We have in chapter 28 an account of one of the last days and evenings of Saul’s life. The two armies have drawn up in battle array against one another and Saul, in terror at the prospect of the coming battle, seeks some contact with the divine world or sphere. He can no longer find God, all the means of his former contact with God have been lost to him on account of his unbelief and disobedience. So he turns to necromancy and witchcraft. We have Saul here in the very last stage of his spiritual disintegration and all of this in contrast to David who, at the same time, is besting his enemies and the enemies of God’s people in a great victory, an account which follows immediately upon this account of Saul and witch of Endor.

Now, what is important to recognize is that chronologically chapter 28 comes after chapter 29. You can tell this by noting that in 28:4 the Philistine army has advanced beyond the muster point at Aphek to Shunem in Jezreel, though at 29:1 the Philistines are still at Aphek. The point of the rearrangement seems primarily to be that in this way the narrator is able to place Saul’s failure and David’s triumph in the proper order, giving David pride of place in the contrast the narrator is making between the two men.

v.2 These verses introduce David’s situation and we will be left in some suspense awaiting the outcome of this terrible dilemma which David’s deceit has created for himself. We don’t pick up this thread of the story until 29:1. That further indicates that chapter 28 really is something of a parenthesis, David being the main subject and interest of the narrator. David’s own words, quoted in v. 2, are probably to be taken as an "artful dodge" (Alter, Com, 171). That is, he gives Achish the impression that he will do as he says without actually saying that precisely. He’s biding his time and hoping for some solution to appear. Achish’s reply either means that he will reward David for his faithful service or suggests that there is still some suspicion in Achish’s mind and he wants to maintain closer surveillance.

 

v.3 This is a repetition of the notice of Samuel’s death from 25:1. Saul is going to seek an audience with Samuel so we are reminded that he was already dead. And Saul himself, no doubt under Samuel’s guidance, had expelled the mediums and spiritists from the land. Necromancy and witchcraft – both terms indicate the supposed contact with the realm of the dead or the underworld – were forbidden in the law of Moses (Deut. 18:9-14; Lev. 19:31) as were all forms of pagan guidance, all of which assumed that there was a principle of control over the world apart from the God of absolute sovereignty and perfect justice and that men needed or could obtain reliable information beyond and apart from the Word of God that had been revealed to his people. The fact that Saul had expelled them and now consults them is a demonstration of his moral disintegration.

 

In 1 Chron. 10:13-14 we read: "Saul died because he was unfaithful to the Lord; he did not keep the word of the Lord and even consulted a medium for guidance, and did not inquire of the Lord. So the Lord put him to death and turned the kingdom over to David, son of Jesse." Clearly what Saul is now going to do constitutes a decisive demonstration that he had no faith in God and was willing to do anything apart from turn in humility and dependence to the Lord. He was willing to use the mechanisms of revelation, any of them, but was clueless to the necessity of true faith for the blessing of God. See how religious Saul continues to be, and how false!

 

v.6 Saul, facing a very uncertain military situation, wants some reassurance regarding the chances of his success in battle against the Philistines, but none of the conventional methods works; for David is now the one to whom the Lord is revealing such information (Gordon, 194).

 

v.7 As so often is the case, a government war on vice hardly resulted in people not knowing very well how to find that particular vice! Saul’s would not be the last government that outlawed a vice it continued to practice itself!

 

v.8 "Consult a spirit for me" means "Tell me my fortune by consulting the dead." [Gordon, 195]

 

v.10 The drug dealer suspects that the buy is really being made by an undercover cop. Saul must go in disguise; after all, he is the king who outlawed the use of mediums and expelled them from his realm. But there is probably a symbolic significance for the narrator here as well. Saul is seen without his robes, having divested himself of his royal clothing before going to hear of his impending death.

 

As one commentator puts it [Fokkelman, II, 600]: "Saul is unintentionally giving in to the divine plan, for by taking off his royal attire and other insignia of dignity, Saul is himself symbolically now already marking his end, his life no longer being bearable, and his kingship."

 

That he swears to the woman in the name of the Lord is a supreme irony. To swear to a pagan medium in the Lord’s name! A later Jewish writing (Midrash Yalkut Shimoni 2:247:139) catches the irony. "Whom did Saul resemble at that moment? A woman who is with her lover and swears by the life of her husband."

 

v.12 Now the story gets complicated and opaque. The woman is said to have seen Samuel. But Saul does not. Somehow she knows it is Samuel and that leads her to see through his disguise to the recognition of Saul the King. Whether anything like this had ever happened to her is perhaps to be doubted. That is perhaps how she knows it is Samuel. This isn’t the usual séance, here we have a figure actually coming up from below and he’s wearing his prophet’s robe! In any case, the Lord is not unwilling to use paganism’s routines when it suits his purpose. Remember the way he used the Egyptian magicians – who suddenly had the power to do things they had never done before! – to harden Pharaoh’s heart.

 

v.13 From this point the medium disappears, and v. 21 may suggest that the conversation that followed was held privately between Samuel and Saul. He who comes with a message from the Lord obviously is not going to allow himself to be manipulated by some medium! What is more Samuel appears as his old self, as the prophet of the Lord, and not as some ghost.

