Today’s passage: 1 Samuel 28:1-25
Helpful thoughts:
- There are two play-on-words instances in verse 2.
- What King Achish was about to see David do could have been against Israel or against the Philistines.
- The phrase, “I will make you my bodyguard for life” in Hebrew is literally, “I will make you keeper of my head.” David had already captured the head of one Philistine from Gath.
- Anyone in Israel who consulted a medium was to be “cut off” from Israel (Leviticus 20:6). Saul clearly knew this as he had previously outlawed and removed all of the mediums.
- Saul had disrespected and disobeyed God, Samuel, and killed the priests. Now that he’s in distress, he wants God to speak to him…and when Saul gets what he wants, he’s certainly not happy about it.
- In his promise to not allow harm on the medium, Saul truly used the Lord’s name in vain.
- It seems as though this deceiving medium realized she had been deceived when her divining appeared to actually work! Certainly, she was not the one who successfully brought Samuel to Saul, the Lord allowed this.
Questions to consider:
- What kind of situation is David in? What kind of trouble have his double-meaning statements gotten him into?
- How could Saul’s actions show us that being spiritual and religious does not automatically mean a person is following Jesus? Why did Saul want to hear from the Lord and from Samuel? What was he willing to do in order to get it?
- How might people cut off God from their lives today and then expect Him to arrive to save the day when their consequences approach? Is that cry to God an act of repentance? What would repentance look like? What has Christ provided for us in our repentance?