serving that Master, who, when we are most dejected with the conscience of evil, heartens us with inward comfort, and speaks peace to the soul in the midst of tumult!Bp. Hall.
Shall thou and thy sons be with me; i.e. in the state of the dead. Hereby also this old deceiver would persuade Saul that the souls of all men, as well good as bad, go to the same place; seeking thereby to blot out of him all knowledge and apprehension of eternal life.Trapp.
It is a grievous miscalculation which men make, when, conscious that life is passing on in the neglect of God and duty, they reckon within themselves a certain power which they imagine the approach of death will have to awaken their attention to religious duties, and to bring with it a disposition to attend to religious duties. There is in such immediate prospects no necessary power to move the heart. Did Sauls approaching end awaken his conscience or soften his heart?Miller.
1Sa. 28:7-20. All human art has failed to portray, all human history has failed to record, a despair deeper and more tragic than his, who, having forsaken God and being of God forsaken, is now seeking to move hell since heaven is inexorable to him; and infinitely guilty as he is, assuredly there is something unutterably pathetic in that yearning of the disanointed king, now in his utter desolation, to change words once more with the friend and counsellor of his youth, and, if he must hear his doom, to hear it from no other lips but his. I know not whether the world has anything to show at all so mournful as the spectacle which we have here: namely, the gradual breaking down under the wear and tear of the world, under the influence of unresisted temptations, of a lofty soul Yet as many among us as are old enough to have been able to watch the development of lives, can hardly have failed to note on the one side some who, giving little promise at the commencement of their career, have yet afterwards risen into clearness of purpose and dignity of aim while others of much rarer and ampler gifts have contracted their aims and lowered their standard What is the explanation of the Jacobs, who, with many and most serious faults, are yet elevated and exalted into Israel princes with God; and of the Esaus; who, not without a certain native generosity, separate themselves off in the end from all which is highest, and truest, and best? The explanation is not far to seek. Jacob, with all his faults had yet a side on which he was turned towards God which was exactly what Esau had not. Dwell a little, I beseech you on that word a profane person. (Heb. 12:16)one that is, without a fane, without a sanctuary in his soul; for whom all things were common, common as the outer court of some temple, which, unfenced and unguarded, is trodden and trampled on by the careless foot of every passer by. Take, I beseech you, the lesson which the Sauls and Esaus have bequeathed us. Build on no good thing which you find in yourselves. There is only one pledge for the permanence of any good thing that is in younamely, that you bring it to God, and that you receive it back from God, with that higher consecration that He can give it: not now any more a virtue of this world, but a grace of the kingdom of heaven. Trench.
1Sa. 28:21-25. Even in a sorceress, with all her deceptions and delusions, her wild and dreadful life, the true woman comes out at the mute appeal of misery. How kindly persuasive her words; how prompt her hospitable labours. We take leave of her, as she took leave of the ruined king, with a pitying heart.Translator of Langes Commentary.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Preparations for Sauls Last Battle, 1Sa. 28:1 to 1Sa. 29:11.
David With Achish in Battle. 1Sa. 28:1-2
And it came to pass in those days, that the Philistines gathered their armies together for warfare, to fight with Israel. And Achish said unto David, Know thou assuredly, that thou shalt go out with me to battle, thou and thy men.
2 And David said to Achish, Surely thou shalt know what thy servant can do. And Achish said to David, Therefore will I make thee keeper of mine head for ever.
1.
What was the demand of Achish on David? 1Sa. 28:1
In exchange for the protection which David had received from Achish, David was expected to serve as a soldier with the Philistines. This was a high price to pay for the little bit of security which the Philistines afforded David. It has well been said that he who gives up a bit of his liberty in order to insure some security is worthy neither of liberty or security. David found himself in a position where he was expected to fight with the Philistines against his own people.
2.
Did David intend to fight against Saul? 1Sa. 28:1-2
While David was living in Philistia, the Philistines gathered their armies together for a campaign against Israel. Achish sent word to David that he was to go with him in his army along with his own men. David answered ambiguously. His words contained no distinct promise of faithful assistance in the war against the Israelites. There are no grounds for inferring that David was disposed to help the Philistines against Saul and the Israelites. Judging from his previous acts, it would necessarily have been against his principles for him to fight against his own people. Nevertheless, in the situation in which he was placed he did not venture to give a distinct refusal to the summons of the king. He was undoubtedly hoping that God would show him a way out of the conflict between his conviction and his duty to obey the Philistine king. He had no doubt prayed earnestly about it; and the faithful God helped his servant; first of all, by the fact that Achish accepted his indefinite declaration as a promise of unconditional fidelity and still more by the fact that the princes of the Philistines overrode the king.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
(1) The Philistines gathered their armies together for warfare.This was evidently, as Jose-phus remarks, a great effort on the part of the Philistines. It was no ordinary raid or border incursion, such as seems to have been so frequent all through the reign of Saul. Since their defeat in the Valley of Elah, which followed the single combat between Goliath and David, no such Philistine army had been gathered together. We are struck at once with the presence of the enemy in the heart of the land, no longer choosing the well-known and often-contested Marches, or border districts. The Philistines are now strong enough to strike a blow at the centre of the kingdom, and to challenge a battle on the plain of Jezreel. or Esdraelon, north of Ephraim and Issachar. They probably marched along the sea-border of Canaan, collecting their forces as they advanced from each of their well-known military centres, and then, turning eastward, invaded the land by the Valley of Jezreel, or Esdraelon. They marched still eastward, and took up a strong position on the slopes of one of the groups of mountains that enclosed the broad plain of Jezreel toward the east, near the town of Shunem. King Saul, quickly assembling the fighting men of Israel, marched in pursuit, and coming up with them in the Esdraelon plain, took up his position opposite the Philistinesonly a few miles parting the two hostson the slopes of another group of mountains, known as Mount Gilboa, lying to the south of the Philistine frontier. (There is a map of the Plain of Esdraelon in Stanleys Jewish Church, vol. ii., Lecture 21, illustrative of this closing scene in Sauls career, well worth consulting.)
And Achish said.David soon found into what a grievous error he had fallen by taking refuge with the hereditary foes of his people. Want of faith and patience had urged him to take this unhappy step. The sixteen months he had spent in Phihstia had been certainly successful, inasmuch as they had strengthened his position as a free lance captain, but nothing more. They had been stained by bloodshed and cruelty. His life, too, was a life of duplicity and falsehood. The results of his unhappy course of action were soon manifest. His nation sustained a crushing and most humiliating defeat, which he narrowly escaped being obliged to witness, if not to contribute to. His own general recognition as king was put off for nearly seven years, during which period a civil war hindered the development of national prosperity; besides which, during this time of internal divisions the seeds were too surely laid of the future disastrous separation of Judah and the south from the northern tribesa division which eventually took place in his grandsons time, when his strong arm and Solomons wisdom and power were things of the past.
The summons of Achish to his great military vassal was perfectly natural: indeed, Achish had no reason to suspect that such a campaign as the one the Philistines were about to undertake against King Saul would be in any way distasteful to the wronged and insulted David. Not improbably the presence of David and his trained forceincluding, as the wily Philistine well knew, some of the bravest souls in Israelencouraged Achish and the other Philistine lords to this great and, as it turned out, supreme effort against Israel. The King of Gath and his colleagues in Philistia saw that, in the divided state of Israel, their chances of success were very great, and it is highly probable that they looked forward to establishing their friend and follower David on the throne of Saul as a Philistine vassal king.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
THE PHILISTINES PREPARE TO FIGHT WITH ISRAEL, 1Sa 28:1-2.
1. The Philistines gathered their armies These inveterate enemies of Israel had hitherto been unable to regain the dominion which they lost in the time of Samuel’s rule, (see note on 1Sa 7:13,) though they made repeated efforts to do so all the days of Saul. Now, however, they are about to enjoy a momentary triumph.
Thou shall go out with me to battle This demand was placing David and his men in a difficult position, for how could they take up arms against their own nation and kindred?
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
David Becomes A Petty King of Ziklag And Carries Out successful Raids To Obtain Booty, Thereby Consolidating His Position with The King Of Gath Who Thought That He Was Raiding Israel/Judah ( 1Sa 27:5 to 1Sa 28:2 ).
We need not doubt that there was far more to the discussions between Achish and David than we are told. It seems very probable that David was feeling constricted both physically and spiritually in Gath and that his men were possibly chafing through inactivity. There may also have been conflicts with local Gittites who objected to their presence. David may well therefore have proposed to the king that he and his men could achieve more by having their own city to operate from, a city ‘in the country’, that is, in a less occupied area from which raiding operations could be carried out.
Achish clearly saw the sense in this and gave David the city of Ziklag, with its environs, which was probably sparsely occupied at the time. Ziklag was in the far south, in the Negeb. (That it was near Beersheba is suggested by Neh 11:28). There its surrounding area was especially vulnerable to attacks from the warlike tribes that roamed the Sinai peninsula. Achish may well therefore have seen this as a means of making that area, which was under his control, secure. And from there David in his turn attacked these tribes and obtained from them much booty, including large quantities of cattle, sheep and goats. Achish would receive his share of it, being informed erroneously that it had been obtained by attacking Israelite towns. Some of it was also distributed among the hardpressed people of Judah, to their eternal gratitude, so that they began to look on David with favour. He was a good neighbour to have.
Analysis.
a
b Then Achish gave him Ziklag that day, which is why Ziklag pertains to the kings of Judah to this day. And the number of the days that David dwelt in the country of the Philistines was a full year and four months (1Sa 27:6-7).
c And David and his men went up, and made a raid on the Geshurites, and the Girzites, and the Amalekites, for those nations were the inhabitants of the land, who were of old, as you go to Shur, even to the land of Egypt (1Sa 27:8).
d And David smote the land, and saved neither man nor woman alive, and took away the sheep, and the oxen, and the asses, and the camels, and the clothing, and he returned, and came to Achish (1Sa 27:9).
c And Achish said, “Against whom have you made a raid today?” And David said, “Against the South of Judah, and against the South of the Jerahmeelites, and against the South of the Kenites” (1Sa 27:10).
b And David saved neither man nor woman alive, to bring them to Gath, saying, “Lest they should tell of us, saying, So did David, and so has been his way all the while he has dwelt in the country of the Philistines.” And Achish believed David, saying, “He has made his people Israel utterly to abhor him, therefore he shall be my servant for ever” (1Sa 27:11-12).
a And it came about in those days, that the Philistines gathered their hosts together for warfare, to fight with Israel. And Achish said to David, “Know you assuredly, that you will go out with me in the host, you and your men.” And David said to Achish, “Therefore you will know what your servant will do.” And Achish said to David, “Therefore will I make you keeper of my head for ever” (1Sa 28:1-2).
Note that in ‘a’ David had found favour in the eyes of Achish, and in the parallel that favour is clearly demonstrated. In ‘b’ we learn of the limited period for which David dwelt in the land of the Philistines, and in the parallel Achish mistakenly thought that he had him as his servant for ever. In ‘c’ we are told the names of the tribes which David raided, and in the parallel the names of those that he claimed to have raided. Central in ‘d’ is the fact that Achish received much tribute, thus enhancing David in his eyes..
1Sa 27:5
‘ And David said to Achish, “If now I have found favour in your eyes, let them give me a place in one of the cities in the country, that I may dwell there. For why should your servant dwell in the royal city with you?” ’
Whatever the reasons David approached Achish and asked to be given a city some distance from Gath so as to avoid cramping the royal city. This probably indicates that many of the Gittite aristocracy were somewhat put out by the presence of David and his men, and were in some way expressing their hostility, claiming that this was the royal city of Gath, a place in which such a foreign element were not welcome. If this was so Achish would be aware of it and might well have seen David’s suggestion as very wise. He had little to lose and much to gain by giving to David a sparsely populated town guarding the approach from the south, especially if David was able to keep the surrounding area safe and use it as a base from which to carry out his foraging expeditions (compare 1Sa 13:17), thus enhancing Achish’s wealth. It does, however, illustrate the confidence and trust that Achish had in David. He saw him as someone reliable.
1Sa 27:6
‘ Then Achish gave him Ziklag that day, which is why Ziklag pertains to the kings of Judah to this day.’
So that day Achish gave Ziklag and its surrounds to David, for him to rule as a petty king over an independent city state under Achish’s suzerainty. That is why when David became king of Judah the city would become conjoined with Judah (with Achish still seeing David as his loyal vassal), and the city became seen as a Judean city under the control of whoever was king over Judah at the time. Thus anyone who ruled Judah, even if as a part of Israel, ruled Ziklag by right of the fact that it had been given to David and had been conjoined with Judah. It had, of course, always been seen as in Judah’s (and Simeon’s) territory (Jos 15:31; Jos 19:5) by the Israelites. That it was near Beersheba is suggested by Neh 11:28.
There is no reason for suggesting that this phrase pinpoints the date of authorship of the final book, for all kings from David onwards were ‘kings of Judah’, and it was by virtue of this rather than as kings of Israel/Judah that they ruled Ziklag.
1Sa 27:7
‘ And the number of the days that David dwelt in the country of the Philistines was a full year and four months.’
This may indicate the length of time that David was in Gath prior to moving to Ziklag, after which on moving to Ziklag he was seen by the writer as living in an independent city which was in territory allocated to Judah, even if Achish saw it differently. As far as the writer is concerned David was a patriot who was to be seen as having lived among the Philistines for as short a time as possible.
David appears to have ruled the city and its surrounds as an independent city state, while acknowledging Achish as his overlord. The terms on which he received the city would have been laid out in a suzerainty treaty. It would include the obtaining of booty, a proportion of which would be given to Achish, as a result of raids on ‘foreign territory’ (which Achish would see as including Judah), and an expression of willingness to serve Achish directly as mercenaries when called on. To this city and its environs flocked many who were disaffected by Saul’s rule, in order to serve under David who had once been a popular Israelite commander (1Ch 12:1-7; 1Ch 12:20-22). From it he sent ambassadors to Judean cities gaining their friendship (1Sa 30:26-31). He was founding his own small kingdom and it was giving him great experience for the future, with an influence that Achish never dreamed of.
1Sa 27:8
‘ And David and his men went up, and made a raid on (advanced militarily on) the Geshurites, and the Girzites, and the Amalekites, for those nations were the inhabitants of the land, who were of old, as you go to Shur, even to the land of Egypt.’
From Ziklag David made raids on fierce and warlike tribes in the Sinai peninsula. It appears that the Geshurites and the Girzites, of whom little else is known (but see Jos 13:2), were similar to the Amalekites, and somewhat like modern Bedouin, although they may have been more settled than the nomadic Amalekites, in desert cities and oasis encampments. They no doubt constantly raided the Negeb of Judah, and the Negeb of the Philistines, and it is possible that these raids on Philistine territory were one reason why Achish was glad to place Ziklag as a buffer between them and Philistia. These tribesmen had been there in the Sinai peninsula up to the borders of Egypt for as long as men could remember, and they were seen as a constant threat to the more settled peoples of the Negeb, swooping down unexpectedly on unprotected areas and people, seizing both their cattle and flocks, and their people to sell into slavery.
We know that the Amalekites had been responsible for attacks on the children of Israel shortly after leaving Egypt (Exo 17:8-16), the kind of act for which they later came under God’s curse (1Sa 15:2-3; Deu 25:19). And while Saul had wiped out one of their prominent tribes they were very numerous and separated into a number of different tribes, some of which had escaped his intentions. The Geshurites and Girzites may well therefore have also been seen as coming under that general curse. David’s action would, in fact, partly be a retaliation for raids made on what he now saw as his territory.
1Sa 27:9
‘ And David smote the land, and saved neither man nor woman alive, and took away the sheep, and the oxen, and the asses, and the camels, and the clothing, and he returned, and came to Achish.’
Wherever he could find them David, in defence of his territory, sought out these warrior tribes, smiting the land where they could be found, and slaughtering them all, including both men and women. And in the process he took away their sheep, oxen, asses, camels and clothware, most of which they themselves would have obtained by the same method. David’s policy of mass slaughter no doubt sounds harsh to us today, but it is doubtful if those who heard of it then thought the same. All knew that any Amalekites who were left alive would simply join up with other similar tribes, strengthening them for further raids on innocent people, while their womenfolk would be seen as wild, insular, and useless as wives, and likely producers of more raiders once they connected up with other tribes. They were probably as fierce as the men. Harsh as it may seem eradication was therefore seen as the only way of dealing with them (we can compare them with the pirates of later times who preyed on anyone and everyone and were subject to none). Any other route simply resulted in further problems of a particularly vicious kind.
David would then come to Achish bringing his spoils so that Achish could receive his no doubt generous share, and the remainder would be divided up among David’s men.
1Sa 27:10
‘ And Achish said, “Against whom have you made a raid today?” And David said, “Against the South of Judah, and against the South of the Jerahmeelites, and against the South of the Kenites.” ’
Achish was naturally interested in where David had been carrying out his raids, and was erroneously informed that it had been ‘against the Negeb of Judah, and against the Negeb of the Jerahmeelites, and against the Negeb of the Kenites.’ These areas were far enough off and remote enough for Achish not to be aware of what was going on there, and they would anyway no doubt constantly experience raids of one kind or another. That was a consequence of living in such places, which was no doubt why Samuel had earlier sent his sons to act as war-leaders and judges there (1Sa 8:2). There was also probably some truth in his statement. No doubt when he heard of Amalekite raids on those areas he entered them (with the consent of their elders) in order to deal with the Amalekite invaders within those territories.
“The Negeb” was a fairly vague term covering a large area of the dry south, with its lesser rainfall, which extended into the Sinai peninsula. Thus what David said was a half truth. He is not depicted as actually saying that he had attacked the peoples themselves, only their area. He may well have found Amalekites wandering in those areas. And there were Amalekite ‘cities’ in the Negeb.
The Jerahmeelites were a semi-independent clan similar to the Kenites, who had friendly relations with Judah, and gradually became Judeans by adoption (compare 1Ch 2:9 ff). The Kenites had been spared by Saul when he had slaughtered the Amalekites (1Sa 15:6), and had previous associations with Judah (Jdg 1:16). They had assisted Israel on their journey through the wilderness. The Negeb may well have been at this time a fairly fruitful area as a result of careful use of what rainwater it experienced, which was cleverly used for irrigation, but it depended heavily on oases and springs. It was also an area suitable for grazing large flocks. It would thus be seen by the nomadic tribesmen (and by Achish) as a very suitable area from which to obtain booty.
1Sa 27:11
‘ And David saved neither man nor woman alive, to bring them to Gath, saying, “Lest they should tell of us, saying, ‘So did David, and so has been his way all the while he has dwelt in the country of the Philistines’.” ’
The writer now tells us that one reason why David never left any living witnesses to his attacks was so that no one could inform on his activities. The only purpose for taking some alive would be to sell them as slaves, something which David forbore to do. However, we must not discount the fact that he also knew that they were under YHWH’s curse and therefore dealt with them accordingly. But it was clearly essential for him that none should be able to counteract what he had told Achish. The only alternative was to sell them as slaves, for simply letting them go would have meant that they were free to join up with a similar tribe and continue the attacks on innocents, or to produce those who did so. It would have been storing up trouble for the future. But had he turned up with only Amalekite, Geshurite and Gerzite slaves for sale it would have been a real give-away. Achish would have asked, where were the Judeans and Kenites?
He could ,of course, simply have let them go in which case they would never have had any connection with Gath, but that would then have left them free to attack innocent people again. So we must probably see his harsh measures as going beyond just preventing Achish from finding out the truth, and as tying in with the carrying out of YHWH’s curse on them, as a result of the fact that God had declared them worthy of the death sentence (Gen 9:6) because of their savage behaviour.
To us, of course, all this killing is rightly abhorrent. But then most of us live in a society where there is an adequate police force, and where there are organised prisons. We do not live on our wits, faced with constant attacks from merciless tribesmen, with no one to protect us but ourselves. The sentence of death on them was the consequence of the fact that they were seen as regular murderers who would never learn their lesson and therefore needed to be finally dealt with in the only way possible to render them harmless, death (at a time when for all people death by violence was an everyday occurrence for their households, to be constantly warded off by killing others, especially in the Negeb).
1Sa 27:12
‘ And Achish believed David, saying, “He has made his people Israel utterly to abhor him, therefore he shall be my servant for ever.” ’
Achish believed David’s half-truths, and gloated. He considered that by turning his own people and their allies against him it would mean that David for ever remained faithful to those who had not been turned against him, his employers. In other words, they would serve Achish faithfully, as bound to him, into the distant future. They had nowhere else to look.
1Sa 28:1
‘ And it came about in those days, that the Philistines gathered their hosts together for warfare, to fight with Israel. And Achish said to David, “Know you assuredly, that you will go out with me in the host, you and your men.” ’
However, inevitably the day arrived when what David had probably constantly feared came about. A full scale invasion of Israel was planned by the Philistines, in contrast with mere border raids. This was not to be merely for booty. The time had come when the five lords of the Philistines wanted vengeance for past defeats, to re-subjugate Israel, and to expand their territory even further. This may partly have been initiated as a result of Saul’s activities in the valley of Jezreel by which he was cutting off the Philistine trade routes. With this in mind they had built up their strength and trained their troops, and now they mustered their whole armies, which would involve the muster of Canaanite farmers to bolster their numbers, and of course, any mercenaries. It was for activities such as this that mercenaries were mainly hired. Along with the Philistine standing armies they would be the core of the fighting strength, trained fighters who lived for nothing else but warfare. So it is not surprising that Achish called on David and his men and told them to stand ready. They would be required to go out with the Philistine host as part of his contribution to that host.
Achish now had no doubt about David’s faithfulness. Why, had he not already proved his willingness to despoil his own countrymen? Why then should he hesitate in taking part in an exercise that would bring him even more booty and reward?
1Sa 28:2
‘ And David said to Achish, “Therefore you will know what your servant will do.” And Achish said to David, “Therefore will I make you keeper of my head for ever.”
When David was called on he assured the king that he ‘would know what David his servant would do’. To Achish this was an assurance of total loyalty and an indication of a desire for battle. To those who knew David better it might have appeared to be somewhat of an evasive answer. But Achish was satisfied, and assured David that it was because of his dedication and faithfulness that he would make him the permanent ‘keeper of his head’. In other words, David and his men would be his personal bodyguard and his constant protector. He knew that they were the toughest of his troops.
It is possible that the writer deliberately used a phrase which was ironical. We remember, as the writer did, how David had kept Goliath’s head and had taken it to Jerusalem as a trophy (1Sa 17:54). But Achish was not to know that one day David would be his archenemy, so that he would never have dreamed of such an interpretation to his words.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
1Sa 28:6 And when Saul enquired of the LORD, the LORD answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets.
1Sa 28:6
1Sa 28:6 Comments – The three primary ways God spoke to Israel during these days were by dreams, by casting the lot, and by the voice of a prophet. The Urim and Thummim were stones kept in a pouch on the high-priest’s breastplate, used in determining God’s decision in certain questions and issues. Adam Clarke cites the Latin poet Ovid, who writes of just such a casting of stones. In the ancient custom of casting lots, two stones of black and white were used in casting a vote. The white stone was a symbol of good fortune or of innocence while the black stone symbolized bad luck or guilt.
“It was the custom in ancient times to use white and black pebbles, the black for condemning prisoners and the white for freeing them from the charge. At this time also the fatal vote was taken in this way; and every pebble that was dropped into the pitiless urn was black! But when the urn was turned and the pebbles poured out for counting, the colour of them all was changed from black to white; and so, by the will of Hercules, the vote was made favourable, and Alemon’s son was freed.” ( Metamorphoses 15.41) [35]
[35] Ovid, Metamorphoses, vol. 2, trans. Frank J. Miller, in The Loeb Classical Library, eds. T. E. Page, E. Capps, and W. H. D. Rouse (London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1958), 367-368. See Adam Clarke, Revelation, in Adam Clarke’s Commentary, Electronic Database (Seattle, WA: Hendrickson Publishers Inc., 1996), in P.C. Study Bible, v. 3.1 [CD-ROM] (Seattle, WA: Biblesoft Inc., 1993-2000), notes on Revelation 2:17.
Listed are all uses of the Urim and Thummim in the Holy Bible:
Exo 28:30, “And thou shalt put in the breastplate of judgment the Urim and the Thummim ; and they shall be upon Aaron’s heart, when he goeth in before the LORD: and Aaron shall bear the judgment of the children of Israel upon his heart before the LORD continually.”
Lev 8:8, “And he put the breastplate upon him: also he put in the
breastplate the Urim and the Thummim .”
Num 27:21, “And he shall stand before Eleazar the priest, who shall ask counsel for him after the judgment of Urim before the LORD: at his word shall they go out, and at his word they shall come in, both he, and all the children of Israel with him, even all the congregation.”
Deu 33:8, “And of Levi he said, Let thy Thummim and thy Urim be with thy holy one, whom thou didst prove at Massah, and with whom thou didst strive at the waters of Meribah;”
1Sa 28:6, “And when Saul enquired of the LORD, the LORD answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim , nor by prophets.”
Ezr 2:63, “And the Tirshatha said unto them, that they should not eat of the most holy things, till there stood up a priest with Urim and with Thummim .”
Neh 7:65, “And the Tirshatha said unto them, that they should not eat of the most holy things, till there stood up a priest with Urim and Thummim .”
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The Consultation with the Witch
v. 1. And it came to pass in those days, v. 2. And David said to Achish, Surely, v. 3. Now, Samuel was dead, v. 4. And the Philistines gathered themselves together, v. 5. And when Saul saw the host of the Philistines, v. 6. And when Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord answered him not, neither by dreams nor by Urim, v. 7. Then said Saul unto his servants, v. 8. And Saul disguised himself, v. 9. And the woman said unto him, v. 10. And Saul sware to her by the Lord, v. 11. Then said the woman, v. 12. And when the woman, v. 13. And the king said unto her, Be not afraid; for what sawest thou? v. 14. And he said unto her, What form is he of?
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
DOWNFALL AND DEATH OF SAUL (CHS. 28-31.)
THE PHILISTINES GATHER TOGETHER FOR WAR. DISTRESS OF SAUL, AND VISIT TO THE WITCH OF ENDOR (1Sa 28:1-25.).
EXPOSITION
ACHISH SUMMONS DAVID TO JOIN HIM IN THE WAR AGAINST ISRAEL (1Sa 28:1-2).
1Sa 28:1
In those days. I.e. while David was dwelling at Ziklag. The Philistines gathered their armies together. This was, as Josephus has observed, a war upon a much larger scale than any that had been carried on since the defeat of the Philistines in the valley of Elah; for we find that the invasion was made from the north, and the decisive battle fought not in the usual field of operations, but in the territory of the tribe of Issachar, in the neighbourhood of Jezreel. We are not indeed to suppose from this that the Philistines had conquered all the central districts of the land, and, driving Saul before them, at last brought him to bay, and slew him in the north; for though Ishbosheth was compelled to withdraw to Mahanaim, a city on the eastern side of the Jordan, yet Abner is said to have made him king there not only over the trans-Jordanic tribes, but also “over Jezreel, and over Ephraim, and over Benjamin” (2Sa 2:9). It may be said, however, that these were but titular claims; but the philistine conquests, as described in 1Sa 31:7, if not confined to the valley of Esdraelon, as in 1Ch 10:7, were nevertheless all of them to the north of Mount Gilboa, thus leaving Ephraim, Benjamin, and Judah untouched. Nor do we find the Philistines encamped between David at Hebron and Ishbosheth at Mahanaim, or interfering in their contests; and it is only when David was made king over the whole of Israel that they again assembled their forces to dispute the empire with him, and twice suffered defeat (2Sa 5:20, 2Sa 5:25). More probably, therefore, they marched northward through their own territory, raising the whole of the military population as they went, and then, turning eastward, broke into the Israelite territory by the valley of Jezreel. It was probably the rapid decline of Saul’s power which encouraged the Philistines to attempt once again to place their yoke upon the neck of Israel; and Saul, conscious that God’s blessing had departed from him, in pitiable agony sought for unholy aid, but finally, with his sons, made a last brave defence, and died a soldier’s death. Achish said unto David. As a vassal David was bound to accompany his lord to the acid; and Achish, supposing that David had of his own accord made war upon Judah, probably assumed that the invitation was one which he himself desired. To battle. Hebrew, “in the army.”
1Sa 28:2
Surely thou shalt know. Hebrew, “Therefore thou shalt know,” i.e. if the case be so, thou shalt know, etc. The rendering of the A.V. makes David repeat the words of Achish, which literally are, “knowing thou shalt know,” the Hebrew way of making a strong affirmation. David’s reply is really ambiguous, but is understood by Achish as a boastful assent, and he thereupon promises, Therefore will I make thee keeper of mine head, i.e. captain of my bodyguard, forever. Therefore is exactly the same word as that used by David, and has just the same meaning, namely, “If the case be so, if thou provest thy valour, then I, etc.
SAUL AND THE WITCH OF ENDOR (1Sa 28:3-25).
1Sa 28:3
Samuel was dead. A repetition of 1Sa 25:1, inserted to explain Saul’s conduct, as is the other fact, that Saul had put away those that had familiar spirits, etc. We are not told when Saul did this; but at the commencement of his reign, when he brought the ark to Nob, he was probably earnest generally in his observance of the precepts of the Mosaic law. Familiar spirits. Hebrew, oboth, the plural of ob, a leathern bottle. It is generally taken to refer to the distended belly of the conjurer, into which the summoned spirit of the dead was supposed to enter, and thence speak; for which reason the Septuagint renders the word” ventriloquist,” and is followed by most modern commentators. Wizards. Hebrew, “knowing ones,” from the verb to know; just as wizard comes from the old verb to wiss. With ignorant people unusual knowledge is always looked upon with suspicion; but these supposed magicians professed a knowledge to which they bad no claim.
1Sa 28:4
The Philistines pitched in Shunem. Having collected their forces, the Philistines entered Palestine as we have seen, by the valley of Jezreel, also called Esdraelon, and, marching eastward, encamped at Shunem. This was a village in the tribe of Issachar (Jos 19:18), rendered famous as the abode of the woman who made a little chamber for Elisha (2Ki 4:8); and from thence also came Abishag (1Ki 1:8). Conder describes it as being at present only a mud hamlet, with cactus hedges and a spring, but the view extends, he says, as far as to Mount Carmel, fifteen miles away (‘Tent-Work,’ 1:123). It is now called Sulem, a name given to it also by Eusebius, and lies upon the slopes of the little Hermon, opposite Mount Gilboa, from which it is separated by the valley of Jezreel. This broad plain “is bounded on the east by the range of Gilboa, rising 1500 feet above the sea, and consisting of white chalk; while on the west a long spur runs out at about the same average elevation with Gilboa, and wends northwest to the ridge of Carmel. As the valley is about 250 feet above the sea level, Saul, from an elevation of 1200 feet, would easily see the camp of the Philistines pitched upon the slopes of the opposite range at a distance of about four miles.
1Sa 28:5, 1Sa 28:6
When Saul saw, etc. It is plain from this that the Philistines had not forced their way up through the Israelite territory; for this was evidently Saul’s first sight of their forces, and his alarm was caused by finding them so much larger than he had expected. He therefore in his anxiety enquired of Jehovah, but received no answer, neither by dreams. He had expected these to be vouchsafed, possibly to himself, but more probably to some class of prophets (see Jer 23:25, where false prophets claim to have dreamed, in imitation no doubt of true prophets); but though dreams were thus recognised as a means for communicating God’s will to man, yet, as Erdmann well remarks, “a subordinate position is certainly assigned in the Old Testament to the dream as the medium of the Divine influence on the inner life, which in sleep sinks into a state of passiveness.” Nor by Urim. Though Abiathar after the massacre of his family had fled to David with the ephod, it is quite possible that Saul may have had another ephod made, and have set up a fresh sanctuary, perhaps at Gibeon, with Zadok, of the family of Eleazar, as high priest. This would account for Zadok being joined with Ahimelech, the son of Abiathar, as one of two high priests early in David’s reign (2Sa 8:17). It is remarkable, however, that Saul does not mention the Urim himself in 1Sa 28:15, and very probably it is named here not because the ephod was actually used, but as enumerating all the various ways by which men inquired of Jehovah. Nor by prophets. In his dee spair Saul may have turned to some reputed soothsayer present with the host, but his wilful life had alienated both priest and prophet from him. And this is the meaning of the passage in 1Ch 10:14 : “Saul enquired not of Jehovah; therefore he slew him.” He may have gone through the form of inquiring, and certainly now would have been glad of an answer, but his whole mind was determinately set upon carrying out his own purposes, and he would never permit, after the first year or two of his reign, the royal prerogative to bend to the will of God.
