Bible in One Year Day 118 (1 Samuel 27 - 28, Psalm 34)

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Day 118: King Saul Dispairs

Agape Bible Study 

1 Samuel Chapter 27 

Chapter 27: David among the Philistines

1 Samuel 27:1-4 ~ David takes refuge at Gath

In 26:19 David said that his relentless pursuit has effectively banished me today from sharing in Yahweh's heritage... He cannot live on the land of his heritage nor does he have access to the Sanctuary to make offerings to God. David does not believe Saul's promise to give up pursuing him and his followers (26:21). This is the second interior monologue given by David. The first was on his journey to punish Nabal in 25:21-22. He now decides to do what he was fearful of doing in 26:20: So I pray now that my blood shall not be shed on soil remote from Yahweh's presence... and he decides to seek sanctuary for his followers and himself in Philistine territory. This is the second time David has gone to Achish of Gath. The first time was when he was alone in 21:11-16. This time the situation is different because David has more to offer the Philistine ruler; he has a trained army of six hundred warriors. Achish accepts David as his vassal and settles the Israelites at Gath.

1 Samuel 27:5-12 ~ David becomes a Philistine Vassal

David does not want to live in the pagan city of Gath.

Achish agrees to settle David's followers in the town of Ziklag. It is a town in what is now Philistine territory but had originally belonged to the tribal lands of Judah and Simeon.

 Question: David came up with a plan to avoid having to attack Israelite towns to bring tribute to his Philistine master. What did he do instead? 

Answer: David only attacked foreign peoples who God intended Israel to dispossess from the land. He renewed the conquest of Canaan and also served his Philistine lord by removing his enemies.

Achish accepts the lie and comes to trust David, believing that David's military actions against his own people will mean that David will never be forgiven by the Israelites and he will remain Achish's vassal forever.

The outlaw period of David's life couldn't have lasted more than three or four years since he will become King of Israel when he is thirty years old after having been king of Judah for seven years (2 Sam 5:4-5). That means, if David was twenty when he entered Saul's service as a warrior, that he was only twenty-three when he became king of Judah and continued as king of Judah until he was twenty-nine (as the ancients counted). If that was the case, David spent a year and eight months as an outlaw and a year and four months as a mercenary for the king of Gath. 

Chapter 28: The Renewal of the Philistine War with Israel

1 Samuel 28:1-2 ~ David's Dilemma
The Philistines' war with Israel for control of central and northern Israel has resumed. King Achish of Gath expressed his complete confidence in David and his men by informing them that they will not only accompany him into battle but that they will serve as his personal bodyguard.

Question: David responds with confidence, expressing what Achish believes is his willingness to serve his Philistine overlord, but what is the precarious position that the renewed war and his elevation to the commander of Achish's personal guard place on David and his men? What two choices face David and his warriors?
Answer: Thus far David and his men have been able to avoid any hostile actions against fellow Israelites. Now, however, if they follow Achish and the Gathites into battle, they have two choices:

1. To attack their Israelite kinsmen with the Philistines.
2. To turn and attack the Philistines.

1 Samuel 28:3-7 ~ Saul's Dilemma

The information that Samuel has died in 1 Samuel 28:3 is a repeat of the information in 25:1, but it sets the stage for what happens next in Saul's life. In verse 4 we learn that the Philistines are now threatening northern Israel. Saul and his army are encamped in the city of Jezreel at the foot of Mount Gilboa and Saul has deployed his warriors on the height of the mount. The Philistines have entered the Jezreel Valley and are encamped at Shunem just north of Jezreel. In between the two armies is the Harod Valley that will become the battleground for the two opposing armies. When Saul sees the Philistine camp from his vantage point on Mount Gilboa he is terrified.

Saul has expelled all the mediums and sorcerers from Israel in obedience to the Law of Yahweh. Now with Samuel's death and with the surviving priest of the family of Eli with David, he has no means of seeking out God for the answers to his problems.

Question: In what three ways did God's Spirit often communicate with humans and why is Saul lacking an answer from Yahweh?
Answer: In the Old Testament God communicates through dreams, prophets, and the priestly urim and thummim.

1. Saul has no prophetic dreams from God.
2. The priest Abiathar took the urim and thummim for divining God's will with him when he fled to David.
3. Samuel is dead and no prophet of God has come forward to offer to cooperate with Saul.

Saul feels the only option open to him is to break the Law and consult a female necromancer. The Hebrew phrase is best translated as "ghost-wife" or "ghost-mistress" (Tsumura, The First Book of Samuel, page 621). Today we would call this woman a "medium": one who communicates with the dead.

Question: What has Sacred Scripture consistently taught about consulting people who claim such abilities and why? What is the penalty for making use of such services and the penalty for those who practice the occult? See Ex 22:18; Lev 18:23; 20:6-27; Dt 18:10-12 1 Sam 15:23; Gal 5:20 and also CCC 2111, 2113, 2115-2117.

Answer: Such practices are strictly forbidden. To consult someone who claims such abilities or to give credence to their activities or writings denies God's sovereignty over one's life by attempting to discern one's future apart from God. Such activities fall into the classification of idolatry because they consist of attempting to divine what is not of God. The penalty for the one who consults the occult is excommunication and the penalty is death for the practitioner. It was for these practices that the inhabitants were to be dispossessed of the land and to suffer the judgment of herem for these practices as well as human sacrifice.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that idolatry is anything that perverts man's innate religious sense (CCC 2114): 
CCC 2113: "Idolatry not only refers to false pagan worship. It remains a constant temptation to faith. Idolatry consists in divinizing what is not God. Man commits idolatry whenever he honors and reveres a creature in place of God, whether this be gods or demons (for example, Satanism), power, pleasure, race, ancestors, the state, money, etc. Jesus says, 'You cannot serve God and mammon.' Many martyrs died for not adoring the 'Beast' refusing even to simulate such worship. Idolatry rejects the unique Lordship of God; it is therefore incompatible with communion with God."

