Latest / We Are More: Sisters Talk Faith & Feminism / Ep. 121: She's a Witch I Tell You

Transcript

Ep. 121: She's a Witch I Tell You · We Are More: Sisters Talk Faith & Feminism

• 0:12
  Speaker 1: To the We Are More Pod cast. My name is Alyssa. And my name is Bree. We're two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism. We believe that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach his word.
• 0:26
  And apparently, that's controversial. Get comfy.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Hello, world. Oh, dentistry. Oh, dentistry.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: It's nearly Christmas. See, you're at Christmas mode, and I'm distinctly at Halloween. I hear me out. Okay. I'm ready.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: I really don't enjoy Christmas. I think it's fine. But I love everything leading up to Christmas.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: I am obsessed with driving around to look at lights or an excuse to have some kind of event. Watch a Christmas movie. I'm gonna wrap all the Christmas presents. I'm gonna bake all the cookies. I want to go Christmas shopping.
• 1:12
  But the actual day, not a fan of. But I've been in Christmas mode the past couple days.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: So you like the Christmas season, just not Christmas day.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: See, I do enjoy Christmas. I love the Christmas season too. I like all the things we do. Our family, we've got a massive extended family, and everybody gets together 4,000 times to do event after event after event. And we actually like each other most of
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: the time. 30% of the time.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: So that's good. But I love Halloween mostly because it's the lead in to the holiday season. Mhmm. Like, you come off of summer, and I'm not a summer girly. It's hot.
• 1:56
  There are no holidays. People are, like, outside a lot, and that we've already been over how that's not our thing.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: No. I got stung in the butt.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: So I like Halloween because it's fall. It's getting cooler. I can go outside without melting, but I don't have to actually be outside. Trees are turning colors. You know?
• 2:17
  I already got half of my Halloween decorations up.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: Good for you.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Thank you. By half, you mean There's four. So it's definitely not half. But I have a few that are up. I put skulls up on the door today.
• 2:31
  I'm naming them after me, Brie, and our brother.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And I feel like at Disney, they've already started their Halloween party, so 'tis the season to be spooky. Exactly.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Boo boo boo boo. It's all over the social medias. If you haven't seen it, they call it Summerween, which is great because it's just a funny word.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: I know this is very nation. Not a lot of you are gonna get this. But whenever you say that, I think of the Christmas movie that was like Frosty Comes to Town or something. Oh, But not the real Frosty movie, there's a bad man making summer wheeze or something like that. Yeah.
• 3:13
  And it's a spray can that you spray on the sidewalks to get rid of the snow. And they're like, this is bad. Because they want Frosty.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He's a snowman made of snow. But I think of summerwees. That is very niche. Which is probably why you tune in.
• 3:34
  Yeah. The Alyssa and Brianna isms. The isms of it all. Yeah. So I hope you're enjoying your summer ween.
• 3:44
  And Brie's just gonna keep looking at me like I've lost my mind. I don't like it when you say ween. The thing is, though, this is all over the Internet. It's not just me. It's definitely my algorithm, but it's all over the Internet.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: I didn't say I didn't believe you. I'm saying I'm uncomfortable.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Summerween. Summerween. Summerween. I'm leaving. Alright.
• 4:04
  And Alyssa will do the rest of the episode by herself. Alright. Go. Fun for me. But on that particular topic, I don't even have to transition today.
• 4:13
  We're talking about witches. It's spooky time. It's spooky time. Actually, we're not talking about witches. We're talking about one witch.
• 4:21
  And she wasn't even really called a witch. We'll get
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: into it. We'll get into it. We'll dive in. But before we do, hey. Did you do your homework?
• 4:30
  Did you? Did you read
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: your bible? If you did, I'll give you a star. If you didn't, it's a sad frowny face. So you've disappointed me.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: Yes. If you did, go ahead and shoot us a text.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: Not a text. They don't have our phone numbers.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: By text, I mean message us on Instagram or TikTok, and I will personally mail you a golden sticker. You're welcome. Alright. Well, get
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: on that, folks. You can find us on social media at the hashtag we are war. That was a casual plug. But today, we are in fact talking about a witch from the Bible, which is just not a sentence that I would have thought I would say. Not often.
• 5:11
  No.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: And to be fair, like, it's the word witch is, like, our modern interpretation of what she was. Mhmm. But there's a witch in the Bible.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You know? Spooky ooky dooky. Now her title that not that the bible gives her, but that the church has given her, I guess, is the witch of Endor. And for my Star Wars fans out there, no, I don't mean the forest moon of Endor, which is confusing to breathe.
• 5:39
  I'm not a nerd. There are no Ewoks involved here. I don't know what you're talking about. You have to know what the Ewoks are. They're the little fuzzy teddy bears.