1Sa 28:7, 1Sa 28:8
Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit. Hebrew, “owner of an ob” (see on 1Sa 28:3). This determination of Saul proves how obstinate was his self-will. He wanted an answer simply that he might know what was about to happen, not that he might receive guidance and counsel from God. From his bidding them seek him out “a woman mistress of an ob,” we gather that women were the usual claimants to these occult powers, just as now they are the most successful clairvoyantes, Endor“the spring of the round,” i.e. perhaps of the dwelling, houses being originally circular in shape, like tentslay a little to the northeast of Shunem, and it was therefore a hazardous matter for Saul to visit it. Condor (‘Tent-Work,’ 1:122) says, “East of Nain is a village of mud huts, with hedges of prickly pear. This is Endor, famous in connection with the tragic history of the death of Saul. The adventurous character of Saul’s night journey is very striking when we consider that the Philistines pitched in Shunem on the southern slopes of the mountain, and that Saul’s army was at Jezreel; thus, to arrive at Endor he had to pass the hostile camp, and would probably creep round the eastern shoulder of the hill, hidden by the undulations of the plain, as an Arab will often now advance unseen close by you in a fold of the ground.” He proceeds to speculate upon the cave in which the sorceress may have lived, dismissing those in the town as too modern, but suggesting one on the hillside. But there is nothing in the narrative to suggest that she lived in a cave, but rather the contrary, and the idea may be dismissed as due to the imagination of painters. As the journey was very dangerous, Saul disguised himself, and went by night, accompanied only by two men; and nothing could more plainly set before us his mental anguish, and also his intense desire to pry into the secrets of futurity, than this strange journey. All faith and hope are gone, and a feverish excitement, ready to catch at any aid, however lawless and untrustworthy, had taken their place. In this state of mind he arrives at the woman’s dwelling, and says, Divine unto me by the ob. Though divination was strictly forbidden (Deu 18:10, Deu 18:14), yet we find the diviner (A.V. prudent) in high popular estimation in Isa 3:2; and it was probably a lucrative profession, or this woman would not have been willing to incur so great a danger as was involved in its practice. Bring me him up, etc. The fancy that we can see the spirits of the dead is a most natural and enduring superstition, and it seems generally assumed that they must have some knowledge not accessible to the living. It must be said for Saul that he did not become the victim of this folly until after his reason was disturbed, and as a punishment for heinous sins.
1Sa 28:9, 1Sa 28:10
Thou knowest what Saul hath done. Not only had Saul in the earlier part of his reign been earnest in his zeal for the Mosaic law, but even now it seems as if a witch was in danger of death; for he has to take an oath before she will acknowledge that she practises any illicit art,
1Sa 28:11
Whom shall I bring up to thee? Assured by Saul’s oath, the woman now asserts her ability to call up the spirits of the dead, and asks, just as would happen now with those who claim similar powers, who it is to be. We need not suppose that she possessed either greater or less powers than those claimed or even exercised now; for many of the phenomena of clairvoyance, though undoubtedly natural, still belong to an unscientific, and therefore vague and illusory, region. Perhaps on this very account these arts have always had an extraordinary fascination for men, and been practised in all ages and among all people with considerable skill. Bring me up Samuel. Samuel had been Saul’s friend in his youth, and his guide and counsellor in those happy days when the young king walked uprightly, and all went well with him. But gradually the light yoke of respect for one who loved him became too heavy for a despotic temperament, which would brook no will but its own. Now that self-will is broken; it had brought the warrior king to a hopeless despair, and in his distress his mind once again returns to its old channels Intense as was the degradation for one so haughty, in disguise by night, at the risk of his life, to seek help from a sorceress, he bears it all that he may at least for a few minutes see the spirit of the true though stern monitor, whose memory once again filled his whole heart.
1Sa 28:12
When the woman saw Samuel, she cried with a loud voice. Evidently the last thing that she had expected was that anything else should happen than the usual illusion by which she imposed upon her victims; nor is it certain that anything else did happen. Her assertion that she saw Samuel was probably false; and it was in feigned excitement that she cried out, Why hast thou deceived me? for thou art Saul. She could not but have noticed the tall stature, the dignified manner, and also the intense excitement of her strange visitor; and when he bade her call up the spirit of Samuel, she must have been dull indeed not to know who the stranger was.
1Sa 28:13
What sawest thou? Thus far Saul had seen nothing; and as the words literally are What seest thou? it is plain that she had not gone into another room, as some have supposed. The vision was entirely unsubstantial, and Saul, hearing her cry, and observing her excitement, and her steady gaze upon some object, asked what that object was. Probably she was at some distance from him, as was no doubt her custom when performing her incantations, in order that what she did might not be too closely observed; probably, too, she burnt odours, and surrounded herself with the smoke of incense. In answer to Saul she says, “I see Elohim ascending out of the earth.” As the participle is plural, she does not mean God; nor, as it was a single appearance, is the rendering gods correct. What she means is that she saw some grand supernatural appearance rising out of the ground, which she calls a god in a general way, without attaching any very exact meaning to the term.
1Sa 28:14
What form is he of? Rather, “What is his aspect?” i.e. his look. As the term a god conveyed no other idea than that she had seen something majestic, Saul asks for a more exact description. She answers that it was an old man clad in a robe, meil (see on 1Sa 2:19). Samuel seems never to have worn the prophetic mantle (see on 1Sa 15:27), but always the meil. There was nothing, therefore, distinctive in the dress; but as she says that she has seen an old man, Saul concludes that he for whom he had asked had appeared to him. Instead of Saul perceived, the Hebrew has “Saul knew.” There is nothing to prove that Saul really saw anything; all that is said is that by the woman’s description “Saul recognised that what she had seen was Samuel, and he bowed himself to the ground, and made obeisance.”
1Sa 28:15, 1Sa 28:16
Why hast thou disquieted me? I.e. Why hast thou caused me to be disturbed by the incantations of this woman? Neither by prophets nor by dreams. It is suggested in the Talmud (Berach 1Sa 12:2) that Saul omitted all mention of the Urim from shame at having murdered the priests. Is become thine enemy. By a slight difference of reading the Septuagint have, “is on the side of thy neighbour.”
1Sa 28:17-19
Jehovah hath done to him. Rather, “hath wrought for himself;” but the LXX; Vulgate, and some MSS. read “hath done to thee,” as in 1Sa 28:18. As he spake by me. See 1Sa 15:28. Saul’s rebellion is there said, in 1Sa 15:23, to be a crime as great as the witchcraft which he was at that time so zealously punishing; here, where the sentence is being carried into execution, Saul has himself become guilty of what in his better hours he so abominated. Jehovah will also deliver Israel with thee. Rather, “will deliver Israel also with thee,” i.e. the nation is to share thy punishment. Tomorrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me. I.e. shall be dead. Whence this voice came it is difficult to say. St. Augustine thought that the woman really conjured up a demon, who took the form of Samuel. Maimonides treats the whole as the effect of Saul’s diseased imagination; while many modern commentators regard it as a well played piece of jugglery on the part of the woman, who recognised Saul at once on his entrance, but professed not to know him till his name was revealed to her by the pretended apparition, in whose name she reproached him for his crimes, announced to him, what now all were convinced of, that David was to be his successor, and foretold his defeat and death. In the face of such a passage as Deu 18:10-12 we cannot believe that the Bible would set before us an instance of witchcraft employed with the Divine sanction for holy purposes; but we can easily believe that the woman would gladly take a bitter revenge on the man who had cruelly put to death all persons reputed to have such powers as those to which she laid claim. The object of the narrative is plainly to set before us the completeness of Saul’s moral downfall and debasement. Here is the man endowed with so many and so great gifts of genius, and who in so many things started so well and behaved so nobly, the victim of a despairing melancholy; his conscience is blackened with the wholesale massacre of the priesthood, his imagination is ever brooding over the sick fancy of treason plotted by his son-in-law, whom now he supposes to be in the Philistine camp; his enemies have invaded his territory in extraordinary numbers and upon new ground; to him it seems as if they have come to dethrone him and place his crown on David’s head. In this dire extremity his one wish is to pry into futurity and learn his fate. There is no submission to God, no sorrow for disobedience, no sign of even a wish for amendment; it is to unholy arts that he looks, simply that he may know what a few more hours will make known to all. Neglecting his duties as a general and king, instead of making wise preparation for the coming fight, he disguises himself, takes a dangerous and wearisome journey round the enemies’ camp, arrives at his destination by night, and, exhausted with hunger and mental agitation, seeks there for the knowledge unattainable in any upright manner from a reputed witch. He has rejected God, lost all the strength and comfort of true religion, and is become the victim of abject superstition. Whether he were the victim also of the woman’s arts, or of his own sick fantasy, is not a matter of much consequence; the interest of the narrative lies in the revelation it makes to us of Saul’s mental and moral state; and scarcely is there in the whole of Scripture anything more tragic than this narrative, or any more intense picture of the depth of degradation to which a noble but perverse intellect is capable of falling.
1Sa 28:20-25
Saul fell straightway all along, i.e. at full length, on the earth. He fainted, partly from mental distress, partly from bodily exhaustion, as he had gone all the day and all the night without food. It was this long continued violent emotion of feeling which had driven Saul to this rash enterprise; but fasting and agony of mind were the worst possible preparation for a visit to one used to cajole her victims by pretended magical arts, and gifted, as people of her class usually are, with great shrewdness. But practised as she was in deceit, yet even in her triumph over her enemy she felt, when she saw him swoon away, a natural sympathy for his misery and weakness, and urged him to take food. Perhaps she saw that without it he could never have got back to the Israelite camp. At first he refused, but the necessity of it was so plain, that when the two men with him also urged it, he at last consented. So he arose from the earth, and sat upon the bed. During this colloquy he had remained prostrate upon the ground, but now he seated himself, not on a bed, but upon the raised bank, or divan, which runs along the wall of an Oriental house, and is furnished with carpets and cushions for men to sit or lie upon. There he rested, a prey, we may well believe, to bitter thoughts, while the woman hastily prepared a meal, killing a calf and baking unleavened cakes, as there was no time to leaven the dough. And so “they ate, and rose up, and departed that night.”
HOMILETICS.
1Sa 28:1-5
The operation of moral causes.
The facts are
1. On war arising between the Philistines and Israel, Achish reminds David of his obligation to assist him in battle.
2. David, although answering ambiguously, is trusted by Achish, who promises him promotion.
3. On the opposing forces being assembled, Saul’s heart faints for fear of his enemy. The narrative shows that both David and Saul were at the same time in embarrassed circumstances, and each as the consequence of his sin. They were bent on totally diverse objects, but neither of them was in a position of safety. The penalties of transgression were being paid. We see here an instance of
I. THE QUESTIONABLE AMBIGUITIES OF LIFE. David’s false step in yielding to unwarrantable fear, followed as it was by actions unworthy of his fair fame, was now developing to a crisis in which the principles of his entire life would be put to an unavoidable test. His heathen friend and protector naturally claimed his help in the coming struggle with Israel. Painfully must David have winced as Achish, trusting to his honour and gratitude, reminded him of his obligations. Although he had simulated hostility to Israel for his own selfish purposes, and had done himself and his countrymen a wrong by allowing it to be supposed that he could ever be their enemy, yet there was enough of fidelity in his heart to save him from so dire an evil as was suggested by Achish. To escape from the awkward position, recourse was had to the craft of an ambiguous statement, to which he and Achish attached different meanings. The common judgment on David’s conduct will be adverse. Even though some would apologise for it under the plea of danger, yet they must condemn its essential falsehood. It is not lawful to palliate our deceit by reference to difficulties created by our own misconduct. Plain, straightforward words and conduct, even in times of perplexity, are not only morally best, but, even from a utilitarian point of view, are most conducive to permanent welfare. It is to be feared that ambiguities abound in life more than becomes a Christian profession. There is conduct as well as language admitting of double interpretation. We should always aim to be and to speak so as not to be objects of suspicion. To say exactly what we mean and to act with singleness of purpose is to approximate towards the “simplicity that is in Christ” (cf. Rom 12:8; 2Co 1:12; 2Co 11:3).
II. UNTIMELY TROUBLES. Troubles are in the way at any time, but there are seasons when their presence is most inconvenient. It was annoying to David that war should break out between Israel and the Philistines just when he was, according to the ordinary judgement of men, under obligation to assist Achish; and it was especially inconvenient to Saul that this trouble of war should occur when, by reason of Samuel’s long discountenance of his reign, the gradual alienation of able men, the loss to the kingdom of David’s prowess, and his own private sorrows, it was not possible to gather adequate forces and act with wonted energy. Providence has a manifest tendency to allow troubles to cross the path of the wrong doer just when, for his own purposes, it is desirable to have it quite clear. “Behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns,” is a prediction likely to be fulfilled in the lives of rulers and nations bent on a crooked course of conduct; nor can individuals escape the law of providential vexation when they practise deceit or, like Saul, cherish an impenitent spirit. It is thus that the delusiveness of sin appears; for the ease and pleasure anticipated in doing one’s sinful will vanish before events, which, like mists around a mountain, seem to come from we know not where. A man’s sin will be sure to find rebuke in forms he could not foresee. It is very inconvenient to be on the wrong side in the moral conflicts of life. Good men can bear trouble in patience, knowing that it is as truly helpful to their highest interests as is joy; wicked men not only lose the support of a clear conscience, but have to learn that the end for which they have striven will be frustrated (cf. Psa 7:9; Psa 37:38; Psa 112:10).
III. THE OPERATION OF MORAL CAUSES. The troubles which thus came on David and Saul, producing in the one a questionable ambiguity of conduct, and in the other a sense of helplessness, were connected with a set of moral causes that had been in steady operation for a considerable period, and had interacted with the physical in producing the crisis. Taking the case of Saul, we see how his sin in the early part of his reign, being unrepented, induced the line of conduct which drove David from the land, alienated the spiritual power and many of the ablest men, gradually drew around himself evil men, and created uneasiness and distrust in the nation. Whatever reluctance on the part of the people to assemble in full force, and whatever want of nerve on the part of Saul to lead them on, might have been the immediate cause of his fearthese were the result of the moral defection which had slowly worked on all departments of life. Besides this, the sin of Saul had had the effect of so withdrawing the Divine favour that Providence, by not restraining their will, permitted the attack of the Philistines. For moral reasons Saul’s predicted doom was preparing, in spite of all his efforts to avoid it. It is one of the most striking characteristics of the Bible, as compared with other books, that it brings into prominence the moral causes that affect the present and future position of men. Assuming the orderly action of physical laws, it impresses us with the truth that the mental and moral are above the physical, and that man by his conduct sets in motion moral forces which, by a subtle interaction, ultimately govern the bearing of the physical upon his condition. Moral causes are primary. In so far as we may imagine the Divine action in creation having a beginning, the moral cause of action was antecedent. The reason of the exercise of power was moral. In our world’s sad history moral causes have been primary. The same is true of our personal life. They lie at the spring of our joy or woe. They are also silent and slow. Saul’s sin and impenitence were not uttered, and they worked on in silent, slow course all through his life. It seems to require time for the higher moral laws to work out their legitimate consequences in the sphere of the physical. There are many illustrations of this in the lives of evil men, as also of good. They are also invincible. No energy or cunning on the part of Saul could obviate the political and military weakness of his kingdom. No power can check the tendency to physical and political decay consequent on the sins of statesmen and peoples. The whole universe submits to the action of the moral forces that are tending to bring men into judgment. The sea even will obey and give up its dead.
General lessons:
1. In embarrassments brought on by our sins. it is honouring to God to speak the plain truth and trust to his care,
2. The affairs of life will be easily conducted in proportion as men are honest and simple in word and deed.
3. Those only who learn the lessons of trouble in their early stage will escape later evils.
4. We should be thankful to God for hedging our erring steps with difficulties.
5. It is a comfort to the holy that the principles ruling in their souls are destined to finally subdue all things to their truest welfare.
1Sa 28:6-14
Man’s appeal from God to man.
The facts are
1. Saul in his trouble seeks in vain guidance from God.
2. In despair he has recourse to the witch of Endor, promising her that no harm should come to her for assisting him with her incantations.
3. Saul desires of her to bring up Samuel.
4. On Samuel coining forth the woman is in terror, and also discovers Saul’s identity.
5. By the aid of the woman Saul recognises Samuel, and bows himself to the earth. The strange events here narrated awaken feelings of wonder, and, in minds not acquiescent in God’s methods of developing his purpose in connection with the Hebrew race, some degree of incredulity; but the important spiritual teaching is obvious, and the difficulties of the subject, also, are not without their practical value. We have here an instance of
I. A MAN RIGHTEOUSLY LEFT OF GOD IN TIME OF DISTRESS. The triple reference to dreams, prophets, and Urim indicates the intense desire of Saul to obtain some intimation of the Divine will; and this renders the futility of his endeavour the more impressive. Outwardly he conformed to the usages of a ruler in Israel, and, were he judged by men who have regard only or chiefly to the zeal which meets the eye, he would be regarded as, so far, a religious man, and within the range of blessing. To those who are unfamiliar with Scripture it may seem painfully strange that a man presumably in earnest should be so utterly left of God; but, as in other instances, a little more knowledge will afford a solution of the fact and justify the ways of God.
1. It is a fact that men are left to themselves. Divine guidance had been. withheld from Saul from the day of his rebellion (1Sa 15:20-23) up to the date of this event. The antediluvians and, at one stage of history, Israel were abandoned to their devices (Gen 6:1-3; Isa 1:15). Pharisees were left to the blindness of their hearts notwithstanding their many prayers. When men deliberately darken the light that is in them God does not enable them to see the “Light of the world.”
2. There are moral reasons for such abandonment. In Saul’s case there was an absence of that state of mind which alone would render attention to his cry for help honourable to God and blessed to mankind. There was no penitential recognition of his former sin, nor of the years of persistent impenitence, nor of his cruelty to David; his desire for God’s guidance and help sprang entirely from fear of military disaster, of loss of influence, and of the fulfilment of the prediction outstanding against him (1Sa 15:28, 1Sa 15:29). The response of God to man’s cry is based on law as beautiful in its orderliness as anything in the physical world. The notion that God must help every one in trouble is based on sheer ignorance, and is profoundly unscientific. Even in home and society we recognise the necessity of moral conditions of receiving attention and favour. Divine mercy is free, but is righteous in its flow. It never sets a premium on selfishness and impenitence; it is never exercised in such a way as to do violence to our radical sense of right and moral propriety. This will account for the deaf ear which God is represented as turning to bad men when, in desperation, they cry to him in adversity, and when, at the end of life, they seek him in vain; for they do not care for God, for holiness, for anything but selfish deliverance from uncomfortable circumstances and great danger. Hence
3. The abandonment is in harmony with the current of God’s promises. Again and again we are encouraged to seek the Lord. Nothing is more certain than that God delights to answer our cry for help. The appeal of David later on in life, and the dumb pleading of the Magdalene, were freely answered; but the fifty-first Psalm reveals the contrast of David’s spirit with that of Saul, and the tears of the unholy woman told of a heart altogether turned toward God.
II. THE SUPERHUMAN CHARACTER OF GOD‘S WAYS. There is in some minds a feeling of surprise that such a narrative as this should find a place in a book supposed to be written or compiled under Divine inspiration for the instruction of the world in spiritual truth; and, assuming that its fitness in such a book can be made out, it is deemed incredible that God should allow his servant to come from the invisible world at the request of such a man as Saul, and through an agency condemned in the Bible. Now on this difficult subject it may suffice for our purpose to observe
1. A revelation of God’s purpose towards mankind in connection with and by means of the history of a race is natural only in so far as it embraces what the chief figures of the history actually did, and especially in their relation to him, be it good or bad. That Saul actually did as here recorded is evident on the face of the whole narrative, for never was there a more perfect air of truthfulness on a record. The very unreasonableness of his conduct in applying to a witch for such a purpose, and after executing the law against witchcraft, is quite reasonable when we reflect on the utter mental and moral confusion involved in his despair. Compare his unreasonable act of seeking a blessing through a sinful act (1Sa 13:8-14; 1Sa 15:21-23). The record, therefore, of such a transaction is reasonable in an inspired book.
2. There are cases in which God allows bad men to have their desire without the advantage they expect from its being granted. Quails were given to men to their grief. A king was desired contrary to God’s will, and one was given, much to the affliction of the nation. There is so far a similarity in this instance, that the granting of the desire to see Samuel was only to seal Saul’s doom, not to give the guidance anticipated, and which had been hitherto refused (1Sa 28:6).
3. There was a manifest fitness in Samuel being permitted to declare the fixity of Saul’s fate and its equity. He had instructed and warned Saul at first in private (1Sa 9:25, 1Sa 9:26), and subsequently (1Sa 15:26-31). All through he had looked with sorrowful pity on this poor wayward, sinning man. With Saul’s belief in the existence of the spirits of good men after death, it was the most natural thing to wish, if possible, to see this wise, kind, and faithful friend, and in his utter despair appeal to his pity; and considering that there evidently still lurked in his mind a last hope that the old, long deferred prediction of downfall might yet be averted, with a feeling that it was very hard, and perhaps unjust, for him to be thus left in misery, there seems to be a blending of Divine tenderness and judgment in this kind and faithful friend being permitted once more to be seen and heard, and at the same time to vindicate the justice of God in the doom about to be accomplished. The Divine tenderness and judgment which had borne with and chastised Saul all through his perverse life were now conspicuous in the irrevocable sealing of his doom. He would rather hear his sentence from Samuel than any other being, if it is to be pronounced.
4. There is no evidence that the woman had anything to do with the appearance of Samuel. He came forth before she called, and hence her wild shriek. That she subsequently played her part as a witch was consistent with the character of such persons. That Saul should suppose her to be the cause of the appearance does not touch the question. He was not in a mental condition to discriminate. That God should allow an invisible being to become visible under such conditions is to be settled by history, for
5. There is no moral principle violated in God allowing a being from the invisible world to become visible. There is here no sanction of witchcraft, no admission of its powers. Kindness and judgment only are displayed in relation to Saul. The whole difficulty, therefore, resolves itself in a visible appearance of a dead man. Will any one say that God cannot cause a Samuel to appear as truly as a Moses and Elijah? Does the incredulity lie in the fact that we never see the departed, or that God does not cause them to appear to others? By what law is God bound to make a specific exercise of his power common? Will the case be improved by saying it is such an exercise of power as we should not deem wise and useful? What is that but saying we make our method of government a standard by which God’s reported acts shall be judged? Is it not wiser to submit to the force of historical testimony, and admit that his ways are not our ways? God does strange things in the earth, at which men marvel, but never unholy things. There is nothing incredible in the existence of departed spirits, nor in their employment when God has a fit purpose to accomplish through them.
III. THE PERMANENCE OF RELIGIOUS SENTIMENTS. It is noteworthy that although Saul had lived so long in impenitence, and had become even hardened in his sinful course, he still retained an awe and reverence for the supernatural and invisible. His very folly and sin in having recourse to a witch revealed the strength of the feeling which could not rest without some help from the unseen world, If God cannot be found men will seek out a substitute. Idolatry and all forms of religious superstition are evidence of the power of the religious sentiment in man. Thousands of men have done much to crush it out, but it has reasserted itself in seasons of distress. Because man is formed for religion, and carries within him feelings which crave for the unseen and eternal, therefore he often becomes the slave of false systems of belief and worship. The permanence of this sentiment gives hope to the missionary, and adds to the remorse of the finally impenitent.
IV. THE POWER OF RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE. The influence of Samuel over Saul appears in this bitter cry for his presence in the hour of misery. The foundation of this influence was laid in Samuel’s character, and in the kind and wise interest he took in Saul when entering on his public duties as king. Holy example, faithful warning, wise instruction, tender forbearance, and pitiful concern had not been altogether lost on this erring, self-willed man, although in the perversity of his heart he had for years gone counter to Samuel’s guidance. In the dark and painful hour of despair the thought of the wise counsellor and sincere friend came over the soul with memories rich in homage to him. How often does the poor prodigal, when sinking in misery, feel the spell of a mother’s piety! How many a man after years of neglected instruction thinks of the faithful pastor, and perchance takes to heart the lessons of his words and life!
General lessons:
1. The climax of trouble is reached when God refuses to hear our prayer, for “What can I do?” then admits of no satisfactory answer.
2. We ought to search our hearts, to see whether we so “regard iniquity” therein as to be in an unfit moral condition to receive a blessing from God (Psa 66:18).
3. God has methods by which he can vindicate the justice of his judgments, even when we are craving for relief from them.
4. It is important to exercise religious influence over others as early and constantly as possible, since we know that it will be a power even when we are gone.
1Sa 28:15-25
The last fruitless effort.
The facts of this section are
1. Saul, in reply to Samuel’s question, declares, as the reason of seeking him, his deep distress and desire to know what to do.
2. Samuel intimates that the inquiry is vain, as he cannot go against God; that the event causing so much distress was simply the perfecting of what had long before been declared; that David was the coming king, and that all this was the consequence of deliberate disobedience.
3. He also declares that the morrow should witness the overthrow of Saul’s power and the death of himself and sons.
4. The effect of the message on Saul is to prostrate him in terror on the ground.
5. Out of compassion the woman seeks in vain to rouse Saul from his helpless despair, but by the aid of his attendants he is at last constrained to rise and partake of the meal she had prepared. Among the many truths suggested by this impressive scene we may notice a few.
I. THE DARING OF DESPERATION. Ordinarily men shrink in dread from all thought of contact with visitants from the unseen world, and bad men especially tremble at the possible presence, seen or unseen, of the ghosts of the departed. The experience of all ages testifies to this. And yet here we have an instance of a man, not usually distinguished by calm self-possession, deliberately seeking, and actually holding, converse with one from the dead. The solution of this reversal of the course of human feeling and conduct lies in the desperation of despair, which so overpowers all thought and feeling as to dare to do what at other times would be impossible. Such the urgency of conscience, the pressure of misery, the violent struggle of a will caught in the coils of its own perversity. The same occurs in other circumstances, as when, to extricate themselves from self-brought miseries, men dare to perpetrate deeds of honour or shame, or even commit suicide. Is there not a similar feeling implied in the cry to the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the wrath of the Lamb”?
II. AN UNANSWERABLE QUESTION. One question had agitated Saul for some days. He appealed to God, and no answer came; and now Samuel is told that the object for which he was summoned into the visible sphere was to reply to this one question, “What shall I do?” The silence of God and the words of Samuel show that practically this was a question for which no answer was possible. The day for doing was in the past, when Samuel delivered instructions in the name of God. Years of persistent impenitence for disobedience and of self-willed warring against the purposes of God had brought the unhappy man to a time and position in which no action on his part could reverse the judgment impending. Too late! So is it in human life still. Men may persist in evil ways at home or in business till ruin of domestic peace and of prospects is inevitable, and no course is open for retrieval. The question of the jailor, “What must I do to be saved?” was opportune, and then, as generally, it admitted of a blessed answer; but it is possible for men to scorn and despise Christ so long that the other question may arise, “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?” (cf. Heb 2:3; Heb 6:3-7; Heb 10:26-31).
III. THE UNALTERABLE LAW OF LIFE. The whole of Saul’s conduct during these closing days of his life was based on the ignorant supposition that by some device he could be sustained in the kingdom notwithstanding his former disobedience and continued impenitence. Conformity in act and spirit to the mind of God is the law of true prosperity in life. Israel’s king rises or falls according to this law. As a servant called to perform an important part in unfolding Messianic purposes, Saul’s hold on the kingdom was made to depend on character. No plea, no consideration of personal misery, no device suggested by the living or the dead, could avail to give to a self-willed, impenitent man what is due to the obedient and holy. In all his misery and desire for guidance there was not a trace of the broken or contrite heart which God accepts; there was only and always a blind effort to avert the passing away of the power which sin had forfeited. This law of life is never changed. Men struggle against it, seek to evade its action, crave for some relaxation of its pressure, but it is unbending, unrelenting. Character determines destiny. The lines of experience in the future are the outcome of the present, and not disconnected. As we sow we reap.
IV. THE MORAL INTERPRETATION OF EVENTS. No doubt there were hours when the revival of conscience would enable Saul to read the meaning of the troubles that had long befallen him; but generally, and especially at this juncture, he appears to have wondered at the miseries of his position. Men do bring on themselves manifold troubles, and then, forgetful of the conduct which gave rise to them, or not tracing them carefully back to their own former moral condition, they marvel at, and perhaps complain of, the sufferings endured. The visitant from the unseen world threw light on Saul’s position by reference to conduct and character. Here was an interpretation, from a moral point of view, of a long succession of events in the political, physical, and mental spheres. We never estimate events in our life aright if we leave out the moral element. A vast accumulation of disasters in the history of nations and individuals, Churches and homes, is understandable in the light of what men have been and have done. Hence the value of the Bible, which comes as a visitant from the spiritual sphere, casting light on the matters that worry and distress the heart of man. Sinful men need a voice to tell them how to estimate the experiences of their life.
V. THE VINDICATION OF GOD‘S SEVERITY. It seemed hard to Saul to be thus left of God, the mere wreck of his former self, and now exposed to a great disaster as commander of an army. Had casual observers, unacquainted with antecedent moral facts, looked on his miseries, they might pronounce the treatment severe. There is, however, in the conscience of even the most self-willed sinner that which recognises the majesty of right and echoes the voice of judgment. It was only for Samuel to refer to the deliberate disobedience of former days, and Saul saw at once the connection of all his woes with the depraved moral condition then manifested and subsequently cherished. Divine patience had borne with him during years of rebellion, content to let the natural outgrowth of his own acts bring on the judgment predicted, and, now that it was falling on him with crushing force, this reminder of great and continuous sin was even to the suffering king a full vindication of the course of Providence. Here is warning and instruction for us. Let us never suppose that we or others bear more than we deserve. We should avoid the bare thought that God deals harshly with any of his creatures. The bitterest element in the cup of suffering is that we put into it by our transgressions; for facts prove that overwhelming material disasters, with a good conscience, are not the worst of evils, and become not only endurable, but means of spiritual good. The hour may come to each when, by a voice full of truth, we shall be made to see how just are God’s judgments on ourselves. The escape from so awful a position is by fleeing now for refuge to Christ our Righteousness. The dumb consent of Saul to the truth of Samuel’s words is in keeping with the acquiescent silence wherewith, in the future life, the wicked are represented as bowing to the sentence of the Judge (cf. Mat 7:21-23; Mat 25:11, Mat 25:12, Mat 25:31-46; Luk 16:23-25; Luk 19:22-26).
VI. THE GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT OF LIFE. Saul certainly cherished hope to the last that by some contrivance, some casual aid, he should avert the evil due to his sins. With all the unreasoning energy of desperation he sought Samuel as a final resource; but instead of the hoped for guidance of what he shall do, he meets with a declaration of his doom. Sentence of death is passed by the very friend whose counsel is sought. This doubtless was the most grievous disappointment of his earthly life, and might well lay him low in the dust. Not instruction, but judicial utterance. Not deliverance, but destruction. There are bitter disappointments during the life of most men, and the heart sinks in pain and dismay, but the great disappointment of some is at the end of their earthly course. Christ represents some as expecting to be received into heaven, and all the hopes of years are blasted by the awful words, “Depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” The parable of the Pharisee and publican points to the same fearful issue. Would that men did but “ponder the path” of their feet, and by timely penitence and renewal of soul obviate that most calamitous of all disappointments!
