Ask the Rabbi – Saul and the Spirit Medium – 2

• Just because something is not allowed doesn’t mean it won’t produce results! 
  • The “something that is not allowed” is the practice of necromancy [i.e., sorcery, (black) magic, witchcraft, witchery, wizardry, the occult, occultism, voodoo, hoodoo; divination; spiritualism].  
  • In the text under scrutiny, there are two characters interacting with each other initially:  King Saul and the witch of Endor.  
  • Saul had decreed against the practice of necromancy which is forbidden by the Torah; the witch by the very fact she’s called a witch or in some texts “necromancer” has the reputation of having practiced it, and has either discontinued it because of the decree or continued but secretly. 
  • Saul disguises himself because he has to violate his own decree; this is the extent of the depths to which this king has sunk. 
  • Why does he want to violate his and the Torah’s decree? Because he’s desperate, wants answers about the security of his kingship and his kingdom, but no longer has Samuel to consult and all other recourse yield no answers.  
  • So despite Saul’s violation of the Torah prohibition and his own decree, he still gets what he wants and asks for: the return of Samuel from the dead to prophesy the end of Saul’s kingship.
  • So next the interaction shifts between Saul and the “being” that Saul perceives to be Samuel; if it is not the real Samuel, then it is some spirit [possibly an angelic messenger] taking the place of the dead Samuel, though that is not indicated in the text, in fact the text says Samuel is speaking, sounding irritated that he had to be “disturbed” to be “raised up.”  It would seem God did indulge Saul so he could hear of his impending fate.
  • The Rabbi is right:  something not allowed produced results for Saul; he got what he asked for [rouse Samuel from his sleep of death] and got an answer to his question, but not the answer he had wanted to hear.
  • Now why would God allow the violation of His own Torah by allowing Samuel to return to issue one last prophecy on the destiny of Saul?  
  • Why indulge Saul’s wrongful and sinful tendency? 
  • How could that possibly teach Saul a lesson? 
  • This is confusing  to the rest of Torah-students like ourselves who cannot understand how this fits in the teaching on disobedience and consequence?
    
• I’ll flip it the other way: Just because something works doesn’t mean it is allowed.Torah tells us right from wrong. Good from bad. Pure from impure. Amen!
  • For all that Saul went through to get answers even if he went about it the wrong way, he did succeed . . . but everything he did was a violation of Torah . . . a sin against God. He suffered the consequences. 
  • Could he have repented and asked forgiveness?  That is always a choice of every person who realizes he has sinned, God reacts favorably toward the repentant, just look at David. But the text does not indicate that Saul repented.
• G-d made a world with impurity (for the sake of freedom of choice) and we are to choose the path of Torah.  Perhaps this should be reworded into:  God made a world that He pronounced “good” and “very good,” except that man was given freedom of choice which could turn the good and very good to bad and very bad when man strays from the path of Torah and disobeys God’s specific commandment.

Are we satisfied with this reply?  Not quite, though Rabbi Cotlar has helped us look at the episode from another angle.