Saul and the Medium of Endor

Today's Reading

Read 1 Samuel 28:3-25 in full. The story is so strange and so important that the whole chapter rewards a slow reading.

Read Deuteronomy 18:10-12 again, noting that Saul knew this law: "There shall not be found among you... a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord."

Read 1 Chronicles 10:13-14 for the chronicler's theological summary: "So Saul died for his breach of faith. He broke faith with the Lord in that he did not keep the command of the Lord, and also consulted a medium, seeking guidance. He did not seek guidance from the Lord. Therefore the Lord put him to death and turned the kingdom over to David the son of Jesse."

Read Isaiah 8:19-20: "And when they say to you, 'Inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter,' should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living? To the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn."

Reflection

The story in 1 Samuel 28 is so dark that the church has often softened it or skipped over it. Today we sit with it.

Saul is the king of Israel, anointed by Samuel decades earlier, now facing the Philistine army at Mount Gilboa on what will be the last morning of his life. The narrative opens with a verse so spare it is almost unbearable: And when Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord did not answer him, either by dreams, or by Urim, or by prophets. The three legitimate channels of divine guidance available to a king of Israel — dreams, the priestly oracle of Urim and Thummim, and the prophets — are all silent.

Why?

Because Saul has spent his reign breaking faith with the Lord. He has kept the throne by force, persecuted David, slaughtered the priests of Nob, and in this very chapter has only recently put the mediums and necromancers out of the land (v. 3) — fulfilling the law of Deuteronomy 18 with apparent obedience. The silence of God in the moment of crisis is not random; it is the long-deferred consequence of a life of unfaithfulness. God has not been ignoring Saul's prayers; he has been refusing to answer prayers offered without repentance.

Saul, facing this silence, makes a choice that becomes the summary of his apostasy. He says to his servants: Seek out for me a woman who is a medium, that I may go to her and inquire of her. The man who had banished mediums by royal decree now hunts for one in disguise.

The medium of Endor is found. Saul, dressed as a commoner, comes by night. He asks her to bring up Samuel.

Here the text becomes one of the most disputed passages in the Old Testament. The medium begins her ritual; she screams; she sees an old man wrapped in a robe rising from the ground. She knows immediately that her client is Saul. The figure addresses Saul. His message is exactly the message Samuel had given Saul years before, now sealed with finality: the Lord has done to you as he spoke by me, for the Lord has torn the kingdom out of your hand and given it to your neighbor, David... Tomorrow you and your sons shall be with me.

Was this the actual prophet Samuel?

Christian interpreters have divided. Some — including a strong line of patristic and medieval commentators — argue it was a deceiving spirit imitating Samuel, on the grounds that necromancy is real spiritual contact but with demons rather than with the dead. Others — including most modern Old Testament scholars and Calvin himself in his commentary — argue that the figure was the genuine Samuel, brought up not by the medium's power but by God's strange permission, as the final unbearable judgment on Saul. The text seems to favor this second reading: the narrator simply calls the figure Samuel, and the message is theologically true and consistent with everything Samuel had said before.

Either way, the lesson is the same. Saul is condemned not by the mode of the apparition but by the prohibition he broke to seek it.

This is why the medium of Endor episode functions in the canon the way it does. The chronicler in 1 Chronicles 10:13-14 takes the entire arc of Saul's life and summarizes it with this single act: Saul died for his breach of faith. He broke faith with the Lord in that he did not keep the command of the Lord, and also consulted a medium, seeking guidance. He did not seek guidance from the Lord. Therefore the Lord put him to death. The chronicler is not saying the medium consultation was Saul's only sin. He is saying it was the summary of his unfaithfulness — the final, defining act in which Saul declared that he would rather hear a forbidden voice than wait on the silence of the God he had wronged.

This is the deepest pastoral point of the chapter, and it applies directly to modern Christians.

There is a kind of silence from God that is not abandonment. It is sometimes discipline; it is sometimes the testing of faith; it is sometimes the hidden working of God in a season the believer cannot read. Job experienced it. Asaph wrote psalms about it. Mother Teresa lived in it for decades. The mature spiritual life learns to wait in such silence — to keep praying, to keep reading Scripture, to keep coming to the table, to keep walking in obedience even when the felt sense of God's presence has withdrawn. The silence is part of how God forms his saints.

The immature spiritual life — Saul's life — cannot bear the silence. It panics. It looks for a substitute. It says: if God will not speak, I will find someone who will.

The substitute is always available. In Saul's day it was the medium of Endor. In our day it is the tarot reader, the psychic, the astrologer, the manifestation coach, the Instagram intuitive who promises a "channeled message" for the followers who are stuck. The voice is always there for hire. The cost is always the soul.

J.I. Packer's pastoral counsel on the silence of God, in Knowing God, is exactly the right reading of 1 Samuel 28. He notes that there is a kind of silence that is not absence but discipline, and that the mature soul learns to wait in that silence. The immature soul, panicked, reaches for a substitute — and discovers, often too late, that the substitute is worse than the silence. The medium spoke, and Samuel told Saul he would die tomorrow. The forbidden voice did not save Saul. It confirmed his ruin.

Isaiah 8 makes the principle explicit. And when they say to you, "Inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter," should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living? The prophet is incredulous. There is a living God who speaks. Why would his people seek the chirping and muttering of those who do not?

The answer, in Saul's case and in ours, is that the living God's speech requires the listener to be in right relationship with him. Mediums require only payment. The Father speaks to those who repent and obey; the medium speaks to whoever pays. For the unfaithful soul, the medium is more accessible than the Father. That is precisely the spiritual catastrophe.

The right response to divine silence is not to manufacture a voice. It is to ask why he is silent.

Often the answer is that there is unconfessed sin between us and him — and the silence is the invitation to repentance. Sometimes there is no specific sin, and the silence is a season in which God is forming a deeper trust. Either way, the response is the same: keep coming to him. Keep praying without the felt answer. Keep reading the Scripture you have already heard. Keep walking with his people. Keep refusing the substitute.

The medium of Endor episode is in the canon because the church needs the warning. There is a path Saul walked, and souls walk it still. It begins with the silence of God. It ends with the chronicler's verdict: he did not seek guidance from the Lord.

Going Deeper

If you are in a season of divine silence — a prayer not answered, a clarity not given, a relief not felt — write a single sentence about it and bring it to the Lord today, plainly. Then read Psalm 13 out loud. The psalmist asks four times, how long, O Lord? He does not get an immediate answer. But he ends the psalm: I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me. The psalm shows you what waiting in silence looks like, and what it produces.