Commentary - 1 Samuel 28:3-7

Bird's-eye view

In this passage, the miserable King Saul is approaching the very end of his frayed rope. The narrative is being set for his final and pathetic downfall. With the Philistine army mustered and looking formidable, Saul finds that the spiritual resources he had long neglected are no longer available to him. His past disobedience has resulted in present desolation. In his terror, he casts about for a word of certainty, any word from the supernatural realm, and in his desperation, he turns from the God who has gone silent to the demonic practices he himself had once outlawed. This is the story of a man whose compromises have finally caught up to him, leaving him spiritually bankrupt on the eve of his final battle.

The stage is set with two crucial reminders: Samuel, the prophetic voice of God, is dead, and Saul, in a fit of what passed for piety, had expelled the mediums and spiritists. This backdrop highlights the profound irony and hypocrisy of Saul's subsequent actions. When confronted with a genuine crisis, his superficial reforms are exposed, and his true spiritual condition is laid bare. He is a man who fears the Philistines more than he fears Yahweh, and so he seeks counsel from the kingdom of darkness because the kingdom of Heaven will not answer him on his own terms.

Outline

Verse by Verse Commentary

1 Samuel 28:3

Now Samuel was dead, and all Israel had lamented for him and buried him in Ramah, his own city. And Saul had removed from the land those who were mediums and spiritists.

The narrator begins by giving us two crucial pieces of background information. First, Samuel was dead. This is not incidental. The great prophet, the man who had anointed Saul and later pronounced God's judgment upon him, was gone. This means the primary prophetic voice in Israel, the man who represented God's authoritative word to the king and the people, was silenced by the grave. A great grace had been removed from Israel. With Samuel gone, the nation was spiritually adrift, and Saul was left without the counselor he had consistently ignored but whose presence was a restraining grace.

Second, we are told that Saul had put the mediums and spiritists out of the land. On the face of it, this was an act of obedience. The law of God robustly condemned such practices (Lev. 20:27; Deut. 18:10-11), and Saul, as king, was responsible for enforcing that law. He had done the right thing. But as the subsequent verses show, this was an external reformation only. It was a public policy, not a heartfelt conviction. He cut down the weeds in the public square but cultivated them in the private garden of his heart. This earlier act of righteousness makes his later desperation all the more pathetic and his hypocrisy all the more stark. He knew what God's law required, and had even enforced it, which makes his violation of it a sin of the highest order.

1 Samuel 28:4

So the Philistines gathered together and came and camped in Shunem; and Saul gathered all Israel together, and they camped in Gilboa.

Now the external pressure is applied. The Philistines, the perennial enemies of Israel, are mustered for war. They are organized, confident, and encamped. In response, Saul does what a king is supposed to do. He gathers his own army. The two forces are arrayed against each other, setting the stage for a great conflict. From a purely military standpoint, this is standard procedure. But the real battle is not the one that will be fought with swords and spears on the slopes of Gilboa. The real battle has already been raging in the heart of Israel's king, and the Philistine army is simply the final exam for which he has not studied.

1 Samuel 28:5

Saul saw the camp of the Philistines and was afraid and his heart trembled greatly.

Here we see the internal collapse. When Saul looked out and saw the strength of the enemy, he was not filled with a righteous zeal for the Lord's battle. He was filled with sheer terror. His heart "trembled greatly." Why? Because a man who is not right with God has no foundation to stand on when the enemy appears. A guilty conscience makes cowards of us all. Saul had forsaken God, so when the crisis came, his courage forsook him. He remembered the priests of Nob he had slaughtered. He remembered the Amalekites he had sinfully spared. He knew, deep down, that he was on his own. This is not the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom. This is the raw, animal fear of a man who knows he is exposed and utterly alone.

1 Samuel 28:6

So Saul asked of Yahweh, but Yahweh did not answer him, either by dreams or by Urim or by prophets.

In his panic, Saul makes a show of turning to God. He inquired of Yahweh. But the text is blunt: Yahweh did not answer him. This divine silence is a terrible judgment. God had established clear, lawful channels through which He would communicate with His people and their king. These were primarily three: dreams, which were often a means of revelation to kings; the Urim and Thummim, which were the priestly means of discerning God's will; and the prophets, who spoke God's direct word. All three channels were static. God was not speaking.

And why should He? Saul had ignored the clear prophetic word from Samuel for years. He had murdered the priests who would have used the Urim. He wanted a word of encouragement from God now, but he had not wanted the words of correction from God then. You cannot treat God's word like a buffet, taking what you like and leaving the rest. When you reject God's authority when it is inconvenient, you forfeit the privilege of His counsel when you are desperate. God will not be mocked, and He will not be used as a spiritual rabbit's foot. His silence here is an active response, a righteous judgment on a faithless king.

1 Samuel 28:7

So Saul said to his servants, “Seek for me a woman who is a medium, that I may go to her and inquire of her.” And his servants said to him, “Behold, there is a woman who is a medium at En-dor.”

This is the pivot from frantic fear to high-handed, defiant rebellion. If God will not answer through His appointed means, Saul will get his answer through forbidden ones. He doesn't repent in the face of God's silence. He doesn't throw himself on God's mercy. No, he turns to the occult. He commands his servants to find him a medium, a necromancer, the very kind of person his own edict had banished. This is a man who would rather hear from a demon than repent before God.

And notice how quickly his servants respond. "Behold, there is a woman at En-dor." The king's purge was not as thorough as it seemed. You can make a sin illegal, but you cannot eradicate it as long as there is a demand for it in the hearts of men, starting with the king. The supply chain for wickedness had simply gone underground. Saul is now actively seeking counsel from the demonic realm. He has abandoned any pretense of faithfulness to Yahweh. He wants a supernatural word, and if the God of Heaven won't give it to him, he will seek one from the spirits of the earth. This is the final, pathetic act of a man who has become his own worst enemy.

Application

The story of Saul's decline is a stark warning against the kind of religion that is all form and no substance. Saul's earlier purge of the mediums was a good work, but it was not the fruit of a good heart. When the pressure came, his hypocrisy was revealed. We must constantly be on guard against an external righteousness that does not flow from an internal love for God and His law. It is easy to condemn sins we are not currently tempted by, but true faithfulness is revealed when our own security is on the line.

Furthermore, we learn a crucial lesson about what to do when God seems silent. Saul's response to God's silence was to turn to a forbidden source of spiritual information. The Christian response to divine silence must be repentance. If we inquire of the Lord and hear nothing, the first place to look is inward. Is there unconfessed sin? Is there a command we have been ignoring? God's silence is not an invitation to seek other counselors; it is a call to examine ourselves. Unlike Saul, we must not prefer the lying whispers of the world, the flesh, or the devil to the silence of a holy God who is calling us back to Himself.

Ultimately, Saul sought a word that would give him control and comfort on his own terms. But the gospel is the announcement that we are not in control, and our only true comfort is found in surrendering to the one who is. We have a better King than Saul, and a better Prophet than Samuel. In Christ, God has spoken His definitive Word. We are never left in the kind of silence Saul experienced, because the Son is always speaking, and the Spirit is always testifying to Him. Our task is not to frantically seek a new word in times of crisis, but to faithfully obey the Word we have already been given.