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SCHOLARSHIP in recent decades has enriched our understanding of the worship of ancestors and related rituals surrounding death in Israel's popular religion.1 However, the Bible's only uncontested example of necromancy contains several unexplained features and for obvious reasons, continues to raise fascinating issues. In this study, I propose that the Deuteronomistic historian used the account of Saul's necromantic inquiry at Endor rhetorically as a means of characterizing the ill-fated king (1 Sam 28:3-19) and has elsewhere used Israel's legitimate means of divination-that is, divination by means of casting lots, or cleromancy-as a contrastive literary device to prepare for this characterization of Saul.2
It has been emphasized recently in the pages of this quarterly that the History of David's Rise (1 Sam 16:14-2 Sam 5:25) explained and legitimized David by means of an extended narrative devoted primarily to characterizations of Saul and David.3 Specifically, it can be demonstrated that Saul and David are introduced and characterized in strikingly similar ways, which also serves to heighten their more important differences. Thus, the narrative legitimates David through contrastive portraits of Saul as the rejected king and of David as the ideal king. In light of these contrasting theological identities that distinguish David and Saul in the extended narrative, my intent in this article is to examine in more detail one particularly striking feature in which the contrast is drawn between them, namely, the way the narrative uses David's growing reliance on cleromancy as an intentional and deliberate preparation for Saul's reliance on necromancy in 1 Samuel 28.4
I. Necromantic Terminology in 1 Samuel 28:3-19
In 1 Sam 28:3-19, the locus classicus for any examination of necromancy in the Hebrew Bible, Saul goes to a necromancer, a "spiritist," in order to conduct a seance in which he converses with the deceased Samuel. In an extraordinary turn of events, the first king of Israel consults the medium of Endor in order to "bring up" the old prophet, whose death had been reported in 1 Sam 25:1 and was emphasized again at the beginning of this text, presumably to remove all doubt about Samuel's demise (28:3a). Samuel is then described as coming up out of the ground (28:13) and engaging in a conversation with Saul. The deceased Samuel announces that the...