VII. SYMPATHY WITH FALLEN GREATNESS. There is an awful and instructive contrast in this closing scene of Saul’s careerbetween the calm, measured, though evidently tender words of Samuel, followed by his return to the invisible world, leaving the wretched king prostrate and helpless on the ground, and the active compassion of this evil woman for the distinguished sufferer at her feet. Samuel was still the true, loving man as of old; but in the invisible sphere he saw things in a clear moral light, and was restrained by his judicial commission from manifesting in action sympathy for the fallen king. It is a question how far a perfect perception of the enormity of sin, such as must be attained by the “spirits of the just made perfect,” diminishes what we ordinarily understand as sympathy for those who receive “according to the deeds done in the body.” Be that as it may, we cannot but note how even those addicted to a life of sin, as was this woman, are touched by the presence of a great sorrow. There is something exquisitely beautiful in her conduct. For a time the old cunning and moral insensibility and cynicism are set aside, and the humane feelings of her soul find free exercise, as perhaps in the days of her youth suggestive to us of the germ of true humanity that underlies the accretions of a guilty life, and of the power that may be exercised over even the worst, if only we knew the art of touching the hidden spring. Every reader of the narrative must enter into her gentle and respectful feelings towards the fallen monarch; and we feel that had we been there we also should have sought to raise him from the earth, and provide generous nourishment for his exhausted frame. For sympathy with the righteous judgments of God does not extinguish pity for those who fall under them. In fallen greatness we see the majesty and the dishonour, the possibilities and the actualities, of our common humanity. It is as though a large part of ourselves had come to grief; and though we cannot but deplore the sin, we feel disposed to weep over the lost one, and to render the last offices of kindness with a tender hand. So did our blessed Lord, the perfect Man, weep over the lost city when proclaiming with full acquiescence its righteous doom (Mat 23:37, Mat 23:38; Luk 19:41-44).
General lessons:
1. The only safe course when sin has been committed is at once, after the example of David and Peter, to return to the Lord and cast ourselves entirely on his mercy. Saul’s neglect of this was the secret of his subsequent miseries.
2. There is great probability of cherished sin issuing in a state of mind such that men shall imagine they are seeking good of God when in reality they are seeking only the evasion of his righteous judgments.
3. It cannot be too earnestly and frequently impressed on young and old that moral character is the governing element in the determination of their present and future condition.
4. The occasional justification of God’s apparently severe judgments recorded in Scripture may be regarded as foreshadowing the future moral solution of the dark and painful events connected with the history of the intelligent universe.
5. If we would be prepared to end life with a realisation of our hopes we must give heed to the reality of our oneness with the mind of God.
HOMILIES BY B. DALE
1Sa 28:1-6. (GILBOA.)
Darkening. shadows of retribution.
“And when Saul saw the host of the Philistines, he was afraid, and his heart greatly trembled” (1Sa 28:5).
1. The end of Saul was now approaching. How long he reigned is not stated (“forty years,” Act 13:21; perhaps a round number, including the judge ship of Samuel). But his course from his first wrong step (1Sa 13:8-15) had been a downward one, broken only by brief seasons of amendment. His mental malady may account in part for some of his actions in his later years. During his persecution of David the enemies of Israel became more powerful and aggressive, and, in retribution for unfaithfulness to Jehovah, he was about to be delivered with the host of Israel “into the hand of the Philistines,” from whom he had been chosen to effect deliverance (1Sa 9:16).
2. The Philistine invasion was on a larger scale than any that had recently occurred (1Sa 13:5; 1Sa 17:1), and in a different part of the country. It was evidently planned with a view to inflict a fatal blow on Israel. The enemy marched northward, entered the plain of Esdraelon (Jezreel), the battle field of Palestine (stretching out eastward in three branches, like fingers from the hand), and encamped at Shunem (at the base of Little Hermon, north of the central and principal branch). “And the Israelites pitched by the fountain which is in Jezreel” (1Sa 29:1), on a spur of Mount Gilboa (south of the central branch), from which they could see the Philistines, three miles distant across the plain, where on the morrow the conflict must be waged.
3. What the issue of the conflict was likely to be Saul’s heart told him only too plainly. He felt that what he had so long dreaded was about to come upon him; that the sentence of rejection formerly uttered by Samuel (1Sa 16:14-16), now gone to his rest (1Sa 28:3), was to be fully executed, and that he would be deprived of his crown, and probably of his life. David, who had once saved Israel in similar peril, had gone over to the Philistines (1Sa 27:4), was now (as he thought) among them, and would “surely be king” (1Sa 24:20). The night of retribution is setting in. The ministers of vengeance are gathering, like vultures to the prey,
“From the invisible ether;
First a speck, and then a vulture,
Till the air is dark with pinions.”
The experience of Saul is shared by many a persistent transgressor in the presence of imminent danger and approaching death, when “the terrors of God do set them selves in array against” him (Job 6:4; Job 24:17). He is
I. BESET BY IRRESISTIBLE FEAR. The sight of superior hostile forces is calculated to produce such fear, but its power to do so depends chiefly upon the inward state of a man himself, more or less conscious of his condition;
1. The remembrance of past transgressions, and of the punishment threatened against them, and already in some measure experienced. Circumstances often quicken the memory and open its secret records, so that former actions and events reappear, are seen in their true character, and fill the soul with consternation. “I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes” (Psa 1:1-6 :21).
2. The consciousness of Divine displeasure in consequence of disobedience, and the heart not being right with God. Although conscience may slumber long, the hour of awakening comes, and when it asserts its power “its frown is more to be dreaded than the frowns of kings or the approach of armies. It is a fire in the bones, burning when no man suspects” (South). “A wounded spirit who can bear?” (Pro 18:14).
“O conscience, conscience, man’s most faithful friend,
How canst thou comfort, ease, relieve, defend!
But if he will thy friendly cheeks forego,
Thou art, oh, woe for me! his deadliest foe” (Crabbe).
3. The foreboding of approaching doom. Conscience “exerts itself magisterially, and approves or condemns,…and if not forcibly stopped, naturally and always, of course, goes on to anticipate a higher and more effectual sentence, which shall hereafter second and affirm its own” (Butler).
II. IMPELLED TO SEEK DIVINE COUNSEL. “And Saul inquired of Jehovah” (1Sa 28:6). It is not recorded that he had ever done so since he “asked counsel of God” and “he answered him not” (1Sa 14:37). His communication with Heaven had evidently been long interrupted. But under the influence of fear he felt the urgent need of it, as other men who have neglected to seek God often do in times of danger, and he expected that it would come at his bidding, as a matter of course, when he made use of the recognised means of obtaining it, apart from a proper state of heart, therein exhibiting the same blindness as of old (1Sa 13:9). Cherishing a spirit of envy and hatred, how could it be expected that he should be visited by the Divine Spirit in dreams of good? Having slain the high priest, and compelled his son to flee to David “with the ephod” and the Urim, how could it be expected that he should obtain counsel through another whom he had appointed in his stead, or, having alienated the prophets, that he should gain it through them? Divine aid is often sought through proper channels in vain because
1. It is not sought at the right time,“When thou mayest be found” (Psa 32:6). “Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer” (Pro 1:24-33),which takes place not merely as a just punishment for long neglect, but also on account of the increased hardness of their hearts thereby induced, and rendering them incapable and utterly unworthy of holding communion with God. “If we do not hear God’s voice when it goes well with us, God can and will refuse to hear our voice when it goes ill with us” (Starke).
2. It is not sought in a right spiritwith humility, penitence, self-renunciation, and faith. Of these principles there is no trace in the inquiry of Saul.
3. It is not sought with a right purpose, but with some earthly and selfish end in view, rather than the Divine honour. “As the event proved, Saul did not really inquire of the Lord in the sense of seeking direction from him, and of being willing to be guided by it. Rather did he, if we may so express it, wish to use the Lord as the means by which to attain his object. But that was essentially the heathen view, and differed only in detail, not in principle, from the inquiry of the familiar spirit, to which he afterwards resorted” (Edersheim). “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss,” etc. (Jas 4:3; Psa 66:18; Isa 66:4; Eze 14:4; Eze 20:31).
III. DENIED THE DESIRED RESPONSE. “Jehovah answered him not,” etc. (1Sa 28:6). “I am sore distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and God is departed from me, and answereth me no more” (1Sa 28:15). “Saul received from God no answer more, except for judgment.”
1. What dreadful silence and loneliness are here revealed! “We read of the silence of the desert, the silence of midnight, the silence of the churchyard and the grave; but this is something more profound and appallingthe silence of God when appealed to by the sinner in his extremity. It is not the silence of indifference, nor of inability to hear, nor of weakness, nor of perplexity; but of refusal, of rejection, of displeasure, of abandonment” (Bonar, ‘Bible Thoughts’). “Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone” (Hos 4:17).
2. What utter helplessness!
3. What intolerable darkness and distress! (Heb 10:27).
Consider
1. That if “inquiry of the Lord” be left unanswered, the reason of it is to be sought in the moral condition of the inquirer.
2. That nothing but the offering of the sacrifice of “a broken and a contrite heart” can prevent despair.
3. That the boundless mercy of God should awaken hope even at “the eleventh hour.”D.
1Sa 28:7-10. (GILBOA, ENDOR)
Resorting to superstitious practices.
“Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit, that I may go to her, and inquire of her” (1Sa 28:7).
1. The religion of Saul (like that of many others in Israel) was largely pervaded by superstition. He regarded Jehovah as an object of dread rather than of trust and love, and observed the outward forms of his service not in a spirit of willing and hearty obedience, but because he thought that they would of themselves procure for him the Divine favour. Hence his zeal in putting away “those that had familiar spirits” (Oboth = spirits of the departed, supposed to be called up from the unseen world to make disclosures concerning the future, and dwelling in them and speaking through them in hollow tones of voice, Isa 8:19; Isa 29:4; ventriloquists, LXX.; necromancers) “and wizards” (sorcerers). And when his inquiry of the Lord was not answered, he resorted to one of these, in the expectation of being told what he must do (1Sa 28:15) to avert the wrath which he feared. In like manner the heathen resorted to their priests and diviners (1Sa 6:2). He was an embodiment of the heathen mind in Israel. “There were three courses open to him: he might sit down in quiet hopelessness, and let the evil come; or he might in faith and penitent submission commit the whole matter to God, even amid the awful silence; or he might betake himself to hell for counsel, since heaven was deaf. He chooses the last! ‘God has cast me off; I will betake myself to Satan. Heaven’s door is shut; I will see if hell’s be open'” (Bonar). He had about him servants who pandered to his superstitions propensities (1Sa 16:15), and informed him of a practitioner of the heathen are residing at Endor, eight miles distant (north of Little Hermon); and thither two of them conducted him “by night.” (Another of the night scenes of this book1Sa 3:3; 1Sa 5:3; 1Sa 9:25; 1Sa 15:11; 1Sa 19:10; 1Sa 25:36; 1Sa 26:7; 1Sa 30:17). It was “a dreadful journey, a terrible night; both symbols of Saul’s, condition, lost on the way of inner self-hardening and thorough self-darkening” (Erdmann). The readiness with which he was directed to the sorceress shows the secret prevalence of superstition in Israel.
3. He failed to obtain the aid he desired, committed his crowning act of apostasy, and hastened his doom. “So Saul died for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit, to inquire of it” (1Ch 10:13). “There is no wisdom, nor understanding, nor counsel against the Lord” (Pro 21:30). There may have been “an objective reality, a dark background of magical agency”; but, on the other hand, “the actual references to magic in Scripture do not involve its reality. The mischiefs resulting from the pretension, under the theocracy, to an act which involved idolatry justified the statute which denounced it with death” (Kitto, ‘Cyc.,’ art. Witchcraft). “In the doctrinal Scriptures magic is passed by with contempt; in the historical Scriptures the reasonableness of this contempt is shown. Whenever the practisers of magic attempt to combat the servants of God they conspicuously fail” (Smith’s ‘Dict.,’ art. Magic). Resorting to superstitious practices of various kinds (the selection of “lucky” days, fortune telling, spirit rapping, psychography, necromancy, and, in more direct connection with the Christian religion, image worship, prayers to the dead, superstitious rites and ceremonies of various kinds) is not unknown at the present day. Notice
I. ITS INDUCEMENTS. Among them are
1. Unbelieving fear. “Superstition is the restless effort of a guilty but blind conscience to find rest and peace and good by unauthorised propitiations and ceremonies” (R. Watson). “The true cause and rise of superstition is indeed nothing else but a false opinion of the Deity, that renders him terrible and dreadful, as being rigorous and imperious; that which represents him as austere and apt to be angry, but yet impotent and easy to be appeased again by some flattering devotions, especially if performed with sanctimonious shows and a solemn sadness of mind” (Smith, ‘Sel. Dis. Superstition’). “The human heart needs something to cling to, something to which it may hold fast, a prop which its tendrils may firmly clasp; therefore when it leaves him for whom it was made, when it sinks into unbelief, then it clings to superstition and darkness” (Schlier).
2. Unhallowed curiosity, which is not satisfied with what has been revealed in the word of God, and wishes to become acquainted with the secrets of the unseen world and the future, designedly concealed. Such curiosity “Is a flattering serpent, which promises us the wisdom of God, and cheats us out of a blessed paradise of happier, childlike waiting.” “Let no man beguile you,” etc. (Col 2:18).
3. Foolish presumption, which fancies that it can attain the knowledge and help of the supernatural by other ways and means than God has appointed. “He who, in respect of supersensual things and of the mysterious background of sensible things, regards as true, and allows impressions to be made on himself by thoughts or occurrences whose reality has neither the warranty of undoubtedly credible tradition nor the warranty of internal force of conviction in their favour, is rightly called superstitious” (Delitzsch).
II. ITS DEVICES. They usually
1. Involve artifice, effort, trouble, and sacrifice (1Sa 28:7, 1Sa 28:8). What extraordinary pains do men sometimes undergo in the practice of superstition I (1Ki 18:28).
2. Affect darkness and secrecy, and necessitate the adoption of undignified, mean, and shameful courses. They are carried out under the cover of night, which is favourable to deception. Saul disguised himself not to escape the Philistines, but to elude the observation of his own people, and to impose upon the sorceress (1Sa 28:9).
3. Involve mental blindness and credulity, so that those who yield to them become the ready dupes of others who traffic on their gloomy fears and illusory hopes, “deceiving and being deceived.” “It was a shame that the king who had expelled all sorcerers must himself at last fall into the hands of a sorceress” (Winer).
III. ITS SINFULNESS.
1. It casts contempt upon the sufficiency of Divine revelation. “Wilt thou have light for all the riddles and dark questions of this life? betake thyself to God’s word, there enough is revealed, and what goes beyond that comes of evil.”
2. It chooses evil instead of good, disregards the moral dispositions which God requires, and violates the sense of goodness, righteousness, and truth. Saul took an oath “by the Lord” to protect what he knew was displeasing to the Lord, and was guilty of connivance at what he himself had condemned as worthy of death (1Sa 28:10).
3. It does what the word of God prohibits, and in its worst forms, casts off allegiance to God, and makes alliance with his enemies (Le 19:31; 1Sa 20:6, 1Sa 20:27; Deu 18:10; 2Ki 23:24; Gal 5:20; Rev 22:15). “Knowing that the act of divination cooperates in no slight degree with the errors of the lives of the multitude, so as to lead them out of the right way, Moses did not suffer his disciples to use any species of it whatever. All these things are but the furniture of impiety. How so? Because he who attends to them and who allows himself to be influenced by them disregards the cause of all things, looking upon those things alone as the causes of all things, whether good or evil” (Philo, ‘On Monarchy’).
IV. ITS INJURIOUSNESS.
1. It fills the votaries of superstition with miserable disappointment.
2. It makes them the victims of delusion, and further estranges them from the way of truth.
3. It increases their guilt, hardens their heart, and quickens their pace to final ruin. Saul’s night visit was an ill preparation for the coming conflict. It extinguished every ray of hope, and turned his fear into despair.D.
1Sa 28:11. (ENDOR.)
Samuel’s counsel vainly desired.
“Bring me up Samuel.” The character of Samuel was so great, his life had been so long continued, his appearance so familiar to all, his influence so powerful and extensive, that after his departure his form must have seemed still to brood over the land. What the thoughts of Saul were at his death we know not. Perhaps he was glad of his removal. Although dwelling near him, he was altogether estranged from him, and entirely neglected to seek his counsel. But the time camethe threatening hosts of the Philistines, his overwhelming fear, the silence of Heavenwhen he urgently needed it, and earnestly but vainly desired the benefit of it. Whether he went to the sorceress with the deliberate purpose of seeking an interview with his old and faithful counsellor, or sought it under the impulse of the moment, is not stated. The former is the more probable. He was certainly persuaded of the power which she professed to have (1Sa 28:11) of raising up the spirits of the departed, and (after her expression of surprise, and her description of his well known appearance) of the actual presence of Samuel in consequence of his request (“I have called thee,” 1Sa 28:15). The result of the interview, however, proved that his hope of obtaining good from it was vain. It is not unusual for those who have neglected the advice of a teacher or friend to desire, when he is gone, that he might come back and again grant it to them. In such a desire we see
I. THE VALUE OF FAITHFUL COUNSEL, to which it is a testimony. The reproofs and warnings which a faithful counsellor gives are not always agreeable. They are often deemed unnecessary, regarded with contempt, and cause him to be accounted an enemy. But they are justified by events; and then their worth is felt, and they are longed for, when perchance it is too late. The sore distress which Saul now suffered would have been averted if he had listened to the counsel of Samuel. He is your best friend who tells you the truth, and seeks your welfare rather than your favour. Give heed to what he says while it may conduce to your profit.
II. THE FOLLY OF FAITHLESS NEGLECT, Of which it is a confession. “How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof; and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me!” (Pro 5:12, Pro 5:13). “How many who have despised the advice of a father or a mother, and grieved their parents by oppostion and disobedience, long bitterly to bring them back when they have gone down to the grave, that they may have the benefit of the counsel which they once slighted and scorned! If they could go to the necromancer in the hour of their distress, it would not be, ‘Bring me up the companion who cheered me in my gaieties, who was with me at the revel and the dance and the public show;’ but, ‘Bring me up the father with his gray hairs, who solemnly told me that the way of transgressors was hard; or the mother who with weeping eyes and broken voice admonished me against sinful indulgences.’ And yet, if you neglect the Lord and continue to resist the strivings of his Spirit, so that at length he departs from you as he departed from Saul, what would it avail that the grave could give up its inhabitantif the parent, the friend, or the minister should return at your bidding?” (H. Melvill).
III. THE WORTHLESSNESS OF PIOUS WISHES in those who persist in transgression. Saul was deeply humbled. His self-will and pride were broken down into pitiable abasement, and he seemed willing to receive and obey the counsel which he had previously slighted. Yet his motive was doubtless the same as in inquiring of the Lord (1Sa 28:1-6); he looked upon Samuel as more merciful than the Lord, relied upon him to effect a change in the Divine purpose (1Sa 15:29), and expected his aid at the very moment he was committing a capital offence. He was more blinded and self-deceived than ever. Men often abase themselves deeply in affliction while they remain wholly destitute of the spirit of obedience. “Let no man deceive himself.” What value can there be in a religious desire which is combined with the violation of the plainest religious duty?
IV. THE USELESSNESS OF EXTRAORDINARY COMMUNICATIONS, such as have been sometimes desired from the dead. Saul had what to him was the fulfilment of his desire; but he was told only what he already knew or feared, he was not led to repentance and faith, and sank into despair. Is it supposed that benefit would be derived from the reappearance and counsel of the departed? Consider that
1. The light which might be brought would only be a confirmation of the truth which has been already revealed. If even future events, as, e.g; the time of death, should be declared, the know]edge thereof would probably be useless and injurious. Should death be distant, it would be a strong temptation to sloth and continued sin; should it be very near, whilst it might arouse some to make preparation for it simply from a selfish dread of threatening evil, it would lead others to feel that it was too late to avert the danger, and resign themselves to reckless indulgence or blank despair (see 1Sa 3:1-21).
2. Those who are not improved by existing inducements to faith and obedience would be proof against such as might be thereby presented, and would in most cases be hardened in sin (Joh 12:10). “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead” (Luk 16:31).
3. God has given to men the knowledge and inducements which are best adapted to their probationary condition and sufficient forevery practical purpose, and has wisely determined that no more shall be afforded. “He that is unjust,” etc. (Rev 22:11). “As no additional dissuasions from sin and inducements to holiness would be presented, they who, notwithstanding these disclosures, remained impenitent and unbelieving must continue in irreclaimable wickedness.” “Say not in thine heart,” etc. (Rom 10:6-11). Crave not for “secret things”the mysterious, the supernatural, the miraculous, the speculative, the impossible. “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”D.
1Sa 28:12-20. (ENDOR.)
The sentence of rejection confirmed.
“And Jehovah hath done for himself, as he spake by me” (1Sa 28:17).
1. The narrative of Saul’s interview with the sorceress is graphic, but brief, incomplete, and in many respects, as might be expected, indefinite. Whether on his request, “Bring me up Samuel,” she employed her illicit art is not expressly stated, nor whether any supernatural agency was concerned in what took place. “The woman saw Samuel,” and she alone (1Sa 28:14), “and she cried out” (in real or feigned surprise and fear), “Why hast thou deceived me? for thou art Saul.” There is no intimation that the name of Samuel or the distinguished stature of her visitor had previously suggested who he was; nor of any “gestures of fearful menace such as he could only show towards a deadly enemy, i.e. towards Saul” (Ewald, Stanley). It was from her description of “gods ascending out of the earth,” and of the well known appearance of the venerable judge and prophet, that “he perceived that it was Samuel,” and prostrated himself in abject homage before him whom he had formerly moved by his importunity to comply with his request (1Sa 15:30); and while “stooping with his face to the ground” he heard a voice which he was persuaded was the voice of Samuel. The evidence of an apparition or vision (for there can be no question concerning anything else) depended solely on the testimony of the woman; of the hearing of an unearthly voice on that of Saul, from whom also (unless his two servants were present at the time, which is not likely) the whole account must have been primarily derived.
2. It has been explained in various ways, e.g; that there was
(1) A real apparition of the prophet (Ecclus. 46:20), either evoked by the conjurations of the woman (LXX; Josephus, Talmud), or effected by Divine power without her aid, and contrary to her expectation (see, for authorities and arguments, Wordsworth, ‘Com.;’ Waterland, Delany, Sir W. Scott, ‘Demonology;’ Kitto, ‘D.B. Illus.;’ Lindsay, Hengstenberg, Keil).
(2) An illusory appearance produced by demoniacal (or angelic) agency, and, according to some, employed as a medium of Divine revelation (Luther, Calvin, Grotius, Gilpin, ‘Daemonologia Sacra;’ Hall, Patrick, M. Henry).
(3) A mental impression or representation produced by Divine influence.
(4) A superstitious self-deception on the part of the woman, combined with a psychological identifying of herself with the deceased prophet (Erdmann).
(5) A conscious deception practised by her (perhaps not entirely without illusion) on the fearful and superstitious mind of the king, fasting, wearied, terrified, and in the dark (Chandler, W. Scott, ‘Existence of Evil Spirits;’ Thenius); little other than a dream, though terribly real to him. The circumstances of the case were such that the almost dramatic language of the historian may be fairly understood as descriptive of what seemed to Saul, and was afterwards popularly believed, rather than of the actual reality. All that occurred may be accounted for more satisfactorily on this hypothesis than any other. Almost every other involves assumptions concerning the power of necromancy, the reappearance of the dead, evil spirits, etc; which are unsupported by Scripture and exceedingly improbable. A Divine interposition would have been unmistakably indicated in the narrative (which is not the case, 1Sa 28:21), inconsistent with the Divine refusal to answer Saul’s inquiry, unnecessary in order to reprove him further for the past (for there is no expressed reproof of his present crime), without adequate theocratic purpose, contrary to the holiness of God, and a confirmation (not a punishment) of “the anti-godly attempt of the sorceress.”
3. Its chief significance lies in the revelation which it makes of the depth of degradation to which Saul had sunk and the effect of his apostasy. His “sin of divination” (1Sa 15:23) led to despair, and was speedily followed by the full execution of the sentence of his rejection. The silence of God was the silence that precedes the thunderstorm and the earthquake. Observe that
I. THERE IS NO APPEAL FROM THE DIVINE JUDGMENT TO ANY OTHER (1Sa 28:16, 1Sa 28:17). Saul appears to have clung to the delusion that the sentence of Divine judgment uttered against him might be effectually resisted and entirely revoked; refused to acknowledge and submit to it, and hoped to succeed in his conflict with it when success was plainly perceived by others to be impossible. Hence (and not merely to gratify his curiosity concerning his fate) he sought the counsel of Samuel. In answer to the voice (asking reproachfully the reason why he had “disquieted” the dead, and drawing forth the expression of his feelings and wishes), he pathetically described his distress in consequence of the attack of the Philistines and his abandonment by God, and appealed for aid in his perplexity. Without supposing a desire of revenge on the part of the sorceress, hardly any other reply could be more accordant with his state of mind and deepest convictions than that which came to him. Since (by his own confession) he was abandoned by the Lord, it was useless to expect effectual help from the prophet of the Lord, who was the exponent and executor of his will. No direction was given “what he must do,” and no ground of hope afforded that he might find mercy with the Lord himself if he sought it in a right spirit. “The belief that Samuel bad come to revisit him from the dead so worked upon Saul’s mind as to suggest to his conscience what seemed to be spoken in his ear” (Smith’s ‘Old Testament History’).
II. THE DIVINE JUDGMENT IS SOMETIMES FELT TO BE IRREVOCABLE. Of this he had occasionally caught a glimpse, but it was now brought home to him with overwhelming force in connection with
1. The consciousness of his present condition, as an object of Divine displeasure, and destined to be replaced in the kingdom by David, to whom he had long ago applied the words of the prophet (1Sa 13:14; 1Sa 15:28): “The Lord hath rent,” etc. (1Sa 28:17). “The perfects express the purpose of God which had already been formed, and was now about to be fulfilled” (Keil).
2. The remembrance of his past transgression. “Because,” etc. (1Sa 28:18). The sparing of Amalek was the well known cause of his estrangement from Samuel and his rejection; and how vividly does some former act of disobedience sometimes rise before the mind of the sinner, increasing his burden of guilt and justifying his condemnation!
3. The fear of his future fate, now foreseen to be approaching (1Sa 28:19). Israel would share his defeat, he and his sons would be on the morrow numbered with the dead, and the camp spoiled by the enemy. It was a terrible message, an inward realisation and confirmation of the Divine sentence. How little had he profited by resorting to divination! “The Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent.”
III. THE CONVICTION THAT THE DIVINE JUDGMENT CANNOT BE ALTERED PRODUCES DESPAIR. “And Saul fell straightway all along on the earth,” etc. (1Sa 28:20). Up to this moment some hope lingered in his breast.
“The wretch condemned with life to part
Still, still on hope relies;
And every pang that rends the heart
Bids expectation rise.
“Hope, like the glimmering taper’s light,
Adorns and cheers the way;
And still, as darker grows the night,
Emits a brighter ray” (Goldsmith).
But now it was quite extinguished. “Whilst evil is expected we fear, but when it is certain we despair. Saul was too hardened in his sin to express any grief or plain, either on his own account, or because of the fate of his sons and his people. In solid desperation he went to meet his fate. This was the terrible end of a man whom the spirit of God had once taken possession of and turned into another man, and whom he had endowed with gifts to be leader of the people of God” (O. von Gerlach). “All human history has failed to record a despair deeper or more tragic than his. Over the close of this life broods a thick and comfortless darkness, even the darkness of a night without a star” (Trench, ‘Shipwrecks’).
Remark that
1. If men are forsaken by God, it is only because he has been forsaken by them.
2. Their only effectual resource in distress is the mercy of God, against whom they have sinned.
3. Persistent transgression infallibly ends in misery and despair.D.
1Sa 28:20-25. (ENDOR.)
The witch of Endor.
According to Jewish tradition she was the mother of Abner, on which account perhaps she escaped when others were “put away;” and the two attendants of Saul, in his visit to her, were Abner and Amass. She dwelt at Endor (the fountain of habitation), a village four miles south of Mount Tabor (Jos 17:11; Psa 83:10). “The calcareous cliffs around are filled with wide caverns, and some of the modern habitations are formed of front wails shutting in these caves,” in one of which she may have dwelt and practised her forbidden art. This possessor or mistress of Ob (see 1Sa 28:7-10), although differing much from those who were accounted “witches,” greatly abhorred and severely punished in more recent times, was a representative of many of them in
1. Perverted religiousness. Her history might have shown that she possessed a more than ordinary measure of the religious sentiment prevalent in women, and that it had been (as it often is) misdirected by the influences under which she fell. She was at first a victim of superstition, and afterwards, finding herself perhaps endowed with peculiar and mysterious susceptibilities, and looked up to by others on account of her superior “wisdom,” practised on their superstitions fears, in part deceived and in part deceiving. The mischief of the perversion of the religious sentiment is incalculable.
2. Secret criminality. If she had lived among the heathen from whom her art was derived, she might have been held in general repute, like the oracles of Greece. But in Israel necromancy was condemned as treason against the Divine King, an abomination associated with and promotive of the worship of idols, and she displayed a daring impiety in practising it even in secret. “The Hebrew witch, or she who communicated or attempted to communicate with an evil spirit, was justly punished with death, though her communication with the spiritual world might either not exist at all, or be of a nature much less intimate than has been ascribed to the witches of later days; nor does the existence of the law against the witches of the Old Testament sanction in any respect the severity of similar enactments, subsequent to the Christian revelation, against a different class of persons accused of a very different species of crime” (Sir W. Scott).
3. Unholy cupidity. The desire of gain, to which she may have been urged by necessitous circumstances, was probably her principal motive in practising her art at the risk of life. The same desire leads to the basest actions, and even turns godliness into ungodliness. It is “a root of all evil.”
4. Perpetual fear of discovery and suspicion of deception on the part of those to whose wishes she ministered, and of whose weaknesses she made traffic (1Sa 28:9). The sword of justice hangs over the head of secret transgressors, and suffers them not to enjoy a moment’s peace.
5. Skilful deception. Saul thought to deceive her, but was himself deceived by her, and fatally deluded. Whatever may have been her power in magic, clairvoyance (Keil), and ventriloquism (Isa 29:4), she certainly professed what she did not possess (1Sa 28:11); employed it in “cunning craftiness,” and became (whether designedly or undesignedly) accessory to his ruin (1Ch 10:14). How much of the power which is now abused and made a curse might if properly used become a blessing!
6. Kindly sympathy and ministration. On observing his heavy fall (for she was apparently in the same room) she came to his side, and seeing that he was “sore troubled,” felt a woman’s pity, spoke to him in soothing tones as to a wilful child, requested him to gratify her wishes in eating “a morsel of bread” to strengthen him, in return for her obeying his voice (with “a talkativeness characteristic of this class of women, and a certain humour”), perhaps called his servants, and with them constrained him. Her heart was not dead. “She had one calf that she was very fond of, and one that she took a great deal of care of, and fed it herself; for she was a woman that got her living by the labour of her own hands, and had no other possession but that one calf; this she killed, and made ready its flesh, and set it before his servants and himself. Now it is but just to recommend the generosity of this woman (Josephus).
7. Pitiable desolation. Saul is gone forth into the night to meet his fate. Left to herself, distrusted and distrustful, feared and fearful, without the consolations of religion, she is as much an object of pity as of blame. “We take leave of her, as she took leave of the ruined king, with a pitying heart.”D.
HOMILIES D. FRASER
1Sa 28:11-15
A God-forsaken man.
I. FOREBODING BEFORE THE BATTLE. As the clouds gather blackness before a storm, so the mind of King Saul became more than ever dejected and gloomy before his defeat and death on Mount Gilboa. He who in the beginning of his reign struck so boldly at the Philistines, and threw off their yoke from the neck of Israel, was now afraid at the approach of their host, and “his heart greatly trembled.” Not that his natural courage had deserted him, but, amidst all the disorder of his brain, this one thing he knew, that it was the God of Israel who had given him success against the Philistines, and now he found himself without God. There was no priest with the army to obtain Divine direction by the Urim and Thummim. Saul had slain the priests. There was no prophet to bring messages from God. By his breach with Samuel Saul had alienated from his cause all those who had any measure of prophetic gift. We hear the wail of a perturbed spirit”I am sore distressed;” but no confession of sin, no accent of repentance. This is an ominous characteristic of Saul, that he never fairly faces the question of his own misconduct, always palliates his sin, always evades self-judgment and self-reproach. What breaks from him in his extremity is only the cry of hurt pride, the bitter vexation of a man who saw that his career was a failure, and that he had brought himself to disappointment and defeat. His foreboding before the battle was only too well grounded. So Shakespeare describes Richard III. gloomy and desperate before the battle of Bosworth Field:
“I have not that alacrity of spirit
Nor cheer of mind that I was wont to have.”
