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Samuel Pulled from the Dead Sought Moses for Testimony

When the witch of En-Dor conjured Samuel back from the dead, he assumed the Final Judgment had arrived and went immediately to find Moses as his witness.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Witch's Cave
  2. Samuel's First Thought
  3. The Gathering of the Righteous
  4. What the Scales Carry
  5. The Soul in the Treasury
  6. The Warning to Saul

The Witch's Cave

Saul had banned the practice of consulting the dead. He had expelled every medium and necromancer from the land. Then, on the night before the battle that would kill him, he went to the witch of En-Dor and asked her to conjure Samuel.

Samuel came up. The woman saw him and understood immediately that she had been deceived about who her client was, no ordinary man would have produced this particular dead prophet. She screamed. Saul told her not to be afraid and asked what she had seen. She described an old man wrapped in a robe. Saul bowed his face to the ground. He knew it was Samuel.

Samuel's First Thought

According to the Legends of the Jews, Samuel's first thought upon finding himself back in the living world was not about Saul. It was not about the war. It was not about what the witch had done or what her client wanted. His first thought was that the Final Judgment had arrived.

He had been pulled back from the dead in the middle of the night in a cave in En-Dor, and the most logical explanation, from Samuel's vantage point, was that the end of days had finally come and the dead were rising for the great reckoning. If that was what was happening, Samuel needed Moses immediately. He needed Moses to testify on his behalf, to confirm, before whatever tribunal was assembling, that Samuel had kept the laws of the Torah faithfully, just as Moses had established them.

The Gathering of the Righteous

Samuel was not the only one who drew this conclusion. A whole company of pious souls rose with him, each one making the same calculation: if the dead are being called back, the Judgment must be at hand. They came up from their resting places convinced that the final accounting for all of human history was about to begin. The gathering of righteous souls in En-Dor was an unintentional assembly, summoned by a witch's spell and misread by everyone who found themselves in it as the most consequential moment since creation.

It was not. It was a frightened king in a cave the night before his death, and the dead had been pulled back into the world for the most ordinary of reasons: a man needed reassurance from a prophet he had spent years ignoring.

What the Scales Carry

The Shemot Rabbah connected Samuel and Moses through a different frame: divine justice as perfect balance. The verse from Proverbs, "a just balance and scales are the Lord's", served as the lens through which the sages read both prophets' interactions with God. Moses and Samuel were the two figures the tradition placed on either side of the scales. Both were great intercessors. Both had pleaded for the people in moments of crisis. Both had encountered God's judgment on its own terms and negotiated with it directly.

The Talmud preserved the comparison explicitly: before Samuel's birth, Hannah prayed with such intensity that the tradition compared her prayer to Moses's. After Samuel's death, the tradition placed him alongside Moses as the two prophets through whom God had most completely communicated the standards of Torah observance. When Samuel went looking for Moses on the night of his resurrection, he was going to the one person whose testimony about his conduct would carry the full weight of the law's own author.

The Soul in the Treasury

The Bamidbar Rabbah taught that all souls come from God and return to God, and that upon death, the soul is placed in the otzar, the divine treasury, a storehouse of souls held in God's keeping until the moment of return. Rabbi Eliezer the son of Rabbi Yossi HaGelili used the image of a man holding a bird: while we live, our souls are in God's hand, on loan. When we die, they return to the treasury from which they came.

Samuel, pulled from that treasury by a witch's spell, carrying the knowledge that his soul had been stored in God's hand since his death, understood the situation with the clarity of someone who had already been through the accounting and knew what it required. He had been a righteous man by his own reckoning, but righteousness still needed a witness, and the only witness he trusted entirely was Moses.

The Warning to Saul

When Samuel finally turned to Saul, he had nothing comforting to offer. Why have you disturbed my rest? What do you expect me to tell you? The Lord has departed from you and become your adversary. The kingdom will be given to David. Tomorrow you and your sons will be here with me. The battle would be lost, and Saul would not survive it.

Samuel delivered this verdict without softening it, because he was a prophet and the truth was the truth and he had already spent his life telling Saul things Saul did not want to hear. Having been pulled from the treasury of the dead by a witch in the middle of the night, he saw no reason to change his approach.

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The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Legends of the Jews 3:32Legends of the Jews

The story goes that a witch – a powerful sorceress, no doubt – managed to conjure up spirits, and Samuel was among those she pulled back into the world of the living. Now, according to Ginzberg's retelling in Legends of the Jews, Samuel, upon his resurrection, assumed the Day of Judgement had finally arrived!