• 5:48
  Okay. They wear robes and they have sticks. What's the point? This it's Star Wars. Don't look at me like that.
• 5:58
  I'm not crazy. I
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: like the Star Wars land in Disney because they have a pretty good breakfast wrap, and they have that nice quick service.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That's true. But this is the city of Endor. So, yeah. So it's a city.
• 6:14
  It is not a moon, and she happens to live there. And she did practice, like, fortune telling, necromancy,
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: stuff like that. Right? Like, spooky okey dokey stuff.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Spooky, spooky stuff. So let's tell her story a little bit. And you can find her story in first Samuel. 28. Yep.
• 6:39
  And then she is mentioned again, I think in Chronicles, first Chronicles. She's just super briefly mentioned again. But this is a story that includes Saul. Now if you don't know who Saul is, he is a a pretty major player in the bible. A major player.
• 6:56
  He was the king of Israel before David was king.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: I think he was the first king.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: I believe so. Yeah. And he was known as not a good king. He was not the king that god wanted in power. He was not a king that sought god.
• 7:11
  And so he was told by Samuel that he was gonna be like, that basically David was gonna take over. And he didn't want that. So Saul's having a rough time. He's kind of panicking a little bit.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: So he knows that he's about to be attacked. Mhmm. He's gonna have to there's an incoming army coming against him. He's gonna have to fight. And he knows because of what Samuel told him that he might not make it.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Mhmm. Now Samuel was his prophet. The way that Israel was set up, there was a prophet, and there was the king. And they were kinda separate because what? When God set this system up, God knew religion and political power don't go well together.
• 8:04
  Now, obviously, this was a religious structure, so the prophet still definitely spoke to the king. But it was set up very differently. So Samuel has now died. Mhmm.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: And Samuel was pretty much the only connection that Saul had to God. Mhmm.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: You're right. So he's getting all of his information about God through Samuel. Uh-oh. Samuel's gone. Yeah.
• 8:25
  And now he's facing an army. And he knows, like, we're probably gonna lose. Now, before Samuel died, he had given Saul a prophecy. And basically said, you're going to lose. And you and your sons are going to die.
• 8:41
  And David is gonna take over. Okay. So before Samuel died, he gave him this prophecy. But Saul doesn't like the prophecy.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: And that's a human response. I think it's a good way to humanize this person that we're hearing about in the Bible. How many times have we probably been given direction from God and been like, I don't like that answer. So I'm gonna force my own way. So Saul
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: tries to talk to God himself. But remember, like, Saul and God don't have a good relationship. You can see that throughout the whole bible. And well, I guess the parts that he's in. And so he he tries to talk to God.
• 9:26
  He tries to go through the normal routes to talking to God through his dreams, through other prophets. And God is not talking to him. God is giving him the silent treatment in a big, big way.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: And this is pre Jesus. Yep. This is pre Holy Spirit. Mhmm.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: Things are weird. So it's not just, hey, I'm gonna say a prayer and know that God is hearing me. That's not what's happening. Mhmm. So Saul decides that he's gonna take things into his own hands in a very controversial way.
• 10:01
  He goes about finding the Witch of Endor. Mhmm. And prior to this, he had kind of like outlawed all the mediums and the mystics and whatever. Kicked them out.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: Said that this is against God's will. Right. You should not be here. See you. Bye.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Right. Which, to be fair, it was. I think it's in Leviticus?
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: Mhmm. It's Levitical law.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That says that anyone trying to, like, divine answers, things like that, that they should be killed. So he's within reason of saying this shouldn't be amongst the Israelite people. For the time. For the time.
• 10:44
  Yes. Yes. Yes. And I'm not I'm not saying the stoning part. But he just he said, kick them out.
• 10:50
  Right? Push them out. Make them leave. Because here's the consequences. But when he needed something, he decided to skirt around his own rules.
• 11:02
  Which how often are we seeing in power today?
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: When I need something, I'm above the law. Mhmm. So he turned to his servants, and he said, hey. Who knows a medium? Now mind you, he's kicked them all out, right, in theory?
• 11:18
  And his servants immediately are like, oh, yeah. She's over here. She's down the road. Yeah. Just right over there.
• 11:24
  He didn't have to, like, travel. She was just right over there. Just a block over. And they immediately knew. So clearly, kicking out of all the mediums was not like he didn't do a thorough job.
• 11:37
  But he goes to her. He takes off
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: his royal robes. To look like just a commoner. And he goes to find this woman, and she doesn't recognize who he is Mhmm.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: Right away. Yeah. And so he basically says, hey, I want you to summon someone from the dead for me. And she because she knows, like, hey, this is against the law, she thinks he's trying to trap her Mhmm. And turn her in.
