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Samuel Prophesied After His Death and Offered Saul a Way to Die

The woman at Endor had never heard of Samuel. She called him up anyway, and the thing that came out of the ground told her whose king was in her house.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The King Who Ran Out of Answers
  2. The Woman Who Did Not Know Whom She Was Calling
  3. The Mantle
  4. What Samuel Offered Him
  5. The Only Calf She Had
Samuel Prophesied After His Death and Offered Saul a Way to Die Click for full size

The King Who Ran Out of Answers

The Philistines had brought their whole confederacy up to Shunem, and Saul put his camp on Mount Gilboa opposite them and counted the campfires on the other side. There were more of them than there were of him.

He asked God what the battle would do. He asked through the prophets and got nothing back. He waited for a dream and did not get one. The silence was new, and it frightened him more than the count of the fires did, because a man who has been answered his whole life knows the sound of the answering stopping.

Years earlier he had cleared the country of fortune-tellers and necromancers and everyone who worked that trade, and he had left the prophets alone. Now he told his servants to find him a woman who called up the dead. One of them knew of one at Endor, unknown to anyone in the camp.

Saul took off the royal clothes. He took two servants he trusted and went across the ridge at night.

The Woman Who Did Not Know Whom She Was Calling

She said no. She told the stranger in front of her that she had never insulted the king who banned her craft, that she had done nobody any harm, and that he was standing in her doorway trying to trap her into a crime she could be executed for.

He swore an oath. Nobody would ever know she had done it, and nothing she said would leave the room, and no harm would come to her from it.

She asked whom he wanted. He said Samuel. The name meant nothing to her. She had no idea who Samuel was, and she did the work anyway, and called him up out of the place where the dead are kept.

The Mantle

Something came up, and she started screaming.

She had done this before, for other people, and whatever usually happened had not happened this time. She turned on her guest with a certainty that had arrived from somewhere else in the room. "Are you not King Saul?"

He admitted it and asked her what had frightened her. She said a figure was coming up out of the ground and the shape of it was like a god. He asked her what it looked like, what it was wearing, how old it was. An old man, she said. A glorious old man in a priest's mantle.

Saul knew the mantle. He had grabbed a fistful of it once and torn it, and been told that the kingdom had come away from him in exactly that manner. He went down on the floor of the woman's house and pressed his face to it.

What Samuel Offered Him

"Why have you disturbed me? Why have you had me brought up?"

Saul told him everything at once. His enemies were on top of him. He did not know what to do. God had left him and would not answer through prophets or through dreams, and Samuel had always taken care of him.

"There is no point asking me about the future when God has left you." The old man gave him the sentence flat. David is to be king and will finish this war well. You lose your kingdom and your life, because you did not obey God about the Amalekites, and I told you so while I was alive. Your people will be handed to their enemies. Tomorrow you and your sons fall in the battle.

Then came the last four words of it. And you will be with me.

Rabbi Jochanan heard an offer buried in that sentence, and taught it. Every other prophet prophesied while he was alive. Samuel prophesied while he was alive and then went on prophesying after he was dead, and this is what he came up to say: take my advice, walk into the battle, fall by the sword, and the death itself will be your atonement, and your portion will be where I am. Not the grave. The division of heaven where Samuel keeps his place.

Saul could not get a word out. He had eaten nothing for a day and a night, and he went down full length on the floor and stayed there.

The Only Calf She Had

The woman would not let him leave like that. She had broken a law she could die for, at his insistence, for a man she had never met, and now she stood over him and argued with him about supper until he gave in.

She owned one calf. She had raised it herself by hand, and it was the only property she had in the world, and she was a woman who lived on the work of her own hands. She killed it, cooked it, and put the meat in front of the king and his two servants.

She expected nothing back. There was nothing to expect. She had just heard the man be told that he would be dead by the following evening.

Saul ate, and got up, and walked back to his camp while it was still dark.

He did not run. He knew what the next day would do to him and he took his sons into the line with him, Jonathan and Abinadab and Malchisua, and they made the enemy come to them until they were surrounded. The sons went down first. Saul took so many wounds he could not stand, and he told his armor-bearer to run him through, and the armor-bearer would not do it. He set his own sword point against himself and threw his weight on it and it would not go in. He turned to a young man standing nearby and asked him who he was. An Amalekite. Of all the men on that mountain, an Amalekite. Saul asked him to push the sword through, and he did, and then he took the bracelet off the king's arm and the crown off his head and ran.

