Saul and the Witch of En Dor: What Actually Happened?

Can mediums communicate with the dead? Even in our modern world, there are people who claim to have this ability. Someone grieving the loss of a loved one may hire a medium in the hope of speaking with the deceased. 

Others may seek out a medium for reassurance from the dead, believing they possess unique insight into the world of the living and can offer guidance or comfort. 

Does the Bible show that mediums can talk with the dead?

There is an event in biblical history that some claim confirms that mediums can communicate with the dead on behalf of the living. 

The story is found in 1 Samuel 28 and involves King Saul, a medium and allegedly the prophet Samuel.   

[We use the word witch in the article title, because many people use it in searching for information on Saul’s encounter. But most Bible translations use the word medium in relaying the story. For that reason, we do the same in this article.]

Saul went to great lengths to locate and secure the services of a medium for the specific purpose of conjuring up the prophet Samuel, who had been dead for about five years. 

A surface-level reading of the account seems to show the medium successfully making contact with the dead prophet. It appears that Samuel was able to communicate a prophecy to the king about his fate.

The core of the message was, “You, Saul, will die in battle tomorrow.” That’s exactly what happened! 

But does this prove that the message came from Samuel?

Is it possible to communicate with the dead?

Was the medium really able to conjure up Samuel from the dead? Could the dead prophet know the future? Did the deceased Samuel really communicate with King Saul?

The technical term for attempting to conjure up the dead in order to obtain knowledge or predict the future is necromancy. The peoples of the ancient Middle East commonly believed this was possible and developed various methods of practicing it. 

It was so common in the land of Canaan and the surrounding nations that God gave Israel a law explicitly prohibiting all forms of it.   

Every claim of communication with a dead person is a hoax, whether the medium realizes it or not. God said, “When you come into the land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations [detestable acts] of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who . . . practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead” (Deuteronomy 18:9-11).

But why did God so strongly prohibit it? Was God trying to prevent His people from learning secret knowledge that the dead might impart?

Not at all! The truth is, the dead are not conscious in any way, shape or form after death. That is true for all people, whether they had lived righteously or wickedly. 

Ecclesiastes 9:5 puts it plainly: “For the living know that they will die; but the dead know nothing” (emphasis added throughout).

Scripture consistently teaches that the dead are unconscious until the resurrection (Daniel 12:2; John 11:11-14). Therefore, any spirit claiming to be a deceased human being should be viewed with great caution. 

The dead cannot offer the living any insight into . . . anything!

Every claim of communication with a dead person is a hoax, whether the medium realizes it or not.

For more insight on the state of the dead, read “Do Humans Have an Immortal Soul?” 

Communicating with spirits

However, this is not to say that humans cannot sometimes communicate with spirit beings. The Bible makes it clear that there are fallen angels—demons—who are eager to interact with gullible human beings, not to impart secret knowledge, but to deceive and mislead. 

The term suggests a familiarity or ongoing association between the person and the spirit, resembling an unholy partnership. 

In this relationship, each seeks to benefit from the other. 

The human intermediary may gain fame, notoriety or financial reward through a supposed ability to “speak to the dead.” The demon, in turn, gains an avenue to deceive and influence those who seek the medium’s services. 

Contact with demons is dangerous

Demons have no interest in helping humankind. On the contrary, the ultimate objective of Satan and his demons is humanity’s destruction. To achieve that goal, they readily deceive either by telling outright lies or by mixing partial truths with falsehood. 

God warned that seeking mediums would spiritually corrupt the nation of Israel (Leviticus 19:31). He added that He considered such an act to be so unfaithful that He would cut the offender off from the nation and sentence him or her to death (Leviticus 20:6, 27).

God’s prohibition against all forms of necromancy was to protect His people from these dangers.

For more insight on the problems with these activities, read “Channeling: What Does the Bible Say About Contacting the Dead?” and “Astrology and Wicca: What’s the Danger?”