And shadows in the night struck yet deeper terror into the soul of Richard. In like manner Macbeth at Dunsinane, expecting the attack, has dark foreboding:
“There is no flying hence, nor tarrying here.
I ‘gin to be aweary of the sun.”
II. RECOURSE TO FORBIDDEN ARTS. The troubled thoughts of the king went after that great prophet who had anointed him to be king, and had been to him as the voice of God. All his mishaps had come from inattention to Samuel’s instructions and warnings. And it seemed to him that his fortune might still be retrieved if only he could have once more the advice of Samuel. The prophet was dead and buried, and there was no way to communicate with him except through the forbidden art of necromancy. Saul had in his zeal against heathen practices expelled from his dominions those who plied this art for gain; but now he fell in this, as in so many other respects, below his own former level, and repaired to a female necromancer at Endor. As to what occurred at Endor it is not necessary or perhaps possible to pronounce a very decided opinion. It was no mere piece of jugglery. To the perception of the woman there really was an apparition; but there is room for much question whether this was the actual appearance of a departed spirit, or a sort of waking vision dependent on the ecstatic and clairvoyant state of the necromancer. If there was a real presence, it was that of Samuel, or possibly that of an evil spirit personating Samuel. Neither of these suppositions commends itself to our judgment. No doubt the historian says, “Samuel said to Saul.” But he describes the scene merely according to appearance, and so as to account for the effect produced on the mind of the king. He does not analyse appearances at all, or look under them for possible elements of illusion or delusion. But if it be possible to account for the apparition any otherwise, we shrink from the belief that Samuel was actually brought into this scene of gloom and wickedness, and, coming into it, spoke to poor distracted Saul without any tone of pity or exhortation to repentance, grimly telling him that tomorrow he would be defeated, and he and his sons would join the ghosts in Sheol. The moral improbability of this is very great. As to an evil spirit personating Samuel in order to drive the king to despair, there is no moral unlikelihood in the conjecture, and it has been the opinion of Tertullian, of Luther, of Grotius, and many more; but it supposes a greater marvel than the phenomena require to account for them, and therefore we reject it. Our view is that the apparition was real, but was no more than an apparition. The old man in the mantle had no existence whatever but to the morbid mind of the woman, who had fallen into a clairvoyantic trance. It is perfectly well known that women of a certain constitution have extraordinary aptitude for such trances and visions, and there is good reason to believe that the female necromancers and sorcerers of antiquity were persons of the same class with the nervous, crazy creatures who are nowadays spoken of as “powerful mediums.” Such persons in our own time see apparitions of the dead, and if they add some elements of trick and imposture the better to establish their reputation, it is only what such unhappy beings have done in the past, and what the woman at Endor very likely did also. The voice that Saul heard may easily have proceeded from her as a practised ventriloquist (see Isa 29:4). Saul had fallen with his face to the ground before the apparition, which was invisible to him. So the ventriloquism was easy enough, and there was nothing in the words ascribed to Samuel which it was beyond the power of the necromancer to say, well aware as she must have been of the king’s unfitness to encounter the great Philistine army, and the strong probability that the battle on the morrow would go against him. The wretched conclusion of the whole matter was that Saul was bereft of all hope, and “was sore afraid.”
III. COMMUNION WITH THE DEAD. Necromancy, unfortunately, is not a lost art among ourselves. Men and women of education are not ashamed or afraid to practise arts and consult “mediums” that are referred to in the Old Testament as abhorrent to God and utterly forbidden to his people. In the communication with the dead which is said to be established there may be an element of trickery, there may be an element of power of some evil sort that no one can define; but the process all in all is one of base delusion, its whole tendency is crazy, and its issues are in gloom and madness. Above all, it tends to draw men away from God, or it is an attempt to obtain preternatural direction for souls that have fallen out of communion with him, like the soul of Saul, and it cannot come to good. But we do not say to the children of God, “Have nothing to do with the dead.” In the communion of saints we are bound to those who have departed, as much as to those who are in the body. How they may help us even now is one of the things of which we have no certain knowledge. But we pay them most honour when we refrain from any attempt to disturb their sacred repose, and endeavour to remember their counsels, to walk in their steps, to live as they would wish us to live before God and man.
“How pure in heart and sound in head,
With what Divine affection bold,
Should be the man whose thought would hold
An hour’s communion with the dead.
“In vain shalt thou or any call
The spirits from their golden day,
Except, like them, thou too eanst say,
My spirit is at peace with all.
“They haunt the silence of the breast,
Imaginations calm and fair,
The memory like a cloudless air,
The conscience as a sea at rest”
(Tennyson).F.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
1Sa 28:1-2. It came to pass in those days The Philistines, recruited about this time, as Sir Isaac Newton judges, by vast numbers of men driven out of Egypt by Amasis, resolve upon a new war with Israel; nor were Samuel’s death, and David’s disgrace, as we may well judge, inconsiderable motives to it. Achish, who appears to have been commander in chief of the combined army of the Philistines, knew David’s merit, and had a thorough confidence in his fidelity; and therefore he resolved to take him with him to the war. Accordingly, he moved the matter to David, and David made him a doubtful answer. Surely thou shalt know what thy servant can do: upon which Achish replies, therefore will I make thee keeper of mine head for ever: that is, in the present military style, he promised to make him captain of his life-guard, and we find by the sequel that he did so; whence, it seems, that Achish understood his answer in the affirmative. But did David promise that he would join in battle against his own people? No such thing. David made no compliance or promise of this kind, but answered ambiguously.He was undoubtedly in circumstances of great difficulty. But who reduced him to these difficulties? Who forced him to seek refuge among the Philistines? It was Saul, by his causeless, cruel, and unrelenting persecutions; Saul, therefore, was in a great measure answerable for all the evil consequences of it. But must not David have fought against his king and country, or else have fallen off to the Israelites, and ungratefully employed his arms against the Philistines, and Achish his protector? I am not sure that he was reduced to the necessity of doing either. David knew himself destined by Providence to the throne of Israel, and therefore could never have joined Achish to complete their destruction, which must have cut off every possible prospect of his succeeding to the crown. The particular favours that he had received from Achish, laid him under no obligation whatsoever to assist the Philistines in general against his own countrymen. He might have shewed his gratitude to Achish, by affording him protection in his turn, securing his person, and those of many of his people, had the Israelites been victorious over the combined armies. Being often under the divine impulse, he might have made this reply in obedience to the divine inspiration; without being acquainted with that concatenation of events which was foreseen by the Deity, who foreknew that it would be a means of extricating him out of his present difficulties, without exposing him to any in future. As David was frequently inspired with a knowledge of futurity, he might possibly have foreseen that event which freed him from the dilemma into which this promise might, in its utmost latitude, have drawn him; and then it could not have been looked upon by himself as an obligation to take up arms against his king and country, because he foreknew that he never should be put to that trial.
REFLECTIONS.We have here,
1. The distress to which David is reduced in this war between the Philistines and Israel. Achish, as he justly might, insists on David’s going with him to battle. David dared not refuse, though he, no doubt, resolved not to fight against God’s people: he, therefore, gives an ambiguous answer, which Achish interprets of his fidelity and valour, and promises to make him captain of his guards for life if he should acquit himself well. Hereupon the Philistines march, and David with them, into the heart of Canaan, and encamp at Shunem, without opposition.
2. Saul, with his forces collected at Gilboa, appears greatly terrified at his danger; and now, no doubt, heartily wishes for David back again, whose presence in the opposite army gives such weight to his foes. The remembrance of his past guilt adds terrors to his present danger, while the sense of his present danger awakens his conscience to a deeper sensibility of his past wickedness. To accumulate his miseries, he receives no answer from God; he is vouchsafed no divine vision in a dream; has no Urim to consult, since the priest is fled with it to David; nor prophet to advise or direct him. At last, he is resolved to have recourse to the devil for advice; but his own former edicts against sorcerers make it difficult to find one, as he had, in pretended zeal for God, or at Samuel’s instigation, put to death all such abominable workers of iniquity throughout the land of Israel. Note; (1.) They who refuse to seek God while he may be found, will cry in vain when he refuses to answer. (2.) The troubles of the wicked are doubly aggravated by the terrors of an evil conscience. (3.) To the very sins against which men professed once to be most zealous, they will readily abandon themselves, when they have thrown off the cloke of religion.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
FOURTH SECTION
Sauls Downfall in War with the Philistines
1 Samuel 28-31
I. David in the Philistine Expedition against Israel. Sauls Visit to the Witch of Endor
1Sa 28:1-25
1And it came to pass in those days that the Philistines gathered their armies1 together for warfare,2 to fight with Israel. And Achish said unto David, Know thou assuredly that thou shalt go out with me to battle [in the army],1 thou and 2thy men. And David said to Achish, Surely [Therefore] thou3 shalt know what thy servant can [will] do. And Achish said to David, Therefore will I make thee keeper of mine head4 for ever.
3Now [And] Samuel was dead, and all Israel had lamented him and buried him in Ramah, even5 in his own city. And Saul had put away those that had familiar 4spirits6 and the wizards7 out of the land. And the Philistines gathered themselves together, and came and pitched in Shunem; and Saul gathered all Israel together, 5and they pitched in Gilboa. And when Saul saw the host of the Philistines, Hebrews 6 was afraid and his heart greatly trembled. And when [om. when] Saul inquired of the Lord [Jehovah], [ins. and] the Lord [Jehovah] answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim8 nor by prophets.
7Then said Saul [And Saul said] unto his servants, Seek me a woman9 that hath a familiar spirit, that I may go to her and inquire of her. And his servants said 8unto him, Behold, there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at Endor. And Saul disguised himself, and put on other raiment, and he [om. he] went, and two men with him, and they came to the woman by night; and he said, I pray thee, divine unto me by the familiar spirit,10 and bring me him [him] up whom I shall 9name unto thee. And the woman said unto him, Behold, thou knowest what Saul hath done, how he hath cut off those that have familiar spirits and the wizards out of the land; wherefore, then, layest thou a snare for my life, to cause me to die. 10And Saul sware to her by the Lord [Jehovah], saying, As the Lord [Jehovah] 11liveth, there shall no punishment11 happen12 to thee for this thing. Then said the woman [And the woman said], Whom shall I bring up unto thee? And he said, Bring me up Samuel.
12And when [om. when] the woman saw Samuel, [ins. and] she cried with a loud voice, and the woman spake [said] to Saul, saying, Why hast thou deceived me? 13for13 thou art Saul. And the king said unto her, Be not afraid; for [om. for]14 what [ins. then] sawest [seest] thou? And the woman said unto Saul, I saw gods 14[see a god]15 ascending out of the earth. And he said unto her, What form is he of [is his form]? And she said, An old16 man cometh up, and he is covered with a mantle. And Saul perceived that it was Samuel, and he stooped with his face to the ground, and bowed himself.
15And Samuel said to Saul, Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up? And Saul answered [said], I am sore distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and God is departed from me, and answereth me no more, neither by prophets nor by dreams, therefore [and] I have called17 thee that thou mayest make known 16unto me what I shall do. Then said Samuel [And Samuel said], Wherefore, then, dost thou ask of me, seeing the Lord [Jehovah] is departed from thee, and is become 17thine enemy?18 And the Lord [Jehovah] hath done to him19 [for himself] as he spake by me, for [and] the Lord [Jehovah] hath rent the kingdom out of 18thine hand and given it to thy neighbor, even to David. Because thou obeyedst not the voice of the Lord [Jehovah], nor executedst his fierce wrath upon Amalek, 19therefore hath the Lord [Jehovah] done this thing unto thee this day. Moreover [And] the Lord [Jehovah] will also [om. also] deliver Israel [ins. also]20 with thee into the hand of the Philistines, and to-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me; the Lord [Jehovah] also [om. also] shall [will] deliver the host [camp]1 of Israel 20[ins. also] into the hand of the Philistines. Then [And] Saul fell straightway21 all along [his full length] on the earth, and was sore afraid because of the words of Samuel; and there was no strength in him, for he had eaten no bread all the 21day nor all the night. And the woman came unto Saul, and saw that he was sore troubled, and said unto him, Behold, thine handmaid hath obeyed thy voice, and I have put my life in my hand, and have hearkened unto thy words which thou 22spakest unto me. Now therefore [And now], I pray thee, hearken thou also unto the voice of thine handmaid, and let me set a morsel of bread before thee, and eat, that thou mayest have strength when thou goest on thy way. But [And] he refused, 23and said, I will not eat. But [And] his servants, together with the woman, compelled22 him [his servants compelled him, and the woman also], and he hearkened unto their voice; so [and] he arose from the earth and sat upon23 the bed 24[bench]. And the woman had a fat [fatted]24 calf in the house; and she hasted and killed it, and took flour, and kneaded it, and did bake unleavened bread 25thereof; And she brought it before Saul and before his servants, and they did eat. Then [And] they rose up, and went away that night.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1Sa 28:1-2. A new war of the Philistines against the Israelites. David is required by Achish to join the Philistine army with his band and take part in this war against his own people.His indefinite and evasive answer.In those days, namely, during Davids stay in Philistia; giving the chronological connection with the preceding, in order to continue the narrative of chap. 27.The Philistines gathered their army, a general summons throughout Philistia to the extreme north, where a battle was afterwards fought in the region of Jezreel,a general war of all the Philistine princes against Israel, in which David, as Philistine vassal-prince, was obliged to take part (Ewald). In the army (), not into the camp (S. Schmid, de W.), [Eng. A. V. freely to battle]. In Davids answer the thou shalt know answers to Achishs formal know thou [same word in Heb.]. Thus is explained the [emphatic] thou (), for which there is no need to read with Sept. and Vulg. now (, Then.). is not profecto (Cler.), [so Eng. A. V. surely], but = accordingly, therefore, cum ita sit s. ita videbis (Maur.). David gives not a definite, but an evasive answer, comp. 1Sa 29:8. By Achishs demand, made in good faith, that he should go to battle against his people, David must have been thrown into a struggle of conscience, of which Achish had no suspicion. The latter therefore takes Davids ambiguous answer, which seemed to promise the action which he required, as a definite declaration, and accordingly names him confidingly keeper of his head, captain of his body-guard (Ew.). Here, as above, =under such circumstances, therefore. The rendering I would name thee (Cler., Dathe) is untenable by reason of the context, especially the for ever. That David actually went out with the Philistine army appears from 1Sa 29:2 sq. The narrative in 1Sa 29:1 sq. is the continuation of 1Sa 28:2. All between from 1Sa 28:3 is an episode, which (as appears especially from a comparison of 1Sa 28:4 with 1Sa 29:1) is an insertion from a separate source, and therefore is an independent narrative, which is not in necessary connection with the preceding and succeeding context.
1Sa 28:3. Introductory statement 1) of Samuels death, not from a second source, but here inserted by the redactor from 1Sa 25:1 to introduce what follows. The verbs are pluperfect in sense. And they had buried him at Ramah, namely or, that is, in his city. The [= and, namely] is explicative, as in 2Sa 13:20; Amo 3:11; Amo 4:10 (Ges. 155, 1 a). Its omission in Sept., Vulg., Syr., is explained by the difficulty that it occasioned the translators. 2) Of Sauls expulsion of the witches and soothsayers (long before this). Saul had put away, expelled the necromancers () and the wise men () [wizards], the soothsayers. On the various meanings of the word Ob [Eng. A. V. familiar spirit] see Bttcher, de inferis, I., pp. 101108. Most moderns connect it with ob (), leather bag, which is found in the Plural in Job 32:19. We cannot, however, thence render the word with the Sept. ventriloquist (), because, as Diestel (Herz., XVII., 482) remarks, the representation of soothsaying or sorcery as ventriloquism would destroy the appearance of the supernatural, and it cannot be shown that ventriloquists as such were accounted sorcerers. As the word in Isa 8:19; Isa 29:4 expresses a dull, hollow, groaning sound, it is best to suppose a stem , the softened form of the Arab. [] = to be hollow, and Ob is then the hollow thing (bag), and so one who speaks hollow (Diestel ubi sup.). In conjurations of the dead it is the dull, hollow, mysterious tone of the voice, which was personified and represented as a mysterious being, whether as the spirit of the departed speaking from the depth of the earth (Isa 29:9), or as the spirit dwelling in the conjuror, man or woman (Lev 19:31; Lev 20:6; Lev 20:27), and, finally, the necromancers or speaking soothsayers themselves were so called, as here and 2Ki 23:24. The wise people [wizards] (), always connected with the Oboth or necromancers, are those that deal in necromancy through sorcery and soothsaying; the simple expression in our [German] popular language, wise woman [so Eng. wizardTr.] rests on the same idea of a knowledge of what is concealed and future by mysterious means. In his passionate zeal for the Law, urged on by an unquiet conscience, Saul had driven the necromancers and soothsayers out of the land (Lev 19:31; Lev 20:27, comp. Deu 18:10 sq.), that he might thus show himself a zealous theocratic king and win Gods favor. This statement is appended to that of Samuels death as a superscription, as it were, to bring out the sharp contrast of the following narrative of Sauls conduct.
1Sa 28:4-25. Saul and the witch of Endor.
1Sa 28:4. The camp of the Philistines was in Shunem, Jos 19:18, which signifies, according to Ges., two resting-places (= ); according to Eusebius it was also called Shulem, which is confirmed by the present name, for it is the same place that is now called Solam or Sulem (Rob., III., 402 [Am. ed., ii., 324]), on the western declivity of little Hermon25 [Jebel Duhy], the home of Abishag (1Ki 1:3), and of the woman that often entertained Elisha, whose son he restored to life (2Ki 4:8-37; 2Ki 8:1; 2Ki 8:6). [Bib.-Com.: The Philistines either advanced along the seacoast, and then entered the valley of Jezreel from the westthe same route, only in the opposite direction, as that taken by the Midianites, who, coming to the valley of Jezreel from the Jordan, penetrated as far as Gaza (Jdg 6:4; Jdg 6:33)or else they came by the present road right through Samaria, starting from Aphek.Tr.] Only about four miles thence Saul had gathered the host of Israel, which was encamped on Gilboa, that is, the mountain range in the territory of Issachar, which traverses the south-eastern part of the plain of Jezreel from Zerin to the Jordan-valley, into which it sinks precipitously at Bethsan. There is now there a village called Jelbon (Rob. III. 404 [Am. ed., 2:316]). The two armies were therefore encamped on the two groups of mountains that enclosed the broad plain of Jezreel toward the east, or, more precisely, the south-east, between which stretched a valley-plain. From an elevation of about twelve hundred feet Saul could see the Philistine camp, which was only four miles distant.26
1Sa 28:5. The sight fills him with fear and great dread, because he had a bad conscience towards the Lord, and therefore could not be sure of His help, not merely because he saw that the Philistine army was so unexpectedly numerous (Cler.).
1Sa 28:6. Yet in his anxiety he had recourse to inquiring of the Lord; he wished thereby to learn what he was to do, and also the fate of himself and his army. But the Lord answered him not, the reason for which see in 1Sa 15:26, comp. 1Sa 14:37.The threefold [also] puts in one line the three means of inquiry of the Lord (on the repetition of to connect things related or similar, both and in pos. sentences, neither nor in neg., see Ew., 359): Dreams, Urim (and Thummim) and Prophets.27 The phrase inquire in ( ) is commonly used of inquiry by Urim and Thummim, with which the two other modes are here connected. The dreams, the first means of the revelation of the divine will, are not dreams by incubations at a holy place (Ew.), to which nothing here or elsewhere points (Then.), nor the dreams of those that receive the revelation, but the dreams of mediating persons, through whom the Lord was inquired of; these might be and were sometimes prophets, comp. Num 12:6 with Jer 23:25; Jer 23:32, and Deu 13:2 sq., where the false prophets with their lying dreams are opposed to the truebut might also be unprophetic persons, as in Joe 3:1. Here in our passage the persons who have revelations in dreams are distinguished from the prophets. In the order of arrangements of these three vehicles of revelation there is a progression from the less to the greater, since in the Old Testament a subordinate position is certainly assigned to the dream as the medium of divine influence on the inner life, which in sleep loses the power of self-manifestation and sinks into a state of the extremest passivity.Urim is the abbreviation of Urim and Thummim (Exo 28:30; Num 27:21), which, as the high-priestly medium of inquiring the divine will, stands between the revealing-dreams and the prophetic testimony. But since the murder of the priests in Nob the external apparatus, the Ephod with the Urim and Thummim had been in Davids camp, 1Sa 22:20 sq., 1Sa 23:6, 1Sa 30:7; and nothing is anywhere said of another high-priest than Abiathar, who had fled to David. Thenius thence concludes that this section contradicts the narrative of chap. 23, since Saul could have gotten no answer at all through Urim and Thummim, because these could have been only in one place. But this is not certain; after the catastrophe at Nob Saul may well have had a new Ephod with Choshen [Breastplate] and Urim and Thummim prepared (Keil), and this is the more natural from Sauls independent mode of procedure in matters of religious service, and the probability that in his heated theocratic zeal he did not suffer the public service at the tabernacle to cease after the murder of the priests. (It is possible also that a copy of the Ephod with the Urim and Thummim had been left behind when Abiathar fled.) As to the high-priest, apart from the possibility of inquiring by Urim and Thummim without him (it is done apparently without a priest by Saul, 1Sa 14:37, and David, 1Sa 23:9-12), it is to be observed that in the first years of Davids government the tabernacle is at Gibeon with Zadok, son of Ahitub of the line of Eleazar, as high-priest, which can be explained only by supposing that Saul had removed the tabernacle and the national worship thither from Nob, and that there were two high-priests, who, indeed, are frequently mentioned, 2Sa 8:17; 2Sa 15:24; 2Sa 15:29; 2Sa 15:35; 1Ch 15:11; 1Ch 18:16. We may thence conclude that Saul chose a high-priest from the high-priestly race of the line of Eleazar. It is further to be remarked that in Sauls own words, 1Sa 28:15, this inquiry by Urim is not mentioned. In 1Ch 10:14 it is said that he was slain by the Lord because he did not inquire of the Lord. The contradiction is only apparent; he gave over the true, right inquiry, in that, his first questioning, which was not with upright, humble heart, having been unanswered, he betook himself to a necromancer, instead of penitently applying to God.By the prophets. Intercourse between Saul and the prophets had doubtless been broken off since the beginning of Sauls persecution of David (19), while it had continued between David and the prophets, as far as circumstances permitted (1Sa 22:5 sq.). But in his anxiety and despair Saul had now again turned to them for aid. Proof that application was made to prophets not only in great theocratical matters, but also in personal affairs, is found in 1Sa 9:6 sq.; 1Ki 14:1 sq.; 2Ki 1:3.Saul received from God no answer more, except for judgment.
1Sa 28:7. Instead of humbling himself before God, he turns with hardened heart and bad conscience to the superstitious means, that the law of God had forbidden (Lev 19:31). Making accomplices of his servants, he gets information through them of a necromancer. (, appositional construct. without Genitive relation, Ges. 116, 5, see Jos 37:22; Jer 14:17.) A woman mistress of Ob, = a woman who is in possession of an Ob, that is, of a spirit (comp. Lev 20:27) by which the dead are conjured up, in order that they may disclose the present and the future. They inform him of such a one who dwells at Endor. Endor was on the northern declivity of Little Hermon, four and three-fourths Eng. miles south of Tabor, nine and a half miles south-east of Nazareth, about twelve miles north of Gilboa, so that Little Hermon lay between; there is still a place of the same name on the declivity of the mountain, Jebel Duhy. Rob. III. 1, 486 [Am. ed. ii. 360].[Endor, = fountain of the dwelling, is still marked by a spring and numerous caves fit for the abode of witches (Thomson). For descriptions of the circumstances of this incident see Stanleys Hist. of the Jewish Church, II. 30 sq., Sinai and Pal. p. 328334 (Eng. ed.). Porter in Murrays Handbook for Syria and Pal. ii. 355 sq., Thomsons Land and Book, 2:161.Tr.]
1Sa 28:8. Saul disguised himself, namely, by putting on other clothes so as not to be recognized by his royal dress and insignia, especially as he was treading a path forbidden by himself. At night he went thither, in order to escape the notice of his own people and of the enemys posts, which were not far off; he was accompanied by two men to show him the way and act as guard. A dreadful journey, a terrible night, both symbols of Sauls condition, lost on the way of inner self-hardening and thorough self-darkening.Sauls request: Divine for me by necromancy [properly: by the Ob, the spirit, as in Eng. A. V.Tr.]. The word divine () commonly occurs in a bad sense of the predictions of false prophets, comp. Deu 18:10; Deu 18:14; 2Ki 7:17; 1Sa 6:2 (in a good sense in Isa 3:2; Isaiah 28 Pro 16:10 [the subst.]). On its meaning see Hengst., Bileam, p. 9 sq. Anm.29
1Sa 28:9. The woman does not recognize Saul, as is plain from 1Sa 28:12. Her words show that Sauls order for the extirpation of this superstition had been vigorously carried out. (Thenius: may be Sing. Col. (Bttch.), but all the VSS. and twenty-three MSS. supply the Plu. , which may easily have fallen out through the following .)Necromancy was forbidden on pain of death (Exo 22:18; Lev 19:31; Lev 20:27; Deu 18:10-11). The woman supposes that the stranger is putting her to the test, in order to kill her according to the kings law and command; and this indicates that it was in this way that the law of extermination of witches was carried out. In the earliest period of the monarchy, as fruit of Samuels labors, we see a worship purified from all idolatry, and an energetic zeal against everything connected with idolatry, including this sort of superstition.[This statement is too broad; idolatry probably existed all along in Israel. Comp. Jdg 18:30-31; 1Sa 19:13.Tr.] So much the more despicable is Sauls present action.
1Sa 28:10 sq. Saul swears to her that no harm shall thereby come to her: by the Lord; an oath which shows how completely hardened Saul was (Keil). Not till he has given this oath does the woman ask: Whom shall I bring up to thee? which is in two respects significant: 1) in that the witch thereby claims to have sovereignty, as it were, over the whole realm of the dead, and 2) in that these words indicate the business-like routine of the witch in her soothsaying and conjuration, and have precisely the tone of the modern small dealer: what do you wish? and how can I serve you?Thenius supposes that the woman thus obtained from Saul the promise that she should not be punished for what he (already recognized by her as the king) should hear from her; but this view rests on the unfounded assumption that the woman had certainly known beforehand from the servants (who had directed Saul to her) of this visit, and must have recognized the visitor, if not by his attendants, yet by his extraordinary bodily size. From the narrators account we cannot doubt that his view was that Saul came as an unknown person to the woman. And the womans whole conduct, 1Sa 28:12, permits no other opinion. His height need not have betrayed him to her; it was night, and he was disguised; his anxiety, his age and his disguise all permit us to suppose that he was somewhat bowed and bent.Sauls demand: Bring me up Samuel (and go the womans question) supposes (the word up involves it) that the dead dwelt not in the grave, in the pit, but (as buried) dwelt under the earth in Sheol, that is, a large, broad space which received and claimed (from , comp. Pro 27:20; Psa 6:6 [5]) all the dead without distinction, godly and ungodlydwelt in a realm of the dead. The contrast to this realm of the dead beneath the earth is heaven above the earth, where dwells the Lord with the host of angels. The superstition in question consisted in the fact that it was believed that by conjuration the dead were compelled to rise from the depth of Sheol to the surface of the earth, and answer questions put to them. It seems from Exo 22:18; Lev 20:27, that women often practiced this necromancy, to which fact Winer conjectures the Fem. Plu. form Oboth to refer (W.-B. II. 626, A. 4). The usual operations or formulas of conjuration, which the woman no doubt employed after the above business-conversation, are not specially mentioned by the narrator, being irrelevant and of purely technical significance, but belong between 1Sa 28:11-12. Bttcher conjectures, but unnecessarily and without ground, that a verse has here fallen out, which mentioned the necromantic apparatus, and stated that the woman went out into a court or garden. Such a supplement is not at all needed for the understanding of the affair. In support of this view Bttcher adduces the words: and the woman came of 1Sa 28:21, and the necessity of a large space for the exhibition of a gigantic figure; to which Thenius rightly replies that we need not regard the figure indicated by the Elohim [God, 1Sa 28:13] as a gigantic one, and that nothing is said in the account of exhibiting it.
1Sa 28:12. She saw (), not: she acted as if she saw (Then.). Render: When the woman saw Samuel, she cried with a loud voice.According to this the cause of her outcry was the sight of the apparition of Samuel. The following words: And the woman said to Saul, Why hast thou deceived me, for thou art Saul? indicate that the woman at the same time recognized Saul in the Unknown; this discovery naturally reminded her of her danger as violator of the kings prohibition. She thinks herself deceived, tricked and given over to death. There is hardly any doubt, therefore, that this sudden perception of her danger, together with Samuels apparition, was the cause of the terror which was expressed in her outcry. How she came to recognize the king in the Unknown, is not indicated in the words. Thenius, assuming that she already knew with whom she was dealing, supposes that, as she simulated fear at the alleged apparition, she now pretended that her sudden recognition of Saul came through supernatural influence, through Samuel indeed. But the text gives no support to the assumption on which this explanation rests. Ewald supposes that she burst out into a loud cry on seeing Samuels shade, because it ascended with such frightfully threatening gestures as it could have used only against its deadly enemy, that is, Saul, and she thence saw that the questioner must be Saul. But the words give no reason at all to suppose that this was the view of the narrator. Keil holds that the woman had fallen into a state of clairvoyance, in which she could recognize persons who, like Saul, were unknown to her by face. Is there not, however, a simpler explanation, partly psychological, partly suggested by the context, both of her seeing Samuels form and recognizing Saul? As to the former, so much is clear from the connection, that only the woman, not Saul, saw Samuel; this appears from Sauls question, 1Sa 28:13-14 : What seest thou? what is his form? She then describes the apparition, in order to leave to Saul its identification with Samuel (1Sa 28:14 b). That the woman went out of the room in which she was at first with Saul, into another, is not said, and is not to be inferred from the words: she came to Saul. Therefore in the same room she sees Samuels apparition, and Saul does not see it. This can be explained psychologically only as by an inner vision, the occasion for which was given by Sauls request to bring up Samuel, and the psychological foundation of which was her inward excitement, in connection with her lively recollection of Samuels form, which was well known to her from his earthly life, and stood before her mind in vividest distinctness. So Tanchum explains it: She saw Samuel not with the eyes, but with the aid of the imagination, inwardly, in his well-known form. And her recognition of Saul just at this moment would be psychologically explained as the product of her inward perception of Samuel (occasioned by Sauls request), and of her recollection of the relation in which she knew Saul had stood to Samuel and of the prophetic sentence of punishment which Samuel had pronounced against Saul. When now, at this moment, so full of danger for all Israel, she saw before her the mysterious Unknown, who was come through her to question Samuel concerning the impending battle, and who on a nearer view, despite his disguise, made on her by the mysterious character of his personality, the impression of an extraordinary person, she could, by her intensified power of perception, straightway recognize him as Saul, and must needs then be seized with the terror of which the account tells.
1Sa 28:13. Saul calms her deadly fear.Fear not, that is, concerning thy life.The question: What seest thou? supposes 1) that he did not see what she saw; 2) that she was with him in the same room in which the foregoing conversation had occurred, and 3) that on account of the manipulations usual in such conjurations, she was yet necessarily at some distance from him. She answers: I see Elohim ascending out of the earth.The word Elohim signifies here not a plurality of appearances (Gods, Sept., Vulg., Syr., Arab.or spiritual beings, ghosts, Tremell.or several devils, one of whom took the form of Samuel, S. Schmidor angels, Chald., Theod.), but, despite the [Heb.] Plu. predicate (, ascending, by attraction from the Plu. subst.), a single appearance, as is evident from the Sing. pronoun, his form, a spiritual appearance belonging to the region of the super-terrestrial, the superhuman, a fear- and terror-producing spiritual appearance. The word is here employed in a sense for which the idea of divinity is too restricted, the general, vague idea of the not-earthly not-human (Hengst., Beit. II. 255). But Thenius also rightly connects with it the idea of the terror-inspiring from the fact that the simple Heb. sounds alah (), from which the word is made, are the involuntary sounds of astonishment and fear, referring to Gen 31:42, where the fear of Isaac stands along with the God of Abraham.30
1Sa 28:14. Sauls second question : What is his appearance, his form? The womans answer gives an exacter description of the spiritual appearance which she saw in her visionary state: An old man cometh up, and he is covered with a mantle.The meil () is the talar-shaped garment [reaching to the ankles.Tr.], the prophets mantle, which Samuel wore in his life-time (1Sa 15:27), and in which the woman and Saul would necessarily remember him. Still we have no hint that Saul saw the appearance that was visible to the woman. It is said of him only that from this description he recognized the form seen by the woman to be Samuel, and to do him reverence bowed down to the ground.
