1 Samuel 28: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The Philistines gather to fight Israel, and Achish tells David that he and his men must join the Philistine army. Saul, terrified at the sight of the Philistine camp and unable to get any answer from the LORD, disguises himself and goes at night to a woman at Endor who consults spirits, even though he himself had driven such people out of the land. He asks her to bring up Samuel, who tells Saul that the LORD has turned away from him, has given the kingdom to David because Saul did not carry out the LORD's anger against Amalek, and that Saul and his sons will be with him the next day. Saul collapses in fear, and the woman and his servants persuade him to eat before he leaves that night.

Claim by Claim

1. 28:1
   • In those days the Philistines gathered their camps as an army to fight against Israel.
   • Achish said to David that David should know for certain that he would go out with Achish in the army.
   • Achish said that David and David's men would go out with him.
2. 28:2
   • David said to Achish that Achish would come to know what his servant could do.
   • Achish said to David that he would make David keeper of his head for all time.
3. 28:3
   • Samuel was dead.
   • All Israel had mourned for him.
   • They had buried him in Ramah, his own city.
   • Saul had removed from the land those who consult ghosts and those who are familiar spirits.
4. 28:4
   • The Philistines gathered together.
   • The Philistines came and camped at Shunem.
   • Saul gathered all Israel.
   • Saul and Israel camped at Gilboa.
5. 28:5
   • Saul saw the camp of the Philistines.
   • Saul was afraid.
   • Saul's heart trembled greatly.
6. 28:6
   • Saul inquired of the LORD.
   • The LORD did not answer him.
   • The LORD did not answer him by dreams.
   • The LORD did not answer him by Urim.
   • The LORD did not answer him by prophets.
7. 28:7
   • Saul told his servants to seek out for him a woman who consults ghosts.
   • Saul said he would go to her and inquire of her.
   • His servants told him there was a woman who consults ghosts at Endor.
8. 28:8
   • Saul disguised himself.
   • Saul put on other clothes.
   • Saul went with two men.
   • They came to the woman at night.
   • Saul told the woman to divine for him by a ghost.
   • Saul told the woman to bring up for him the one he would name to her.
9. 28:9
   • The woman said to him that he knew what Saul had done.
   • The woman said Saul had cut off from the land those who consult ghosts and those who are familiar spirits.
   • The woman asked why he was laying a trap for her life to cause her death.
10. 28:10
    • Saul swore to her by the LORD.
    • Saul swore by the life of the LORD that no punishment would come upon her for this thing.
11. 28:11
    • The woman asked whom she should bring up for him.
    • Saul said to bring up Samuel for him.
12. 28:12
    • The woman saw Samuel.
    • The woman cried out with a loud voice.
    • The woman asked Saul why he had deceived her.
    • The woman said that he was Saul.
13. 28:13
    • The king told her not to be afraid.
    • The king asked her what she saw.
    • The woman said to Saul that she saw a divine being, or gods, coming up out of the earth; the number is ambiguous.
14. 28:14
    • Saul asked her what his form was.
    • The woman said an old man was coming up.
    • The woman said he was wrapped in a robe.
    • Saul knew that it was Samuel.
    • Saul bowed his face to the ground.
    • Saul prostrated himself.
15. 28:15
    • Samuel asked Saul why he had disturbed him by bringing him up.
    • Saul said he was greatly distressed.
    • Saul said the Philistines were fighting against him.
    • Saul said God had turned away from him.
    • Saul said God no longer answered him, neither by prophets nor by dreams.
    • Saul said he had called Samuel to make known to him what he should do.
16. 28:16
    • Samuel asked why Saul was inquiring of him.
    • Samuel said the LORD had turned away from Saul.
    • Samuel said the LORD had become Saul's enemy.
17. 28:17
    • Samuel said the LORD had done to him as the LORD spoke through Samuel.
    • Samuel said the LORD had torn the kingdom out of Saul's hand.
    • Samuel said the LORD had given the kingdom to Saul's neighbor David.
18. 28:18
    • Samuel said Saul had not obeyed the voice of the LORD.
    • Samuel said Saul had not carried out the LORD's burning anger against Amalek.
    • Samuel said that for this reason the LORD had done this thing to Saul that day.
19. 28:19
    • Samuel said the LORD would also give Israel along with Saul into the hand of the Philistines.
    • Samuel said that the next day Saul and his sons would be with him.
    • Samuel said the LORD would also give the camp of Israel into the hand of the Philistines.
20. 28:20
    • Saul hurried and fell full length on the ground.
    • Saul was very afraid because of the words of Samuel.
    • There was no strength in him.
    • He had eaten no food all that day and all that night.
21. 28:21
    • The woman came to Saul.
    • The woman saw that he was greatly terrified.
    • The woman said to him that his handmaid had obeyed his voice.
    • The woman said she had put her life in her own hand.
    • The woman said she had listened to the words he spoke to her.
22. 28:22
    • The woman asked Saul to also listen to the voice of his handmaid.
    • The woman asked to set a morsel of bread before him.
    • The woman told him to eat.
    • The woman said that eating would give him strength for going on his way.
23. 28:23
    • Saul refused.
    • Saul said he would not eat.
    • His servants and the woman urged him insistently.
    • Saul listened to their voice.
    • Saul got up from the ground.
    • Saul sat on the bed.
24. 28:24
    • The woman had a fattened calf in the house.
    • She hurried and slaughtered it.
    • She took flour and kneaded it.
    • She baked unleavened bread from it.
25. 28:25
    • She brought it before Saul and before his servants.
    • They ate.
    • They got up and went away that night.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

