#69: “Wait…what did that say about a witch?”

#69: “Wait…what did that say about a witch?” by Brendon Wahlberg So you’re reading along in the book of Exodus, and suddenly you come to a rather surprising passage, Exodus 22:18. In the famous King James phrasing it reads: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” In the more familiar NRSV, it reads “You shall not permit a female sorcerer to live.” Coming right before this jarring statement are laws about paying the owner for an injured borrowed animal, and about paying a father for a seduced virgin daughter. So the thing about witches is a sudden change of subject. Then the text right after that moves on to talk about completely different things, leaving you wondering, what was that about witches? What did that strange brief statement even mean? Right away, you may think about Salem witch trials, but really, that period is far removed from the Old Testament age. What did it mean to be a witch in the time of Moses and David? Why were they to be put to death? What was so bad about them? Various Hebrew words get translated as “witch” in English. These words variously mean “sorceress”, “medium”, or “necromancer”. It can be hard to pin down exactly what a witch was, so let us look at an example from 1 Samuel 28, which may shed some light on the subject. This is the story of the so-called “Witch of Endor”. “Now Samuel had died, and all Israel had mourned for him and buried him in Ramah, his own city. Saul had expelled the mediums and the wizards from the land. The Philistines assembled, and came and encamped at Shunem. Saul gathered all Israel, and they encamped at Gilboa. When Saul saw the army of the Philistines, he was afraid, and his heart trembled greatly. When Saul inquired of the LORD, the LORD did not answer him, not by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets. Then Saul said to his servants, ‘Seek out for me a woman who is a medium, so that I may go to her and inquire of her.’ His servants said to him, ‘There is a medium at Endor.’ So Saul disguised himself and put on other clothes and went there, he and two men with him. They came to the woman by night. And he said, ‘Consult a spirit for me, and bring up for me the one whom I name to you.’ The woman said to him, ‘Surely you know what Saul has done, how he has cut off the mediums and the wizards from the land. Why then are you laying a snare for my life to bring about my death?’ But Saul swore to her by the LORD, ‘As the LORD lives, no punishment shall come upon you for this thing.’ Then the woman said, ‘Whom shall I bring up for you?’ He answered, ‘Bring up Samuel for me.’ When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out with a loud voice; and the woman said to Saul, ‘Why have you deceived me? You are Saul!’ The king said to her, ‘Have no fear; what do you see?’ The woman said to Saul, ‘I see a divine being coming up out of the ground.’ He said to her, ‘What is his appearance?’ She said, ‘An old man is coming up; he is wrapped in a robe.’ So Saul knew that it was Samuel, and he bowed with his face to the ground, and did obeisance. Then Samuel said to Saul, ‘Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?’ Saul answered, ‘I am in great distress, for the Philistines are warring against me, and God has turned away from me and answers me no more, either by prophets or by dreams; so I have summoned you to tell me what I should do.’ Samuel said, ‘Why then do you ask me, since the LORD has turned from you and become your enemy? The LORD has done to you just as he spoke by me; for the LORD has torn the kingdom out of your hand, and given it to your neighbor David. Because you did not obey the voice of the LORD, and did not carry out his fierce wrath against Amalek, therefore the LORD has done this thing to you today. Moreover, the LORD will give Israel along with you into the hands of the Philistines; and tomorrow you and your sons shall be with me; the LORD will also give the army of Israel into the hands of the Philistines.’ Immediately Saul fell full length on the ground, filled with fear because of the words of Samuel; and there was no strength in him, for he had eaten nothing all day and all night. The woman came to Saul, and when she saw that he was terrified, she said to him, ‘Your servant has listened to you; I have taken my life in my hand, and have listened to what you have said to me. Now therefore, you also listen to your servant; let me set a morsel of bread before you. Eat, that you may have strength when you go on your way.’ He refused, and said, ‘I will not eat.’ But his servants, together with the woman, urged him; and he listened to their words. So he got up from the ground and sat on the bed. Now the woman had a fatted calf in the house. She quickly slaughtered it, and she took flour, kneaded it, and baked unleavened cakes. She put them before Saul and his servants, and they ate. Then they rose and went away that night.” (1 Samuel 28) The witch in this story hardly seems to be a terrible being who deserves to be put to death. Saul himself is rather a hypocrite, who has banished her kind from the land on pain of death, but seeks her out and uses her power when it suits his own purposes. And what is that power? She is reluctant to use it, but she can enable Saul to speak to the dead. The prophet Samuel is forced up out of the shadowy underworld of Sheol, so that Saul can question him. This act angers Samuel, who did not want to be disturbed. God has ceased to speak to Saul, and nothing that Saul can learn from the dead can help him. Saul turned to the witch because his own attempts at divination failed, and he needed the powers of the witch. “Divination” was the practice of trying to determine God’s will, when God was not being forthcoming. The