Can you imagine his shock?

Immediately, he sought out Moses, no less! He wanted Moses to vouch for him, to testify that he had always upheld the laws of the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) just as Moses had established them.

It wasn’t just Samuel and Moses who appeared. A whole host of pious individuals arose with them, all convinced that the final reckoning was at hand. Imagine the scene – a spectral gathering of righteous souls, ready to face judgment.

But here's a detail that really brings the story to life: Samuel was wearing his "upper garment." This wasn't just any piece of clothing. It was the very garment his mother had lovingly made for him when she dedicated him to the sanctuary as a young boy. He wore it throughout his life, and was even buried in it.

Why is this detail important? Well, the story continues that at the resurrection, the dead are clothed in their grave clothes. It was in this familiar, beloved garment that Samuel stood before Saul, instantly recognizable. The familiar "upper garment" served almost like a calling card from beyond the grave.

It makes you wonder, doesn't it? What items, what memories, what "upper garments" will we carry with us – even beyond this life? What will define us, and make us recognizable, when that great day finally arrives?

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Shemot Rabbah 16:4Shemot Rabbah

Jewish tradition teaches us that justice, true justice, is at the very heart of the Divine. And that the way we act in the world has cosmic repercussions.

In Shemot Rabbah, a compilation of rabbinic interpretations on the Book of Exodus, we find a fascinating exploration of this concept. It all centers around the verse, "Draw, and take for yourselves lambs" (Exodus 12:21) – a seemingly simple instruction before the Exodus. But the Rabbis see so much more within it.

The verse is connected to (Proverbs 16:11), "A just balance and scales are the Lord's." This idea of divine justice, of a perfect cosmic balance, is key. The Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) uses the examples of Moses and Samuel to illustrate this point. Both towering figures, both prophets, yet their interactions with God were different. Moses would ascend to God to receive divine speech. But with Samuel, the text says, "The Lord came and stood" (1 (Samuel 3:1)0). Why the difference?

In Midrash, God says, "With justice and righteousness I interact with the person." Moses sat in one place, and people came to him for judgment (Exodus 18:13). Samuel, however, traveled throughout the land, going to the people so they wouldn't have to travel to him (1 (Samuel 7:1)6). Because Samuel went the extra mile, God met him where he was. A beautiful idea, isn't it? That God responds to our efforts, meeting us in our own dedication to justice and righteousness.

The Midrash continues with another example: Judah. Because Judah saved three lives – Tamar and her two sons – from being burned, God saved three of his descendants – Ḥananya, Mishael, and Azarya (better known as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego) – from the fiery furnace. Again, "a just balance and scales are the Lord's." One good deed begets another.

But what about suffering? What about injustice? The Midrash doesn’t shy away from this. It recalls the Israelites' enslavement in Egypt. For eighty long years, they endured hardship. The Egyptians would flaunt their food, eating meat while the Israelites were denied even a taste. As it says in (Exodus 16:3), the Israelites remember "when we sat by the fleshpot," emphasizing that they could only sit near the meat, unable to partake.

So, what was God's response? The Midrash says that God declared, "You caused My children to drool with the meat that you would eat, and you would not give them any; I, too, will arrange for My children to slaughter the lambs to which you prostrate yourselves. They will eat and you will be envious. Why? Because I am the true judge."

This brings us back to the original verse: "Draw, and take for yourselves lambs." It wasn't just about preparing for the Exodus. It was about divine justice. The Egyptians, who had denied the Israelites even the scraps of meat, would now watch as the Israelites sacrificed and consumed the very animals the Egyptians worshipped. It was a reversal of fortune, a rebalancing of the scales.

The Shemot Rabbah here reminds us that the world operates on principles of justice, even when it doesn’t always appear that way. Our actions have consequences, not just for ourselves but for the world around us. And perhaps most importantly, it suggests that even in the face of injustice, hope remains, because the scales, ultimately, are held by the One who is just.

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Sifrei Bamidbar 139:1Sifrei Bamidbar

In the book of Bamidbar – that's Numbers in English – we find a fascinating glimpse into this very mystery.

The verse It tells us that this verse is teaching us something profound: that all spirits, all souls, ultimately come from Him. They originate from the Divine.

What happens to the soul when we die?

Rabbi Eliezer the son of Rabbi Yossi Haglili offers a compelling image. He says, remember this: while we're alive, our soul is held in the hand of its Owner, meaning G-d. He points to the Book of Job (12:10), where it says, "…that in His hand is the spirit of all living things." It’s like our souls are on loan, a precious gift entrusted to us for a time.

