Witchcraft

Witchcraft in scripture is the cluster of practices by which a human agent attempts to access knowledge or power through spirits other than Yahweh — divination, sorcery, necromancy, soothsaying, omen-reading, charm-binding, and the deceptive sign-working that runs alongside them. The Mosaic legislation treats it as a capital boundary between Yahweh's people and the surrounding nations; the prophets treat it as a vain rival to the word of Yahweh; and the apocalyptic writings treat it as the propaganda apparatus of the beast and Babylon. Across the canon it is named, exposed, criminalized, mocked, and finally judged.

Law Concerning Witches and Spiritists

The Sinai code states the rule with a single imperative: "You will not allow a witch to live" (Ex 22:18). Leviticus places the prohibition inside the holiness code: "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" (Le 19:31). The penalty for the consultant is divine cut-off: "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" (Le 20:6). The penalty for the practitioner is capital and communal: "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" (Le 20:27).

Deuteronomy widens the catalogue. "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" (De 18:10-11). The rationale is national: "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" (De 18:14). The line is drawn between Yahweh's people and a Canaanite religious technology that Israel is expressly forbidden to import.

Witchcraft Among the Nations

The narrative books and oracles show that technology in operation. Pharaoh's "sacred scholars" are introduced as a counter-cabinet at the rod sign — "Then Pharaoh also called for the wise men and the sorcerers: and the sacred scholars of Egypt also did in like manner with their witchcraft" (Ex 7:11) — and they keep up the mimicry through the early plagues: "And the sacred scholars of Egypt did in like manner with their magic" (Ex 7:22), "And the sacred scholars did in like manner with their magic, and brought up frogs on the land of Egypt" (Ex 8:7). Their limit is reached at the third plague, where they themselves identify the divine source: "Then the sacred scholars said to Pharaoh, This is the finger of God" (Ex 8:19). By the sixth plague the persons of the magicians have collapsed under Yahweh's hand: "And the sacred scholars could not stand before Moses because of the boils; for the boils were on the sacred scholars, and on all the Egyptians" (Ex 9:11). Joseph in Egypt deploys the idiom rhetorically — "a man such as I can indeed use magic [to find out]" (Ge 44:15) — but his earlier vindication is exactly the failure of the same caste: when Pharaoh dreams, "I told it to the sacred scholars; but there was none who could declare it to me" (Ge 41:24).

The Babylonian world repeats the pattern. Nebuchadnezzar's first crisis assembles the full guild — "Then the king commanded to call the sacred scholars, and the psychics, and the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans, to tell the king his dreams" (Da 2:2) — and Daniel pronounces the verdict on their craft as such: "The secret which the king has demanded can neither wise men, psychics, sacred scholars, nor astrologers, show to the king" (Da 2:27). The summons is repeated and re-failed in the king's second dream — "Then the sacred scholars, the psychics, the Chaldeans, and the astrologers came in; and I told the dream before them; but they did not make known to me its interpretation" (Da 4:7) — and again under Belshazzar (Da 5:7). Ezekiel narrates Babylonian divinatory technique in detail at the campaign's outset: "For the king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to tell his fortune: he shook the arrows to and fro, he consulted the talismans, he looked in the liver" (Eze 21:21). Isaiah's oracle against Babylon names the same craft as the city's defining export and its defining vulnerability: "in the multitude of your witchcraft, and the great abundance of your magic words" (Is 47:9). Egypt's parallel oracle shows the spirit of a nation collapsing into its mediums — "they will seek to the idols, and to the charmers, and to the spiritists, and to the wizards" (Is 19:3) — and Isaiah summarizes Israel's contamination from the same cultures: "they are filled [with customs] from the east, and [are] omen interpreters like the Philistines" (Is 2:6). Among the gentile peripheral cases, Moab and Midian send Balaam "the rewards of fortune-telling" (Nu 22:7), and the Philistines themselves consult their priests-and-fortune-tellers over the captured ark of Yahweh (1Sa 6:2).

Witchcraft in Israel's Kings

Israel and Judah do not stay clear of the cultures around them. Saul, who had "put away the spiritists and the wizards out of the land" (1Sa 28:3), finally goes by night to one of the practitioners he had purged: "Then Saul said to his slaves, Seek me a woman who is mistress of a spirit, that I may go to her, and inquire of her" (1Sa 28:7). The medium herself names the irony of the visit — "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) — and Saul's request is plain: "Bring me up Samuel" (1Sa 28:11). The Chronicler closes that life with the canonical verdict: "So Saul died for his trespass which he committed against Yahweh… for asking counsel of a spiritist, to inquire" (1Ch 10:13). The same prophet who anointed Saul had already named the equivalence: "For 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).