1Sa 28:15-20. Conversation of Samuel and Saul. 1Sa 28:15. And Samuel said, that is, the woman (Tanchum) spoke from the place where she was standing in hollow, dull tones, which Saul supposed to be Samuels, perhaps in the manner of ventriloquists, the natural result of her excited visionary state, in which she identified herself with Samuel.Why dost thou disquiet me, disturb me (comp. Isa 14:9), to bring me up? These words prove that the narrator assumes the previous employment of arts of conjuration, and exclude the supposition (left undecided by Keil, adopted by other expositors) that Samuels ascent is represented as produced by miraculous power of God. They also refute the opinion of these expositors, that Samuels apparition rose before the woman had employed her art, and that therefore there is no employment of magic means between 1Sa 28:11-12. Rather the view that there was such magic art in this place (between 1Sa 28:11-12) is confirmed by these words of Samuel: why dost thou disquiet me ? namely, by the womans conjurations. Sauls answer gives his reason for this disturbance of the dead as follows: 1) I am in great straits from the Philistines, who are warring against me; 2) God has left me, and answers me no more; 3) I wish to know what to do, I am at a loss and uncertain about the future. So I have had thee called31 to tell me what I shall do.According to the preceding words: God has left me and answers me no more, Saul cannot regard the answer which he asks from Samuel as Gods revelation and declaration; in fact there is in his words a contrasting, or at least a distinction between the divine revelation no longer granted him and the supernatural magic-gotten answer which he expects from Samuel. And yet Samuel was the prophet of the Lord and His organ. This is the contradiction to which Samuels answer, 1Sa 28:16, refers. The contradiction is not that Saul asks from Samuel a divine announcement, while he yet says there is no longer any such answer for him (Keil).
1Sa 28:16. Samuels answer: Why dost thou ask me, since the Lord has left thee and become thy enemy?32 That is: if the Lord has left thee, why dost thou apply to me, the Lords instrument?
1Sa 28:17-19 contain the confirmation of Sauls previous sentence of rejection and the announcement of his impending fate. 1Sa 28:17. The declaration of the fact that the Lord, according to His counsel and determination ( , hath done for Himself [Eng. A. V.: wrongly to him]), has taken the kingdom from him and given it to David. The Lord hath done for himself.Pleonastic Dative, not unmeaning = has done according to His will, or to carry out His purpose, to show His truth (Berl. Bib.). The reading to thee () in Sept., Vulg. and some MSS. cited by Thenius (Cod. Kenn. 155, 246; De Rossi 305, 679, 716 [orig.]) is suspicious from its allusion to 1Sa 15:26; 1Sa 15:28, and because it seems to be an attempt to interpret and smoothen the text, though an original [thee] might easily be copied as [him], and the latter so come into the traditional text. As he spake by me.Comp. 1Sa 15:23. It is remarkable that while in that passage Sauls obstinate rebellion, through which he loses the kingdom, is equalled with the gross sin of sorcery, here in the act of committing this superstitious sin (against which he had shown such bloody zeal), the judgment of inward self-hardening being then finished, he again hears the sentence, and learns with terror that the complete realization and definite fulfilment of the divine decree of rejection is now at hand. The whole declaration of 1Sa 28:17 is the factual explanation and confirmation of the words of 1Sa 28:16 : The Lord is departed from thee and is become thy enemy, thy oppressor.
1Sa 28:18. The reason is stated, namely, Sauls disobedience (as in 1Sa 15:23). This thing is this strait or distress. Comp. I am sore distressed, 1Sa 28:15. The Perf. [hath done] is to be understood, like the preceding Perfects, of what has happened, and is settled. This Philistine distress, with its immediate results, is Gods act in complete fulfilment of the judgment against him.
1Sa 28:19. Announcement of impending misfortune for himself, his house and his people in battle with the Philistines. And the Lord will deliver Israel also with thee, etc.Will deliver () again indicates the act of God in accord with His holy and righteous will, and is to be taken (with Keil) as voluntative; with the king, on whom the judgment falls by the Philistine, the judgment will reach the people also, on account of the ethical and theocratical solidarity [organic oneness] which exists between him and them; the Lord will subject them to the Philistines. And to-morrow wilt thou and thy sons be with medead, with me the dead, in the Underworld; with me in the kingdom of the dead, in Sheol. Hence it appears that besides self-consciousness (which indeed was conceived of as sunken into a sleep or dream-like state), that is, besides the continued existence of the personality after death, a union after death in Sheol was believed in; at the same time it hence appears that in the realm of the dead the good and evil were not thought to be separated. Thenius would read with the Sept. thou and thy sons with thee shall fall, on the ground that the Heb. text strangely first speaks of the Israelites, then descends to the Underworld, then returns to the camp of the Israelites, while the Sept. text presents a perfectly good order: first the general, the defeat; then the particular, the death of Saul and his sons; and finally the result, the plundering of the camp. But the arrangement is excellent in our text, which says nothing else than what the Sept. periphrastically expresses: to-morrow thou and thy sons will be dead, and then the Underworld is by no means put in the same line with the Israelites and their camp, but Israels renewed defeat, the death of Saul and his sons, and the complete destruction of the camp of Israel, are mentioned as the three decisive blows in the judgment which should fall on Saul.
1Sa 28:20. Up to this point Saul had remained in his reverential posture as stated in 1Sa 28:14; now under the powerful impression of these words he falls suddenly to the ground, and lies his full length on the earth. The cause is stated to be: 1) his terror at Samuels words, and 2) his weakness, resulting from the fact (of course from inward excitement), that he had taken no food the whole (preceding) day and the whole night.
1Sa 28:21-25. Sauls entertainment by the woman. The words and the woman came do not in themselves justify the opinion (Then., Diestel in Herz. XVII. 482, et al.) that the woman had been in another room, nor is there any hint of this elsewhere in the narrative. The words of the woman (1Sa 28:21-22) show a talkativeness characteristic of this class of women, and a certain humor, particularly in the contrasting of her obedience to his command and the obedience which she now requires from him for his good, in the introductory words, and now hearken thou also. That thou mayest have strength when thou goest on thy way.These words express neither apprehension, nor the fear that he would die on her hands, and it would then go hard with her, and her prediction would not be fulfilled (Then.); they exhibit merely her natural sympathy with her guest, worn out by excitement and abstinence from food, which prompts her to offer him her hospitality.
1Sa 28:23 sq. The further minute description of the proceedings of Saul and his servant and the woman is so domestically and psychologically true to life, that the historical trustworthiness of the narrative is put beyond all doubt. Saul refuses to take food because he is full of fear and terror. The servants and the woman force himhe suffers himself to be persuaded. Till now he has lain on the ground; now he gets up and seats himself on the divan ( [Eng. A. V. not so well: bedTr.], the cushioned bench, which extends along the wall of the room, still found in the East (Then.). She kills a fatted calf and bakes unleavened cakes. She kneaded where we need not supply it, since the words describe the operation of kneading. She baked it as unleavened loaves or cakes, because she was obliged to hurry.
HISTORICAL AND THEOLOGICAL
1. The theocratic and biblical-theological significance of the history of Sauls visit to the Witch of Endor is to be judged and determined, first in respect to the representation of the condition of departed souls after death, then as to the religious-moral facts which come under consideration from the Old Testament standpoint of revelation and from the theocratic point of view, and finally as regards Sauls state of heart in respect to God and the people. In respect to the state of departed souls after death we have the representation not merely of their continuance in personal identity, but also of a self-conscious existence, which is conceived of as a condition of slumber-like rest, from which there may be a rousing and raising; yet such a disturbance is regarded as a disquieting. The abode of the departed, in contrast with heaven as the throne of God and the dwelling of the heavenly powers, is thought to be a wide space deep under the earth (comp. Deu 32:22; Psa 86:13; Psa 63:10 (9); Eze 26:20), not the narrow grave; for Samuels grave was at Ramah. The differencing of the realm of the dead from the grave, in which the body is laid, attests the continuance of the soul when separated from the body. Sheol, the Underworld, the Realm of the Dead, receives all the dead without distinction; there is no separation there between Righteous and Unrighteous (1Sa 28:19); the divine law of requital does not reach the Beyond. Comp. Oehler: Vet. test, de rebus post mortem fut. 1846, and the same writer: Die Lehre des Alt-Test, von der Unsterblichkeit (Herz. 21:413 sq.): Bttcher: de inferis rebusque post mortem futuris, 1846. H. A. Hahn: de spe immortalitatis sub V. T. gradatim excult, 1846. H. Schultz: Alttestamentliche Thcologie I. 396 sq. [See also Oehler: Theologie des Alt. Test., 1873, I., 77 sq. (and Eng. Transl.). Delitzsch: Bibl. Psychologie (and Eng. Transl.). Himpel: Unsterblichkeits lehre des Alten Test., 1857. Hodges Theology III. 716 sq. Smiths Bib. Dict. Arts. Dead, Hell, Pit. Fairbairns Bib. Dict. Hades. Ewald: Lehre der Bibel von Gott, 1873, III., 345.Tr.]
But while now the condition of departed souls is, as a rule, so conceived and represented, that there is no intercourse between them and the Upperworld, and no return from Sheol (Job 7:9), this narrative of Samuels appearance would be the only passage in the Old Testament that teaches the contrary [if it did teach it]. And in fact the narrative means to declare that Samuel really appeared (1Sa 28:16; 1Sa 28:20); as Vilmer remarks (Vom Aberglauben und Zauberei, in the Pastoral-theolog. Blttern, 1862, p. 201), unless violence is done to the text, it can be only understood as affirming that the real Samuel ascended from Sheol. That is the view of the Septuagint also in the addition to 1Ch 10:13 : Saul inquired of the ventriloquist [witch], and Samuel the prophet answered him, and of the Son of Sir 46:20 (23); and after he fell asleep he prophesied and showed the king his end, and out of the ground lifted up his voice in prophecy. In contradiction with this correct opinion is the view of the church-theologians of the 16th and 17th centuries, derived from the patristic writers,33 namely, that by divine ordering Saul saw under the form of Samuel a ghost, an illusion produced by demonic, devilish powers. Tertullian (de anima, cap. 57) regards it as a rivalry of truth by an unclean spirit; it was permitted, says he, the pythonic spirit to represent the soul of Samuel, when Saul (after he dad inquired of God) inquired of the dead. Far be it from us to believe that the soul of any saint, much less a prophet, can be drawn forth by a demon. We are taught that Satan transfigures himself into an angel of light, but not into a man of light. So Ephrem Syrus.34 In agreement with this Luther says that it was the devils ghost, and Calvin that it was not the real Samuel, but a spectre. So Grotius: It is more credible that it was a deceptive spirit, and so the woman herself seems plainly to indicate when she says that gods were ascending out of the earth, thus terming those spirits, one of whom had assumed Samuels form. Comp. S. Schmid (Comm.); A. Pfeiffer, dubia vex. Cent. II. loc. 77; Sal. Deyling, observ. ss. II. obs. 18; Buddus, hist. eccles., V. I. II. 243 sq.; J. Gerhard, spectrum Endoreum, Jen. 1663 [Bp. Patrick, Comm. in loco]. But the narrative gives not the slightest support to such a view. Neither the original narrator nor the redactor [editor] had in mind (judging from the narrative itself), an illusion produced by demonic or diabolical power. Theodoret, rejecting the view (suggested by the words of the narrative and frequent with the Talmudists) that Samuels spirit was really evoked by the conjurations of the womanheld that, before the woman employed her arts, the appearance of Samuel was produced by Gods power, and that Gods voice itself was heard in those words against Saul. He says: It is thence clear that the very God of all beings, having fashioned Samuels form as He wished, uttered the judgment, the witch not having been able to do this, but God gave the decree even through enemies [Qust. in Lib. Reg. ad 1 Samuel 28.]. Appealing, for proof that God speaks through enemies, to the example of Balaam and to Eze 14:4; Eze 14:7 sq. (where it is said of idolators when they come to the prophet, I will answer them after my manner), he explicitly affirms that the words ascribed to Samuel were a divine utterance spoken through the mouth of the woman who was acting against Gods command. But against this view (which is held also by Justin, Origen, Ambrose, Augustine, and by some Rabbis, as R. Saadias) it is rightly remarked by D. Kimchi, that we can then see no reason why God should not have answered Saul before by Urim and Thummim, by dreams or by prophets. In fact it is fatal to this view that according to it God is here the answerer, while it is expressly said in 1Sa 28:6 that God answered Saul no more, and 1Sa 28:7 clearly means that for this reason Saul turned from God to a sorceress. An immediate divine miracle is assumed, which is to be brought into union with the anti-godly attempt of the sorceress and an open act of godlessness or God-forgetfulness on the part of Saul. Support would thus be given to the superstitious opinion that departed spirits may be summoned, while the fundamental view of the Old Testament every where is that a return of the dead to the land of the living is not possible, comp. 2Sa 12:23; Job 7:9. The necromantic superstition, on which Saul (who, unworthy of a divine answer, is guilty of disobeying the divine command, for which he had displayed so much zeal) and the woman (who practices this superstition as a trade) are united would, according to the narrative, have been the occasion or the medium of a miraculous divine act. Now it may be said indeed that God is accustomed in the wisdom of His providential government so to use mans evil purpose as to compel it to minister immediately to the revelation of His power and glory, as is shown in the history of Balaam and in the declaration of Eze 14:4; Eze 14:7 sq. But in such cases express reference is made also to the divine control, comp. Gen 15:20; Exo 10:27. But here there is not the slightest allusion to an immediate interference of God. On the contrary, we plainly read between the lines of this narrative that here a sin is committed; there is no trace of divine action. We cannot therefore accept this view, which is wholly without support, from a religious-ethical as well as from a theocratic-historical standpoint, however thorough and earnest a defence it may have found, as from Dachsel, Bibl. hebr. accentuata, Lips, 1729, p. 430 sq.; Berl. Bib.; O. v. Gerlach; Delitzsch, Bibl. Psychol., 2 ed., p. 428sq.; Strbel, Luth. Zeitschr., 1867, p. 781 sq.: V. Rudoff, Die Lehre vom Menschen, 2 ed., 1863, II. 365; Hengstenberg, Abhandl. zu den Psalm. IV., p. 324 sq.; Zeitschrift fr Protest. u. Kirche, 1851, p. 138 sq., Abhandl. Die Geschichte der Zauberin zu Endor. Comp. Oehler in Herzog XXI. 414 sq.; Dchsel, Bibelwerk; Keil, Komm. The last named remarks: This apparition was externally indeed spiritual, since Samuel was visible only to the woman, not to Saul, but still only an apparition of Samuels soul in Hades in the investiture of the earthly body and clothing of the prophet in order to become visible. Keil himself remarks that this apparition of Samuel divinely summoned from Hades is a different thing from the appearances of Moses and Elijah at the Transfiguration of Christ (Matthew 17; Luke 9), because the latter appeared in heavenly refulgence and glory; this phenomenon, therefore, so often cited in support of this view falls away as unanalogous and irrelevant. Still less can we appeal to the angelic appearances in human form in Genesis 18 and Judges 13, because these arc superhuman beings. The contradictions in Keils view are insoluble, namely, that Samuel appeared in the spiritual form of the dwellers in Hades, and yet at the same time in the investiture of earthly corporeality and clothing, that Samuels appearance in spiritual Hades-form is set over against the announcement of these angels in human form which was visible to the ordinary bodily eye, as if Samuels apparition was not visible, though it is said that the sorceress saw it and was terrified. According to this view this would be the only passage in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments in which a departed sinful man is called by divine power from the kingdom of the dead to the Upperworld. But this would stand in contradiction with Luk 16:17 sq., where Abraham refuses the rich mans request to send Lazarus to his fathers house to preach to his living brethren. If it be urged that the prohibition of sorcery and necromancy (Deu 18:1; Isa 8:19) does not exclude the possibility of Gods permitting Samuel for special reasons to appear, we reply that neither from the connection of the related procedure nor from the words of the relator are there special grounds for supposing such a miracle, which would be sole of its kind. Apart from the fact that Saul had already vainly used all ordained means for learning Gods will, and might thence conclude that his obstinate impenitence had rendered him unworthy of answer, the appearance and word of Samuel under present circumstances (if God had really been willing to permit it) could no longer have any religious-ethical or theocratic end; no religious-ethical end, because the means for rousing Saul to repentance were exhausted, for this recourse to a necromancer showed a mind thoroughly alienated from God and seeking help elsewhere, a disposition in respect to which even such a miraculous appearance of the prophet would be without effect, as in fact in Samuels words there is no exhortation to repentance, and there is no trace afterwards of any change for the better in Saul;no theocratic end, because Sauls rejection as king had already been repeatedly announced, and the sending of Samuel would have been superfluous for the announcement of Sauls impending fall, which, without a miracle, might have reached Sauls ear and made his heart tremble. We must therefore reject both the ancient church-view of an illusory appearance of Samuel produced by the womans magic art, as the medium of a divine revelation, and also that of an appearance produced immediately by divine power without the womans aid. Over against these views stands that which regards the whole procedure as a mere deception. Balthasar Becker, te betoverde Wereld [The Magic World] III. 6. Anton van Dale, dissert. de divinationibus idololatricis sub V. T. in the Treatise de origine et prog. Idololatri, p. 620 sq. Schmersahl, Natrl. Erklrung der Gesch. Sauls mit d. Betrgerei zu Endor, Hann., 1751. Kcher, Versuch einer Erklrung der Gesch. Sauls und d. Betrgerin zu Endor, Gera, 1780. Hensler, Erluter. des 1 B. Sam., p. 88 sq., Exeget. Handbuch IV. 251 sq. Comp. Bttcher, de inferis, I. Ill sq., Winer II. 627, Thenius, Diestel in Herz. XVII. 482 sq., Rtschi, ibid. s. v. Endor, A. Kuhle, Bibl. Eschatologie, 1870. 1 Abth., p. 65 sq. and others [Clericus in loco]. Thenius remark that the deception is everywhere clear in the account must be admitted except as to the everywhere, though his reason drawn from 1Sa 28:21 [namely, that the woman had been in another room] is not tenable. The womans conduct and words at Sauls arrival, and at the alleged appearance of Samuel, show that she made necromancy a trade and practiced the deceits usual with such people. The speech of Samuel, a long one under the circumstances, his appearance in the characteristic prophetic dress, and the fact that only she (not Saul) sees the apparition, leave no doubt that technical illusion and magical deception was here employed. But this does not prove that there was absolutely nothing but a refined, conscious deception, proceeding from special motives, as Thenius, for example, supposes that she was impelled by desire of revenge, having perhaps been ill-treated during the expelling of the sorcerers. Against such a merely conjectural pragmatic view, we must distinguish and combine an objective and a subjective element in the explanation of the event; the former a religious-historical, the latter a psychological. The former, which is presupposed in the whole account, consists in the fact that necromancy, according to the passage of the Law in which it is forbidden (Lev 19:31; Lev 20:5-6; Lev 20:26-27; Deu 18:9-14), was regarded not as a mere deception, but 1) as a heathen superstition, that is, as a wicked dealing with evil powers, which pertain to the domain of heathendom, out of which the Lord has chosen His people to be sanctified to Him; and 2) as an apostasy from the living God and a negation of the covenant-relation between Him and His people as a heathen abomination. That Saul and the woman undertake a wicked ungodly, illegal thing, is the obvious judgment of the narrative; but there also appears here (as in the passage of the Law) the assumption, which was founded on universal belief, that in this magic art, as in the others borrowed from heathendom, there was not a mere deception with magic formulas, but a real contact and co-operation with mysterious ungodly powers, and with a secret, specifically heathenish mode of actionthough the opinion of the older orthodox theologians as to the operation of wicked spirits or devils here is excluded by the narrative. Gradually came the perception that, as the idols of the heathen are naught, so all heathen existence connected with idolatry is empty and vain. (Comp. Schultz, Alttest. Theol. I. 158 sq.) The second element in our explanation is the psychological in the womans state of mind and soul. Proceeding on the supposition of a connection with mysterious powers, and perhaps under the excitation of narcotics, the women especially (as in heathen magic) who made necromancy a trade, might, through a fit psychical-somatical character, fall into an ecstatic, visionary state (as modern science supposes in somnambulic and magnetic phenomena), in which with superstitious self-deception they had inward perception of the things or persons inquired for (the inquirers of course seeing nothing), and uttered their recollections or anticipations in dull, suppressed tones, so that it seemed as if the utterance came from other voices, particularly as if the professedly summoned person spoke. See Tholuck: Die Proph. und ihre Weissagung, 1, Die Mantik und die dort angefhrten Thatsachen nebst literarischen Nachweisungen. The seeing and speaking of the woman of Endor must be though of in accordance with the nature and characteristic phenomena of ancient and modern mantic (magic), and like the visional-somnambulic states of which there are so many examples in our time, especially among women. What the woman in this condition (in which she identified herself with Samuel) said of Saul in the name of Samuel was partly nothing but what Samuel had repeatedly said, partly nothing beyond the reach of natural conjecture and inference; for after the universally known divine rejection of Saul, after the sad line of experiences which showed that God had forsaken him (he having forsaken God), and especially after the fact, which the woman learned from Saul herself [v. 15], that in the presence of the Philistine army he had inquired of the Lord in vain, the fatal issue of this war could not be doubtful. Calvin has touched the correct view of the womans condition when he says that her senses were deceived, so that she wrongly supposed that she saw Samuel, though he errs in ascribing this effect to devilish powers. Along with the deceit which was necessarily connected with this necromantic trade, we must suppose a psychological fact (attested by the history of mantic [magic] and by modern science), which raises that part of the procedure that relates to Samuels apparition and words out of the sphere of conscious deception and illusive magic. It is only in this way that we can explain the fact that the narrator, according to whom the essential point is that only the woman, not Saul, sees the apparition of Samuel, represents it as if Samuel really appeared and spoke.
The significance of this event for Saul is to be seen not merely from the announcement of his fall in battle, as the completion of the divine judgment, but also from the attitude towards the living God into which he has brought himself by his impenitence and self-hardening. Winer (s. v. Saul) takes a simple and correct view of the case when he says: It is a shame that the king, who had expelled all sorcerers, etc. (1Sa 28:3; 1Sa 28:9), must himself at last fall into the hands of a sorceress. Sauls rejection as king was not his definite banishment from the presence of God. Even if the theocratic kingship to which he had been called had become impossible for him and his house in consequence of his disobedience against God, the king of his people, yet he individually might be saved. But he persisted in his self-blinding, and the sentence was complete in his personal rejection. A tool of heathenish superstition, which he as king ought to have punished, must serve as a means of announcing to him his sentence of death as the conclusion of the divine judicial process, the Lord having preserved silence, and thus already passed sentence on him. The heathen Philistine nation, the hereditary enemy of Gods people, constant war against whom was to be a holy state-affair for the theocratic king, becomes the executor of the divine decree, and carries out against him and his house the sentence of death announced by the necromantic impostor. Calvin: Saul called not on God with humility, prostrate mind and penitent, believing heart, and therefore God rightly rejected him, and the divine threatening was verified in him (Ye shall call on me, but shall not be heard). He himself shows plainly that he approached God as one in despair, because he had no root of true faith in his heart. In his life-course up to this time Saul had descended step by step deeper into the abyss of unbelief; he stands now on the last step, about to plunge irretrievably into the depths of endless destruction.
2. There is a silence of God that is the dumb reply to perverse invocation of His name, wherein man seeks to make the divine will subservient to his own, instead of humbly bowing under the will of God. Such a persistent silence on Gods part is the result of persistent opposition of the heart to Him, and of the thence resulting hardening. When man makes his own sinful will his god that he worships and his lord that he serves, he shows the religious perversity of his soul when, like Saul, he nevertheless calls on God and inquires His will, in order to make this will subservient to his selfish desire. Thus from unbelief follows necessarily superstition [Germ.: aus unglauben folgt aberglaube.Tr.]
[Of the three schemes of explanation of this difficult passage now heldnamely, that which regards the affair as a mere deception (Chandler, Thenius), that which supposes a sort of mesmeric clairvoyance in the woman (Keil, Erdmann), and that which sees here a real appearance of Samuel by divine power, the last has found most favor among English orthodox expositors. In many cases the exegesis is determined by dogmatic considerations, as that such a real appearance of a dead person is impossible, or not in keeping with Scripture, or that the summoning of Samuel by a witch is contrary to the holiness of God. Such considerations must, however, be put aside when our object is to discover simply what the narrator affirms. It is clear that the writer says that Samuel appeared and spoke (so Ewald, Erdmann). How are we to accept this? The writer, says one class of critics, shared the superstitions of his day, and believed that the conjurations of the witch really had power over the dead. Erdmann, however, is not satisfied with this explanation, and accounts for the narrators affirmation that Samuel really appeared on the ground that besides the element of trickery in the womans procedure, there was a real psychological identifying of herself with the deceased prophet, so that the narrator might represent her personation of him as his personal appearance. But certainly this explanation is hardly satisfactory, and it is not easy to see how we can avoid finding in the narration a distinct declaration that Samuel actually appeared and spoke. The only thing in the account itself that opposes this view is the fact that the woman only and not Saul saw the apparition. But it is quite possible that the apparition may have been in a different room from that in which Saul found himselfthough this is not mentioned. Such seems to be the plain statement of the text. The dogmatic and other difficulties are discussed by Erdmann. Chandler, in his Life of David, gives a full and forcible presentation of the grounds for supposing the whole affair to be an imposture by the woman.Tr.]
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Starke: 1Sa 28:1. Pious men are walls and pillars of cities and lands, Eze 22:30; therefore if such men have to start away, all misfortune starts forth too. (Gen 7:7 sq.). 1Sa 28:2. Virtue and bravery deserve to be rewarded; but the world is wont to promise believers reward, in order to draw them off from the right way (Mat 4:9).[1Sa 28:3 : Scott: Hypocrites are frequently very zealous against those crimes to which they are not tempted at the time, or from which they may suffer detriment; and apostates frequently commit those sins, which they once were most earnest in opposing.Tr.].
1Sa 28:4-5. J. Lange: So it goes with the ungodly, that here already they feel in themselves a hell, when their evil conscience awakes in them.Schlier: Saul fears before men, because he no longer feared God; if we see things rightly, all fear has no other ground than lack of the fear of God.The fear of man has its ground in unbelief; true fear of God makes one strong and courageous.
1Sa 28:6. Starke: To go to God when in distress is good and necessary; but it must be done without hypocrisy, with true repentance and from the heart (Isa 26:16).If we do not hear Gods voice when it goes well with us, God can and will refuse to hear our voice also, when it goes ill with us (Pro 1:24 sq.). S. Schmid: Ungodly men and hypocrites care little for God and His service in good days: but when misfortune comes, then they wish to become pious also, and seek Gods counsel and help in every way.Schlier: The Lord gave Saul no answer. To turn to the Lord Saul has not wished; had he wished that, he would also have found the Lords grace. But Saul had no concern about that; he wished to use the Lord for his own ends, he needed a disclosure about his situation, and such a disclosure he wished to force for himself without returning to the Lord.Calvin: By this example we should learn to draw near to God with all humility when we wish to ask His counsel in prayer, far from all obstinate self-will and passion; for His arm is not shortened that He cannot help those who take refuge in Him. Whence comes it that so often our prayers are in vain, and our hopes deceive us? Our sins shut off the grace of God from us, and our unrighteousness separates us from our God, and fixes an immeasurable gulf between us and God.
1Sa 28:7. S. Schmid: Happy is he who so receives Gods punitive silence or other signs of His wrath, as to be led thereby to true repentance; but hardened hearts take refuge, when God is silent, in wicked men and Satan.Schlier: An example of the fact that the unbelief which has lost the living God is always full of superstition instead, and thereby is turned over not merely to empty delusion and vain deception, but also to the powers of darkness.The human heart needs something to cling to, something to which it may hold fast, a prop which its tendrils may firmly clasp; therefore when it leaves Him for whom it was made, when it sinks into unbelief, then it clings to the power of superstition and of darkness. Nothing frees from superstition but true faith.[1Sa 28:7. Taylor: Here is the great difference between Saul in his sins, and David in his backslidings. From each of his falls you hear David come sobbing out a sorrowful confession and appeal like that in the fifty-first Psalm; in each of Sauls wickednesses you see him assuming the attitude of sterner defiance toward the Almighty; or if there be any sorrow in his heart at all, it is for the loss he has himself sustained, or the suffering he has himself endured, and not for the dishonor which he has done to God.Tr.].
1Sa 28:8. Hedinger: So great is the power of conscience that even those who desire evil are ashamed to have it known.Cramer: The ungodly love darkness and shrink from the light (Joh 3:19), but God knows their works (Pro 17:16).
1Sa 28:11-12. Hedinger [from Hall]: It is no rare thing to lose even our wit and judgment together with graces; how justly are they given to sottishness, that have given themselves over to sin!
1Sa 28:15. Schlier: We see here quite clearly that the souls of the righteous rest in Gods hand, and no torment touches them. He who dies in faith enters into rest in the Lord his God; and since, though the whole world come and use all its arts of sorcery, it brings no such soul back to the earth any more, it follows that we men have no power over departed spirits.[Scott: Many who despise the servants of God while they live, are so far convinced of their wisdom and fidelity, that they vainly wish for their counsel and instruction, in distressing circumstances, after their death. But in that blessed world to which they are removed, they have done with fear, favor and affection, and are become far more determined than ever in the service and cause of God; and were they to appear they would denounce the doom of impenitent sinners with more awful decision than before.
1Sa 28:15. Taylor: I am sore distressed. Oh! the wild wail of this dark misery! There is a deep pathos and a weird awesomeness in this despairing cry; but there is no confession of sin, no beseeching for mercy; nothing but the great, over-mastering ambition to preserve himself.Tr.].
1Sa 28:16. S. Schmid: He is highly unfortunate and foolish who, when God forsakes him, prefers to seek help and counsel from creatures, rather than by true repentance to make himself again a reconciled friend to God.Schlier: Wilt thou have light for all the riddles and dark questions of this life, betake thyself to Gods Word; there enough is revealed, there is what is necessary to find everything, and what goes beyond that, comes of evil.
1Sa 28:18. Schlier: Gods wrath is so dreadful, that when all has been in vain He utterly gives up the sinner to His judgments, and unsparingly causes him to learn that sin is ruin to a people.The judgment of hardening comes only when the crime of hardening has first entered. When we shut ourselves against the voice of God, then on the part of God also must hardening follow, as surely as God is a holy and righteous God, who does not allow Himself to be trifled with.
1Sa 28:20. Cramer: The ungodly do not grow better after Gods wrath is made known, but always worse (Act 7:54). [Taylor: Alas for Saul! how changed is he now from that day when Samuel communed with him concerning the kingdom, or when, in the first noble assertion of his royal right, he delivered the men of Jabesh-Gilead from their threatened destruction! Did ever promise of so fair a life ripen into such bitter fruit?Tr.]
[1Sa 28:1-2. One of two things David must now do, and either will be grossly wrong, disgraceful, and hurtful both to himself and to others. To this miserable alternative he had brought himself, by distrusting God and relying on deception. It is one of the severest earthly penalties of wrong-doing, that it often leads to the apparent necessity of doing other and greater wrong.
