The witch of Endor
Feb. 3rd, 2013 12:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zeborah
One of various interludes among the various wives of David.
A woman in Endor is known as a medium (1 Samuel 28:7-25). This isn't a terribly safe trade since King Saul has driven all its practitioners out of the land and she now risks death, so when a man turns up one night asking for her to summon a spirit she demurs. Not for too long, though.
Her client wants to talk to the late prophet Samuel (son of Hannah). She brings up his spirit and then realises: her client is King Saul himself. This makes her Somewhat Nervous, but Saul's too desperate to talk to Samuel to worry about how this is all against a law he created himself. He demands to know what she sees (spirits coming out of the earth) and what he's wearing (an old man wearing a robe).
"That's him!" Saul says at once, convinced by even less evidence than most clients of mediums need.
He asks spirit-Samuel what to do now that the Philistines are fighting against him and God isn't talking to him anymore. Spirit-Samuel says, "Too late, bub: tomorrow the Philistines are going defeat your army and you and your sons will die." At which Saul collapses in fear and exhaustion, having eaten nothing all day.
The medium asks him to let her feed him so he'll have strength to go on his way. (Whatever's to befall him tomorrow, one can see how it'd be inconvenient to her life and liberty to have a monarch fall sick in her house after she's committed a crime for him.) He's not hungry, but she and his advisors prevail on him. She immediately butchers a fattened calf and bakes unleavened bread; he eats; and the men all leave.
(The Philistines defeat Saul's army, kill three of his sons, and badly wound him; he falls on his sword so he won't be killed by uncircumcised men.)
A woman in Endor is known as a medium (1 Samuel 28:7-25). This isn't a terribly safe trade since King Saul has driven all its practitioners out of the land and she now risks death, so when a man turns up one night asking for her to summon a spirit she demurs. Not for too long, though.
Her client wants to talk to the late prophet Samuel (son of Hannah). She brings up his spirit and then realises: her client is King Saul himself. This makes her Somewhat Nervous, but Saul's too desperate to talk to Samuel to worry about how this is all against a law he created himself. He demands to know what she sees (spirits coming out of the earth) and what he's wearing (an old man wearing a robe).
"That's him!" Saul says at once, convinced by even less evidence than most clients of mediums need.
He asks spirit-Samuel what to do now that the Philistines are fighting against him and God isn't talking to him anymore. Spirit-Samuel says, "Too late, bub: tomorrow the Philistines are going defeat your army and you and your sons will die." At which Saul collapses in fear and exhaustion, having eaten nothing all day.
The medium asks him to let her feed him so he'll have strength to go on his way. (Whatever's to befall him tomorrow, one can see how it'd be inconvenient to her life and liberty to have a monarch fall sick in her house after she's committed a crime for him.) He's not hungry, but she and his advisors prevail on him. She immediately butchers a fattened calf and bakes unleavened bread; he eats; and the men all leave.
(The Philistines defeat Saul's army, kill three of his sons, and badly wound him; he falls on his sword so he won't be killed by uncircumcised men.)
