Samuel Rose from the Dead Standing Upright and the Witch Screamed

The witch of Endor put her hands down and screamed.

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She had pulled spirits up before. They came bent, the way the diminished come, heads lowered toward the living. This one rose standing upright, facing forward, in the cloak his mother had sewn when she left him at the sanctuary.

She had not been hired to raise a man who still looked like a judge.

He Thought the World Had Ended

Samuel's first thought was not about Saul, or the woman who had called him, or the Philistine camp pressing down on Israel. His first thought was that the Day of Judgment had arrived. The dead rise at the end of history. He had risen. Therefore history had ended.

He looked around. The world was still intact. He revised. He had been pulled up by an extraordinary act of summoning, not by the end of time.

Other spirits rose beside him, the pious, all of them making the same mistake. He asked Moses to come with him and testify that he had kept the ordinances Moses had set down. They stood together in grave clothes, Samuel in the upper garment Hannah had made, the one he had worn his whole life and been buried in.

The witch saw the company of them and her voice went. Then she knew who had hired her. Only a king asks for a prophet this way, and only a king in that much trouble.

A Two-Year-Old Corrected the Priests

He had been like this from the start.

Hannah brought him to Shiloh at two years old, the vow paid, the boy left. The attendants were looking for a priest to kill the sacrificial animal. Samuel, barely old enough to stand on his own, told them a non-priest was permitted to perform the slaughter. He cited the law correctly. The knife went into other hands because a toddler said so.

Eli arrived while the animal was still going down. He did not smile. He was about to have the child executed. "Let him die," he said. "I will pray for another in his place."

Hannah stepped in. "I lent him to the Lord. Whatever happens, he belongs neither to you nor to me, but to God."

Only then did Eli let him live. Only then did Hannah offer the prayer she had brought with her. The boy who would later rise standing had already refused to bow to a procedure that was wrong.

Elkanah Took the Towns to Shiloh

His father Elkanah was not an ordinary man. Some held him up as a second Abraham. God had been enraged by the idolatry of Micah and was ready to act against the people, and Elkanah's merit stayed the hand.

What he had done was simple. The pilgrimages to Shiloh had fallen off. The road was emptying. Elkanah packed his household, kinsmen and all, and went up three times a year, a man of moderate means walking as if he were rich, because the spectacle was the point. In every town the procession passed, people asked what the noise was. "We are going to the house of the Lord at Shiloh," he said. "The law comes from there. Why should you not join us?"

The first year five households came. The next year ten. He chose a new route every year so more towns would have to ask the question. By the time Samuel was born, the road to Shiloh was a road again.

Later, when enemies surrounded him, Samuel called to God and offered a lamb, and God thundered from heaven and the Philistine line broke. He knew how to ask because he had been raised in a house that still knew the way to the door.

Tomorrow You and Your Sons Will Be With Me

At Endor he did what he had always done. He told the truth.

He told Saul what was coming. Tomorrow you and your sons will be with me. The battle is lost. The kingdom is over. He had anointed Saul. He had later delivered the message that God had rejected Saul. He remained consistent to the end, standing upright in death as he had stood in life, delivering the assessment the situation required, whether the person receiving it wanted it or not.

The witch had never seen anything like it. She had summoned bent spirits. Samuel refused to bend.