passage mentions that Saul tried asking prophets, waiting for God to reveal himself in a dream, and using the “Urim”. The Urim and the Thummim were two mysterious objects kept inside the breastplate of the High Priest, who would use them in some way (now lost to history) to determine God’s answer to yes-or-no questions. Perhaps they were tossed like coins or cast like dice or bones – a sort of Magic 8-ball for the Priests. Saul was not pleased to be told, “Reply hazy, ask again later.” Divination was a common magic practice in Old Testament times. One method of divination was to kill an animal and look at the internal organs for signs of the divine will. The Babylonians were known to do this: “For the king of Babylon stands at the parting of the way, at the fork in the two roads, to use divination; he shakes the arrows, he consults the teraphim, he inspects the liver.” (Ezekiel 21:21) But the Prophets warn against the lies of diviners, in Jeremiah 27:9, and in Ezekiel, because “They have prophesied falsehood and lying divination; they say, ‘Says the LORD’, when the LORD has not sent them, and yet they wait for the fulfillment of their word! Have you not seen a false vision or uttered a lying divination, when you have said, ‘Says the LORD’, even though I did not speak?” (Ezekiel 13:6-7) The main problem with divination, then, is that it can be a lie, giving a false answer that has nothing to do with God’s will. It was up to God and God alone to determine God’s will for the people. (The Urim and Thummim were not really exceptions to this rule – it was understood that God sanctioned the use of these items (Exodus 28:30, Numbers 27:21) and communicated his actual will through them.) Divination was considered to be an evil that only led to God’s anger. “…they used divination and augury; and they sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight…” (2 Kings 17:17-18) In the Book of Acts, there is a brief story that shows divination as the power of an actual evil spirit. “One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave-girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, ‘These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.’ She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, ‘I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.’ And it came out that very hour.” (Acts 16:16-18) God’s people are told to reject divining “witches”, and to “set your face against the daughters of your people, who prophesy out of their own imagination.” (Ezekiel 13:17) God says, “I am the LORD, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who by myself spread out the earth; who frustrates the omens of liars, and makes fools of diviners”. (Isaiah 44:24-25) In order to provide Saul with divination, the witch of Endor used the powers of a medium to speak to a dead prophet. Mediums are also condemned in the Bible, as the following passages show. “Do not turn to mediums or wizards; do not seek them out, to be defiled by them: I am the LORD your God.” (Leviticus 19:31) “If any turn to mediums and wizards, prostituting themselves to them, I will set my face against them, and will cut them off from the people.” (Leviticus 20:6) “A man or a woman who is a medium or a wizard shall be put to death; they shall be stoned to death, their blood is upon them.” (Leviticus 20:27) “Now if people say to you, ‘Consult the ghosts and the familiar spirits that chirp and mutter; should not a people consult their gods, the dead on behalf of the living, for teaching and for instruction?’ surely, those who speak like this will have no dawn! They will pass through the land, greatly distressed and hungry; when they are hungry, they will be enraged and will curse their king and their gods. They will turn their faces upwards, or they will look to the earth, but will see only distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish; and they will be thrust into thick darkness.” (Isaiah 8:19-22) Curiously, there is no explanation of the source of the power of a medium. Was it a real power, or another type of fakery? The passage describing the medium of Endor makes it seem as if she really could contact the dead. But, real or not, God clearly did not want people to turn to such dark pursuits. When we asked ourselves what a witch was in Old Testament times, we discovered that they were diviners and mediums. There were of course male sorcerers at the time, and so it seems odd that Exodus 22:18 singles out the female sex and condemns “witches” specifically. Maybe this was a reflection of the Patriarchal society of the time. If only men were allowed to be part of the official Priestly organization, perhaps women were forced to become so-called “witches” in order to get into the prophecy and divination game. It seems like a harsh judgment to sentence them to death, but Exodus 22:18 no doubt reflects the ongoing struggle to prevent the people of Israel from adopting the pagan customs of the Canaanites, so that they could remain God’s people. “When you come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, you must not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations. No one shall be found among you who makes a son or daughter pass through fire, or who practices divination, or is a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or one who casts spells, or who consults ghosts or spirits, or who seeks oracles from the dead. For whoever does these things is abhorrent to the LORD; it is because of such abhorrent practices that the LORD your God is driving them out before you. You must remain completely loyal to the LORD your God. Although these nations that you are about to dispossess do give heed to soothsayers and diviners, as for you, the LORD your God does not permit you to do so.” (Deuteronomy 18:9-14)