• 12:03
  She's like, As
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: you would.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah. She's like, why are you doing this to me? And it reminds me of if you grew up in church a lot, we always heard the stories of Christians in countries where Christianity was outlawed having to, like, hide Bibles, you know, and and meet for a church service in their basement and whatever. It reminds me of that in a totally different way. Mhmm.
• 12:27
  But this is technically her her faith, you know, things like that, and having to hide it and be very suspicious. So it's just a, like, interesting, weird juxtaposition. So she basically tells him, why do you want like, why would you ask this of me? So she basically asks him, are you trying to get me killed? Why why would you ever ask this of me?
• 12:48
  Are you insane? Like, no way. And she reminds him that Saul, because she doesn't know this is Saul, eliminated mediums. They don't exist anymore. That's not her.
• 12:59
  She would never. Right? But Saul swears to her. This is really ironic. He swears to her by Yahweh, so by God, that she won't be punished for violating God's law because he asked her to do it.
• 13:15
  So Saul is violating God's law. We know it's Levitical law. He's not supposed to be involved in this. And yet he's promising someone else that God won't punish them for violating God's law. So it's, like, really messed up.
• 13:31
  Yeah. He clearly is taking her life in his hands. Which, of course, again, is something that we see leadership we see male leadership especially do all the time is not value the lives and contributions of women of women, of others Right.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: And trying to do whatever they want Mhmm.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: To get a different answer. Mhmm. Or
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: not just a different answer, but a different result. Mhmm.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: So she apparently decides to do this for him. And she says, who do you want? And he says, Samuel. And then it gets really strange from here because she then sees Samuel, like, physically actually sees him. The Bible says this.
• 14:25
  Samuel's dead. Right? She sees Samuel, and she screams. Which is fair. I would also scream.
• 14:36
  And then she realizes immediately that the man sitting in front of her is Saul. So she understands, okay, this would be Saul that wants Samuel. This is bad for me. Bad times are ahead. And you have to ask so scholars ask this all the time.
• 14:58
  If she was they call it necromancy, when you, like, summon the dead, speak to the dead, whatever. If she was someone who did this all the time, why was she surprised when Samuel shows up? And there's a lot of different possibilities. Scholars ask this question all the time. The first possibility is pretty simply that she was a fake.
• 15:16
  Right? And that's not out of the realm of possibilities.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: I think two things when I hear that. Mhmm. I think, you know, like Long Island Medium Mhmm. Or something like that, where they're definitely, definitely fake. And then all of a sudden, something real happened And to she was
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: like, what the freaking crap?
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I also think back then, things were different. Mhmm. For example, they had someone like Samuel, who was like, his whole job was to talk to God. Right.
• 15:48
  And prophecy and mysticism. Like, things were different. Mhmm. So that makes me wonder, like, okay, was her seeing specifically Samuel just scary because, woah.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: This is this is freaking Samuel. I know who this is. You know who it reminds me of, actually? For those of you who have seen all the Harry Potter movies, Professor I think it's Trelawney. And they treat her as kind of the crazy person.
• 16:15
  She's Reading tea leaves. Yeah. Like, telling the future or whatever. But every so often, she gets something right. Mhmm.
• 16:22
  And she has a prophecy that's really significant. Mhmm. That's what that makes me think of. Like, normally, this woman's crazy.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: Every
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: now and again so the other possibility is that she normally did practice necromancy, but, like, this was very different from what normally happened. Maybe normally she heard the wind and translated it into something, you know, or whatever. But this, seeing a physical manifestation of Samuel, was like, holy crap. Mhmm. Like, this is not normal.
• 16:54
  Another option is that God did it and she didn't. You know? So like, God said, okay, Samuel, you can go down. Mhmm. But she wasn't really involved there.
• 17:03
  And then some people ask if this was Samuel at all. And that does lead into kind of the rest of the story. Okay. So once Samuel is, I don't know, raised he's not raised from the dead, but like brought back
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: for Summoned a to chat with, like in a seance. Yeah.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Or like, what was that Disney movie where the just the dad's legs came back? Onward. Yeah. Like that. But just for a little while.
• 17:29
  So Samuel's pissed. Right? And the first things he says or the first thing he says is basically like, why'd you wake me up? Leave me the frick alone. Because Samuel and Saul did not particularly get along.
• 17:46
  So Samuel's finally rid of Saul. And now he's in death, straight up dead, and still can't get away from the man. And Saul basically starts explaining, I'm in distress. The Philistines are fighting me. God turned away.
• 18:02
  He's telling his whole sob story. Right? Everything we already know. God won't speak to me. And I needed someone that I knew God would speak to.
• 18:13
  I needed to use you again. Mhmm. So I called you back from the debt. And Samuel basically says, if God himself isn't answering you, what do you think I'm gonna do? Like, do you think that I'm gonna come here and be like, oh, hold on.
