Necromancy - UPDV Updated Bible Version

Necromancy is the attempt to obtain knowledge or counsel from the dead by ritual specialists — "spiritists," "wizards," those "mistress of a spirit," those who "inquire of the dead." The UPDV sets the practice inside a wider list of forbidden divinatory arts and treats it as a substitute for inquiring of Yahweh. The law forbids it, the prophets ridicule it, and the extended narrative — Saul at En-dor — runs the experiment to its end and shows it producing the verdict already pronounced against the inquirer.

What necromancy is, in the language of the text

The clearest list of forbidden practices puts necromancy at the end of a sequence: "There will not be found with you anyone who makes his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, one telling the future, one interpreting omens, or one who uses magic, or a sorcerer, or one casting spells, or one requesting a spirit, or a wizard, or one inquiring of the dead" (Deu 18:10-11). The two specifically necromantic categories — "one requesting a spirit" and "one inquiring of the dead" — sit at the bottom of the list, the gravest of the divinatory arts.

The corresponding term elsewhere in the law is "spiritist" or "wizard": "Do⁺ not turn to the spiritists or to the wizards; do not seek them out, to be defiled by them: I am Yahweh your⁺ God" (Lev 19:31). The practitioner of the En-dor narrative is described in the same vocabulary — "a woman who is mistress of a spirit" (1Sa 28:7).

The legal prohibition

The law forbids consultation, forbids practice, and prescribes punishments for both:

Consultation forbidden. "Do⁺ not turn to the spiritists or to the wizards; do not seek them out, to be defiled by them" (Lev 19:31). "And the soul who turns to the spiritists or the wizards, to go whoring after them, I will even set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people" (Lev 20:6). Consulting is treated as spiritual adultery — "go whoring after them" — and carries the same divine sanction.
Practice punished by death. "You will not allow a witch to live" (Exo 22:18). "And a man or a woman among them, who is a spiritist or a wizard, will surely be put to death: they will stone them with stones; their blood will be on them" (Lev 20:27).
Banned for Israel as a distinguishing mark. "For these nations that you will dispossess, listen to psychics and fortune-tellers; but as for you, Yahweh your God has not allowed you to do so" (Deu 18:14). Necromancy is what the displaced Canaanite nations did and what Israel must not do.

A peripheral verse from the tithe-confession liturgy denies any contact between offerings and the dead: "I haven't eaten of it in my mourning, neither have I put away of it, being unclean, nor given of it for the dead" (Deu 26:14). The worshipper has to swear that the consecrated food was never directed toward the dead — the same boundary line the necromancy laws draw, applied at the level of food-offerings.

Saul at En-dor

The chief sustained necromancy narrative in the UPDV is Saul's nighttime visit to the medium at En-dor (1Sa 28:7-19). Several features of the account are worth noticing in the text itself:

Saul has previously enforced the law: "And Saul had put away the spiritists and the wizards out of the land" (1Sa 28:3). When Yahweh stops answering — "[the Speech of] God has departed from me, and has not answered me anymore, neither by prophets, nor by dreams" (1Sa 28:15) — Saul does the thing he himself outlawed: "Seek me a woman who is mistress of a spirit, that I may go to her, and inquire of her" (1Sa 28:7).

The disguise is itself an admission of guilt: "And Saul disguised himself, and put on other raiment, and went, he and two men with him, and they came to the woman by night: and he said, Tell my fortune, I pray you, with a spirit, and call up for me whomever I will name to you" (1Sa 28:8). The medium herself names what Saul has criminalised: "Look, you know what Saul has done, how he has cut off the spiritists and the wizards out of the land: why then do you lay a snare for my soul, to cause me to die?" (1Sa 28:9).

Saul then commits a second offence — swearing in Yahweh's name to protect the practice Yahweh has banned: "And Saul swore to her [by the Speech of] Yahweh, saying, As Yahweh lives, no punishment will happen to you for this thing" (1Sa 28:10).

The figure that comes up is recognised by Saul as Samuel: "An old man comes up; and he is covered with a robe. And Saul perceived that it was Samuel, and he bowed with his face to the ground, and did obeisance" (1Sa 28:14). The message Samuel gives is not new information — it is the verdict already passed on Saul: "Yahweh has rent the kingdom out of your hand, and given it to your fellow man, even to David. Because you didn't obey the voice [Speech] of Yahweh, and did not execute his fierce wrath on Amalek, therefore has Yahweh done this thing to you this day" (1Sa 28:17-18). And Yahweh's silence, which had driven Saul to En-dor in the first place, ends with a final word: "tomorrow you and your sons will be with me" (1Sa 28:19).

The judgement on Saul

The Chronicler's verdict on Saul's death folds the En-dor visit into the cause of death itself: "So Saul died for his trespass which he committed against Yahweh, because of the word of Yahweh, which he did not keep; and also for asking counsel of a spiritist, to inquire" (1Ch 10:13). The Samuel-narrative judgement that "rebellion is as the sin of fortune-telling, and stubbornness is as idolatry and talismans. Because you have rejected the word of Yahweh, he has also rejected you from being king" (1Sa 15:23) is now confirmed in the manner of the king's death — the man rejected for being like a fortune-teller dies as one.

Royal apostasy under Manasseh

The other named royal practitioner in the historical books is Manasseh, indicted in nearly identical language by both Kings and Chronicles. Kings: "And he made his son to pass through the fire, and interpreted omens, and used magic, and dealt with spiritists and with wizards: he wrought much evil in the sight of Yahweh, to provoke him to anger" (2Ki 21:6). Chronicles parallel: "He also made his sons to pass through the fire in the valley of the son of Hinnom; and he interpreted omens, and used magic, and did witchcraft, and dealt with spiritists and with wizards: he wrought much evil in the sight of Yahweh, to provoke him to anger" (2Ch 33:6). The vocabulary is the same Deuteronomic stack — pass through the fire, omens, magic, spiritists, wizards — now charged against the king of Judah.

The prophets' assessment

The prophets do not narrate necromancy; they evaluate it. Two judgements run side by side: it is a substitute for Yahweh, and it does not work.

Substitute for Yahweh. "And when they will say to you⁺, Seek to the spiritists and to the wizards, who chirp and who mutter: should not a people seek to their God? On behalf of the living [should they seek] to the dead?" (Isa 8:19). The rhetorical question reframes necromancy as a category mistake — the living seeking the dead instead of the living God.

Ineffectual. Egypt's collapse exposes the futility: "And the spirit of Egypt will fail in the midst of it; and I will destroy its counsel: and they will seek to the idols, and to the charmers, and to the spiritists, and to the wizards" (Isa 19:3). Multiplied recourse to spiritists is itself a sign of the spirit's failure, not its remedy.

The image of the dead in Isaiah's poetry is the whisper from below the dust: "And you will be brought down, and will speak out of the ground, and your speech will be low out of the dust; and your voice will be as a spirit out of the ground, and your speech will whisper out of the dust" (Isa 29:4). The prophet does not deny that something speaks; he describes its character — low, ground-bound, whispered — and uses it as the figure of Jerusalem reduced.