Saul’s fear

The events of 1 Samuel 28 take place as King Saul led the army of Israel against its longtime enemy, the Philistines. Verse 4 tells us where the two armies were encamped: the Philistines at Shunem, near the hill of Moreh, and the Israelites about 10 miles to the south on Mount Gilboa. From their positions, it seems the two armies could see one another across the valley. 

Saul and the Israelites were greatly outnumbered. He was terrified. The Bible says, “His heart trembled greatly” (verse 5). Yet Saul had reason to fear more than the Philistine army before him. God had turned away from him, refusing to answer his pleas for help, either directly or through the priests or prophets (verse 6). 

Imagine being completely cut off from God—it would certainly be terrifying! But why would God take such an extreme position? After all, God had chosen Saul to be Israel’s first king. What had brought about such a dramatic change in their relationship? 

God rejected Saul long before

For the answer, we have to pick up the story back in 1 Samuel 15, where we learn that Saul had blatantly disregarded instructions God had given him through the prophet Samuel. Saul had done so before, but this was the last straw.

Rather than God turning His back on Saul, Saul had turned his back on God.

The chapter concludes with God ordering Samuel to tell Saul in so many words, “I am through with you. You will be removed from the throne and replaced by someone more qualified to rule Israel.” 

From that point on, Samuel was instructed to have nothing further to do with Saul.

King Saul’s character

God did not remove Saul immediately. The king actually had time to repent, to turn from the course he had chosen. But he did not. Saul continued to chart a course of wretched behavior. 

Here’s a brief summary of his actions leading up to his encounter with the medium:

• Saul was ready to take the life of anyone he considered a threat. Samuel feared for his life (1 Samuel 16:2).
• Saul became so unstable that he was susceptible to a demonic spirit (verse 14).
• Saul became insanely jealous of the success of David, who was then a loyal officer in the king’s army, and twice attempted to murder him (1 Samuel 18:8, 11; 19:10).
• In his paranoia, Saul unjustly accused his daughter of treason (verse 17).
• Saul publicly cursed his son Jonathan, accusing him of treason, and attempted to murder him (1 Samuel 20:30-33).
• Saul falsely charged the priest Ahimelech with treason and executed him along with 84 fellow priests and even ordered the slaughter of every woman and child living in the priests’ town (1 Samuel 22:16-19).

Saul never repented

These events spanned several years. At no time did Saul turn back to God and seek repentance and forgiveness.  

All of this explains why God was no longer answering Saul’s prayers. By the time Saul consulted the medium, he was on his own—without God’s counsel or blessing. 

No wonder Saul was terrified as he faced the mighty Philistine army. Desperate to escape his predicament, he sought God’s help in every way he could think of, except through genuine repentance. 

His final desperate act was to attempt to contact the dead prophet Samuel. 

God did not suspend reality!

Some commentaries suggest that God took pity on Saul and actually brought Samuel up from the grave to communicate with Samuel. 

However, that idea is absurd. Saul had thoroughly severed himself from God by his string of sinful actions. 

The Bible shows that communication with the dead is impossible. Additionally, as explained above, the Bible shows that communication with the dead is impossible. Samuel was dead, and therefore, a medium couldn’t temporarily awaken him.

So, what happened when Saul met with the medium at En Dor? First, consider this brief comment at the end of 1 Samuel 28:3: “Saul had put the mediums and the spiritists out of the land.”

The Bible doesn’t explain either when or why he had done this. It just gives us this background information so that we know how unusual the story that follows was. 

The point is that at the time of the battle with the Philistines, supposedly no mediums remained in Israel. But as soon as Saul asked where he might find one, his staff knew of one and told him (verse 7)!

Saul’s great effort to meet with the medium

We know it took considerable effort for Saul to reach the medium. She lived at En Dor, north of the Valley of Jezreel and northeast of Shunem, where the Philistines were encamped. To avoid the Philistine army, Saul and his servants had to make the dangerous journey under cover of darkness, traveling around the Philistine lines and then returning the same way to the Israelite camp.