The Philistines hung the bodies on the wall at Bethshan. The men of Jabesh-Gilead walked all night to get them down, and buried them, and did not eat for seven days.

SamuelProphecyKing SaulAfterlifeHeavenWitch Of EndorMidrash Aggadah
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From the tradition

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The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Antiquities VI.14Antiquities of the Jews (Josephus)

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Antiquities of the Jews, trans. William Whiston · Public Domain

Saul was desperate. The Philistine army had gathered at Shunem in overwhelming numbers, and for the first time in his reign, God refused to answer him, not through prophets, not through dreams, not through any channel at all. The silence was terrifying.

The Josephus says in Antiquities of the Jews, Saul had previously banished every necromancer and fortune-teller from the land. Now he needed one. He disguised himself, stripped off his royal garments, and traveled by night with two trusted servants to the town of Endor, where a woman practiced the forbidden art of summoning the dead.

The woman hesitated. She knew the king's decree, anyone caught practicing necromancy could be executed. But Saul swore an oath that no harm would come to her. So she agreed and called up the spirit he requested: Samuel, the prophet who had anointed Saul king years before.

What appeared shocked even the necromancer. She saw a figure of divine appearance rising from Sheol, venerable and draped in a priestly mantle. She realized at once that her client was the king himself. Samuel had revealed it to her. Saul fell on his face before the ghost of his old mentor.

Samuel's message was brutal. "Why have you disturbed me? God has forsaken you. David is to be king. Tomorrow you and your sons will be with me." There was no comfort, no escape clause, no hope. Just the verdict.

Saul collapsed. He hadn't eaten in over a day, and the prophecy of his death drained whatever strength remained. The woman of Endor. And Josephus pauses to praise her generosity, insisted on feeding him. She was poor, owning nothing but a single calf she had raised by hand. She slaughtered it for the doomed king, a stranger who had criminalized her livelihood. She expected nothing in return. She knew he would be dead by morning.

Josephus then offers something remarkable: a eulogy for Saul. He argues that what made Saul truly courageous was not his fighting but his refusal to flee. He knew the prophecy. He knew he would die. He marched into battle anyway, taking his sons Jonathan, Abinadab, and Malchisua with him. They fought until the Philistines overwhelmed them. When Saul's armor-bearer refused to deliver the final blow, an Amalekite bystander drove the sword through at Saul's request. The men of Jabesh-Gilead, remembering how Saul had once saved their city, marched through the night to recover his body and give him a proper burial.

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Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer 33:12Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, trans. Rabbi Gerald Friedlander, London (1916) · CC-BY

In a fascinating passage from Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer, a compelling possibility emerges.

The text explores the story of Samuel, the last of the Judges and a pivotal prophet in ancient Israel. Rabbi Jochanan, a prominent Jewish scholar of the 3rd century, shares a remarkable idea: that Samuel’s prophetic power wasn't limited to his earthly life.

Think about the story of King Saul. He’s a tragic figure, plagued by doubt and ultimately undone by his own choices. He desperately seeks guidance from Samuel, even consulting the prophet through the Witch of Endor after Samuel's death (1 Samuel 28). It's a disturbing, desperate scene.

Here’s where it gets really interesting. Rabbi Jochanan suggests that Samuel, in this posthumous encounter, offered Saul a path to atonement. He advised Saul that if he were to fall by the sword, his death would serve as an atonement. And what's more? That his lot would be with Samuel in the afterlife.

It's a weighty proposition. Saul, facing his demise, seemingly heeds Samuel’s advice. "So Saul died, and his three sons" (1 Sam. 31:6). But why? Why would Saul embrace such a fate?

19).

The key is in the phrase "with me." What does it truly mean? Rabbi Jochanan clarifies: "With me in my division in heaven. It suggests that Samuel, even in death, possessed the ability to influence destinies and offer solace. He had a designated place, a "division," in the celestial realm, and could, perhaps, extend that space to others.

This interpretation offers a glimpse into the complex understanding of prophecy and the afterlife in Jewish tradition. It proposes that the righteous, like Samuel, retain a measure of influence even after death, capable of guiding and even offering a place in the world to come.

Consider the possibility that their influence transcends the boundaries of life and death, echoing through eternity. What does it tell us about our own choices, our own capacity for influence, and the enduring power of a life lived in the service of something greater? It’s a question worth pondering, long after the story ends.

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