[1Sa 28:4-20. Contrast between Saul and David at this crisis of their history: 1) Both are in great distress. We see David in the camp of the Philistines, seemingly compelled to fight against Israel and against the anointed of Jehovah (comp. 1Sa 26:11); and presently we see Saul journeying in fasting and fatigue, in peril and gloomy desperation across the mountain, and entering in disguise the witchs abode. Both are entirely unable to decide what to do or what to hope for. 2) Each is suffering the consequences of past sin. 3) But one has utterly forsaken God, and feels that God is departed from him, and now the sad story of his disobedience comes back (1Sa 28:17-18), and his worst fears are confirmed (1Sa 28:19), till at last, behold his mighty frame prone on the earth in an agony of despair. The other has yielded to distrust and fallen into sin, but has not at heart abandoned the Lord; it may have been in no such lively exercise then as to give him any comfort, but sinning, sorrowing David had still in his heart the fear of Jehovah. 4) And as a result, the fallen king, ruinously defeated and despairing, dies next day by his own hand (31); while the merciful over-ruling of Gods Providence extricates David from his position (29), and prepares for him a new chastening, which brings him to repentance and trust (1Sa 30:4; 1Sa 30:6-8). Behold the difference between a sinning man impenitent, unbelieving, proud, and a sinning man ready to repent, clinging to faith and really humble before God. (Comp. below on chap. 30., Hist, and Theol.).Tr.]
[1Sa 28:21-25. Even in a sorceress, with all her deceptions and delusions, her wild and dreadful life, the true woman comes out at the mute appeal of misery. How kindly persuasive her words; how prompt her hospitable labors. We take leave of her, as she took leave of the ruined king, with a pitying heart.Tr.]
Footnotes:
[1][1Sa 28:1. Literally camps (). The same word in the last clause of this verse is rendered battle [army], and in 1Sa 28:19, host [camp].Tr.]
[2][1Sa 28:1. Syr. adds: to the ravine (), perhaps a repeated misreading of . Sept. has , apparently taking as Inf. in its original meaning go forth.Tr.]
[3][1Sa 28:2. Sept. now ( inst. of ), which is better.Tr.]
[4][1Sa 28:2. Sept.: chief of the body-guard.Tr.]
[5][1Sa 28:3. The is omitted in some MSS. and in Sept., Syr., Vulg.; it may be explained as appositional or epexegetical; but the omission is easier.Tr.]
[6][1Sa 28:3. Usually now rendered necromancers. So the Chald. (); Syr., Vulg. and Aq. have magicians.Tr.]
[7][1Sa 28:3. This is a literal rendering of the Heb., which means: those who know (Eng. wizardfrom the verb wit, to know), Erdmann die klugen leute, so the Greek. Other VSS. render sorcerers, which is the proper sense.Tr.]
[8][1Sa 28:6. The VSS. are troubled by this word. Sept. , Aq. , Sym. , Syr. by fire, Vulg. per sacerdotes. See the Exposition.Tr.]
[9][1Sa 28:7. is the ordinary form of the construct. of . Here the relation expressed (lit. woman of a possessor of Ob) would be simply the appositional. The word may possibly be an absolute form, comp. Deu 21:11. Erdmann: a woman that hath a necromantic spirit.Tr.]
[10][1Sa 28:8. De Wette, Philippson, Erdmann render by necromancy (todtenbeschwrung); but Ob is the spirit, not the art; Cahen: par (lesprit d) Ob.Tr.]
[11][1Sa 28:10. Properly iniquity (), then its result, blame (Erdm., schuld), punishment.Tr.]
[12][1Sa 28:10. The Dagh. in the , which is merely euphonic, is omitted in very many MSS.Tr.]
[13][1Sa 28:12. Lit.: and thou art Saul, explanatory =for. But we may render: why hast thou deceived me, and thou art Saul? Erdmann: du bist ja Saul.Tr.]
[14][1Sa 28:13. The , which is here strange, may be=but in rapid excited talk. Sept. say what thou sawest, where say is an obvious insertion. Other VSS. omit the (Vulg., Syr.).Tr.]
[15][1Sa 28:13. So De Wette, Cahen, Philippson. Sept., Syr., Arab., Vulg. have Plu., as Eng. A. V. Chald.: the angel of Jehovah. Erdmann has geist. See Exposition.Tr.]
[16][1Sa 28:14. Sept.: , upright; they probably read for (Schleusner).Tr.]
[17][1Sa 28:15. The short (Waw consec.) form of the verb is found in 2 MSS.Tr.]
[18][1Sa 28:16. On the text-reading see the Exposition. Aq., Theod.: , Sym. .Tr.]
[19][1Sa 28:17. Vulg.: faciet enim tibi Deus. So Sept. and some MSS.: to thee. The other VSS. are as the Heb., which is better maintained as the harder reading.Tr.]
[20][1Sa 28:19. The here is difficult, unless we render: both Israel and thee. Otherwise the is without explanation, and would seem to be repeated from the third clause. Wellhausen thinks the first and third clauses identical, and omits the first because of the unintelligible . Yet the camp in the third clause seems to difference it from the first, and the conjunction may be explained as above or dropped. The Heb. text is supported by the VSS.Tr.]
[21][1Sa 28:20. Lit.: hasted and fell, according to a common Heb. idiom, Ges. Gr. 142. Sym.:, Sept.: . In 1Sa 28:21 the Sept. renders by this same word the Heb. , troubled, whence Wellh. would read the latter word, but unnecessarily, for the present text gives a good sense, and Sept. might be right here, and wrong in 1Sa 28:21.Tr.]
[22][1Sa 28:23. Instead of , some MSS. and EDD. have . The former=violently pressed on, the latter=besought. The text, as the stronger and more vigorous, must be maintained.Tr.]
[23][1Sa 28:23. Many MSS. and EDD. read inst. of , and so the ancient VSS. seem to have read. is difficult here.Tr.]
[24][1Sa 28:24. Sept. : Sym.: , Others: .
[25][This incorrect name comes from a misunderstanding of Psa 89:12 (13).Tr.]
[26][According to Stanley (Sin. and Pal., IX., 1Sa 2:3) Saul was stationed nearly on the site of Gideon’s camp. See Art. Gilboa in Smiths Bib-Dict., and Hacketts note, Amer. Ed.Tr.]
[27][Bp. Patrick notes that the same three classes are mentioned in Iliad 1:62.Tr.]
[28][Not necessarily here in the good sense, more probably it and prophet are intended to describe all classes of predictions.Tr.]
[29] , Kethib, , Qeri, comp. Ew. 40 b: the O-sound is sometimes so pressed by new endings that it recedes to a foregoing vowelless consonant, and is sometimes repeated with two adjacent consonants, as In such cases we find the half-vowel echo Oo in the same syllable (commonly found only with gutturals), generally with , and in a loosely connected syllable as here. Comp. Jdg 9:8.
[30][Whatever may be the original meaning of the stem (), the reasoning of Thenius, endorsed by Erdmann, is very unsafe. We know too little of primeval onomatopoeia to base etymologies on it. The example of Gen 30:42 cannot be decisive for the original meaning of Elohim, and, if it were, the actual historical meaning is a question of use, not of etymology. Now Elohim is elsewhere in the Old Testament used only of god and judges or kings.Tr.]
[31]On the – parag. instead of -, for strengthening, see Ew. 228 c, A. 1.
[32] = enemy, occurs elsewhere only in Psa 139:20, a Psalm which undoubtedly contains some Aramaic words and forms, and in Dan 4:16 as a Chaldee wordnot in Psa 9:7 and Isa 14:21, where the form is to be otherwise explained. We might take the word as Aramaic form of , the interchange of Heb. and Aram. being not infrequent, like and in Greek (examples in Ges. under letter n. 3); and though there is no other Aramaic form in this section, and the word (for ) appears with this signification mostly in poetry (Job 36:16; Lam 1:5; Lam 1:7; Lam 1:10), yet the prophetical style (as here) is not far removed from the poetical, and might be used here as well as in Num 10:9, which is not properly poetical; the Aramaic change of into might easily come by error in copying. The use of might be explained as a designed reference to in 1Sa 28:15. But the absence of before makes a difficulty, never occurring in such a construction without it; though, while unexampled, it, would not be ungrammatical (Maur.). We should expect . Does not this then cast suspicion on the whole expression, especially as in Psa 139:20 is not assured? It is certainly surprising and noteworthy that Sept.: , and Vulg.: transierit ad mulum tuum [in Psalms 139. Sept. , Vulg. adversariiTr.], render (comp. Syr., Ar.) as if they read = and is with thy neighbor, which Then. thence adopts as the true reading. These translations may indeed be mere conjectural paraphrases (Keil), or may have had in mind the of the following verse and the parallel passage, 1Sa 15:28 (Maur.). It is hard to decide, the pros and cons being so nearly balanced.
[33][But Justin Martyr (Dial. cum Trypho) holds that it was really Samuel.Tr.]
[34][And Cyril of Alexandria and Jerome.Tr.]
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
We are hastening to the close of the reign and life of Saul. The Philistines are preparing for a battle fatal to Saul. He is dispirited and dismayed; and instead of looking to the Lord, he betakes himself to familiar spirits; the sad consequence which follows, and the alarms of Saul, are rehearsed in the close of this chapter.
1Sa 28:1
(1) And it came to pass in those days, that the Philistines gathered their armies together for warfare, to fight with Israel. And Achish said unto David, Know thou assuredly, that thou shalt go out with me to battle, thou and thy men.
See Reader, in this preparation of the Philistines for battle against Israel, the sad effects of Israel departing from the Lord. The Lord had promised when he settled his people in their kingdom, to drive out all nations from before them, and that there should not be a man to stand before them. But, when Israel deserted the Lord, the Lord raised up enemies to Israel, as his instruments to correct them. See Jos 1:3-5 . But Reader! when you have duly pondered this subject, as it concerns Israel of old, look at it again, as it concerns Israel now. Are not our unsubdued corruptions, our unhumbled lusts, and the remains of inbred sin in our mortal bodies, like those Philistines waging war with the soul? Did you and I live wholly to Jesus, would those enemies dare rise up against us? How important is that exhortation of Peter, when he said, Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul. 1Pe 2:11 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Saul and the Witch of Endor
1Sa 28:7
I. How Valued and Beneficent Presences may be Withdrawn. What pathos there is in the fact that on the eve of dreaded battle Saul has not his friend, his teacher, his pastor, to consult. Samuel was dead. Samuel had been everything to Saul. But Saul had not treated him well. He had slighted his old friend. Saul would have given a great deal to have had his rejected and grieved friend now, but ‘Samuel was dead’.
II. How a Man may Cut Himself Off from Divine Influences. ‘When Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord answered him not.’ May we get so forlornly far? Yes, we may so sin and sin and sin, we may so fatally harden ourselves, that God will have nothing to do with us.
III. How Low a Man may Sink by Sin, Is this Saul? Yes in ruins.
( a ) He is physically and mentally enfeebled. You see that by the fear and trembling which seizes him as he looks across from Gilboa to Shunem and sees the Philistine camp. His sins have so wrought on him that he is in a state of collapse.
( b ) Saul is now doing what once he condemned. Early in his reign he put out those that had familiar spirits and the wizards out of the land. Now he is actually proposing to consult one of the obnoxious herd.
( c ) Having given up God Saul is compelled to resort to strange methods. He the King of Israel is on the way to consult a woman who has a familiar spirit.
IV, See how the Tragedy Culminates. Saul’s servants tell him that at Endor there is a woman reputed to have ‘a familiar spirit’. Saul confronts the wild old creature at her cave door, a diabolical inspiration seems to be upon Saul, for he not only asks the witch to ‘divine by the familiar spirit’ but he goes so far as to beg her to practise necromancy and to read the future by means of the dead. The leering scoundrel says, ‘whom shall I bring up unto thee?’ The infatuated Saul, all trepid, shaking with uncontrollable excitement, cries ‘Bring me up Samuel’. No description is given of the arts the witch used. But the issue is plainly stated. ‘The woman saw Samuel,’ and at the same time she discovered that her interlocutor was King Saul. Saul perceived it was Samuel. He falls overwhelmed and obeisant. And the spirit of the seer cries, ‘Why hast thou disquieted me to bring me up?’ Saul tells his woeful tale. Samuel assures Saul that he can do nothing in his behalf, seeing God has become his adversary because of his sins. Then he adds this prophecy, ‘To-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me’.
V. From this Seance let us Learn
( a ) How God confounds evildoers. Little thought Saul that the scene in Endor’s cave would be so tragically real.
( b ) How near is the spirit world; strangely soon did the spirit form appear. The world unseen is close to us.
( c ) Men seem to retain in the spirit world the appearance they have on earth. Samuel’s form was identical with that he had when here.
( d ) God often gives solemn intimations concerning eternity ‘To-morrow’. Saul and his sons were to die. The Almighty forewarns them.
( e ) Mercy rejoices over judgment in God. Samuel said to Saul, ‘To-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me’. ‘With me.’ And in what part of the spirit world was Samuel? Samuel was in immortal and ineffable bliss.
Saul and his sons were to be with Samuel. I think that this can only mean that Saul was in his few remaining hours to repent, and once more to receive ‘the root of the matter’ into his nature. Then when death destroyed his body his pardoned and purified soul was to be received into paradise. He who said to the dying robber, ‘Today shalt thou be with Me,’ allows Samuel to say to the stricken Saul, ‘To-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me’.
Dinsdale T. Young, Neglected People of the Bible, p. 74.
References. XXVIII. 6. J. Bowstead, Practical Sermons, vol. i. p. 80. XXVIII. 13. E. A. Askew, Sermons Preached in Greystoke Church, p. 21. XXVIII. 15. G. W. Brameld, Practical Sermons, p. 344. XXIX. 8. J. M. Neale, Sermons for the Church Year, vol. ii. p. 256. XXX. 4-6. Ibid. Sermons Preached in a Religious House, vol. ii. p. 555.
Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson
Saul At Endor
1Sa 28:7
SAMUEL was dead, and all Israel had lamented him, and buried him in Ramah, even in his own city. The death of such a man so described! How graphic in its simplicity is this book of God! No common author could afford to treat his best materials in this way. The writer who spins himself into fine sentences would have dwelt long and carefully upon the death of Samuel; he would have told how dreary was the hollow sound of the moaning wind on the burial day, how tearfully came the moon to look at the new grave in Ramah, and how orphan-like and inconsolable were the stunned hosts of Israel. Such decorations do not make us richer; these perishable tapestries of the hireling’s pen are out of season when a man like Samuel is called away to the starry places and the quietudes of the upper Zion. Samuel was dead! That is enough. Death is not poetical. The fine old cedar has fallen; let us turn aside, and be silent for a while.
But Saul! The dark day came when Saul needed a light; in its dread gloom, he looked Samuel-ward, but no fiery pillar glowed upon the old man’s grave. Samuel was dead, Saul was dead too; for though he lived, yet his heart’s strength had withered, and his heart’s joy had perished. Sometimes one life is all the world to us. So long as that dear life lives we cannot be altogether sad. The day may be very gloomy, but we have a bright light shining in the heart. So strange, too, is our human life, that even our neglect of that one redeeming power does not destroy its good influence; we know where it is; we are careless, yet not unappreciative; we are perhaps ungrateful, yet down in the very secret of the heart there is a living love; hence when trial comes, or swift darkness swallows up the path, or great fire-bolts strike the towers of our ambition, we hasten to the trusted one to hide ourselves in the love we never should have left. But what if we be too late? What if God have withdrawn the defence we have neglected, so that when we run to the familiar place, or hasten to the neglected door, we find a stranger there, or be answered only by the echoes of the silent chambers? The reckless young man says in his far-away wanderings, when money is gone and health is wasted, “I will return to the house of my childhood, and be glad amongst my old loves and hopes;” but the place knows him no more; a stranger’s face is in the window of his home; he tells the tale of his shame to a heedless world; and soon there forces itself upon his reluctant consciousness the terrible truth that the breaker of hearts must be branded as the chief of murderers.
Not only was Samuel dead, but the Lord himself gave Saul no answer, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets. It is of no use for some men to pray. They have sinned away the day of grace. By iniquity upon iniquity they have built up between themselves and God a great wall. By the exceeding multitude of their sins they have exhausted the patience of God. “We had better say this very plainly, lest we encourage false hopes, and undertake a case which admits of no defence. If a man put out his own eyes, shall we urge him to try to see, and pity him because he is blind? If a man wilfully destroy his hearing, what boots it that we exhort him to listen? Madness! To some men I have this message to deliver: You have shut yourself out from God, you have deafened yourself against his counsel, and would none of his reproof, you have starved the good angel within you which sang the sweet song of your youthful hope, you have murdered your own soul: toll the knell; report the news in heaven: a man has slain the God that was in him, and now he awaits but the hour which shall see him thrown into the only darkness which can hide his shame. He is “without God and without hope in the world;” there is now no summer in his life; he is winter-bound and filled with desolation.
In the intensity of his fear Saul said, “Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit, that I may go to her, and inquire of her.” What a fall, from the Lord God of Israel to a witch hiding in a cave! Even in such a fall there is much to teach us respecting the higher life of man. Better that a man should seek to consult the spiritual world through the medium of a witch than that he should be the most prosperous of materialists. That may seem a hard thing to say, but its hardness may be in its truth. Given two men, to say which is the wiser: the one is a materialist, who scorns the idea of God and all the other ideas which flow from it or properly belong to it; he has no faith, no anticipation of a spiritual future; to him there is nothing valuable but gold, and nothing certain but death; he prospers exceedingly in all the affairs of this life, and has more than heart can wish: the other worships a stone which is to him the image of God; he has faith in a spiritual region round about him; scientifically, he is utterly ignorant; socially, he is of the smallest account; theologically, he is in the lowest stratum of idolatry: given such men, to say which is the wiser, and unhesitatingly we pronounce for the wisdom of the idolater. Better worship a stone than never worship at all; better believe in an Indian’s happy hunting ground beyond the grave than believe in no other life than this. The idolater occupies larger life-spaces than the materialist; he drinks at deeper springs; he hears a finer music in all the movements of creation. Of course we condemn belief in witches and in witchcraft; we laugh it to scorn. But what was Saul to do? Consider his education. Remember the tremendous and desolating loss which he had sustained: Samuel gone: the Philistines upon him; his reason unsteady; the heavens, which dropped down dew upon his life, now hard as Brass. He went to Endor in the hour of despera tion. His theology might be ideally correct, but he could not use it, God had gone up far beyond the cry of his pain, and Samuel was buried in Ramah. Thank God, in that hour Saul did not become a defiant atheist or materialist: he still believed in the divine and spiritual, and treated with impatience the mocking solaces of things seen and temporal. Pity the materialist more than you pity the heathen. Condemn materialism more strongly than you condemn the most fanatical displays of spiritualism: train your children to believe in ghosts rather than to believe in nothing but dust and death; the crudest, weakest faith is infinitely preferable to the animalism which makes man all flesh, or the insanity which only trains life so as to add another sting to the last enemy.
“Then said the woman, Whom shall I bring up unto thee? And he said, Bring me up Samuel.” The worlds are nearer together than we think. What is there in reason, in the fitness of things, or in Scripture itself, to forbid the idea that we are surrounded by spiritual existences? What is thy universe, O man? Thou makest thine own creation. Is it a poor little world, all surface, whose pools dry up, and whose roots disappoint the hunger of the body? Is thy world but a graveyard, cold, gloomy, death-governed, with hopelessness written on every stone, and flowers sickening and perishing on every dewless mound? At best, is it but a wheat-field and a vintage watered by a great river, but never bathed by the living tide of a spiritual eternity? It is a poor sad world, not such as thy Father meant it to be to thy soul. How different is the world to some of us! Round about it is a mantle of light: oft descending into its air are spiritual watchers and harpers sent to do us good, to save our feet from stumbling, and to comfort the soul during the drill and culture of this school-life; it is an isthmus connecting us with the immeasurable and everlasting; a bridge by which we pass into riches and rest, infinite and indescribable; a flying star-chariot, on which we hasten to sunnier climes; it exhausts all figures and images which signify emancipation, joy unspeakable, and glory ever-during. This faith is the gift of Jesus Christ; when he was alone, he was not alone; he spoke of the angels being near: in the wilderness of temptation an angel ministered unto him; in the agonies of Gethsemane an angel strengthened him. The angels hastened Lot; the angel saved Daniel from hurt; the angel delivered Peter from prison; the angel spake to Paul on the stormy sea. “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?” Let us seize the inheritance, and be rich with all the Father’s wealth.
The pathetic incident shows: 1. The rapidity with which a man may fall from the highest eminence. “Because thou obeyedst not the voice of the Lord, nor executedst his fierce wrath upon Amalek, therefore hath the Lord done this thing unto thee this day.” There is but a step between thee and death.
2. The awful possibility of being cut off from spiritual communication with the divine and invisible. “God is departed from me, and answereth me no more, neither by prophets, nor by dreams.” “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord: and they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it.” “Mischief shall come upon mischief, and rumour shall be upon rumour; then shall they seek a vision of the prophet; but the law shall perish from the priest, and counsel from the ancients.”
3. The certainty that one day the impenitent will want their old teachers. “Bring me up Samuel.” “I have called thee, that thou mayest make known unto me what I shall do.”
The solemn lesson of the whole is Seek ye the Lord while he may be found. One day he will enclose himself within inaccessible depths; we shall cry, but he will not answer; we shall say, “Lord! Lord!” but he will not know us; we shall shout as men shout in mortal anguish, and only hear the mocking echo of prayer too long delayed.
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
XIV
ZIKLAG, ENDOR, AND GILBOA
1Sa 27:1-31:13
Let us analyze David’s sin of despair, and give the train of sins and embarrassments that follow. The first line tells us of his sin of despair, 1Sa 27:1 : “And David said in his heart, I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul.” It is a sad thing to appear in the life of David, this fit of the “blues” that came on him, and was utterly unjustifiable. In fact, he is done with Saul forever. Saul will never harm him again, and he is very late in fearing that he will one day perish by the hand of Saul. It reminds us of Elijah under the juniper tree, praying that he might die in his despair, when God never intended him to die at all but to take him to heaven without death. It was unjustifiable because the promises to him were that he should be king, and he should not have supposed that God’s word would fail. It is unjustifiable because up to this time he had been preserved from every attack of Saul, and the argument in his mind should be, “I will be preserved unto the end.”
The distrust of God sometimes comes to the best people. I don’t claim to be among the best people. I am an average kind of a man, trying my level best to do right, and generally optimistic and no man is ever whipped until he is whipped inside, and it is a very rare thing that I am whipped inside. Whenever I am it lasts a very short time. I don’t stay whipped long. But we may put it down as worthy of consideration in our future life that whenever we get into the state of mind the Israelites were in about the Canaanites that we are “mere grasshoppers in their sight and in our own sight,” then our case is pitiable. Let us never take the grasshopper view of ourselves.
That was the first sin, the succumbing of his faith; the temporary eclipsing of his faith. The next sin is this: “There is nothing better for me than that I should escape into the land of the Philistines.” Had he forgotten about God? Had he forgotten that he had tried that Philistine crowd once and had to get away from there without delay? Had he forgotten when he went over into Moab and was told by the prophet to get back to his own country? God would take care of him. That sin is the child of the other.
His third sin was that before taking such a decisive step he didn’t ask God a very unusual thing for him. Generally when anything perplexed him he called for the Ephod and the high priest and asked the Lord what he should do, but he is so unnerved through fear of Saul that he does not stop to ask what God has to say, and so that is a twin to the second sin, that was born of the original one. Without consulting anybody he gathers up his followers with their women, children, and everything that they have, and goes down to Gath, and there commits his next sin. He makes an alliance with the king of Gath and becomes tributary to him.
That in turn leads to another sin. He is bound to fight against the enemies of God’s cause, and so, occupying a town, Ziklag, bestowed upon him by the Philistine king, he marches out secretly and makes war on the Geshurites and Ginzites and Amalekites, and for fear that somebody would be spared to tell the Philistines that he was killing their allies, he kills them all, men, women, and children. Now, if he had been carrying out a plan of Jehovah he would have been justified, but the record says that he did it for fear that if he left any one of them alive they would report the fact to King Achish of Gath. His next sin is to tell a lie about it. We call it “duplicity,” but it was a sure-enough lie. He made the impression on Achish’s mind when he went out on this expedition that he was going against Judah, which pleased the Philistine king very much, for if he was fighting against Judah, then Judah would hate him and the breach would be widened between him and his own people.
We now come to another sin. Each sin leads to another. The Philistines determined to make a decisive war against Saul, and not to approach him in the usual way, but to follow up the boundary of the Mediterranean Sea and strike across through the very center of Palestine and cut the nation in two from the valley of Esdraelon. So Achish says to David, “You must go with us. You are our guest and ally and occupying a town I gave you.” So David marches along with his dauntless 600, and evidently against the will of his own men, as we will see later. He does go with the Philistines to the very battlefield, and when they get there the Philistines, seeing that he is with the court of the king, object to’ his presence and will not allow him to go to the battle with them. So he returned to the land of the Philistines.
I have no idea that he ever intended to strike a blow against Saul. I feel perfectly sure of it. When the battle was raging he would have attacked the Philistines in the flank with his 600 men, but he made the impression on the mind of the king that he would fight with them against Saul. The providence of God kept him from committing that sin.
These are the six sins resulting from getting into the wrong place just one time. I don’t say he won’t get into the place again, but this time he certainly was cowed. A man can’t commit just one sin. A sin can outbreed an Australian rabbit. The hunter sometimes thinks he sees just one quail, but when he flushes him, behold there is a pair or maybe a covey! There is a proverb that whoever tells a lie ought to have a good memory, else he will tell some more covering that one up, forgetting his first statement. I am sorry to bring out this charge against David, but I will have a much bigger one to bring out before we are done with him. He is one of the best men that ever lived, but all the good men that I know have their faults.
I have never yet been blest with the sight of a sinless man. I know there are some people who claim to be perfect and sinless, but I don’t know any who really are. A great modern sermon was preached on this despair of David, taking that first line as a text: “I shall one day perish by the hand of Saul.” The preacher was John McNeil, who is called the “modern Spurgeon.” He has charge of one of the livest churches in London and has published several volumes of sermons. This is the first in one of his books, and it is a great one.
This sin of David was punished in two ways. While he was off following the Philistines to the battlefield, these same Amalekites that he had been troubling so much, swooped down on Ziklag the town given to David by Achish and there being no defenders present, nobody but the women and children, they burned the town. They didn’t kill any one, but they took all the women and the children and the livestock and the furniture and everything made as clean a sweep as you ever saw, including both of David’s wives, Ahinoam and Abigail. The second punishment was that his own men, who didn’t want to go up with the Philistines, wanted to stone him for what bad happened when he was gone. His life was in danger.
But he recovered himself from this sin. When he saw the destruction of Ziklag and the temper of his men, the text says that David “greatly encouraged his heart in God and called for the high priest and the Ephod.” What a pity he hadn’t called for him sooner! But God is quick to answer readily, and forgive his erring children, and to put away their sin, and the answer comes through the Ephod to David’s questions: “Shall I pursue after this troop? Shall I overtake them?” and God’s answer comes as quick as lightning, “Pursue them, for you shall overtake them and you shall recover all.” That was a very fine reply for a sinner to get when his troubles arose from his own sin, and so he does pursue them with his 600 men, and David in pursuit of a foe was like the Texas rangers. If a man’s horse gave out they left it. If a man himself gave out they left him. They just kept pursuing until they found and struck the enemy. That was the way with David.
A third of his force, 200 of his brave men, when they got to a certain stream of water, could not go any farther. He had to leave them and go with just 400 men. Out in the desert he finds a slave of one of the Amalekites, an Egyptian, starving to death. He had had nothing to eat for three days. David fed him, and asked him if he would guide them to the camp of the Amalekites. He said he would if they would never let his master get him again, and David came upon them while they were feasting and rejoicing over the great spoils. He killed all of them except about 400 young men who rode on camels. They got away. Camels are hard to overtake by infantry. They are very swift. And your record says that David recovered every man, woman, and child and every stick of furniture, besides all the rich spoils these desert pirates bad been gathering in for quite a while, cattle and stock of every kind.
David made the following judicious uses of the victory:
1. On the return, when they got to where those 200 were left behind, certain tough characters in his army did not want the 200 men to share in the spoils. They could have their wives and children, but nothing else. David not only refused to follow that plan, but established a rule dating from that time, that whoever stayed behind, with the baggage must share equally with those that went to the front. These men did not want to stay, but they couldn’t go any farther.
At the battle of San Jacinto, Houston had sternly to detail a certain number of his men to keep the camp, and they wept because they were not allowed to go into the battle. Those men that were detailed to stay in camp ought to be counted as among the victors of the battle of San Jacinto, and history go counts them.
2. The second judicious use that he made of the spoils captured from these Amalekites was to send large presents to quite a number of the southern cities of Judah that had been friendly to him and his men. He was always a generoushearted man. That made a good deal of capital for David. Even had he been acting simply as a politician, that was the wisest thing he could have done. But he simply followed his heart.
There were great accessions to David at Ziklag. The text tells us, 1Ch 12:1-7 , that there were about twenty-three mighty men, some of whom were Benjamites, who had come from Saul’s tribe, and they were right-handed and left handed. They could shoot an arrow with either hand. They could use either hand to sling a stone, and among these twenty-three were some of the most celebrated champions of single combat ever known in the world’s history. One of them, Jashobeam, in one fight killed 300 men with one spear.
SAUL AND THE WITCH OF ENDOR It is important for us to note just here the Mosaic law against necromancy, or an appeal to the dead by the living through a medium, i.e., a wizard, if a man, or a witch, if a woman, and wherein lies the sin of necromancy, which relates exclusively to trying to gather information from the dead. The law of Moses, in the book of Deuteronomy, is very explicit that no Israelite should ever try to gather information from the dead through a wizard or a witch, and the reason is that hidden things belong to God and revealed things to us and our children. The only lawful way to information concerning what lies beyond the grave is an appeal to Jehovah, and if God does not disclose it, let it alone. The prophetic teaching on this subject is found in the famous passage in Isaiah: “Woe to them that seek to wizards and witches that chirp and mutter. Why should the living seek unto the dead instead of unto the living God?”
Early in his reign Saul had rigidly enforced the Mosaic law putting the wizards and witches to death, or driving them out of the country.
There are several theories of interpretation concerning the transaction in 1Sa 28:11-19 , but I will discuss only three of them. Saul himself goes to the witch of Endor and asks her to call up Samuel, making an inquiry of the dead through a medium, wanting information that God had refused to give him. These are the theories:
1. Some hold that there was no appearance of Samuel himself nor an impersonation of him by an evil spirit; that there was nothing supernatural, but only a trick of imposture by the witch, like many modern tricks by mediums and spirit rappers, and that the historian merely records what appeared to be on the surface. That is the first theory. That is the theory of the radical critics, who oppose everything supernatural, and you know without my telling you what my opinion is of that theory. There are indeed many tricks of imposture by pretended fortunetellers, and some of them are marvelous, but such impostures do not account for all the facts.
2. Others hold that there was a real appearance of Samuel, but -the witch didn’t bring him up; she was as much if not more, startled than Saul when he came; that God himself interfered, permitting Samuel to appear to the discomfiture of the witch, who cried out when she saw him, and to pronounce final judgment on Saul. They quote in favor of this theory Eze 14:3 ; Eze 14:7-8 : “Son of man, these men have taken their idols into their heart, and put the stumbling block of their iniquity before their face: should I be inquired of at all by them? . . . For every one of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that separateth himself from me, and taketh his idols into his heart, and putteth the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and cometh to the prophet to inquire for himself of me; I, Jehovah, will answer him by myself; and I will set my face against that man, and will make him an astonishment, for a sign and a proverb, and I will cut him off from the midst of my people.” They interpret this passage to mean that when a man violated God’s law,. as Saul and this witch did, that God took it upon himself to answer, and answered through Samuel.
That theory is the Jewish view throughout the ages. According to the Septuagint rendering of 1Ch 10:13 , “Saul asked counsel of her that had a familiar spirit, and Samuel made answer to him.” It further appears to be the Jewish view by the apocryphal book Sirach 46:20, which says, “After his death Samuel prophesied and showed the king his end, and lifted up his voice from the earth in prophecy.” The Jewish view further appears in Josephus who thinks that Samuel was really there, but that God sent him; not that the witch had brought him up or could do it. This view was adopted by many early Christian writers; for example, Justin Martyr, Origen, and Augustine, all great men, and this view is held more and more by modern commentators, among them, for instance, Edersheim, in his History of Israel, and Kirkpatrick in the “Cambridge Bible,” and Blaikie in the “Expositor’s Bible,” and Taylor in his History of David and His Times. All those books I have recommended; they all take that second view.
