1 Samuel 28:14 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
1 Samuel 28:14
And he said unto her, What form is he of? And she said, An old man cometh up; and he is covered with a mantle. And Saul perceived that it was Samuel, and he stooped with his face to the ground, and bowed himself.
to say (used with great latitude) · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
form
תָּאֳר֔וֹto.'o.Ro
H8389
outline · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
said
וַתֹּ֗אמֶרva.To.mer
H559
to say (used with great latitude) · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person feminine singular
old
זָקֵן֙za.Ken
H2205
old · adjective, masculine singular absolute
man
אִ֤ישׁ'ish
H376
a man as an individual or a male person · noun, common masculine singular absolute
up
עֹלֶ֔ה'o.Leh
H5927
to ascend · verb, qal active participle, masculine singular absolute
covered
עֹטֶ֖ה'o.Teh
H5844
to wrap · verb, qal active participle, masculine singular absolute
mantle
מְעִ֑ילme.'Il
H4598
a robe (i.e. upper and outer garment) · noun, common masculine singular absolute
Saul
שָׁאוּל֙sha.'Ul
H7586
Shaul · proper noun, a man's name
perceived
וַיֵּ֤דַעvai.Ye.da'
H3045
to know (properly · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
Samuel
שְׁמוּאֵ֣לshe.mu.'El
H8050
Shemuel · proper noun, a man's name
stooped
וַיִּקֹּ֥דvai.yi.Kod
H6915
to shrivel up · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
face
אַפַּ֛יִם'a.Pa.yim
H639
properly · noun, common masculine dual absolute
ground
אַ֖רְצָה'Ar.tzah
H776
the earth (at large · noun, common feminine singular absolute + directional suffix
bowed
וַיִּשְׁתָּֽחוּvai.yish.Ta.chu
H7812
to depress · conjunction + verb, sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
1 Samuel 15:27 And as Samuel turned about to go away, he laid hold upon the skirt of his mantle, and it rent.
1 Samuel 24:8 David also arose afterward, and went out of the cave, and cried after Saul, saying, My lord the king. And when Saul looked behind him, David…
2 Kings 2:8 And Elijah took his mantle, and wrapped it together, and smote the waters, and they were divided hither and thither, so that they two went o…
2 Kings 2:13-14 He took up also the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and went back, and stood by the bank of Jordan;
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on 1 Samuel 28:7-14
Here, I. Saul seeks for a witch, Sa1 28:7. When God answered him not, if he had humbled himself by repentance and persevered in seeking God, who knows but that at length he might have been entreated for him? but, since he can discern no comfort either from heaven or earth (Isa 8:21, Isa 8:22), he resolves to knock at the gates of hell, and to see if any there will befriend him and give him advice: Seek me a woman that has a familiar spirit, Sa1 28:7. And his servants were too officious to serve him in this evil affair; they presently recommended one to him at Endor (a city not far off) who had escaped the execution of Saul's edict. To her he resolves to apply. Herein he is chargeable, 1. Wit…
bring me him up, whom I shall name unto thee--This pythoness united to the arts of divination a claim to be a necromancer (Deu 18:11); and it was her supposed power in calling back the dead of which Saul was desirous to avail himself. Though she at first refused to listen to his request, she accepted his pledge that no risk would be incurred by her compliance. It is probable that his extraordinary stature, the deference paid him by his attendants, the easy distance of his camp from En-dor, and the proposal to call up the great prophet and first magistrate in Israel (a proposal which no private individual would venture to make), had awakened her suspicions as to the true character and rank of…
An old man cometh up, and he is covered with a mantle - This seems to have been a second apparition; she cannot mean that she had seen gods ascending out of the earth, and these gods were like an old man with a mantle. The angelic appearance first mentioned prepared the way for Samuel; and the whole was done so as to show to the woman that her art had not prevailed in the present instance, and that what was now taking place was wholly independent of her incantations.
Saul perceived that it was Samuel - The description was suitable to his person and clothing.
The Church Fathers
And that the souls survive, I have shown to you from the fact that the soul of Samuel was called up by the witch, as Saul demanded. And it appears also, that all the souls of similar righteous men and prophets fell under the dominion of such powers, as is indeed to be inferred from the very facts in the case of that witch. Hence also God by His Son teaches us for whose sake these things seem to have been done, always to strive earnestly, and at death to pray that our souls may not fall into the hands of any such power.
And, therefore, if we inquire regarding the "tongue," and the "finger," and "Abraham's bosom," and the reclining there, it may perhaps be that the soul receives a form similar in appearance to its earthly body in the change. If, then, any one of those who have fallen asleep is recorded as having reappeared, he is seen in the same way and in the form that he had when he was in the flesh. Besides, when Samuel appeared, it is clear that, being seen, he was clothed in a body; and this must especially be admitted, if we are pressed by arguments which prove that the essence of the soul is incorporeal and is manifested by itself.