• 18:31
  Now, God, what are you doing? No. And so he then says, basically, why ask me when god himself left you and has become your enemy? So god has become your enemy, Saul. Don't ask me anything about this.
• 18:48
  And then Samuel tells him pretty solidly the same thing Samuel told him before. You're gonna be attacked. You and your sons will die. David will take over. So Saul, again, gets the same response.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: He doesn't he say, pretty soon you and your sons will be with me?
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: Like, tomorrow you and
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: your sons will be with
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: me. Mhmm. Saul went through all of this trouble. Right? He went against his own laws to find this woman.
• 19:20
  And then Samuel told him the same thing again. That's a pretty big bummer. Mhmm. And yet really predictable. I don't know if maybe he was like, you wonder what he was hoping.
• 19:35
  Well, obviously, he was hoping for a different answer. But why go to the same person? You know? Maybe he was hoping that because because it was through a medium you know, like, maybe maybe he was hoping for a little bit of not god magic. You know, to I I don't like the word magic necessarily, but if an another god could save him or if something else because he went outside of his faith.
• 20:08
  He went outside of what was acceptable for the Jewish religion. So maybe he was hoping for something that wasn't god. You know? And the bible doesn't say that. That's just me guessing.
• 20:19
  But I just wonder if maybe that's the case. Because God already gave you his response. You already know what he's gonna say. He stopped talking to you. Mhmm.
• 20:28
  Things aren't good.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: He's like, please change your mind.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: Please change
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: your mind. Please change your mind.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: But Saul has lived a life that led to this point. This wasn't sudden. This was his whole life coming right here. So after this, Samuel disappears. Goes back to heaven.
• 20:46
  I don't know.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: The seance ends. The spell is over.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He evaporates. And Saul just straight up collapses to the ground. He's terrified. He's exhausted.
• 20:57
  He apparently hasn't eaten, like, all day or night. And a really interesting thing happens. His servants don't take care of him. He's got two servants with him. They're not taking care of him, whether that's because they know he's about to die and they don't care so much anymore, or they're scared too, or maybe they ran off.
• 21:15
  That or maybe he wasn't treating his servants so well, so they're like, well Right.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: You kinda deserve this.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Sucks to suck. Sucks for you. Yeah. But the woman who the bible actually doesn't call a witch, and I'll get into what she is called in a minute. But the woman who he went to and endangered her life, she's the one that comes to him.
• 21:43
  Kneels down next to him and basically says, I risked my life to do what you asked me to do. Now listen to me. You owe me a favor. Eat something. And this reflects several things that god does to me.
• 22:01
  There are several moments in the bible where god looks at one of his children and says, you're human. We need to take care of your human needs. Eat something. And I think that's really cool to see that reflected in her. And so at first, Saul refuses, but she and his servants together kind of, like, persuade him.
• 22:23
  She then goes and takes a fattened calf, kills it, prepares it, makes unleavened bread, and feeds them all. Which like, can you like, the length of that process?
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: How long? I know. How long are we talking? Because listen, I don't do these kinds of things.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Really? This isn't part of your day to day?
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: I don't slaughter animals. But I think it's like a process. I don't think it's just like, quick. No.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: I don't you have to let it bleed and stuff? Like, there's it's a whole don't There's organs involved. Listen. I don't know.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: But it seems like it would have taken a really long time. Mhmm.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Which is an interesting choice. But regardless, this would have been a meal to honor someone. Right? We see the image of a fattened calf later on when Jesus has his parable about the prodigal son. The father kills the fattened calf and has a celebratory dinner.
• 23:21
  So this was a celebratory dinner. I don't
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: know that it was a celebratory dinner so much as it is a last supper. Yeah. A send off. Yeah.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: Like a big deal. Symbolic. Maybe that's the best way to say it. Symbolic. And she feeds them.
• 23:41
  And then they leave. And exactly what Samuel said would happen, happens. Because that's how God works. Right? Mhmm.
• 23:50
  And that's the story. That's her story. We don't know what happens to her from here. We don't even know her name. Nope.
• 23:56
  We know all of the men's names, but we don't know her name. And that's why she got this moniker of, like, the Witch of Endor because even though the bible doesn't give her that title, it doesn't give her really any identifying factors. So somewhere along the line, someone thought, you know what? This sounds really dramatic. Let's go with it.
• 24:17
  And it's mentioned again in first Chronicles, this story. And all it says about her is that Saul died because of his unfaithfulness, including consulting a medium for guidance. And that's all. That's all we get of her story. There's nothing about her historically.
