1 Samuel 28:12

And when the woman saw Samuel,.... The appearance of him whom she took for Samuel; no mention is made of the methods she used to raise him, to check the curiosity of such as might be desirous to know

And when the woman saw Samuel, she cried with a loud voice: and the woman spake to Saul, saying, Why hast thou deceived me? for thou art Saul. No JFB commentary on this verse.

She cried with a loud voice, for fear of her life, Saul himself being witness of her crime. Thou art Saul: this she knew, either by some gesture of reverence which this supposed Samuel might show to Saul, as to the king; or by information from this ghost; or from the spirit by whose help she had raised him.

1 Samuel 28:12 And when the woman saw Samuel, she cried with a loud voice: and the woman spake to Saul, saying, Why hast thou deceived me? for thou [art] Saul.Ver. 12. And when the woman saw Samuel.] That is, The devil in Samuel’ s mantle. Who also told her that it was Saul, whence her outcry.

(12) And when the woman saw Samuel, she cried with a loud voice.—Nothing is more clear from the narration than that the woman of En-dor saw something she never dreamed of seeing. Whatever did appear that night was different from anything she had seen before. Whether or not she was an impostor matters little to us. From the severe enactments in the Mosaic code respecting these practices, it would seem as though in the background there was something dark and sinister. At all events, on this memorable occasion, the witch was evidently amazed and appalled at the success of her enchantments. Ewald supposes that she burst into a loud cry on seeing Samuel’s shade, because it ascended with such frightfully threatening gestures, as it could have used only against its deadly enemy, Saul; and she then saw that the questioner must be Saul. This can, however, only be taken as an ingenious surmise. There is a singular passage in the Chaggigah Treatise of the Babylonian Talmud (quoted below), which—contrary to the usual interpretation of the word rendered “gods” (1 Samuel 28:13)—assumes that a second form “came up” with Samuel; and one Jewish interpretation tells us that these were “judges”—so rendering the Elohim of 1 Samuel 28:13—judges robed in their judicial mantles; and it was the sight of these awful ministers of justice which appalled the consciously guilty woman. Deeply interesting, however, as are these traditions and comments, handed down probably from a school of expositors which flourished before the Christian era, we hardly need anything more to account for the cry of terror which burst from the woman than this appearance of the venerable seer, evidently by her quite unlooked for. And the woman spake to Saul.—At this juncture the woman recognised in the unknown stranger King Saul. For a moment remembering his stern, ruthless procedure in such cases of sorcery as the one in which she was then engaged, she thinks herself betrayed, and given over to a shameful death of agony; and she turns to the king boeide her with a piteous expostulation, “Why hast thou deceived me?” The question now comes up, How did she come to recognise Saul in the unknown? Ewald’s ingenious suggestion has been mentioned above. Keil suggests that the woman had fallen into a state of clairvoyance, in which she recognised persons who, like Saul in his disguise, were unknown to her by face. Josephus (6:14, 2), no doubt writing from traditional sources, asserts that Samuel had most likely revealed the presence of Saul to the witch. “Samuel saw through Saul’s disguise, which had deceived her whom Saul came to consult, as he spoke to Saul as Saul. So Ahijah the prophet, though blind by age, saw through the disguise of the wife of Jeroboam (1 Kings 14:2; 1 Kings 14:6).”—Bishop Wordsworth.On the whole, Josephus’s explanation is probably the true one. It was some word—probably spoken by Samuel—not related here which betrayed the king’s identity to the woman.

Verse 12. When the woman saw Samuel] That Samuel did appear on this occasion, is most evident from the text; nor can this be denied from any legitimate mode of interpretation: and it is as evident that he was neither raised by the power of the devil nor the incantations of the witch, for the appearances which took place at this time were such as she was wholly unacquainted with. Her familiar did not appear; and from the confused description she gives, it is fully evident that she was both surprised and alarmed at what she saw, being so widely different from what she expected to see.

12. thou art Saul] The woman had not previously recognised her visitor, but simultaneously with the apparition of Samuel, discovered that he was Saul, either by the fact of the apparition for which she was unprepared, or by her intensified perception in a state of clairvoyance.

It is manifest both that the apparition of Samuel was real, and also that the woman was utterly unprepared for it.

12. When the woman saw Samuel, she cried with a loud voice — As soon as he said whom he wished to consult, she proceeded, by her peculiar arts, to place herself in a clairvoyant state, and as soon as