3. Now here is the third theory of interpretation. First, there is such a thing as necromancy, in which, through mediums possessed of evil spirits which spirits do impersonate the dead and do communicate with the living. This theory holds that the case of Saul and the witch of Endor is in point that an evil spirit (for this woman is said to have had a familiar spirit; she was possessed with an evil spirit and the business of these evil spirits in their demoniacal possession is to impersonate dead people;) caused the semblance of Samuel to appear and speak through his mouth. This theory claims that the scripture in Job 3:17 , to wit: “When the good man dies he goes where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest,” would be violated if this had really been Samuel, who said, “Wherefore hast thou disquieted me?” And whoever this man was that appeared did say that.
If God had sent him he could not very well have used that language. God had a right to do as he pleased, but Saul had no right to try to call back a dead man to get information from him. This theory also claims that the prophecy pronounced by that semblance of Samuel was not true, but it would have been true if Samuel had said it. That prophecy says, “Tomorrow thou and thy sons shall be with me,” but Saul didn’t die until three days later; on the third day the battle of Gilboa was fought, and that Samuel, neither dead nor alive, would have told a falsehood. Very many early Christian writers adopt this theory, among them Tertullian and Jerome, the author of the Vulgate or Latin version of the Bible, and nearly all of the reformers, Luther, Calvin, and all those mighty minds that wrought out the reformation. They took the position that the evil spirit simulated Samuel. Those who hold to this theory further say that unless this is an exception, nowhere else in the Word of God is any man who died mentioned as coming back with a message to the living except the Lord; that he is the first to bring life and immortality to light through the gospel after he had abolished death. They do not believe that the circumstances in this case warrant an exception to the rule that applies to the whole Bible, and particularly they quote the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man asks that Lazarus might go back to the other world with a message to his brethren, and it was refused on the ground that they have Moses and the prophets, and if a man won’t hear Moses and the prophets neither would he hear though one rose from the dead. That makes a strong case.
Certainly the first theory is not true, and the other two theories are advocated with such plausibility and force that I will leave you to take whatever side you please. My own opinion is that Samuel was not there, but on a matter of this kind let us not be dogmatic. Let us do our own thinking and we will be in good company no matter which of these last theories we adopt.
A great many years ago, when spirit rapping was sweeping over the country, it was a custom among Methodist preachers to tell about visitations they had from the dead, and warnings that they had received, and J. R. Graves fought it. He said that it was against the written law of God, the law of Moses and the prophets, and our Lord and his apostles, and that we didn’t need any revelations from dead people, whereupon a Methodist preacher named Watson challenged him to debate the question and they did debate it. Graves stood on this position: There isn’t a case in the Bible where one who died was allowed to come back with a message to the living but Jesus only, and he is the only traveler that has ever returned from that bourne to throw light on the state of the dead. In the debate, of course, the central case was that of Saul, the witch of Endor and Samuel. If Watson couldn’t maintain himself on that it was not worth while to go to any other case. Watson quoted the appearance of Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration. Graves said, “Yes. They did appear, but they had no message for living people; none for the apostles.” Then he finally made all of his fight on this case. I read the debate with great interest. It was published, but it is out of print.
GILBOA The description of the battle and the results are so explicit in the text that I refer the reader to the Bible account of this great battle. But we need to reconcile 1Sa 31:4-6 , and 1Ch 10:4-6 . Both of these assert that Saul committed suicide fell on his sword and died and that he did die (2Sa 1:6-10 ), where that Amalekite who brought the news to David of the battle says that he found Saul wounded, and that Saul asked the Amalekite to kill him, and that the Amalekite did kill him. The Amalekite brought also to David a bracelet and a crown that belonged to Saul. You are asked to reconcile these two statements. Did Saul commit suicide? We know he tried to do it, but did he actually commit suicide, or did that Amalekite, after Saul fell on his sword, find him still alive and kill him? My answer is that the Amalekite lied. The record clearly says that Saul did kill himself, and his armor-bearer saw that he was dead, and every reference in the scriptures is to the death by his own hand except this one. This Amalekite, knowing that Saul and David were in a measure rivals, supposed that he might ingratiate himself with David if he could bring evidence that he had killed Saul.
There is no doubt that this Amalekite was there and found Saul’s body, and no doubt he stripped that dead body of the bracelet and the crown, but his story was like the story of Joe in the “Wild Western Scenes.” An Indian had been killed, stabbed through the heart, and the heart blood gushing all over the man who slew him. The fight was so hot that Joe, being a coward, stayed there fighting the dead Indian, and so they found him there stabbing and saying that the man that had first stabbed him through thought he had killed him, but that he was not dead and had got up and attacked him, and he had been having a desperate fight with the Indian.
The news of this battle sadly affected Jonathan’s son. Everybody that heard of the battle started to flee across the Jordan, and the nurse picked up Jonathan’s child and in running dropped him and he fell, and became a cripple for life. We will have some very interesting things about this crippled child after a while.
The gratitude and heroism of the men of Jabeshgilead are worthy of note.
The Philistines had cut off Saul’s head and sent it back to the house of their god, and took his armor and hung up his body and the body of his son Jonathan and the bodies of the two brothers of Jonathan on the wall of Bethshan, and when the men of Jabeshgilead (who had been delivered by Saul as the first act of his reign, and who always remembered him with gratitude) heard that Saul was killed, they sent out that night their bravest men and took those bodies down, carried them over the Jordan, burned them enough to escape recognition, and buried their bones under a tree. A long time afterwards David had the bones brought and buried in the proper place. I always think kindly of those men of Jabeshgilead.
David’s lament over Saul and Jonathan is found in 2Sa 1 . That lamentation, expressed in the text, is one of the most beautiful elegaic poems in the literature of the world. It is found on page 104 of the textbook. It is not a religious song. It is a funeral song, an elegy, afterward called “The Bow,” and David had “the song of the bow” taught to Israel, referring to Jonathan’s bow. I give just a little of it: Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, Who clothed you in scarlet delicately, Who put ornaments of gold upon your apparel. How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle!
Now the tribute to Jonathan: Jonathan is slain upon thy high places. I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: Very pleasant hast thou been unto me. Thy love to me was wonderful, Passing the love of women.
Every admirer of good poetry bears tribute to this exquisite gem, and it has this excellency: It forgets the faults and extols the virtues of the dead. Saul had done many mighty things. That part of Gray’s Elegy, “No further seek his merits to disclose,” compares favorably with this. It is the only elegy equal to David’s.
QUESTIONS
1. Analyze David’s sin of despair, and in order, the train of sins and embarrassments that follow.
2. What great modern sermon was preached on the despair of David, taking this line for a text: “I shall one day perish by the and of Saul”?
3. How was this sin of David punished?
4. How does he recover himself from this sin?
5. What judicious uses of the victory did he make?
6. What were the great accessions to David at Ziklag?
7. What is the Mosaic law against necromancy, or an appeal to the dead by the living through a medium, i.e., a wizard, if a man, or a witch, if a woman, and wherein lies the sin of necromancy?
8. What is the prophetic teaching on this subject?
9. What had Saul done to enforce the Mosaic law?
10. What are the theories of interpretation concerning the transaction in 1Sa 28:11-19 ?
11. Describe the battle of Gilboa and the results.
12. Reconcile 1Sa 31:4-6 and 1Ch 10:4-6 .
13. How did the news of the battle affect Jonathan’s son?
14. Describe the gratitude and heroism of the men of Jabeshgilead.
15. How did David lament over Saul and Jonathan, 2Sa 1 ?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
1Sa 28:1 And it came to pass in those days, that the Philistines gathered their armies together for warfare, to fight with Israel. And Achish said unto David, Know thou assuredly, that thou shalt go out with me to battle, thou and thy men.
Ver. 1. And it came to pass in those days. ] When Saul’s sin was now grown ripe and ready for the sickle, and David as a weaned child was now fitted for the kingdom.
Thou shalt go out with me to battle.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
men. Hebrew. ‘. enosh. App-14.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Chapter 28
So it came to pass in those days, that the Philistines gathered their armies together for warfare, to fight with Israel. And Achish said to David, Know assuredly, that you shall go out to battle with me, you and your men. So David said to Achish, And you shall know what your servant can do. Achish said to David, Therefore I will make you the keeper of my head for ever. [In other words, sort of putting David over as his personal bodyguard and all.] Now Samuel was dead, and Israel had lamented for him, and buried him in Ramah, even in his own city. And Saul had put away those that had familiar spirits, and wizards, out of the land. And the Philistines gathered themselves together, and came and pitched in Shunem: and Saul gathered all Israel together, and they pitched in Gilboa ( 1Sa 28:1-4 ).
Now Gilboa is up in the area just south of the Sea of Galilee. So the Philistines had really moved a long way against the Israelites. Gilboa is clear over-actually the one side of Gilboa goes down to the Jordan River. So the Philistines had really taken a lot of the territories at this point. Saul was being boxed in to just a very small area. There he was encamped in Gilboa.
And when Saul saw the host of the Philistines, he was afraid, and his heart greatly trembled. And Saul inquired of the Lord, but there was no answer either by dreams, nor by the Urim, nor by the prophets ( 1Sa 28:5-6 ).
Now God speaks to us in many different ways. God can speak to us by dreams. Now I don’t believe that I personally have ever had a dream that had any spiritual significance to it. But now that I’m getting to the age, as the scripture said, “Your old men shall dream dreams,” maybe I’m going to someday start getting dreams with spiritual significance. Let me say this, though to my own belief I’ve never had a dream with any spiritual significance, it doesn’t stop me from realizing that I may someday have a dream that has spiritual significance, and I’m open to it. Just because I never had it, I don’t say, “Well, God doesn’t speak to men through dreams anymore.” I believe that God can still speak to people through dreams, and I’m open to dreaming if God wants to speak to me in a dream, I’m open to it. I’d be thrilled and delighted to have God speak to me in a dream.
God also speaks to people through visions. Now I have had visions in which God did speak to me. God speaks to people through the prophets, and I have had God’s word come to me through anointed brothers and sisters in Christ, that I recognize as God’s word to me.
In the Old Testament God also spoke through the Urim and the Thummin, which were a part of the priest’s garments. They were a little sort of a pouch that he wore, and they say that there was a black stone, and a white stone, and that the black stone was a no answer, and the white stone was yes. Whether or not that is actually so, I don’t know, but somehow God spoke through the Urim and the Thummin. Now the words actually mean “lights and perfections,” and it could be rather than stones, which have become sort of a traditional kind of a thing, it could be that this thing would light up that the priest wore. When God would say yes, that this thing would light up. But God was not answering Saul’s prayers by any of these methods by which they were accustomed to God speaking to them.
Now I’m interested in God speaking to me, however. God spoke to some of them through angels. But God has spoken, and God continues to speak to me constantly through His Word. This, I think, is the place where you learn to start knowing to hear the voice of God, getting into the Word. It’s so important that you’re in the Word, and God has that opportunity to speak to you through His Word.
So God wasn’t answering the prayers of Saul,
So Saul said to his servants, Find me a woman that has a familiar spirit, that I may go to her, and inquire of her. And his servants said to him, Behold, there’s a woman that has a familiar spirit at Endor. And Saul disguised himself, and put on other raiment, and he went, with two men, and they came to the woman at night: and he said, I pray thee, divine unto me by the familiar spirit, and bring me him up, whom I will name unto thee. And the woman said unto him, Behold, you know what Saul hath done, he has cut off all of those that have familiar spirits, and the wizards out of the land: why are you laying a snare for my life, to cause me to die? And Saul swore to her by Jehovah, saying, As Jehovah lives, there shall no punishment happen to thee for this thing ( 1Sa 28:7-10 ).
Now there of course is that weird mixture in Saul. Here he is talking to a witch, and swearing by the Lord that no evil will come to her if she goes ahead and practices her witchcraft and brings forth a spirit that he is desiring. “As Jehovah lives,” swearing by the Lord.
There are a lot of people who are really mixed up in the whole spiritual life, just a total confusion in spiritual things, using spiritual phraseology. You know, it’s like planning to rob a bank, and then having a prayer meeting, “Now Lord, help us to pull off this job successfully.” It’s just really confusion. Here he is engaged in this woman who is possessed by a demon. Actually that’s what it means, “a familiar spirit,” a demon-possessed woman. Going to her for counsel and advice, bringing back a spirit.
And then the woman said, Whom shall I bring up to thee? And he said, Bring me up Samuel. And when the woman saw Samuel, she screamed: and the woman spake to Saul, saying, Why have you deceived me? for you are Saul. And the king said unto her, Don’t be afraid: what did you see? And the woman said, I saw the gods ascending out of the earth. And he said unto her, What form was he? And she said, He was like an old man covered up; and his coverings with a mantle. And Saul perceived that it was Samuel, and he stooped with his face to the ground, and bowed himself. And Samuel said to Saul, Why have you disquieted me, to bring me up? And Saul answered, I am sore distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and God is departed from me, and he answers me no more, neither by the prophets, nor by dreams: therefore I’ve called thee, that you may make known to me what I shall do. Then said Samuel, Why do you ask me, seeing the Lord is departed from you, and is become your enemy? And the Lord hath done to him, as he spoke by me: for the Lord has taken the kingdom out of your hand, and given it to your neighbour, even to David: And because you obeyed not the voice of the Lord, nor executed his fierce wrath upon Amalek, therefore hath the Lord done this thing unto thee this day. Moreover the Lord will also deliver Israel with thee into the hand of the Philistines: and tomorrow you and your sons will be with me: [Oh, that would be a heavy thing to lay upon somebody wouldn’t it?] and he’ll deliver the host of Israel into the hand of the Philistines ( 1Sa 28:11-19 ).
Now did Samuel really come back? Did this witch actually bring back a spirit from the dead? I would like to say I see no reason at all for not believing the story just as it is written. I always feel that the obvious interpretation is the correct interpretation. If you try to force another interpretation into the text, that actually the very fact that you’re trying to force something, means that it doesn’t fit. I do not understand this whole issue. But I am convinced that even as it is written, so it happened, and that somehow Samuel did come back. That it was indeed Samuel that talked with Saul. The spirit of Samuel was brought back, and that it was a genuine experience of dealing with spirits that have departed and are in the other world.
It would seem that the witch herself was shocked because of what happened. She screamed when she saw Samuel. It could be that she had been using, as these spirit mediums all, often do, just a particular demon spirit that gives them information.
Now there is a reality to the spirit world, there is a reality in spiritism, but you are warned by the Bible to stay away from that kind of stuff. That is, isn’t something that you should be dabbling with. But it is possible to contact spirit entities. But as a general rule what a person is contacting is a demon that can disguise himself as different persons.
Now these demons having lived in the various ages, and being in the spirit realm, able to observe many things, are naturally able to tell you facts about your life, and about the past that nobody else ever knew. Usually people are drawn into these kinds of things because the person is able to tell them names, and to tell them experiences that they had as a child, or that they had sometime during their life that is sort of locked up in their own heart. They’ve never told anybody else, and now this spirit has told me and revealed these things to me, and you get all excited and you think, “Oh, I’m actually contacting the spirit of my mother, because that was something that only my mother and I knew.” Not so. Demons knew it too. Thus they are able to rehearse for you conversations that you had, experiences that you had, things that took place. Lying spirits disguising themselves as one of your dead loved ones. There is a reality to the demon spirits and all, and this woman having a familiar spirit, or a demon spirit, was able to consult the demon spirit.
Now there are people who dabble into this realm of spiritism and some of them get spirit guides, and they direct their writing, or they direct their arts, and people get into all kinds of things, using spirit guides. But they are demon spirits who disguise themselves as say the spirit of a writer of the past, or something of this nature.
There is a real world of spirits. There is a real world of demon spirits, as there is the real world of the angelic spirits that are still obedient to God. But it is the world that we are warned not to dabble with, not to get involved with. The fact that they can hypnotize a person and put them in age regression, take them back before their birth, and then supposedly go back to previous lives, and get the names of Annie Murphy and the street she lived on, and all this kind of stuff, doesn’t prove reincarnation at all. It only proves demons have been around for a long time, and they can use all kinds of guises in order to deceive people, and draw people into their deceptions.
Now I personally believe that this woman was shocked and surprised when Samuel came back. She expected to have a little conversation with her demon guide, and her demon spirit, and from him to get the information that Saul was seeking. But to her amazement this spirit actually came out of the earth, and she shrieked when she saw it. All of a sudden she realized the truth, “That’s Saul.” Samuel began to talk to Saul, and God allowed this to happen, a special dispensation of God that surely it isn’t a criteria for us to seek to contact the spirits of those that have departed to be with the Lord.
Now Samuel came up out of the earth, prior to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, every one who died went into Sheol which is in the lower parts of the earth, or in the heart of the earth. Prior to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Sheol was divided into two separate compartments as is taught by Jesus in Luke’s gospel chapter sixteen. There was one compartment where Abraham was encouraging, and comforting those who died in faith. There was another part where the sinners were being in a state of torment. Jesus speaks about it very clearly and plainly in Luke’s gospel. After the ascension of Jesus Christ or at the ascension of Jesus Christ, those who were being comforted by Abraham, and in that part of Sheol were resurrected with Christ, and went on into the heavenly scene.
For Paul tells us in Ephesians, the fourth chapter, “He who has ascended is the same One who first of all descended into the lower parts of the earth, and when He ascended, he led the captives from their captivity.” Fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah sixty-one that declared, “He would loose the bonds, and set at liberty those that were captives.” So He set at liberty those that were being held captive by death. In Matthew twenty-seven we read, “And the graves of many of the saints were opened, and they were seen walking through the streets of Jerusalem after His resurrection from the dead.”
So Samuel coming up out of the earth, spoke to Saul telling him that God had departed from him. What a horrible thing. But you see, what could you expect? He was a man who had departed first from God. “Because you disobeyed the voice of God, God has departed from you. Because you have rejected God, God has rejected you. And tomorrow you and your sons are gonna be here with me.”
Saul fell on the ground, he was sore afraid, because of the words of Samuel: there were no strength left in him; for he had not eaten all that day, nor that evening. The woman came to Saul, and she saw that he was [afraid,] troubled, she said, Behold, your handmaid has obeyed your voice, I’ve put my life in my hand, I’ve hearkened unto your words which you spoke unto me. Now I pray thee, hearken thou also unto the voice of thine handmaid, and let me set a morsel of bread before you; that you may eat, and have strength, that you may go your way. And he refused, and he said, I will not eat. But his servants, together with the woman, pressed upon him until he ate; and so the woman fixed dinner for him ( 1Sa 28:20-25 ). “
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
It is strange how this story has been made to serve in defense of things occult, which, as a matter of fact, it condemns. Let it be carefully read, and it becomes perfectly patent that this woman had nothing to do with bringing up Samuel. Still practicing her black art, and that in secret, because of the king’s edict against all of her class, she commenced, on the occasion of Saul’s visit, to practice the deceptions with which she was familiar. When in response to her incantations, as it seemed, Samuel actually appeared, she was startled beyond measure.
That Samuel actually did appear to Saul there can be no doubt. However, he was sent of God for the express purpose of delivering the terrible message to Saul, to which the king listened in amazement. It was the pronouncement of his doom, and the call from the other side to the spirit of the man who had so utterly and disastrously failed to fulfil his opportunity.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
Resorting to a Familiar Spirit
1Sa 28:1-14
This chapter records the climax to which Sauls sins led, and which sealed his fate. See 1Ch 10:13-14. He went back to that which he had put away and sought counsel of a familiar spirit, 2Pe 2:20-22.
The soul cannot live apart from the unseen world. It is its native element. Divorce it from God, and it will fill the empty space with demons. When the king could get no answer to his questions by the usual means, he sent his servants, in desperation, to seek for a medium. Had he been right with God, there would have been no need for this. It is the decay of the old religious spirit that nowadays gives occasion for the rise of crystal-gazing, palmistry and spirit-rapping. What a tragedy was presented that night in the witchs hut, and how terrible must have been Sauls long tramp to and fro, between his own encampment and Endor, which lay in the rear of the Philistine host! It is an evil thing and a bitter to forsake the fountain of living waters, and hew out broken cisterns that can hold no water, Jer 2:13; Jer 2:19.
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
1Sa 28:15
We have before us here a picture of a God-deserted man; one who has in former times had plenteous advantage and revelation, but who has forsaken God until God has forsaken him in turn, and who is now joined to his idols, seared against the penitent desire; one who presents that most appalling of all wrecks of ruin-a human soul consciously severed from the sympathy, and bereft of the favour, of the Divine.
I. There is illustrated here the accelerating progress of evil. From the monarch on the eve of the battle of Jabesh-Gilead, to the monarch on the eve of the battle of Gilboa, what a fearful fall! Saul had suffered, because Saul had sinned. In his elevation he had forgotten God. Pride had stolen away his heart; he had been guilty of repeated and flagrant disobedience, and it is an easy descent to perdition when the bias of the nature is seconded by the strenuous endeavours of the will.
II. To every sinner there will come his moment of need. The worldling may prolong his revelry and accumulate his gain, but the hour will come when he will discover that the world is a cheat and that riches cannot always profit. Your hour of need may be nearer than you think. God’s mercy may still delay it, but it will come-the hour of trial, when sorrow breaks upon sorrow, like billows upon a desolate strand. Flee to the ever-willing Saviour now and you shall have no need to work some foul enchantment in order to wring direction from the sheeted dead.
III. This subject illustrates the terrible power of conscience. Saul’s greatest enemy was within-the wounded spirit, a more dreaded foe than all the Philistine armies; the dogs of remorse more furious than the dogs of war. And so it always is with the sinner. Christ alone can still the tempest with a word, whether it rage upon a Lake of Galilee or surge and swell on a poor sinner’s soul.
W. MORLEY Punshon, Sermons, p. 35.
I. We, in this world, are in a state of probation. (1) We are placed amongst a multitude of outward things which perpetually force us to choose whether we will act in this way or in that; and every one of these choices must agree with the holy and perfect will of God, or else be opposed to it. (2) The especial trial of us Christians consists in our being placed amongst these temptations under the personal influence of God the Holy Ghost, so that in every such distinct act of choice there is either a direct yielding, or a direct opposition to His secret suggestions.
II. The necessary consequences of every act of resistance to the Holy Spirit must, by a twofold process, carry us on towards final impenitence. For (1) by our moral constitution, the breaking through any restraint from evil, or the resisting any suggestion of good, carries us by an inevitable reaction somewhat farther than we were before in the opposite direction. (2) By resisting the Holy Spirit we cause Him to withdraw from us those influences for good in which is alone for us the spring and possibility of amendment. As a necessary consequence of such a withdrawal the progress of the forsaken soul towards final hardness is inevitable.
III. These, then, are the lessons from this fearful subject. (1) That we strive diligently to maintain such a temper of watchful observance for the motions of the Blessed Spirit as that we may never unawares resist or neglect any of His lightest intimations. (2) Let us learn not to trifle with any sin. (3) If through our exceeding feebleness we have fallen, let us learn to look straight to the cross of Christ and strive diligently in His strength to arise again.
S. Wilberforce, University Sermons, p. 222.
References: 1Sa 28:15.-M. Nicholson, Communion with Heaven, p. 206; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. v., p. 1. 1Sa 29:6. with 1Sa 30:1, 1Sa 30:2.-F. W. Krummacher, David the King of Israel, p. 199; Parker, vol. vii., p. 52. 1Sa 29:8.-J. M. Neale, Sermons for the Church Year, vol. ii., p. 256. 1Sa 30:6.-J. Van Oosterzee, Year of Salvation, vol. ii., p. 448; J. M. Neale, Sermons in Sackville College, vol. ii., p. 195. 1Sa 30:6-8.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvii., No. 1606. 1Sa 30:13. -Ibid., Evening by Evening, p. 72. 1Sa 30:20.-Ibid., My Sermon Notes, Genesis to Proverbs, p. 64. 1Sa 30:24.-Outline Sermons for Children, p. 43. 1Sa 31:4.-R. C. Trench, Sermons Preached in Ireland, p. 321.
Fuente: The Sermon Bible
7. Saul and the Witch at Endor
CHAPTER 28
1. David fully joined to Achish (1Sa 28:1-2)
2. Forsaken Saul (1Sa 28:3-6)
3. The command to seek a witch (1Sa 28:7)
4. Sauls visit to Endor (1Sa 28:8-14)
5. Samuels solemn message (1Sa 28:15-20)
6. Sauls despair and departure (1Sa 28:21-23)
Sauls final plunge towards his awful end is the main topic of this chapter. Israel had adopted necromancy, asking the dead, and other occult and wicked practices of the Canaanitish nations. They had those who were possessed by demons; the so-called mediums of spiritism and the modern day Psychical research endeavors follow the same paths. Saul had cleared the land of these necromancers. Saul became frightened by the advancing Philistines. But when he asked the Lord there was no answer. Then in despair he sought the woman with the familiar spirit at Endor. Disguised he sneaked away to the woman. And he swears unto her in the Lords name to exempt her from all punishment in breaking the law. What presumption! He demands to see Samuel. The woman no doubt had the power to communicate with wicked spirits, who represented themselves as those who had died. It is the same in spiritualism. The messages which are transmitted through the women mediums in that cult do not emanate from the dead at all, but from lying spirits, who impersonate the dead. More than once has this been practically demonstrated. When this woman at Endor saw Samuel, she cried out in fear and at the same time she recognized the king, who told her not to be afraid. (It has been suggested that the word Samuel should be Saul in verse 12. The woman, it is said, recognized Saul, which would explain the second half of that verse. However, there is no reason why such a change should be made.) She had not expected the return of Samuel from the realms of death. Was it really Samuel or only an apparition? There can be no doubt whatever that it was Samuel who came up. It was by Gods own power and permission that he appeared to pronounce the final doom upon Saul. And what a message it was! The LORD is departed from thee and become thine enemy;–the LORD hath rent the kingdom out of thine hand;–the LORD will deliver Israel with thee into the hands of the Philistines. Then came the announcement of his death and the death of his sons. Tomorrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me. This means that they were to die. Perhaps the more correct rendering is given in the Septuagint version, which reads: Tomorrow shalt thou and thy sons with thee be fallen.
Solemn is the record of Saul as given in 1Ch 10:13. So Saul died for his transgressions which he committed against the LORD, even against the Word of the LORD, which he kept not, and also for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit, to enquire of it. Such was the condition and doom of the peoples king, before Gods king came into power. Here is a striking and significant type of the conditions on the earth before Gods King, our Lord Jesus Christ, the son of David and Israels King is enthroned. The kings of the earth and nominal Christendom are disobedient to the Word of God. They like Saul commit transgressions against the Lord and follow seducing spirits and doctrines of demons (1Ti 4:1). It is said that a number of European rulers have their own mediums and necromancers. But the kings of the earth defying God and His laws will be dragged lower still. The spirits of demons, working miracles, will yet go forth, during the closing years of this present age, and possess the kings of the earth and the whole world and gather them together to the battle of that great day of God Almighty, the battle of Armageddon (Rev 16:13-16). This is foreshadowed in Sauls apostasy and in Sauls end.
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
that the: 1Sa 7:7, 1Sa 13:5, 1Sa 17:1, 1Sa 29:1
Philistines: Jdg 3:1-4
thou shalt go: 1Sa 27:12, 1Sa 29:2, 1Sa 29:3
Reciprocal: 1Sa 31:1 – the Philistines 1Ch 10:1 – the Philistines fought
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
SAULS CAREER ENDED
CALAMITY FORETOLD (1 Samuel 28)
This chapter is important and illustrates again the deceptive character of Saul. Having professedly put the necromancers out of Israel in obedience to the divine command (Lev 19:31; Lev 20:27; Deu 18:10-11), he no sooner finds himself in straits than he seeks out one of them for his aid.
Two questions arise. Did Samuel really come forth from the dead, and was it the womans power that brought him forth? To the first we answer yes, on the evidence of 1Sa 28:12-16, and to the second, no. The woman was surprised to see Samuel and affrighted (1Sa 28:12), which is proof that she was not a factor in the matter, and that God brought up Samuel to rebuke Saul.
Two other questions follow. Is it possible for human beings to talk with the dead, or lawful to do so? We answer no in both cases. Spiritualistic mediums may have intercourse with demons who by their superior knowledge personate the dead, but they are not permitted of God to bring back the dead themselves. On the other hand God may be at liberty to do what He would not permit His creatures to do.
How are we to understand the words Tomorrow shalt thou be with me. Was not Samuel one who feared God and Saul the opposite? How then could the future life of both be located in the same place? The answer is that the Jews regarded the place of the dead as composed of two realms, one for the righteous and one for the unrighteous. Saul might be with Samuel in that he was among the dead, and yet not in the sense that he was in the company of the righteous dead.
THE EVIL IN OPERATION (1 Samuel 29-30)
There is no apology for Davids hypocrisy in this chapter, but the situation in which he found himself was the result of the unbelief that led him to leave the land of his fathers and throw in his lot with the Philistines (1Sa 27:1).
Achish shows up better than he in this transaction, for he seemed to have confidence in David (1Sa 28:1-2). And had it not been for the shrewder judgment of his princes (1Sa 29:3-5), David would have been found playing the traitor to him later, for it is unlikely he would have fought for him against his own kith and kin.
Chapter 30 may be included in this division because it still has to do with David. There is nothing in it requiring explanation except the observation in 1Sa 30:6, that David encouraged himself in the Lord his God. How he did it, and what encouragement he received is indicated in 1Sa 30:7-8, but why God would be willing to encourage such a man puzzles us, till again we think of ourselves. The best of us are unbelieving, mean, and hypocritical at times, and yet Gods patience waits, and does not destroy and cast away. The reason is that Gods love for us terminates on His own glory. He is doing these things for His Names sake. His honor is at stake in the execution of His purposes and the fulfilling of His will. He had great plans for Israel and the world through David. And He is not measuring us by what we now are, but by what He sees us to be when the work of grace is perfected in us in the ages to come. David becomes a different man even before his earthly career is ended, and we find something of the same transformation in his career as in that of his progenitor, the supplanted Jacob who became Israel, the prince who prevailed with God (Gen 32:28).
THE END REACHED (1 Samuel 31)
We need not comment on the events of this chapter which tell their own story, but the following from Illustrations of Scripture, by Hackett, will be quickening to faith:
I venture to affirm that he who compares the Bible account of this battle with the regions around Gilboah, has the same sort of evidence that it relates what is true as a person would have concerning the battles of Saratoga, Yorktown and Waterloo, should he compare their histories with the localities where they occurred.
Some of the most celebrated battlefields of Grecian and Roman history correspond imperfectly with the descriptions of ancient writers. The writers may be trustworthy, but the villages they mentioned have changed their names or entirely disappeared. In some cases convulsions of nature have altered streams, or disturbed landmarks between hills and valleys. But Sauls battleground remains mapped out on the face of the country, almost as distinctly as if it occurred in our time, and yet it occurred in an age more remote than the founding of Rome, or the siege of Troy.
QUESTIONS
1. How does chapter 28 illustrate hypocrisy?
2. What reason is there to doubt that the womans power brought forth Samuel?
3. What is the nature of mediumistic power, and how is it limited?
4. How did the Jews regard the place of the dead?
5. Describe the equivocal position in which David finds himself in chapter 29, and explain it.
6. What is the secret of Gods long suffering patience with His people?
7. How do present facts substantiate the story of the battle?
Fuente: James Gray’s Concise Bible Commentary
1Sa 28:1. The Philistines gathered their armies together Sir Isaac Newton judges that they were recruited about this time by vast numbers of men driven out of Egypt by Amasis. This probably was one reason why they resolved on a new war with Israel, to which, however, Samuels death and Davids disgrace were doubtless additional motives. Achish said to David, Thou shalt go out with me to battle Achish formed this resolution in consequence of his knowledge of Davids merit, and the thorough confidence he had in his fidelity.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
1Sa 28:4. Shunem, in the tribe of Issachar, not far from mount Hermon.
1Sa 28:7. A woman that hath a familiar spirit: a mistress of OB. See Deu 18:11. The LXX read pythoness, a word often used by Herodotus for the Sybils or priestesses of heathen temples. It was understood that she was familiar with an evil genius, but an evil genius that certainly had no power over Samuel. The African negroes in the West Indies still preserve the Hebrew word, and affect to practise obi, by incantation to demons who cannot help them.