• 24:35
  I checked. There are a couple of mentions in other religions, but very briefly. And it's just really a strange story.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: It is. Because you growing up in the Little Baptist church, we couldn't even come close Mhmm. To that kind of behavior. You know? Watching Bewitched
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: Was on the edge.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: Was on the edge. Anything involving, like, magic, that kind of thing, stay away from.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: And here it is in the Bible. Right. It's just it's it's interesting to hear about, especially because this stuff isn't being talked about at any church service that I was at. Mhmm.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: And we have been to an awful lot of church services.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: And again, it's like, it's not necessarily condemning her.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: It shows her as a woman who knows that she's doing something against the law. Mhmm. And then she has empathy towards this man who definitely, one, is gonna die. Mhmm. Two, is the king who's not such a good king.
• 25:51
  And then she shows empathy towards him and makes him eat and has a human experience with him. It's just really interesting story. Well,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: another interesting thing too is, like, we know that she was known as a medium, at least so much that his servants knew, okay, this is who we go to. But it doesn't say she's still doing this. It doesn't say, and she cursed God. It doesn't say any of those things. We know she was kind of forced into this.
• 26:23
  Mhmm. So it's just interesting to think of her story and what brought her to this point, what the rest of her faith journey looked like.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: Or like, how God puts people into positions where they're supposed to be at certain times. And maybe he worked through her to say, Saul. Fine. I'll send Samuel, and I'll make it really obvious that it's Samuel, and you're gonna get the same answer. Because I'm not changing my mind, buddy.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: Mhmm. And God works through a lot of mystical things. And we're gonna talk about that next week. But there's a lot of mysticism in the Bible that we like to pretend is not there. Or just, like, let's talk about the wonders of miracles.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: Mhmm. We talk about them so casually because we hear about them all the time if you're going to church. But, like, parting the sea. Can you imagine standing there Mhmm.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: And seeing that happen? Or literally anything else. Right. Dreams. Often dreams are used and then interpreted by someone else.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: And then you look at our day to day lives, and we we lose a little bit of that sense of wonder. Like, even the miracle of childbirth. Like, disgusting. I don't wanna be part of it. But that's amazing Mhmm.
• 27:51
  That it happens. Or have you seen how koalas give birth?
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: That's strange. Marsupials. Yeah. That is strange. So there's a lot of back to the main story.
• 28:03
  We'll talk more about
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: We're done with koalas. Moving back on. We'll talk more
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: about mysticism later in the episode and next week, so be prepared. But there's a lot of debate around this story because it makes Christians uncomfy, because it kind of contradicts some of the laws of the bible. Right? You're not supposed to use mediums. And in theory, a person shouldn't be able to call someone back from the dead.
• 28:33
  Right? Like, that's a Jesus thing. This woman shouldn't be calling people back from the dead. So there's some different theories. And some of them, I think, lean into the story and the mysticism, and some of them try and explain it away.
• 28:45
  Mhmm. Which, if that isn't the church, let me tell you. So when it comes to Samuel himself, after Samuel is called back, There's a few different theories. The first one is pretty simply that it really was Samuel. That the Bible the narrator in the Bible calls him Samuel.
• 29:06
  So that's pretty simple. He doesn't say something resembling Samuel or a demon that was pretending to be Samuel, which is another theory. He also doesn't even just say that Saul thought it was Samuel. He specifically names him Samuel. And then the prophecy given is both correct and the same as it was before.
• 29:26
  You know, like, it's it's matching. You have to assume that probably this prophecy wasn't proclaimed to the world. Everybody didn't know it. It was relatively private. So it it seems reasonable that only Samuel would come back and say the exact same thing that he said before.
• 29:45
  So that's theory number one. An interesting throwback text. So this is in not in the main Bible, in the book of Sarac, which is an ancient Jewish wisdom book. So not something that we see in our Bibles, but it does often appear in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles. So that's interesting.
• 30:03
  It was written around a 180, before Christ. It says in chapter 46 verse 20, it says even after Samuel's death, he prophesied and revealed the king's death, speaking from the ground. So that's interesting. Not in our Bible. So I like to look at those things outside of our faith tradition because it explains a little bit.
• 30:27
  Mhmm. You know? And I find that really interesting. So even this ancient Jewish text is saying, yes, this was in fact Samuel. Now, the second theory is darker.
• 30:39
  Oh. But we've got witches and demons in this story. Happy summer ween. Happy summer ween. So the second theory is that it was a demonic impersonation.
• 30:53
  So Christians often lean towards this theory because if it really is Samuel, this becomes a problem. Right? Because a medium shouldn't be able to summon one of god's prophets. That seems reasonable. So Christians often lean towards we need some other explanation.
• 31:17
  And one solution has become it wasn't Samuel. It was a demon who was impersonating Samuel.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: But there's a problem with that. Because I feel like they would have said.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The bible doesn't say that. And I'm not saying that it's not a theological option. You know, I think it's good for us to debate some of these different things. The Bible doesn't explicitly say it's not the case.
