Jesus: From Genesis to Revelation

Day 5: The Medium at Endor, the Death of Saul, and the End of an Era

Reading

Historical Context

The final movement of 1 Samuel unfolds in four interconnected scenes: David’s crisis of loyalty as a Philistine vassal, Saul’s descent to the medium at Endor, the Philistine dismissal of David before the battle, and the catastrophe at Mount Gilboa. The narrative cuts between the two men – the fugitive and the king – with a cinematic precision that highlights the contrast between their trajectories. One is ascending through darkness toward a throne. The other is descending through darkness toward a grave.

David’s position at the opening of chapter 28 is impossibly compromised. Achish, king of Gath, summons his vassal to march against Israel. David, the anointed king of Israel, is expected to fight against his own people. His response to Achish – “Then you shall know what your servant can do” (28:2) – is masterfully ambiguous. Achish hears a promise of loyalty. The reader hears evasion. The narrator holds the tension without resolution. God will resolve it in chapter 29 when the Philistine commanders refuse to let David march with them, declaring, “Is not this David, of whom they sing to one another in dances, ‘Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands’?” (29:5). The song that caused Saul’s jealousy now becomes the instrument of David’s deliverance. Providence works through the suspicion of pagan generals.

Saul’s journey to Endor is the narrative’s darkest scene. The text establishes the theological backdrop with devastating clarity: “When Saul inquired of the LORD, the LORD did not answer him, either by dreams, or by Urim, or by prophets” (28:6). The three channels of divine communication are listed and closed, one by one. Dreams – the most common form of divine revelation in the ancient Near East. The Urim (ha’Urim), the priestly oracle connected to the ephod – but Saul massacred the priests of Nob, and the ephod went with Abiathar to David. Prophets – but Samuel is dead. Every door is shut. The silence of God is not passive; it is the active consequence of a life of sustained disobedience.

The medium at Endor is called ba’alat-‘ob – “mistress of a spirit” or “possessor of a necromantic pit.” The word ‘ob refers to the spirit of a deceased person or the pit from which such spirits were summoned, a practice explicitly forbidden in Deuteronomy 18:10-12: “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’evat YHWH) to the LORD.” Saul himself had banned mediums from the land (1 Samuel 28:3), enforcing the very law he now violates. The irony is complete: the king comes in disguise to break his own decree because the God whose law he is violating will not speak to him through legitimate means.

What rises from the ground is debated by interpreters, but the text treats the encounter as genuinely involving Samuel. The old prophet’s words are unchanged by death: “Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?” (28:15). Samuel’s final oracle is a death sentence: “Tomorrow you and your sons shall be with me, and the LORD will give the army of Israel also into the hand of the Philistines” (28:19). Saul collapses, full-length on the ground (wayyippol melo’ qomato artsah). He has eaten nothing all day. The medium – the woman Saul came to illegally – feeds him bread and a fattened calf. The king eats his last meal from the hand of the one whose practice he outlawed. The scene is grotesque in its reversals.

The battle at Mount Gilboa is narrated with terrible brevity. The Philistines overwhelm Israel. Jonathan falls, along with his brothers Abinadab and Malchi-shua. Saul is wounded by archers – the Hebrew wayachel me’od mehammmorim (“he was badly wounded by the archers”) uses chul, a verb that can mean both physical pain and the writhing of fear. He asks his armor-bearer to kill him so the Philistines will not abuse him, but the armor-bearer refuses. Saul falls on his own sword (wayyippol al-charbo). The spear he threw at David, the spear David left in the ground – now his own weapon ends his life. The Philistines find his body, cut off his head, strip his armor, and hang his body on the walls of Beth-shan. The armor goes to the temple of Ashtaroth. The cycle is complete: the king who kept the best of Amalekite plunder for himself now becomes plunder for the Philistines.

The men of Jabesh-gilead – the town Saul rescued from Nahash the Ammonite in his first act as king (1 Samuel 11) – march through the night, retrieve the bodies of Saul and his sons from the walls of Beth-shan, burn them, and bury the bones under the tamarisk tree at Jabesh. They fast for seven days. It is an act of extraordinary loyalty, reaching back to the beginning of Saul’s reign to honor the man he was before he became the man he ended as. The tamarisk tree (‘eshel) recalls the tree Abraham planted at Beersheba (Genesis 21:33) – a marker of covenant faithfulness in a landscape of loss.

Christ in This Day

The contrast between Saul’s death and Christ’s death is the theological spine of this passage. Saul dies because God has abandoned him to the consequences of his disobedience. Christ dies because God has sent him into the consequences of humanity’s disobedience. Saul falls on his own sword to avoid the mockery of the uncircumcised. Christ endures the mockery of the crucifixion willingly: “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7). Saul’s death is the terminus of a life that grasped at power, disobeyed the prophetic word, and filled the silence of God with necromancy. Christ’s death is the culmination of a life that emptied itself of power, fulfilled every prophetic word, and answered the silence of Holy Saturday with the shout of resurrection morning. Both kings die on a hill. One dies because he refused to trust God. The other dies because he trusted the Father completely – even unto death, even death on a cross (Philippians 2:8).