 

v.19 Samuel repeats the condemnations he gave earlier, especially in chapter 15 in regard to Saul’s failure against the Amalekites. That is important because we are about to see David win a smashing victory over the same Amalekites. Samuel’s question: "Why do you consult me now" carries the overtones: "What? Do you suppose I didn’t mean what I said or that God has changed his mind?"

 

v.25 The last scene seems to picture for us a thoroughly demoralized and disorganized man. Saul is no longer a king in anything but name. He has to be lectured about eating by a medium. He is overtaken by fear and dread. Significantly, they leave to walk back to Israel’s camp in the dead of night. Darkness has fallen over the life and the kingdom of Saul.

 

We are given one last look at Saul in this chapter and are made to see a thoroughly disreputable man. He is a hypocrite, availing himself of a medium after expelling them from his realm. He is pathetically incompetent, facing battle and paralyzed by fear and uncertainty. For the several hours it must have taken the woman to fix that meal for Saul and his aides – she had to butcher the calf, after all – we are supposed to see him sitting there brooding, perhaps almost in a catatonic state, completely overwhelmed by bad news he cannot do anything about.

But, it is clear enough where the problem lies. This is a man with no faith. He does not trust in God. He is willing to avail himself of supposed mechanisms of revelation that are the virtual denial that God reigns in this world in perfect justice according to the Word he has revealed to man.

His last hope is for one more conversation with Samuel, the prophet who had anointed him in the first place, the man about whom Saul can remember happier days. He hopes Samuel will relent and give him a favorable prophetic word.

The woman calls him up. She sees a man – not what necromancers apparently usually claimed would happen. Rather they would feel a presence and try to interpret that feeling or sounds that the dead spirits, the ghosts, were supposed to have made. But there is nothing like that here: a man appears in a robe, probably a prophet’s robe and begins to speak. She was terrified! And, apparently, once she realized who had come up and to whom he was speaking, she left.

Saul, apparently, never sees Samuel, but he hears him. He has to ask the woman, "What did you see?" But he hears Samuel reiterate his terrible judgments perfectly well. He recognizes Samuel’s voice and is devastated by his unrelenting prophecy of doom. In all probability, the two aides didn’t hear Samuel either.

This is a very difficult text and interpreters have puzzled over it through the ages. This does not seem to be a resurrection in any physical sense. Saul cannot see Samuel. The OT’s view of Sheol or the grave has many dimensions. It is in general "the state of death depicted in visible terms." It is the place where all men go when they die, but it can also be the place of punishment for the wicked. In general, the grave is symbolic of death viewed as something that is not right, that sin has introduced into the world. And, of course, there is a sense in which even the righteous experience this. The Bible is honest about death being an enemy and about the wrench that it is for the body to be laid in the ground. The hope of resurrection in Christ does not entirely remove the darkness of death, even as it gives us hope in death.

There are two great lessons here. One is the primary point of the narrator, viz. to show that Saul’s lack of faith, his turning away from the Lord in disobedience, had finally worked itself out into the complete disintegration of his life and the complete unmanning of Saul as king. It does not always work itself out so completely within the lifetime of a man, but unbelief is a principle of moral and spiritual corruption that in time will and must destroy the soul and the entire life, rendering it incapable of anything good. Saul is finally there and all the wicked will finally be there.

For those who prefer their worldly friends to their Christian friends, take warning here. You should never forget that your unbelieving friends are out and out fiends to be and your Christian friends, however unimpressive or interesting to you now, are saints and heavenly rulers to be, who will one day be so perfect and so good that, could you see them now as they will be then, you would be sorely tempted to fall down and worship them. Even the angels will honor them when they are all that Christ will make them to be! But, see in Saul what happens to a man who will not trust the Lord!

And, then, there is the specific sin that Saul commits. Seeking some way around the silence of heaven. No, he had the Word of God. If only he would have believed it and obeyed it, he would have needed nothing more. And, in his case, would still have had the prophet and the Urim and the Thummim.

Dr. Waltke, who has done some great work on the matter of guidance, and how Christians ought to seek guidance for their lives, says that, though he realizes that some people may think his an overreaction, he never even takes a fortune cookie at a Chinese restaurant! Anything that assumes a principle of control in this world that is apart from or beside the living God and anything that suggests that we need some further revelation than what has been entrusted to us in Holy Scripture, he thinks is paganism. Perhaps we would say that as Christians we laugh at the nonsense of it all when we take a fortune cookie and chuckle at the ridiculous things we find in them. But, of course, there are many Christians who, in one way or another, seem to feel that there is a way to get additional knowledge from God than what he has revealed and that we need that knowledge to live our lives successfully. Well, we don’t. And the Bible never tells us how to get such knowledge if it could be got or how we could verify it as coming from the Lord. Saul is the father of all people who think they will be better off by doing something other than trusting and obeying the Lord!

What comes next in the narrative is the contrast. A man who does trust and obey and whom the Lord rewards accordingly. David, as the greatest Christ figure of OT prophecy and typology, is the image for us of a king who trusts the Lord and obeys his Word. Blessed is the people with such a man for their King!

Let me conclude with one further thought. There is no greater curse in all of this world than for God to refuse to speak to a person. And there are great multitudes of people who belong to that class. But, if that is so, there is no greater foolishness in all the world than to be someone who has heard the Word of God but does not give it heed, does not believe, and does not obey. That was Saul and see and study and ponder his end! We have the Word of God; he has spoken to us.