28:1

The Philistines were a people settled on the coastal plain southwest of Israel, in five main cities, and were Israel's chief military rival at this time. Achish was the Philistine king of Gath, one of those cities; David had been living under his protection as a fugitive from Saul, which is why a Philistine king is giving him orders.

28:2

David's reply is deliberately ambiguous in the Hebrew: it can be heard as a loyal promise of good service or as a veiled threat about what he might do in the battle. The narrator does not resolve it. "Bodyguard" translates a Hebrew phrase meaning "keeper of my head."

28:3

The two groups named are those who consulted the spirits of the dead on someone's behalf and those who practiced other kinds of divination, the King James "wizards" means a "knowing one," a professional diviner, not a fairy-tale magician. Israelite law forbade both, so Saul's earlier purge was enforcement of that law. The verse notes it here because it sets up the problem of the rest of the chapter.

28:4

Shunem and Gilboa face each other across the Jezreel Valley, roughly eight to ten miles apart. Both are well north of the Philistines' own coastal territory, so this is a Philistine push deep into Israelite farmland rather than the usual border skirmishing.

28:6

The Urim was a sacred object (paired in other passages with the Thummim) kept in the high priest's breastpiece and used to obtain yes-or-no answers from God. Dreams, the Urim and prophets were the three recognized ways of putting a question to the LORD; the verse is saying every legitimate channel had gone silent.

28:7

Endor lay a few miles north of Shunem (that is, past or around the Philistine camp) which is why the journey is made at night.

28:8

Saul disguises himself for two reasons the story assumes the reader will supply: he is the king and would be recognized, and he is asking for the very service he himself had outlawed.

28:9

Saul himself had made this work a capital crime, so the woman assumes the stranger is an informer setting a trap. What she is afraid of is the king, not the spirits.

28:10

"As surely as the LORD lives" was the strongest oath formula in Hebrew, staking the speaker's own standing before God on his word.

28:12

The text does not say how seeing Samuel told the woman who her visitor was; it simply reports that it did. The gap is in the Hebrew as well, and translations leave it open.

28:13

The Hebrew word here, *elohim*, covers God, gods, and supernatural beings generally, and the verb attached to it in this verse is plural. It can be read as "a god," "a divine being," or "spirits" coming up, and the ambiguity is in the original. "Out of the ground" reflects the ordinary Israelite picture of the dead as being below the earth, in Sheol.

28:14

The robe is a *me'il*, a long sleeveless outer garment; Samuel's robe is mentioned earlier in the book, when Saul tore its hem. Bowing face to the ground was the customary gesture of respect before a superior (a king, or a prophet) and does not by itself indicate worship.

28:15

"Disturbed" and "brought up" both assume the dead are at rest below the ground; Samuel's complaint is about being stirred out of that rest and made to come up.

28:17

"The man next to you" translates a Hebrew word meaning neighbor, companion, fellow. It repeats, word for word, what Samuel had said to Saul in an earlier confrontation, where the man was left unnamed; here the name David is supplied.

28:18

The Amalekites were a desert people Saul had been ordered to destroy completely, sparing nothing, an order he had carried out only in part, keeping their king and the best of their livestock alive. "Carry out his burning anger" means executing that sentence.

28:19

"You and your sons will be with me" means among the dead.

28:20

"Fell straightway all along on the earth" is old English for collapsed at once, full length, stretched out face down on the ground.

28:21

"Your servant" (King James "handmaid") is the polite way a person addressed a superior, referring to herself in the third person rather than saying "I." "I put my own life at risk" renders a Hebrew idiom, literally "I put my life in my hand."

28:23

The bed is a couch or low raised platform, used for reclining at meals as well as for sleeping, so sitting on it is the normal posture for eating, not a retreat to rest.

28:24

A fattened calf was an animal specially fed for slaughter, the most expensive meat available and normally reserved for a major occasion. Bread without yeast needs no time to rise, so it can be mixed and baked at once, the point here is speed, not any festival meaning.