1 Samuel28chapter 28

1 Samuel 28:7-8

Seek me a woman: Saul does not go himself first; he sends his servants to find what his own decree had made illegal to keep. Endor lay seven or eight miles from Gilboa on the far side of the Philistine camp, so reaching it by night meant passing near the very army Saul feared. He goes disguised, in another man's clothes, because he does not want the woman to know who is asking and suspects she would refuse a king the practice she might risk for a stranger.

Saul's request to bring up a named person assumes that the dead live on and know what the living cannot, as Matthew Henry observes. Albert Barnes links the medium's craft with the ventriloquist's art. The Greeks had necromancers who called up departed spirits for the same purpose.

1 Samuel 28:9-10

layest thou a snare for my life: The woman names Saul's own law back to him without knowing who stands in front of her, and her fear is for her life rather than for the sin itself, which Matthew Henry notes is the common order among sinners, dread of punishment before dread of judgment. Saul answers with an oath sworn by the very name whose law he is about to break, As the Lord liveth, promising a safety he has no standing to promise since the penalty was never his to waive. The narrator leaves the irony to stand without comment: a king invokes the Lord to guarantee the success of consulting the dead.

Saul's own law made him the judge who should punish the woman, and Matthew Henry says he knew it. His oath promises a safety he could not give even to himself. Within a day he falls on Gilboa, as chapter 31 records.

1 Samuel 28:11-14

Bring me up Samuel: Saul names exactly who he wants, and the woman's own reaction settles a question the older commentaries return to: she cries out and immediately recognizes Saul, as though what appeared was not the sort of spirit her own art was used to raising. She first calls it gods ascending out of the earth, a general word for a supernatural being rather than a claim of deity, and only when Saul asks for a shape does she describe an old man covered with a mantle. That mantle is the detail that convinces Saul, the same garment Samuel wore when Saul tore it at 15:27 and heard the kingdom's rending read out of the tear. He falls with his face to the ground before the man whose robe had already carried this news to him once.

How she knew her client was Saul is left unstated. Albert Barnes suggests she reasoned that Samuel would answer the call of no one less than the king. Matthew Henry thinks her familiar spirit told her, and John Wesley stresses that the text says she saw Samuel.

The woman's word for what she sees coming up is elohim, and Adam Clarke notes that the Chaldee version renders it an angel of the LORD. Albert Barnes explains the direction: the place of the dead was pictured beneath the earth, as in Isaiah 14:9-10. Origen took it as the medium's belief about the gods.

The fathers divided over this old man coming up. Justin Martyr took him as the soul of Samuel called up by the woman, while Hippolytus denied that a demon could bring up the soul of any man. Augustine and Methodius of Olympus asked how Samuel could be seen wearing a robe.

1 Samuel 28:15-16

Why hast thou disquieted me: The text names the speaker without qualification: And Samuel said to Saul. Two readings have stood in the church since the fathers. Keil and Delitzsch and Adam Clarke read it as a true appearance permitted by God rather than produced by the woman's craft, pointing to her own terror as proof her art had not caused what she saw. Matthew Henry calls the figure an evil spirit in Samuel's mantle offering Saul cold comfort meant to drive him toward despair, and Tertullian argues the same power that let a demon impersonate a dead man for the followers of Simon was granted once here and nowhere else in Scripture.

Samuel's question turns Saul's complaint in verse 15 back on him. Adam Clarke paraphrases it: the prophet had only ever passed on the LORD's counsel, so he has nothing to give a man the LORD has left. Matthew Henry adds that Saul could expect no friend in Samuel with God as his enemy.

1 Samuel 28:17-19

given it to thy neighbour: The rending of the kingdom repeats what Samuel had told Saul face to face at 15:28, spoken now a second time from beyond the grave. Verse 18 names the ground that chapter had already stated: Saul did not carry out the Lord's sentence on Amalek, the war Exodus 17 swore from generation to generation and Deuteronomy 25 commanded finished. Samuel's own word at 15:23 had set rebellion beside the sin of witchcraft, and Saul closes his reign proving the comparison true by consulting one. Tomorrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me is carried out within a day at chapter 31, and Matthew Henry reads with me only as the common state of the dead, separate from the body, stopping short of naming what company Saul keeps there.

Matthew Henry, who reads the speaker as an evil spirit, says the sin Saul once excused before Samuel in chapter 15 is now pressed on him to drive him to despair. Ennodius cited the verse on a king's duty of severity. Saul spared Amalek and brought the LORD's anger on himself.

Albert Barnes points out that the sentence reaches beyond Saul's house to the nation. The Philistines plunder the camp and strip the slain at 31:8. Bede and John Wesley both take the words about being with Samuel to mean only that Saul and his sons would die.

there was no strength in him: Saul collapses at full length on the ground, undone as much by a day and a night without bread as by the sentence he has just heard. John Wesley reads the fall as if the Philistines' arrows had already found him, the body giving out before the battle even begins. Adam Clarke notes that the woman had likely withdrawn during Samuel's appearance and returns only now to find the king alone and prostrate on her floor.

1 Samuel 28:21-25

put my life in my hand: The woman who kept the craft Saul's own law had outlawed is the one who feeds him when no one from his own camp is present to do it, and he refuses to eat until his servants join her in persuading him. She kills the fatted calf and bakes it unleavened only for want of time to let bread rise, not for any ceremony, and Matthew Henry recalls that Josephus praised her courtesy toward a stranger who could do nothing for her in return. The chapter ends as it began, in darkness, with Saul and his two men going away that night the way they had come.

let me set a morsel of bread: The woman asks Saul to listen to her as she had obeyed him in verse 21. Matthew Henry notes that the calf she then killed was likely one used for treading out grain, and so hard to spare. Her small offer of bread becomes a full meal.

The bed Saul sits on is the bench or divan that ran along the wall of an eastern house, as Albert Barnes explains. Adam Clarke adds that such couches were where people sat to eat. Saul's rising from the ground is his consent to the meal.

Adam Clarke explains why the woman had a calf ready. Meat could not be kept long in a hot land, so a house kept young animals to slaughter at once. Bede set this fattened calf and the bread beside the meal Abraham and Sarah prepared for the LORD in Genesis 18.

Adam Clarke counts the chapter's events and finds that they all fit within one night, from Saul's arrival at Endor to the meal. John Gill explains why they left in the dark. Saul had to get back past the Philistines to his camp without being seen.