1 Samuel 28


1 Samuel 28 is the twenty-eighth chapter of the First Book of Samuel in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible or the first part of the Books of Samuel in the Hebrew Bible. According to Jewish tradition the book was attributed to the prophet Samuel, with additions by the prophets Gad and Nathan, but modern scholars view it as a composition of a number of independent texts of various ages from c. 630–540 BC. This chapter contains the account of David's escape from Saul's repeated attempts to kill him. This is within a section comprising 1 Samuel 16 to 2 Samuel 5 which records the rise of David as the king of Israel.

Text

This chapter was originally written in the Hebrew language. It is divided into 25 verses.

Textual witnesses

Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter in Hebrew are of the Masoretic Text tradition, which includes the Codex Cairensis, Aleppo Codex, and Codex Leningradensis. Fragments containing parts of this chapter in Hebrew were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls including 4Q51 with extant verses 1–3, 22–25.
Extant ancient manuscripts of a translation into Koine Greek known as the Septuagint include Codex Vaticanus and Codex Alexandrinus.

Places

  • Endor
  • Gilboa
  • Shunem

    The Philistines gather against Israel (28:1–2)

Verses 1–2 continue the story of David's time among the Philistines, which will be picked up again in chapters 29–30. As the Philistines prepared for another war against Israel, David was placed in an awkward position to prove his loyalty to Achish by going to fight against his own people.

Saul and the Medium of Endor (28:3–25)

At his camp at Gilboa, facing the big army of Philistines at Shunem, Saul was in utter fear because he had no access to divine guidance, as described in verses 3–6:
  1. Samuel was already dead and buried
  2. Saul had removed 'mediums and wizards' from the land, as was required by law.
  3. Saul did not get any answer when he sought YHWH's guidance through dreams, sacred lots and prophets.
This caused Saul to desperately turn to prohibited means of getting to know the divine will, going against his own laws. Because Endor was located northeast of Shunem, thus behind enemy lines, Saul had to go in disguise and at night. The narrative about Saul's visit to the woman in Endor was 'one of the most bizarre texts in Scripture', as it claimed that Samuel's spirit could be called to speak through using witchcraft. It is debatable whether it was really Samuel's spirit or the woman impersonating Samuel, because there was no new information was given other than what was already known from Samuel's speech long ago. The text does say that the woman "saw a figure coming up", whom Saul assumed to be "Samuel", and was in terror, as well as got the knowledge that Saul was the one requesting this. The main point of the narrative is to show how Saul was totally cut off from YHWH, and failed as a king to protect Israel as he himself and his heirs would die at the hands of the Philistines.

Verse 3

The first sentence is a repetition of 1 Samuel 25:1.

Commentaries on Samuel

General

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