And when we die? According to Rabbi Eliezer, the soul is then placed in the otzar – the treasury. Think of it as a storehouse of souls. He finds support for this idea in the Book of Samuel (I (Samuel 25:2)9), where it says, "and may the soul of my master be bound up in the bond of life." That "bond of life" – that’s the otzar.

But what about the souls of the wicked? Do they get the same treatment? Well, the verse continues, "and may He sling out the soul of your foes (as) in the hollow of a sling." So, the implication is that not all souls are treasured equally. There's a distinction, a separation. The wicked don't get the same gentle return to the otzar.

Now, the verse in Numbers also speaks of appointing "a man over the congregation." The commentary suggests that this man is Joshua. But here's an interesting point: why doesn’t Scripture explicitly name him? Why the ambiguity?

Sifrei Bamidbar offers a fascinating reason: to avoid stirring up controversy. if Joshua were explicitly named, it might have caused jealousy or conflict among his own sons and the sons of his uncle Aaron – Elazar and Ithamar. By leaving it unsaid, the potential for discord was minimized. It's a subtle but powerful lesson in leadership and diplomacy. A reminder that sometimes, the way we do things is just as important as what we do.

So, what does all this mean for us today? Perhaps it's a call to recognize the preciousness of the souls within us and within everyone around us. A reminder that these souls are a gift, temporarily entrusted to our care. And maybe, just maybe, it offers a little comfort in knowing that even in death, there's a place, a treasury, where our souls are ultimately bound up in the bond of life.

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Midrash Tehillim 138:2Midrash Tehillim

The ancient rabbis certainly did. And in Midrash Tehillim, a collection of rabbinic teachings on the Book of Psalms, we find a powerful example of just that. It's a passage dripping with resilience and hope.

The verse But who are these "gods"? It's not what it first appears. According to this midrash (rabbinic interpretation), the psalmist isn't necessarily referring to pagan deities. Instead, the rabbis interpret "gods" in a few different ways.

First, it could refer to the Sanhedrin, the ancient Jewish high court. It's a bold statement, singing against such an esteemed body! But the midrash supports this interpretation by citing (Exodus 22:27), "You shall not revile God," implying that the members of the Sanhedrin, as representatives of divine law, could be seen as "gods" in a certain sense.

Then, the midrash suggests that "gods" could also refer to the prophets. (1 (Chronicles 23:1)4) calls Moses "the man of God," and (1 (Samuel 2:2)7) mentions a "man of God" coming to Eli. Even in death, they retain this divine association. The text even points to (2 (Samuel 23:1)3), "I saw gods ascending out of the earth," to further illustrate this idea. even in their passing, the prophets held a certain sacred power.

So, to sing "against the gods" is to sing even against these figures of authority and spiritual weight. But why would we do that?

The midrash offers another layer of meaning. It suggests that singing "against the gods" could also mean singing through our troubles, singing to God despite the hardships that befall us. "Against the troubles that come upon us, we sing to You," the midrash states plainly. That's a powerful image, isn't it? To lift your voice in praise even when surrounded by difficulty.

This leads to a vision of hope, a future when "the wicked are destroyed from the world" and Israel can truly praise God. The verse then connects this singing to the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem. "When the temple is rebuilt and Your sanctuary restored, at that time I will prostrate myself toward Your holy temple." The prophet Zephaniah (3:16) echoes this sentiment, saying, "In that day, it shall be said to Jerusalem, Fear not."

But why will this praise be so powerful? Because, the text says, "You have magnified Your word above all Your name." Israel proclaims that God has magnified everything spoken through the prophets. The midrash then cites (Joel 3:1), "And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit," and (Joel 4:18), "And it shall come to pass in that day that the mountains shall drop down new wine." These are visions of abundance and divine presence. It also references (Isaiah 51:6), "Fear not the reproach of men."

The midrash concludes with a sense of joy and liberation, quoting (Psalm 126:2), "Then was our mouth filled with laughter."

What does this all mean for us today? Perhaps it's a reminder that even when we feel surrounded by challenges, even when we question authority or struggle with our faith, we can still find strength in our traditions, in our prayers, and in our songs. It’s a call to praise, even against the "gods" – whatever they may be in our own lives. It's about finding that laughter, that joy, even in the face of adversity, trusting in the promise of a brighter future. Can we find that song within ourselves?

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