CCC 2115: "God can reveal the future to his prophets or to other saints. Still, a sound Christian attitude consists in putting oneself confidently into the hands of Providence for whatever concerns the future, and giving up all unhealthy curiosity about it ..."

His servants replied, "There is a necromancer [ghost-wife] at En-Dor."
It is interesting that Saul's servants know exactly where a medium can be found. En-Dor is mentioned in Joshua 17:11. Most Biblical archaeologists think En-Dor is modern Khirbet es-Safsafe, about 4.5 miles northeast of Shunem. Therefore, if this is the site, it was on the other side of the enemy's camp from Mount Gilboa where Saul and his army are camped. This is may be the reason Saul disguises himself and takes two servants with him at night to find the medium. He also would not want it to be known that he is seeking the services of the kind of person condemned by the Law that his government has driven out of the land.

Witch of Endor (Nikolai Ge) 

1 Samuel 28:8-11 ~ Saul consults the Witch of En-Dor

Saul goes to visit the ghost-wife at night. Verse 8 and Isaiah 45:19 suggest necromantic rituals regularly took place in the "darkness" of night; "darkness" in Scripture is a metaphor for sin. Saul demands that the woman conjure up a ghost he will name to disclose his future. At first the woman does not recognize Saul and protests that he is setting a trap for her since necromancers and wizards have been outlawed from the country. It isn't until Saul swears in Yahweh's name that she will not be harmed that she asks for the name of the dead person.

Question: What ghost does Saul ask the woman to conjure for him?
Answer: Saul asks for the prophet Samuel.

1 Samuel 28:12-19 ~ The Vision of Samuel and his Message

When Samuel appears the woman seems truly surprised and immediately realizes that her visitor is King Saul. She screamed not because of Samuel's apparition, which she identifies as a "spirit of gods", but because she suddenly realizes the true identity of her visitor and fears for her life. 

The usual procedure is that mediums are possessed by the spirits of the dead who then speak through the medium to the interested party. But in this case, Samuel appears as a distinctly defined image of the prophet wrapped in his prophet's cloak who addresses Saul directly. The witch/medium immediately realizes it is the king who has made the request because it is only for the king that the prophet would have risen from Sheol in his full image. When the witch/medium describes the image, which Saul cannot see, he knows the image is Samuel and he assures the woman she has nothing to fear, but the woman appears to flee from the encounter (see verse 21 where she seems to be returning to Saul).

The image of Samuel angrily demands why Saul has disturbed his "sleep"; it is a response that is typical of Samuel's character.
Question: What is Saul's response?
Answer: A very distraught Saul lists all the causes of his distress: The war with the Philistines, God has turned away and no longer answers him, and so now he has had to call on Samuel to tell him what he should do.

Question: What is Samuel's answer?
Answer: He tells Saul:

1. God has turned away from him and has become his enemy.
2. It shall be as Samuel foretold Saul: his sovereignty has been taken away and given to David because Saul disobeyed Yahweh's command to destroy the Amalekites.
3. The Philistines will win the battle and Saul and his sons will die.

1 Samuel 28:20-25 ~ Saul's response to the Vision

As Samuel returns to Sheol, Saul collapses in despair. The woman, in an act of compassion, urges Saul to eat something and even slaughters a calf to feed her royal guest. It is ironic that David's life has been twice saved by listening to the "voice" of women:

• He was saved by Saul's daughter who "voiced" her plan to help David escape from Saul's death trap (19:11-17).
• He was saved by the "voice" of Abigail from committing blood-guilt and offending God (25:26-31).

But the witch of En-Dor cannot save Saul's life; she can only "voice" her counsel that he eat and then feed him so he can have the strength go and die as Samuel predicted (29:22).

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A Daily Defense 

Day 118 Faith and Reason 

CHALLENGE “Christianity is irrational, for it requires faith, and faith is opposed to reason.”

DEFENSE: On the contrary, “faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth” (Fides et Ratio 1). 

From the perspective of faith, reason is a gift from God. He gave us intellects, and he expects us to use them. There is thus no opposition between faith and reason. Both have a role to play. Certain questions in life can be investigated by reason without invoking the tenets of faith—for example, various truths of mathematics and science. 

However, no human is capable of personally verifying everything within the sphere of human knowledge. It exceeds the capacity of anyone to do this, and so every person must rely on others for some of the things he knows. He exhibits a form of faith in what others have learned (ibid., 31). 

Further, even when one does personally verify something, an element of faith is present. This is why the findings of the sciences are always provisional. Although the hypothesis that electrons exist may explain many observations and may be accepted as a certainty by scientists who study the structure of the atom, there is always a gap between the observational evidence and the hypothesis proposed to explain it. Scientists make a leap of faith when they accept a particular hypothesis as the likely explanation of the data. 

Thus even in the fields most associated with reason, we see a form of faith in play—we see faith and reason collaborating together in a fruitful manner. The Christian claim is that the same dynamic applies to the field of religion. Reason is capable of establishing certain foundational matters, such as the existence of God. It also is capable of discovering and evaluating evidence of his activity in the world. When these evidences are examined, they point to the proposition that God has revealed himself to man in the person of Jesus Christ. Reason provides evidence supporting the Christian faith like it supplies evidence for scientific proposals. There is no opposition between faith and reason; they work together to enhance the scope of human knowledge. 

Jimmy Akin, A Daily Defense: 365 Days (Plus One) to Becoming a Better Apologist