Later we learn that Saul had not eaten all that day or throughout the night of his journey (verse 20).

Seeking out the medium was not a thoughtful search for counsel by a mature, godly man. It was the desperate act of a spiritually unstable and emotionally exhausted king who had reached the end of his rope—a man who had defied God, and from whom God had withdrawn. 

Again, the idea that God would somehow bless this act and actually raise Samuel is preposterous. 

Saul sinned simply by consulting the medium. Furthermore, he was asking her to perform an act that was forbidden by God’s law and illegal under his own decree.

The phony contact with Samuel

Let’s now examine the dialogue between Saul, the medium and the spirit she summoned. 

Saul asked her to “bring up Samuel” (1 Samuel 28:11). 

She went through the motions of her performance, but was shocked by what happened. Verse 12 says, “When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out with a loud voice.”

But it couldn’t have actually been Samuel. He had been dead for several years, unconscious, completely separated from the land of the living (Ecclesiastes 9:5).

In the extremely tense situation, she assumed that the spirit she saw was Samuel.

When Saul questioned what she had seen, she did not say it was Samuel, but rather only that she had seen “a spirit ascending out of the earth” (verse 13).

When asked what the spirit looked like, she gave a vague description of an old man wearing a mantle. The Bible does not say that it was Samuel but that Saul “perceived that it was Samuel” (verse 14). 

In his agitated and unstable state, Saul wanted to believe that he had actually bypassed God’s censure and that the medium had been able to conjure up the dead prophet.

An absurd hoax

Let’s examine what the supposed Samuel said to Saul.

He began by asking, “Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?” (verse 15). The statement fits the illusion that the medium had truly summoned Samuel from the dead.

The spirit then told Saul that God had departed from him, become his enemy and taken the kingdom from him to give it to David (verses 16-17). In saying this, the spirit accurately repeated the judgment God had pronounced on Saul through Samuel, years earlier, in 1 Samuel 15. The spirit also correctly foretold that Saul would die in battle the following day (verse 19).

God said we must not assume that all who claim to speak for Him actually do. Do these truthful statements and the accurate prediction prove that the spirit actually was Samuel? Not at all. As noted earlier, demons are capable of speaking partial truths when doing so advances their purposes or serves to confuse human beings.

We should note that the spirit’s message contains a striking contradiction. It acknowledged that God had withdrawn from Saul and was no longer communicating with him. Yet it simultaneously claimed to be delivering a message from Samuel on God’s behalf. If God had chosen to stop speaking to Saul through His prophet, why would He immediately reverse course by allowing Samuel to return from the dead to deliver a message?

If God had raised Samuel in response to Saul’s sinful act of necromancy, He would have been validating a practice He condemned in His law while reversing His own decision not to answer Saul. Doing so would have placed God in contradiction to Himself.

Demons can be convincing

Not only do demonic spirits sometimes sprinkle their lies with some truth, they also have power, albeit limited, that can lead people to assume that they are God’s messengers. 

Early in Israel’s history, God revealed that impostors would pose as His messengers and that they might even accurately foretell the future at times. But God said we must not assume that all who claim to speak for Him actually do—even if their prophecies come true (Deuteronomy 13:1-4).

What actually happened at En Dor

What actually happened in Saul’s encounter with the medium at En Dor? It marked the final act of rebellion in a tragically sinful life. Though it may have appeared that Saul was seeking God, he was actually continuing his long-standing pattern of rejecting God.

Tragically, this act of unfaithfulness was one of the reasons God allowed Saul to die (1 Chronicles 10:13-14). 

Saul did not contact the spirit of the deceased prophet Samuel.  

Without question, the medium encountered a spirit—but it was not Samuel or the spirit of any deceased human being. It was a deceptive spirit, a demon, impersonating Samuel.

Date Posted: May 4, 2026