• 31:44
  So sure, sit and have this conversation. But the Bible doesn't say that. You can stick that little sticker of Jesus on there
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: that says didn't say that.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: And so you have to add things to the story to get here. So that's complicated. Plus, also, the fact that the prophecy was correct, that a demon shouldn't be able to prophecy. Right? That also seems wrong.
• 32:10
  And if it, in fact, was a demon, the strategy's a little weird. Okay. I'm gonna deceive Saul and remind him accurately of what God said, and that's all. There's really no evil purpose behind it. It's just
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: you'd think they would switch things up like Right. No. Yeah. You're definitely gonna win. In fact, if you jump into this little crater in the earth, I heard you become superhero.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: My hands are so powerful. And I really think that's something the Bible would say explicitly. Because the Bible does talk about demons. Mhmm. Talks about demon possessed people.
• 32:49
  And I'm pretty sure God would have mentioned that.
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: But it's an interesting idea. That's the hard part about so many of these stories is we don't get all the details. We weren't there. So we have our interpretations, and I guess that's up to you which one you choose to believe. But I think it's important to hear all of them.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Now the third theory is, I think, a good middle ground here. And that's that God Himself sent Samuel. Not that the woman was able, through her magic, to call him down, but that God said, alright. I'm gonna step into this situation.
• 33:31
  Things are going poorly. I don't feel like having a conversation with Saul. I'm icing him out. So Samuel, fix this. And that to me makes the most sense
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: because that seems like something God would do. That seems in his character. And also, the fact that the Witch of Endor, which I really wish she had a name. I feel like it's probably Bette Midler. Oh.
• 33:55
  Alright. She screamed. Mhmm. This wasn't something that normally happened Right. To her when she performed this.
• 34:03
  Otherwise, she probably wouldn't have wigged out. Yeah. It probably
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: would have been pretty standard for her. Normal practice. And if that is the case, if God caused Samuel to appear, then it kinda takes away the discomfort of, okay, like, necromancy and the weirdness of that. It doesn't mean that what she was doing worked. It just means that God stepped in.
• 34:31
  Mhmm. Which God so often does. So often Now, an interesting piece of this too is that the woman initially says she saw Elohim rising from the earth. Which, if you've been in church for any amount of time or you've studied some of the Greek and Hebrew, that is a word that the Hebrew people would normally use for God or divine beings. So she may not have known what she was seeing immediately.
• 35:03
  And that's where it makes sense that this was different than normal. Because potentially, if she was seeing figures in other seances, I don't know, they didn't look like this. Samuel was different. He was noticeably different.
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: Enough to make her scream.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: Enough to make her scream. But maybe enough that she knew, I'm in the presence of something divine. God himself has stepped in here. And Saul asks her what the figure looked like. So Saul didn't see the figure at first.
• 35:38
  I think he can see it later in the story. But at first, he can't see what's going on. She can see it. Which is interesting too, because if God is putting Samuel down into the earth again, a woman is seeing him first. And how often does that happen in the Bible?
• 36:00
  I just recorded a video on this today about how women were the first at Jesus' tomb. God so often trusts women with big things. And in this case, regardless of the fact that she was a medium, that she was doing something she wasn't necessarily supposed to be doing, God trusted her first to interpret what was going on here. This was a big moment in the Bible. Saul can't see what's going on.
• 36:30
  His servants can't see what's going on. She can see what's going on.
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: And how frustrating for them to then have to ask her,
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: like Mhmm.
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: Well, what's going on? Mhmm. Well, can you interpret this for me? Can you give me an indication of what God might be telling me to do? Like, they
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: have to yield to what she says. Right. And she tells them she's seeing an old man wrapped in a robe.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: What kind of robe? Was it, like, at a spa?
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Like a spa robe. There was a a wheat stalk coming out of the pocket. Interesting. Yeah.
• 37:05
  Now, Samuel. And from that description, Saul concludes that it's Samuel. He decides right away, hey, this works. This was Samuel. She doesn't say that right away.
• 37:17
  Remember, she said Elohim. She, the medium, calls this essentially God. Saul concludes that it's Samuel. So take that as you will. The Bible calls him Samuel.
• 37:30
  So I do think that's correct. But it's an interesting distinction.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, also, remember who Samuel was. Mhmm. He was the son of Hannah. Hannah was the woman way back when who trusted God, who promised her, I will give you a child. And she said, yeah, if you do, I'm going to basically give him to you.
• 37:52
  Give him to the church. Yeah. And that's who Samuel was. When he was old enough, they took him to what? The tabernacle?
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: I think he was only, like, 11 or something. He was very young.
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And he started serving the Lord then. So this is a super important figure of the Bible. Someone who would have been very close to God's heart.