1Sa 28:8. Saul disguised himself, that the woman might not know him; that the army might not suspect his absence, and that he might conceal the shame of his oracle from his country.
1Sa 28:11. Bring me up Samuel. Augustine, knowing that Satan is often transformed into an angel of light, says it was the devil personating Samuel. This has deceived many. Matthew Henry has adopted Augustines opinion. The woman was terrified. She saw a presence with whom she was not familiar, who, according to Josephus, informed her who her guest really was.
1Sa 28:12. When the woman saw Samuel, she cried with a loud voice: for besides Samuel who was clad in his mantle, she saw gods; that is princes and governors ascending out of the earth; and she was told by one present, that the disguised person was Saul himself. Moses in his strong injunctions to destroy both witches and wizards, founded the divine law on the fact, that some of the humankind are so depraved as to maintain intercourse with wicked spirits. And how revolting soever this may be to the believer, or the unbeliever, we must never be ashamed of the doctrines of revelation. The whole system of revealed religion is founded on an intercourse with the invisible world. The text is also very explicit, that Samuel himself on this great occasion, actually appeared; for when Saul saw him, he stooped with his face to the ground. The terrors of the woman contribute not a little towards identifying the person of Samuel; she knew he was a sacred character over whom her accursed arts had no power. Hence God was pleased, on this occasion, to send Samuel, as he sent Moses and Elijah to talk with Jesus on the mount. Matthew 17. So the author of Ecclesiasticus asserts: he not only identifies the person, but enumerates the objects of Samuels appearing: chap. Sir 46:20. He told Saul that the battle should be fought the next daythat the Philistines should conquerthat the host or spoil should fall into their handthat Saul should be slainthat his three sons should likewise be slainand that David should succeed him in the throne, because he had disobeyed the Lord in the affair of Amalek. Now all these circumstances were too many and too distinguished for a cunning wicked woman to invent. Besides, a woman of that character would have been more inclined to flatter than to add to the kings affliction, by an abrupt disclosure of all those terrific predictions. Hence the sneers of infidels, who pretend that this was a mere juggling trick of the woman, fall to the ground. Saul, attended by two of his valiant friends, would never have prostrated before any being less venerable than Samuel. And it would have been almost impossible to have deceived him, having so long known and revered the holy prophet.
1Sa 28:16. Wherefore then dost thou ask of me? It would have been far better for Saul to have been ignorant of the future, till the God of futurity had made known his pleasure. He and his friends might then have fought with courage and hope: now he went to battle with a dead soul in a living body. Samuel had said in plain words. to-morrow, thou and thy sons shall be with me. The LXX, thou and thy sons with thee shall fall.
REFLECTIONS.
What a lamentable scene does this chapter present. Saul, once very humble, and once a prophet, having long abused the high fruits of heaven, found that the day of his visitation approached. God had a long reckoning with him for his pride and covetousness in sparing Agag, and the flocks of Amalek; for a multitude of tyrannies, and the effusion of innocent blood. Now his day was come, and it was the darkest day of all his life. Mark his situation: he was divested of all the grace and courage conferred at his anointing; for talents long abused are resumed by the giver. When he saw the enemy he was sorely afraid. One would have thought his first steps would have been to recal David, and to renew the national covenant with God; but those ideas he would not admit. Assailed with a thousand fears, he went to the dreamers; but they had no dreams. He next applied to the priest; but the Urim was silent. He went last of all to the prophets; but they had no vision. Ah, how vain for men to apply to the Just and Holy One, till they have first renounced their sins, and to the uttermost of their power repaired their faults. Every wicked man ought therefore to profit by the situation of Saul in the last moments of his life. A day is coming when neither friends, nor physicians, nor even the best ministers of religion will be able to afford them help.
Saul, unable to face his foes, and finding heaven silent, had, strange to say, recourse to the devil. In his early and more pious days, he had purged the land of necromancers, yet he now sends his servants to enquire for a woman who had a familiar spirit; and bad masters often find servants bad employment. He fondly believed, if Samuel would come to his aid, that Israel would yet be safe. Therefore he disguised himself and went to the pythoness of Endor. Oh fie! fie for the king of Israel, when he ought to have been planning the battle, haranguing his troops, and praying to his God, shamefully to have recourse to a woman, the agent of hell. How weak and cowardly, are the wicked when arrested by the hand of justice. The moment heaven lifts up its arm, their spirits droop, and all their boasted strength is fled.
This woman, consummate in her profession, had for a long time had the address to elude the decrees of Saul, who had in pious zeal sought to extirpate such wicked persons from the land. She required an oath of the Lord, that the stranger would not divulge her practices; for secresy emboldens wickedness. Then in hope of reward, she proceeded with her incantations to the powers of hell. Scarcely had she uttered her cries than the vision appeared, and more terrific than she expected. Scarcely had she uttered her fears of death and alarm in the ears of Saul, before Samuel appeared, realizing the anxious wishes of his soul. But what comfort did he bring the prostrate and affrighted king? Comfort he brought him none; and counsel he did not attempt to give; that Saul had always despised. Samuel regarding him now solely as a criminal at the bar, reproached him for his daring wickedness in disquieting the dead, and violating the order of heaven. He then once more apprized him of his ejectment from the throne, and of the election of David; and instead of repeating counsels long contemned, he solemnly passed the sentence of death on the guilty king, in which his sons and most of his army were included. Every sinner may assure himself, that whenever God shall speak, it will be consonant to the language of conscience; for conscience is the echo of heaven in every mans bosom. We learn consequently the awful state of man when the Lord is departed from him. There is sometimes an annunciation of the sentence of justice, which may be reversed on repentance, as in the cases of Hezekiahs death, and Ninevehs destruction; and the thought is very encouraging. But in other cases the Lord passes the sentence absolutely, as in the case of Esau and of Saul; then repentance will not avail. And though Sauls sentence regarded but his throne, and his life; yet from his conduct after the sentence was first passed on his return from Amalek, we have some fears for his salvation. For there is a period in the scale of crimes when the balance turns, and when grace will no more soften the heart, and the Lord will have no regard to the prayers and tears of the wicked in their affliction.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
1Sa 27:1 to 1Sa 28:2. David at Gath (J).Sequel to 1Sa 26:25 (cf. 1Sa 21:10-15).
1Sa 27:1-6. As a last resource David takes refuge at Gath.
1Sa 27:6. Ziklag: Jos 15:31.
1Sa 27:7-12. This paragraph does not simply give an account of a single episode, but describes Davids habitual occupation during this period. He made raids upon the heathen tribes to the S. of Judah, the inhabitants of the land from Telam (so Driver and others, with some LXX MSS., for of old) to the borders of Egypt. These were hostile to Israel, so that David was fighting for his own people. But in order to ingratiate himself with Achish, David said that he had raided the districts of the Negeb (p. 32) or extreme S. division of Palestine, which were inhabited by the allied and kindred tribes of the Judahites, Jerahmeelites, and Kenites. In order that Achish should not learn the truth, David massacred those whom he plundered, both men and women. The primitive documents do not seem to attach much importance to veracity, especially to foreigners (cf. the stories of the Patriarchs). When the Philistines are preparing for another campaign against Israel, Achish notifies David that he and his men will be expected to fight on the side of the Philistines. David gives an ambiguous answer, Thou shalt see what thy servant will do, which Achish would take to mean, You shall see the great things I will do to help you. Achish proposes to make him the captain of his bodyguard.
1Sa 27:10. Jerahmeelites: a tribe in the Negeb, probably not originally Israelite, but later on reckoned to Israel.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
The inevitable conflict between Israel and the Philistines arises again, and David finds himself in an unpleasant situation Achish tells him that he and his men must accompany Achish to fight against Israel. Could he possibly do this? No! Could he explain this to Achish? Nol Instead he answers him In a way that sounded favorable to Achish, but did not commit himself one way or the other. He told him, “You shall know what your servant can do” (v.2). This sounded so enthusiastic to Achish that he promised to make David his bodyguard forever. David never did take this promotion.
SAUL’S VISIT TO A SPIRIT MEDIUM
We are reminded In verse 3 that Samuel had died and was buried with the lamentation of all Israel. Also Saul, likely out of respect for Samuel, had outlawed the practice of spiritism In Israel. Saul had before rejected the Word of the Lord. and now he has no help from Samuel. What is he to do? The Philistines have come to fight against Israel (vs.4-5) and their number and apparent power dismays Saul. He knows he himself is not equal to the occasion, and he needs some kind of help. He enquired of the Lord and received no answer, whether by urim (priestly intercession) or by prophets, What right did he have to the Lord’s direction when he had refused the Lord’s Word?
Therefore he goes contrary to his own legislation against sorcery and asks his servants to find for him a woman (not a man) who had contact with a familiar spirit (v.7). They knew there was such a woman at En-dor who was still practicing. In spite of Saul’s ban, people must have been commonly aware of her unlawful trade.
In order to visit the woman Saul disguises himself. How sadly degraded tor a king of Israeli But tie needed supernatural help, and since he had refused the Word of God he desperately seeks help from demonic sources. He took two men with him and went by night, for he wanted no-one to suspect his consulting a spirit medium. Since that time, and even recently, there have been other heads of government who realized their own human limitations and have consulted mediums because they had no confidence In God’s Word,
He asks the woman to bring up for him a person who had died. This is what mediums profess to do. But it Is false. They only contact an evil spirit who impersonates the dead person’s. The spirit knows something of the dead person’s past, and may refer to this to persuade the inquirer that he is actually the dead person.
The woman Is on guard and suspicious that this was a trap by which to find her guilty of practicing spiritism and to have her put to death (v.9). She reminds him that Saul had cut off the spiritists and wizards out of Israel, which of course put her in danger for practicing.
However, Saul’s conscience Is so deadened that he even Invokes the name of the Lord in swearing to her that she will not incur any punishment for her unlawful services in this case (v.10);
He asks her to bring up Samuel, but when she saw Samuel come up, she was shocked and cried out. Why was this? She did not expect Samuel himself, but the evil spirit to which she was accustomed. Immediately she knew that it was King Saul who was her customer. The fact is that God had intervened in this exceptional case, and actually allowed Samuel to come up. The woman asks Saul why he had deceived her (v.12).
But Saul was not there to trap her. He tells her not to be afraid, and asks what she has seen. She answers that she saw a god ascending out of the earth (v.13) Saul asks as to the form of the apparition she sees (v.14). She tells him it is an old man covered with a mantle. Saul perceived it was indeed Samuel, and stooped and bowed before him, a mere show of servility.
Samuel asks why Saul had disquieted him to bring him up (v.15). This case was extraordinary, but Samuel’s question shows that any effort to contact people who have died is an effort to disquiet them. In this exceptional case God allowed Samuel to be disquieted. Saul tells him of his great distress because the Philistines were waging war against him and he could no longer find any help from God.. He apparently thinks that Samuel might be more Indulgent than God is and asked for Samuel’s advice,
Samuel does not answer Saul’s problem in the way that an evil spirit would have. An evil spirit speaking by means of a medium, always gives messages of a nice, pampering kind that are intended to make the enquirer feel good. But Samuel frankly, honestly tells of the inconsistency of Saul’s enquiring of Samuel when the Lord had departed from him (v.16). Samuel was the Lord’s servant and would fully concur with what the Lord said and did. He reminds Saul, therefore, of how the Lord had spoken by him before, that the Lord would take the kingdom from Saul and give it to another man. This time he tells him that David is that man. Saul knew this without being told, yet was putting off the day as long as he could.
But Saul’s time had come. Samuel repeats what he had told Saul before, that, because Saul had disobeyed God’s express command concerning Amalek therefore he could expect to lose the kingdom. In fact, Samuel tells him, “the Lord has done this thing to you today” (v.18). Samuel gave Saul no advice as to what to do but left him in his own hopeless confusion.
More than that, he tells him that the Lord would deliver Israel and Saul into the hands of the Philistines, and the next day Saul and his sons would be with Samuel (v.19). Saul knew that Samuel meant that Saul would die. He does not at all refer to the question of whether he and his sons would be in heaven or in torment. Saul had not shown any clear signs of being a believer, and no unbeliever will be in heaven. His son Jonathan was evidently a true believer. As well as Saul and his sons being killed in battle, God would cause the whole army of Israel to be defeated by the Philistines.
What a shock for Saul! There is not the slightest ray of hope to lighten his darkness. He only felt the worse for consulting the spirit medium. Tall and strong as he was, he fell to the ground in terror (v.20). He had refused the Word of God. Now he has to face the results of his own folly and is not prepared. What a picture of those who dare to dismiss God from their lives, then come to the end, having nothing whatever to depend upon! He had not eaten, evidently thinking that fasting would gain him some favor with God.
This was probably the most distressing case the woman had ever seen. She reminds Saul that she had put her life in her hands by doing what he wanted. Now she asks him to consider her advice and take some food in order to be strengthened (v.22). The best she can offer is what will give him physical strength in order to go to meet his doom!
Saul refused to eat. Evidently he was too disturbed to even desire food. But the insistence of both the woman and Saul’s servants prevailed, and Saul go up from the ground and sat on the bed. The woman’s house was apparently sparsely furnished, but she had food to give him, a fat calf which she killed, and flour that provided means of baking unleavened bread (v.24). This reminds us of Abraham’s provision for the Lord and the two angels (Gen 18:6-8), but how totally in contrast were circumstances!
Saul and his servants ate, then left that night to return to the camp of Israel. We are not told whether they paid the woman for her services. However, this whole history should persuade us that there is no value in trying to find out what may transpire in our lives in the future. God may be trusted for this.
There is in all of this also a dispensational application that is of deepest interest. The Lord Jesus told the scribes and Pharisees, “When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places seeking rest, and finds none. Then he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that man is worse than the first. So shall it be with this wicked generation” (Mat 12:43-45). Just as Saul got rid of spirit mediums, so Israel had, at the time the Lord spoke, outwardly outlawed idolatry. But since they have not received Christ they are left empty, swept, and outwardly improved, and in the time of great tribulation the evil spirit will return and with it an infestation of even more wicked spirits, so that Israel’s last state will call for the solemn judgment of God.
Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible
28:1 And it came to pass in those days, that the Philistines gathered their armies together for warfare, to fight with Israel. And Achish said unto David, {a} Know thou assuredly, that thou shalt go out with me to battle, thou and thy men.
(a) Though it was a great grief to David to fight against the people of God, yet such was his infirmity, he did not dare deny him.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
The Philistines’ preparations for war against Israel 28:1-2
David’s response to Achish was deliberately ambiguous. He did not promise to fight for the Philistines but gave the impression he would (1Sa 28:2). Achish interpreted David’s words as a strong commitment to him and rewarded David with a position as his bodyguard for life.
David continued to be a blessing to Israel as he obeyed God in Ziklag, without giving any real help to Israel’s enemy, the Philistines. This plan of David’s, while yielding some positive benefits, involved him in deception and lying, plus leaving him vulnerable to Achish if the Philistine king learned what was really happening.
This whole pericope illustrates that, when opposition from ungodly people persists, God’s people should continue to pray and trust Him for protection rather than taking matters into their own hands. If we initiate a plan without seeking God’s guidance, we may remove one source of aggravation and danger only to find ourselves in another. Such plans may result in some good, but they may also put us in situations where we find it even more tempting to disobey God (cf. Jacob). We should, instead, remember God’s promises (e.g., 1Pe 1:3-9; 2Pe 1:2-4) and pray for His guidance (cf. Php 4:6-7).
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
2
CHAPTER XXXIII
DAVID’S SECOND FLIGHT TO GATH.
1Sa 27:1-12; 1Sa 28:1-2; 1Sa 29:1-11.
WE are not prepared for the sad decline in the spirit of trust which is recorded in the beginning of the twenty-seventh chapter. The victory gained by David over the carnal spirit of revenge, shown so signally in his sparing the life of Saul a second time, would have led us to expect that he would never again fall under the influence of carnal fear. But there are strange ebbs and flows in the spiritual life, and sometimes a victory brings its dangers, as well as its glory. Perhaps this very conquest excited in David the spirit of self-confidence; he may have had less sense of his need of daily strength from above; and he may have fallen into the state of mind against which the Apostle warns us, ”Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.”
In his collision with Nabal we saw him fail in what seemed one of his strong points – the very spirit of self-control which he had exercised so remarkably toward Saul; and now we see him fail in another of his strong points – the spirit of trust toward God. Could anything show more clearly that even the most eminent graces of the saints spring from no native fountain of goodness within them, but depend on the continuance of their vital fellowship with Him of whom the Psalmist said, “All my springs are in Thee”? (Psa 87:7). Carelessness and prayerlessness interrupt that fellowship; the supply of daily strength ceases to come; temptation arises, and they become weak like other men. ”Abide in Me,” said our Lord, with special emphasis on the need of permanence in the relation; and the prophet says, ”They that wait on the Lord,” as a habitual exercise, ”shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint.”
The most strange thing about David’s new decline is, that it led him to try a device which he had tried before, and which had proved a great failure. We see him retreating before an enemy he had often conquered; retreating, too, by a path every foot of which he had traversed, and with whose bitter ending he was already familiar. Just as before, his declension begins with distrust; and just as before, dissimulation is the product of the distrustful spirit. He is brought into the most painful dilemma, and into experience of the most grievous disaster; but God, in His infinite mercy, extricates him from the one and enables him to retrieve the other. It is affliction that brings him to his senses and drives him to God; it is the returning spirit of prayer and trust that sustains him in his difficulties, and at last brings to him, from the hand of God, a merciful deliverance from them all.
Our first point of interest is the growth and manifestation of the spirit of distrust. “David said in his heart, I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul; there is nothing better for me than that I should speedily escape into the land of the Philistines.” We find it difficult to account for the sudden triumph of this very despondent feeling. It is hardly enough to say that David could have had no confidence in Saul’s expressions of regret and declared purposes of amendment. That was no new feature of the case. Perhaps one element of the explanation may be, that Saul, with his three thousand men, had not only become familiar with all David’s hiding-places, but had stationed troops in various parts of the district that would so hamper his movements as to hem him in as in a prison. Then also there may have been some new outbreak of the malignant fury of Cush the Benjamite, and other enemies who were about Saul, rousing the king to even more earnest efforts than ever to apprehend him. There is yet another circumstance in David’s situation, that has not, we think, obtained the notice it deserves, but which may have had a very material influence on his decision. David had now two wives with him, Abigail the widow of Nabal, and Ahinoam the Jezreelitess. He would naturally be desirous to provide them with the comforts of a settled home. A band of young men might put up with the risks and discomforts of a roaming life, which it would not be possible for women to bear. The rougher sex might think nothing of midnight removals, and attacks in the dark, and scampers over wild passes and rugged mountains at all hours of the day and night, and snatches of food at irregular times, and all the other experiences which David and his men had borne patiently and cheerfully in the earlier stages of their outlaw history. But for women this was unsuitable. It is true that this alone would not have led David to say, “I shall one day perish by the hand of Saul.” But it would increase his sense of difficulty; it would make him feel more keenly the embarrassments of his situation; it would help to overwhelm him. And when he was thus at his wit’s end, the sense of danger from Saul would become more and more serious. The tension of a mind thus pressed on every side is something terrible. Pressed and tortured by invincible difficulties, David gives way to despair – “I shall one day perish by the hand of Saul.”
Let us observe the manner in which this feeling grew to such strength as to give rise to a new line of conduct. It got entrance into his heart. It hovered about him in a somewhat loose form, before he took hold of it, and resolved to act upon it. It approached him in the same manner in which temptation approaches many a one, first presenting itself to the imagination and the feelings, trying to get hold of them, and then getting possession of the will, and turning the whole man in the desired direction. Like a skilful adversary who first attacks an outpost, apparently of little value, but when he has got it erects on it a battery by which he is able to conquer a nearer position, and thus gradually approaches, till at last the very citadel is in his hands, – so sin at first hovers about the outposts of the soul. Often it seems at first just to play with the imagination; one fancies this thing and the other, this sensual indulgence or that act of dishonesty; and then, having become familiar with it there, one admits it to the inner chambers of the soul, and ere long the lust bringeth forth sin. The lesson not to let sin play even with the imagination, but drive it thence the moment one becomes conscious of its presence, cannot be pressed too strongly. Have you ever studied the language of the Lord’s Prayer? – “Lead us not into temptation.” You are being led into temptation whenever you are led to think, with interest and half longing, of any sinful indulgence. Wisdom demands of you that the moment you are conscious of such a feeling you resolutely exclaim, “Get thee behind me, Satan!” It is the tempter trying to establish a foothold in the outworks, meaning, when he has done so, to advance nearer and nearer to the citadel, till at last you shall find him in strong possession, and your soul entangled in the meshes of perdition.
The conclusion to which David came, under the influence of distrust, as to the best course for him to follow shows what opposite decisions may be arrived at, according to the point of view at which men take their stand. “There is nothing better for me than that I should escape speedily into the land of the Philistines.” From a more correct point of view, nothing could have been worse. Had Moses thought of his prospects from the same position, he would have said, “There is nothing better for me than to remain the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, and enjoy all the good things to which Providence has so remarkably called me;” but standing on the ground of faith, his conclusion was precisely the opposite. Looking abroad over the world with the eye of sense, the young man may say, “There is nothing better for me than that I should rejoice in my youth, and that my heart should cheer me in the days of my youth, and that I should walk in the ways of mine heart and in the sight of mine eyes.” But the eye of faith sees ominous clouds and gathering storms in the distance, which show that there could be nothing worse. As usual, David’s error was connected with the omission of prayer. We find no clause in this chapter, “Bring hither the ephod.” He asked no counsel of God; he did not even sit down to deliberate calmly on the matter. The impulse to which he yielded required him to decide at once. The word “speedily” indicates the presence of panic, the action of a tumultuous force on his mind, inducing him to act as promptly as one does in raising one’s arm to ward off a threatened blow. Possibly he had the feeling that, if God’s mind were consulted, it would be contrary to his desire, and on that ground, like too many persons, he may have shrunk from honest prayer. How different from the spirit of the psalm – ”Show me Thy ways, O Lord, teach me Thy paths; lead me in Thy truth and teach me, for Thou art the God of my salvation; on Thee do I wait all the day.” Dost thou imagine, David, that the Lord’s arm is shortened that it cannot save, and His ear heavy that it cannot hear? Would not He who delivered you in six troubles cause that in seven no evil should touch thee? Has He not promised that thou shalt be hid from the scourge of the tongue, neither shalt thou be afraid of destruction when it Cometh? Dost thou not know that thy seed shall be great and thine offspring as the grass of the earth? Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in his season.
So ”David arose, and he passed over with the six hundred men that were with him, unto Achish the son of Maoch, king of Gath.” It is thought by some that this was a different king from the former, the name Achish like the name Pharaoh being used by all the kings. At first the arrangement seemed to succeed. Achish appears to have received him kindly. “David dwelt with Achish at Gath, he and his men, every man with his household, even David with his two wives.” The emphasis laid on the household and the wives shows how difficult it had been to provide for them before. And Saul, at last, gave up the chase, and sought for him no more. Of course, in giving him a friendly reception, Achish must have had a view to his own interest. He would calculate on making use of him in his battles with Saul, and very probably give an incredulous smile if he heard anything of the scruples he had shown to lift up his hand against the Lord’s anointed.
Availing himself of the favourable impression made on Achish, David now begs to have a country town allotted to him as his residence, so as to avoid what appeared the unseemliness of his dwelling in the royal city with him. There was much common sense in the demand, and Achish could not but feel it. Gath was but a little place, and Achish, if he was but lord of Gath, was not a very powerful king. The presence in such a place of a foreign prince, with a retinue of soldiers six hundred strong, was hardly becoming. Possibly Achish’s own body guard did not come up in number and in prowess to the troop of David. The request for a separate residence was therefore granted readily, and Ziklag was assigned to David. It lay near the southern border of the Philistines, close to the southern desert. At Ziklag he was away from the eye of the lords of the Philistines that had always viewed him with such jealousy; he was far away from the still greater jealousy of Saul; and with Geshurites, and Gezrites, and Amalekites in his neighbourhood, the natural enemies of his country, he had opportunities of using his troop so as at once to improve their discipline and promote the welfare of his native land.
There was another favourable occurrence in David’s experience at this time. From a parallel passage (l Chron. 12) we learn that during his residence among the Philistines he was constantly receiving important accessions to his troop. One set of men who came to him, Benjamites, of the tribe of Saul, were remarkably skilful in the use of the bow and the sling, able to use either right hand or left with equal ease. The men that came to him were not from one tribe only, but from many. A very important section were from Benjamin and Judah. At first David seemed to have some suspicion of their sincerity. Going out to meet them he said to them, ”If ye become peaceably to me to help me, my heart shall be knit unto you; but if ye be come to betray me to my enemies, seeing there is no wrong in my hands, the God of our fathers look thereon and rebuke it.” The answer was given by Amasai, in the spirit and rhythmical language of prophecy: “Thine are we, David, and on thy side, thou son of Jesse; peace, peace be unto thee, and peace be to thine helpers; for thy God helpeth thee.” Thus he was continually receiving evidence of the favour in which he was held by his people, and his band was continually increasing, ”until it was a great host, like the host of God.” It seemed, up to this point, as if Providence had favoured his removal to the land of the Philistines, and brought to him the security and the prosperity which he could not find in the land of Judah. But it was ill-gained security and only mock-prosperity; the day of his troubles drew on.
The use which, as we have seen, he made of his troop was to invade the Geshurites, the Gezrites, and the Amalekites. In taking this step David had a sinister purpose. It would not have been so agreeable to the Philistines to learn that the arms of David had been turned against these tribes as against his own countrymen. When therefore he was asked by Achish where he had gone that day, he returned an answer fitted, and indeed intended, to deceive. Without saying in words, ”I have been fighting against my own people in the south of Judah,” he led Achish to believe that he had, and he was pleased when his words were taken in that sense. Achish, we are told, believed David, believed that he had been in arms against his countrymen. “He hath made his people Israel utterly to abhor him; therefore he shall be my servant forever.” Could there have been a more lamentable spectacle? one of the noblest of men stained by the meanness of a false insinuation; David, the anointed of the God of Israel, ranged with the common herd of liars!
Nor was this the only error into which his crooked policy now led him. To cover his deceitful course he had recourse to an act of terrible carnage. It was deemed by him important that no one should be able to carry to Achish a faithful report of what he had been doing. To prevent this he made a complete massacre, put to death every man, woman, child of the Amalekites and other tribes whom he now attacked. Such massacres were indeed quite common in Eastern warfare. The Bulgarian and other massacres of which we have heard in our own day show that even yet, after an interval of nearly three thousand years, they are not foreign to the practice of Eastern nations. In point of fact, they were not thought more of, or worse of, than any of the other incidents of war. War was held to bind up into one bundle the whole lives and property of the enemy, and give to the conqueror supreme control over it. To destroy the whole was just the same in principle as to destroy a part. If the destruction of the whole was necessary in order to carry out the objects of the campaign, it was not more wicked to perpetrate such destruction than to destroy a part.
True, according to our modern view, there is something mean in falling on helpless, defenseless women and children, and slaughtering them in cold blood. And yet our modern ideas allow the bombardment or the besieging of great cities, and the bringing of the more slow but terrible process of starvation to bear against women and children and all, in order to compel a surrender. Much though modern civilization has done to lessen the horrors of war, if we approve of all its methods we cannot afford to hold up our hands in horror at those which were judged allowable in the days of David. Yet surely, you may say, we might have expected better things of David. We might have expected him to break away from the common sentiment, and to show more humanity. But this would not have been reasonable. For it is very seldom that the individual conscience, even in the case of the best men, becomes sensible at once of the vices of its age. How many good men in this country, in the early part of this century, were zealous defenders of slavery, and in America down to a much later time! There is nothing more needful for us in studying history, even Old Testament history, than to remember that very remarkable individual excellence may be found in connection with a great amount of the vices of the age. We cannot attempt to show that David was not guilty of a horrible carnage in his treatment of the Amalekites. All we can say is, he shared in the belief of the time that such carnage was a lawful incident of war. We cannot but feel that in the whole circumstances it left a stain upon his character; and yet he may have engaged in it without any consciousness of barbarity, without any idea that the day would come when his friends would blush for the deed.
The Philistines were now preparing a new campaign under Achish against Saul and his kingdom, and Achish determined that David should go with him; further, that he should go in the capacity of “keeper of his head,” or captain of his body guard, and that this should not be a temporary arrangement, but permanent – ”forever.” It is difficult for us to conceive the depth of the embarrassment into which this intimation must have plunged David. We must bear in mind how scrupulous and sensitive his conscience was as to raising his hand against the Lord’s anointed; and we must take into account the horror he must have felt at the thought of rushing in deadly array against his own dear countrymen, with most of whom he had had no quarrel, and who had never done him any harm. When Achish made him head of his body guard he paid a great compliment to his fidelity and bravery; but in proportion as the post was honourable it was disagreeable and embarrassing. For David and his men would have to fight close to Achish, under his very eye; and any symptoms of holding back from the fray – any inclination to be off, or to spare the foe, which natural feeling might have dictated in the hour of battle, must be resisted in presence of the king. Perhaps David reckoned that if the Israelites were defeated by the Philistines he might be able to make better terms for them – might even be of use to Saul himself, and thus render such services as would atone for his hostile attitude. But this was a wretched consolation. David was entangled so that he could neither advance nor retreat. Before him was God, closing His path in front; behind him was man, closing it in rear; and we may well believe he would have willingly given all he possessed if only his feet could have been clear and his conscience upright as before.
Still, he does not appear to have returned to a candid frame of mind, but rather to have continued the dissimulation. He had gone with Achish as far as the battlefield, when it pleased God, in great mercy, to extricate him from his difficulty by using the jealousy of the lords of the Philistines as the means of his dismissal from the active service of King Achish. But instead of gladly retiring when he received intimation that his services were dispensed with, we find him (1Sa 29:8) remonstrating with Achish, speaking as if it were a disappointment not to be allowed to go with him, and as if he thirsted for an opportunity of chastising his countrymen. It is sad to find him continuing in this strain. We are told that the time during which he abode in the country of the Philistines was a full year and four months. It was to all appearance a time of spiritual declension; and as distrust ruled his heart, so dissimulation ruled his conduct. It could hardly have been other than a time of merely formal prayers and comfortless spiritual experience. If he would but have allowed himself to believe it, he was far happier in the cave of Adullam or the wilderness of Engedi, when the candle of the Lord shone upon his head, than he was afterwards amid the splendour of the palace of Achish, or the princely independence of Ziklag.
The only bright spot in this transaction was the very cordial testimony borne by Achish to the faultless way in which David had uniformly served him. It is seldom indeed that such language as Achish employed can be used of any servant – “I know that thou art good in my sight, as an angel of God.” Achish must have been struck with the utter absence of treachery and of all self-seeking in David. David had shown that singular, unblemished trustworthiness that earned such golden opinions for Joseph in the house of Potiphar and from the keeper of the prison. In this respect he had kept his light shining before men with a clear, unclouded lustre. Even amid his spiritual backsliding and sad distrust of God, he had never stained his hands with greed or theft, he had in all these respects kept himself unspotted of the world.
The chapter of David’s history which we have now been pursuing is a very painful one, but the circumstances in which he was placed were extremely difficult and trying. It is impossible to justify the course he took. By-and-bye we shall see how God chastised him for it, and by chastising him brought him to Himself. But to those who are disposed to be very severe on him we might well say, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at him. Who among you have not been induced at times to try carnal and unworthy expedients for extricating yourselves from difficulty? Who, in days of boyhood or girlhood, never told a falsehood to cover a fault? Who of you have been uniformly accustomed to carry to God every difficulty and trial, with the honest, immovable determination to do simply and solely what might seem to be agreeable to God’s will? Have we not all cause to mourn over conduct that has dishonoured God and distressed our consciences? May He give all of us light to see wherein we have come short in the past, or wherein we are coming short in the present. And from the bottom of our hearts may we be taught to raise our prayer, From all the craft and cunning of Satan; from all the devices of the carnal mind; from all that blinds us to the pure and perfect will of God – good Lord, deliver us.