I see no objection to saying that each mind has another body [sōma pneumatikos] when it leaves this solid one, and so the mind always has a body to animate, and in it crosses over, if there is any place to which necessity compels it to go, since, indeed, the angels themselves cannot be enumerated if they are not counted by bodies, as truth itself says in the Gospel: "I could ask my Father to send me twelve legions of angels"; and also since it is evident that Samuel was seen in the body when he was raised by the incantation of Saul, and since it is clear, according to the Gospel, that Moses, whose body was buried, came to the Lord on the mount when they stood together.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Divination — Of false prophets (Deut. 18:10, 14; Micah 3:6, 7, 11), of necromancers (1 Sam. 28:8), of the Philistine priests and diviners (1 Sam. 6:2), of Balaam (Josh. 13:22). Three kinds of divination are…
Dress — (1.) Materials used. The earliest and simplest an apron of fig-leaves sewed together (Gen. 3:7); then skins of animals (3:21). Elijah’s dress was probably the skin of a sheep (2 Kings 1:8). The…
Magic — The Jews seem early to have consulted the teraphim (q.v.) for oracular answers (Judg. 18:5, 6; Zech. 10:2). There is a remarkable illustration of this divining by teraphim in Ezek. 21:19-22. We read…
Mantle — (1.) Heb. ‘addereth, a large over-garment. This word is used of Elijah’s mantle (1 Kings 19:13, 19; 2 Kings 2:8, 13, etc.), which was probably a sheepskin. It appears to have been his only garment, a…
Saul — Asked for. (1.) A king of Edom (Gen. 36:37, 38); called Shaul in 1 Chr. 1:48. (2.) The son of Kish (probably his only son, and a child of prayer, “asked for”), of the tribe of Benjamin, the first…
Witchcraft — (1 Sam. 15:23; 2 Kings 9:22; 2 Chr. 33:6; Micah 5:12; Nahum 3:4; Gal. 5:20). In the popular sense of the word no mention is made either of witches or of witchcraft in Scripture. The “witch of En-dor”…
Clairvoyance · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
En-Dor · The witch of, consulted by Saul — The witch of, consulted by Saul
Miracles Through Evil Agents · Exemplified: Witch of Endor
John Gill on 1 Samuel 28:14
And he said unto her, what form is he of?.... Of what stature is he? or rather of what age does he seem to be? and what clothes has he on? as appears from the answer:
and she said, an old man cometh up, and he is covered with a mantle; such as either priests or judges wore, and Samuel did in his lifetime:
and Saul perceived that it was Samuel; by the description she gave of him, by his age and apparel; for as yet it is not certain that he himself saw him, though it should seem as if he did by what follows: it is in the original, "that it was Samuel himself"; which seems to make for those who think the real Samuel appeared, and no doubt Saul thought it was really he himself:
and he stooped…
Saul with the witch at Endor. - The invasion of Israel by the Philistines, which brought David into so difficult a situation, drove king Saul to despair, so that in utter helplessness he had recourse to ungodly means of inquiring into the future, which he himself had formerly prohibited, and to his horror had to hear the sentence of his own death. This account is introduced with the remark in Sa1 28:3 that Samuel was dead and had been buried at Ramah (cf. Sa1 25:1; וּבעירו, with an explanatory vav, and indeed in his own city), and that Saul had expelled "those that had familiar spirits and the wizards out of the land" (on the terms employed, oboth and yiddonim, see at Lev 19:31). He had done…
Saul asked the medium to describe what she saw that caused her to scream. She described a divine being, a god (Hebrew ’elohim) coming up. Perhaps she observed a human figure with a godlike or angelic appearance, or her use of the term god might reflect a pagan belief that a person becomes a god—a spirit possessing supernatural abilities—after death.
Rashi on 1 Samuel 28:14
What does he look like. Three things were said regarding אוֹב: The one who conjures him [the dead] up, sees him, but does not hear his voice; the one who inquires of him, hears him, but does not see him, and therefore, he [Shaul] asked, 'What does he look like?', and the others neither see or hear him.
He is garbed in a robe. For he was accustomed to wear a robe, as it is stated, "and his mother would make him a small robe."13Above 2:19. He was buried with his robe, and so he arose. And so in the future [Resurrection of the Dead], they will rise with their garments.
Necromancy · .The witch of En-dor — .The witch of En-dor
Witchcraft · The Witch of Endor — The Witch of Endor
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