The northern kingdom is described in the same vocabulary. Jehu confronts Joram with the charge that Jezebel's reign is whoring and witchcraft both at once: "What peace, so long as the whoring of your mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many?" (2Ki 9:22). The historian summarizes the cause of the exile in a list: the people "told the future and used magic, and sold themselves to do that which was evil in the sight of Yahweh, to provoke him to anger" (2Ki 17:17). Manasseh of Judah is described in a deliberate echo of De 18: "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" (2Ki 21:6).

The Prophets Against Diviners

The prophets denounce divination both as wickedness and as worthlessness. Isaiah refuses the appeal to the dead: "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?" (Is 8:19). The judgment-oracle on Jerusalem renders her own voice into the very necromantic register she had courted: "your voice will be as a spirit out of the ground, and your speech will whisper out of the dust" (Is 29:4). Jeremiah warns the exilic remnant against the political use of fortune-tellers: "don't listen to your⁺ prophets, or to your⁺ fortune-tellers, or to your⁺ dreamers, or to your⁺ psychics, or to your⁺ sorcerers, who speak to you⁺, saying, You⁺ will not serve the king of Babylon" (Je 27:9). Ezekiel announces the end of the prophetess-diviners' trade: "you⁺ will no more see false visions, nor tell any fortunes" (Eze 13:23). Zechariah names the falsity that runs underneath: "the talismans have spoken vanity, and the fortune-tellers have seen a lie; and they have told false dreams, they comfort in vain" (Zec 10:2). Micah pairs the cessation with messianic restoration: "And I will cut off sorcerers out of your hand; and you will have no psychics" (Mi 5:12). Malachi places the sorcerer first in the closing court-list of the day of Yahweh: "[my Speech] will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against the false swearers" (Mal 3:5). Sirach fixes the wisdom-judgment on the technology: "Divinations, and soothsayings, and dreams are vain, As you hope so does your heart see" (Sir 34:5).

Witchcraft in the New-Covenant Vice-Lists

The apostolic vice-lists carry the prohibition forward without softening it. Galatians catalogues witchcraft among the works of the flesh, paired with the prior vice in a way the Mosaic code already paired them: "idolatry, witchcraft, enmities, strife" (Ga 5:20), and the verdict attached to the whole list excludes the doer from the kingdom of God. The Apocalypse names sorcerers in the list of those whose part is the second death: "sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, their part [will be] in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone; which is the second death" (Re 21:8). Babylon-the-great, the apocalyptic counter-city, falls under a charge that is a direct descendant of Isaiah 47: "for with your witchcraft were all the nations deceived" (Re 18:23).

Lying Wonders

Scripture is candid that witchcraft can produce visible effects. The Egyptian sacred scholars do bring up frogs (Ex 8:7); Pharaoh's craft does turn rods into snakes (Ex 7:11). Paul names the New-Testament counterpart explicitly: the lawless one's "coming is according to the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders" (2Th 2:9). The Apocalypse expands the same category. The second beast "does great signs, that he should even make fire to come down out of heaven on the earth in the sight of men" (Re 13:13); demonic spirits at the sixth bowl are "spirits of demons, working signs; which go forth to the kings of the whole world" (Re 16:14); and the false prophet, who "did the signs in his sight, with which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast" (Re 19:20), is taken with the beast and cast alive into the lake of fire. The signs are real performances, but they are "lying wonders" — their content is deception, their source is Satan, and their issue is judgment.

Witchcraft Vain and Witchcraft Ended

Two notes close the topic. First, the practice is repeatedly named as empty. "Divinations, and soothsayings, and dreams are vain" (Sir 34:5); "the talismans have spoken vanity, and the fortune-tellers have seen a lie" (Zec 10:2); the Babylonian guilds cannot read what God has written (Da 2:27; Da 4:7). Second, the canon is uniform that the practice is on schedule for cessation. "And I will cut off sorcerers out of your hand" (Mi 5:12); "you⁺ will no more see false visions, nor tell any fortunes" (Eze 13:23); the apocalyptic vice-lists exclude the sorcerer from the holy city (Re 21:8). The biblical witness against witchcraft is therefore not chiefly skeptical (denying that it does anything) but theological: it solicits a forbidden source, it works against Yahweh's word, and it has already been sentenced.