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: So the text is just very confusing. It's a lot of up to interpretation. Could Saul see him at any point? How visible was the figure? It's I don't know.
• 38:21
  It feels like an episode of, like, Ghostbusters or something wild, you know?
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: Oh. No. Yes. No. Yes.
• 38:30
  No. Ghostbusters. What? Mythbusters. I'm thinking of Mythbusters as like, what are you picturing?
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: Now I think it's important as you look at the rest of this story, as you look at when it's mentioned in Chronicles as well, that the Bible doesn't ever actually condemn her. Even though she's doing something against the law. Against biblical law and against Saul's law. Saul promises her, hey, you won't get punished Mhmm.
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: Because this is me asking you to do this. Right.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: Now, could argue that he's not telling her the truth there. True. But it doesn't condemn her at any point. At no point does it say, and she's going straight to hell. And in fact, when it's mentioned in Chronicles, it says Saul died because of his unfaithfulness, including consulting a medium.
• 39:29
  It does not say an evil medium. It does not say a medium who is also headed to hell. It doesn't say any of those things. It doesn't condemn her. And that's important.
• 39:43
  Because it the story when we tell stories like this, so often it's a woman was bad and corrupted this wonderful king. I'm thinking of, like, Bathsheba. Mhmm. How often did we hear the story told like she was seductively on her roof taking a bath,
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: And David was innocently just standing there. Or maybe in this one, she was just, you know, luring him with her magic and her witchiness. Yeah. And he couldn't help but go in and ask her. No.
• 40:17
  Not at all. No.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: That's not what happened. The bible never does that. It never blames the innocent victim in the story, you know? And in this case, even if she is breaking the law, she is being forced into a scenario.
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: Mhmm.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: And she, in many ways, is a victim in this particular story, and yet she is kind. Yet she shows love and kindness. And frankly, she shows the love of Jesus. Right? Now Jesus hasn't come yet, but the love of God, the love of Jesus.
• 40:52
  She is that character in this story, and that's uncomfortable for Christians to sit with. Mhmm. Because we like an Us versus them mentality. We talked about that in our episode about the Tate brothers. If you're part of the group, you get grace and love, and I assume that everything you do is for good.
• 41:12
  If you're not part of the club, I assume everything you do is bad. Assume everything you do is to hurt others.
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: It's just how we see throughout history anybody that's different from you. Mhmm. We villainize them. We are scared of us versus them. And similar in this story
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: Too. And
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: I find it fascinating that the Bible chooses not to do that. It chooses not to get involved in the us versus them debate. It chooses to show her kindness. Whoever wrote this book and I'm not I have not done research into who wrote the book of first Samuel. It clearly wasn't Samuel because he did.
• 41:56
  But whoever wrote it chose to continue the story. And in fact, almost continue the story unnecessarily. It kind of feels when she drops to the ground next to him and says, eat something, I'm gonna feed you, It feels kind of like a part of the story we don't need.
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Like, we got the basic information. Right. Now we're done. What is the significance of telling us that?
• 42:22
  What are we supposed to interpret from this section of the And I do kind of feel like it's like his last meal. Goodbye.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And her showing love. Mhmm. Someone we wouldn't normally expect to show love for many reasons. Not just because, oh, a medium had a bad reputation, but because he had kicked her and her people out of his land.
• 42:49
  Think about that. From put yourself into her shoes for a minute. Probably how she was making money Mhmm.
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: Is now decided to be illegal. What is she supposed to do now? Yeah. She either has to leave or she has to hide what she's doing. That's terrifying in and of itself.
• 43:11
  And now, probably in the middle of the night
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: Mhmm. Or It was in the middle of the night.
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: Yep. In the middle of the night, this guy and some servants come and demand entry into your home and you don't get a choice. Right.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: She doesn't get a choice. Right.
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: She doesn't have the opportunity to slam the door in his face and say, Bye. No, thank you. She's forced into a situation which she knows could get her in trouble. She's wondering who this person is. And then freaking Samuel comes down.
• 43:40
  She's like, I'm uncomfortable. Things are happening. I guess I'll make you some food.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: Take four hours of my evening. Yeah. She got no sleep that night. No.
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: This was an all night situation.
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: And it's just it's such an interesting story. And I wasn't aware of it until I actually was telling our aunts this story because I was sitting with them this week and talking about a couple of our episodes. And they were familiar with the story, but it wasn't one I had heard before. Because prior to this podcast and obviously, we've been doing this a long, long time.
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: But prior to this podcast, a lot
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: of my faith stemmed from listening to sermons. I didn't spend a whole lot of time in my bible because even though, yes, almost every sermon is like, hey, and did you do your fifteen minute devotion today? It just realistically doesn't seem necessary. It should, but when you're sitting there and you're told what to believe every Sunday, you're told the important I'm I've got air quotes going on. The important parts of the bible that you already need to know, and you're going there every week, and you're listening to an hour of this every week.