Saul’s consultation of the medium at Endor – seeking the dead because the living God will not answer – stands in absolute contrast to Jesus’ authority over death itself. When Jesus stands at the tomb of Lazarus, he does not conjure or summon through forbidden arts. He commands: “Lazarus, come out” (John 11:43). When he appears to Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration, they come not from a necromantic pit but from the presence of God, speaking with Jesus about his exodus – his departure at Jerusalem (Luke 9:31). Christ does not seek the dead. He conquers death. Paul’s declaration in 2 Timothy 1:10 – that Christ “abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” – is the answer to Endor’s darkness. Saul went down to the dead in despair. Christ went down to the grave in victory and came back with the keys (Revelation 1:18).

The loyalty of the men of Jabesh-gilead – marching through the night to recover the body of a fallen, disgraced king and give him a proper burial – anticipates Joseph of Arimathea’s act at Calvary. Joseph goes to Pilate, asks for the body of Jesus, wraps it in linen, and places it in a new tomb (Matthew 27:57-60). In both cases, loyal followers perform the final act of devotion for a king the world has discarded. The burial honors what the death seemed to deny: that this life mattered, that this body was not refuse, that even in death the person retains dignity before God. But where Saul’s burial is a final act – the bones under the tamarisk tree at Jabesh will stay there – Christ’s burial is a penultimate act. The tomb is not the end. The stone will roll away. The burial that seemed to be a full stop turns out to be a comma, and the sentence continues with the most important word in human history: “He is risen.”

Key Themes

Connections

Old Testament Roots

The prohibition against necromancy is rooted in Deuteronomy 18:10-12 and Leviticus 19:31; 20:6, 27. Saul’s death on Gilboa is interpreted in 1 Chronicles 10:13-14 with theological precision: “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.” The recovery of bodies from Beth-shan echoes the ancient Near Eastern custom of displaying defeated enemies’ remains as trophies – a practice the men of Jabesh-gilead defy at personal risk.

New Testament Echoes

Judas’ death – “he went and hanged himself” (Matthew 27:5) – parallels Saul’s suicide as the end of a trajectory of betrayal. Both men began with divine calling and ended in self-destruction. Christ’s authority over death (John 11:25-26; Revelation 1:18) stands in direct contrast to Saul’s desperate resort to necromancy. Joseph of Arimathea’s burial of Jesus (Matthew 27:57-60) parallels the men of Jabesh-gilead: loyal devotion to a fallen king that the world has discarded, performed at personal risk.

Parallel Passages

Compare Saul’s death with the death of Ahithophel, David’s counselor who also hangs himself after his counsel is rejected (2 Samuel 17:23) – both suicides follow the failure of a plan. Compare the medium’s meal for Saul (bread and a fattened calf, 28:24) with the prodigal son’s feast (Luke 15:23) – both involve a fattened calf, but one is a meal of despair and the other a meal of restoration. Psalm 31:5 – “Into your hand I commit my spirit” – is the prayer Saul could not pray and Christ did (Luke 23:46).

Reflection Questions

  1. Saul’s descent to Endor was not a sudden collapse but the last step in a long series of compromises. What does his trajectory teach about the cumulative danger of small disobediences? Where in your own life might a pattern of minor compromises be leading somewhere you do not want to go?

  2. The men of Jabesh-gilead risked their lives to honor the body of a king who had failed in almost every way. How do you hold together genuine gratitude for what someone gave you and honest acknowledgment of where they went wrong? What does biblical loyalty look like when the person you follow has fallen?

  3. God’s silence toward Saul was the consequence of Saul’s sustained refusal to listen. Have you ever experienced a season where God seemed silent? How do you distinguish between God’s silence as consequence and God’s silence as a test of faith – or is the distinction less clear than we would like?

Prayer

Father, the story of Saul’s end frightens us because we see in it the possibility of our own undoing – not in a single dramatic fall but in a slow descent of small refusals, partial obediences, and substituted judgments. Spare us from the silence that comes when we have stopped listening. Spare us from seeking the dead when the living God has not answered on our schedule. We are grateful that you are not a God who abandons the brokenhearted – that even when Saul fell, the men of Jabesh-gilead marched through the night to honor his body, and that when your Son was taken down from the cross, faithful hands wrapped him in linen and laid him in a garden tomb. Thank you that the tomb was not the end. Thank you that the death of your Son accomplished what the death of Saul could not: victory over the last enemy, the key to the grave, the abolition of the power that held humanity captive. Keep us on the path of obedience, and when we stumble, meet us with the grace that raises the dead. In the name of Jesus, who descended into death and rose with the keys of Hades. Amen.