• 45:09
  It seems like I don't really need to dig into this, right, because you're telling me what it says. I mean,
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: they definitely at least the churches that we grew up in, they're like, be in your bible. Be in your bible. Be in your bible. For sure. And yes, absolutely.
• 45:29
  There are many people out there who have read their Bible from cover to cover. Admittedly, I'm not one of them. But now that we have started this podcast, I am digging more into the Bible, reading these stories that I'm definitely unfamiliar with, but also looking into historical context and putting yourself into their situations, understanding that the Bible was written in a different time. Mhmm. And I think we often forget that.
• 45:58
  And reading books from people who have studied the Bible and the historical context and know a lot more than me.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: Well, also think of how like, this is not a long story in the Bible. Now it is longer than the three verses we talked about last week. Yeah. But it's still not an extensive story. So even if you're reading cover to cover, you're probably not gonna spend a full hour, as we just did, thinking and talking about this one story.
• 46:32
  Mhmm. And it's cool to take a couple of steps back and take a couple of steps out of the four walls of the church for a minute and say, I'm gonna learn something that my pastor doesn't usually think is important enough to preach about. I like that. I like doing that. And I like that this podcast has given us the opportunity over the last two and a half years to do that, to step out of the normal stories, the 50,000 stories about David and Paul, and learn about someone that the Bible thought was important enough to tell us about.
• 47:07
  Mhmm.
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: This story, Jehoshaphat, and also, like, casually, Elisha summoning some bears.
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: Mhmm. There's some weird stuff happening. There's some weird stuff. Now, if you want to do further reading on this, I wasn't able to do a ton of research on this particular topic because some of it actually is coming out later this year. It's being published later this year.
• 47:33
  But if you know who Augustine, he was scholar. And some new sermons came out from him. Are you having fun?
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: Well, I was thinking my dad Augustine well, he's accident prone, but he means You're a the worst.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: Anyway, so some new sermons just recently were not that they came out. Like, it's not like, oh, yeah. There he is.
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: New sermons just dropped. No.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: But they it was in, like, classical text, and it's just been confirmed that it was from him and interpreted and all of these things. And a critical edition is coming out in 2026, and there were two sermons speaking very specifically about this topic. So I'd encourage you to go research that a little bit. We'll learn more about it later this year and maybe do yet another episode on her
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: because that'd always be fun. A follow-up. A follow-up.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: A part two, but in the future. Now next week, we are, like I said, gonna be talking about mysticism. And I think this comes off of this episode really well. But I follow these two women on social media, and they talk a lot about how Christianity has lost its mysticism. But God uses mysticism a lot.
• 48:54
  He uses dreams and visions. Angels appear to people. Prophets are getting messages from God. There's visions. There's people speaking in tongues.
• 49:03
  There's demons going on. There's a lot going on.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: There's a lot going on. And now all of a sudden, we've just made our religion and our faith a little bit bland. Mhmm.
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: We've lost all of this. And I know a lot of people will say, oh, well, these were just things that were happening in bible times. Why? And once the bible was closed, these things were closed. But the bible doesn't say that.
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: Also, you don't think things were happening I don't know how to put this into words. But history continued. Mhmm. After they've decided what scrolls and texts they've decided to go into the Bible, there's still so many stories. Mhmm.
• 49:49
  Like, Beth Allison Barr talks a lot about medieval times and different stories that still involve faith Yeah. That we don't know about. Right. I actually would love to do
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: an episode. Maybe we can do this after that. But on Mary Magdalene after the bible. Because there's a lot of faith traditions that follow her story after the bible. I believe Beth Allison Barr talks about her.
• 50:16
  And one of the faith traditions talks about her going to France and helping convert people there. And there's something about a dragon.
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. There's a lot going on.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: And just stuff that, you know, maybe is not a 100% accurate, but is interesting and still spoken about, still historical to some degree, still was believed by the early church. Mhmm. And we do lose so much of that because we have such a stringent view of what faith is supposed to be. But they didn't always. Tune in for that next week.
• 50:50
  We will do some research, figure out, you know, how to be mystical and magical. Maybe we'll sing that song. And I'll do a backflip. Oh, that'll that would be exciting. Vincent Boone and Brianna.
• 51:04
  Yeah. That sounds like a bad idea, though, because I don't feel the need to take you to the hospital. I did a cartwheel. Yeah. And then broke yourself.
• 51:11
  Yeah. So tune in for that next week. If I have to take Brie to the emergency room, we'll cut
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: it short. We'll report back from
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: live the from the emergency room where Brianna broke her head. Hooray. Okay. Love you. Bye.
• 51:26
  Love you. Sorry. Bye.