Urim and Thummim: Pieces of the Earth

Viking rune stones. Anyone in Israel caught plying or availing the service of any of such defiling (Leviticus 19:31) and detestable (Deuteronomy 18:12) rituals will “be put to death” by stoning (Leviticus 20:27). Did God consider stoning the fitting method of execution for diviners because of the offense’s spiritual identification with the ground?

The story of the Israelite custom of lot casting may have had its origins from a mysterious pair of words that literally mean “lights” and “perfections” that seem to predate Moses. The Bible calls it the Urim and the Thummim, an aspect of the ancient Israelite civilization that we virtually know nothing about.

Whether they are objects, devices, or methods of scrying, the Scriptures are very sketchy in detailing what the Urim and the Thummim truly refer to. The two words are distinct in meaning yet may refer to a singular idea. In actual history, however, the terms are discretely represented as two stones with each word inscribed in Hebraic text on the surface. In the Bible, the words occur seven times, all in the Old Testament: five times, in which order the Urim is mentioned ahead of the Thummim; two times, the Urim appears without the Thummim (Numbers 27:21 and 1 Samuel 28:7); and once, the Thummim is cited ahead of the Urim (Deuteronomy 33:8).

The words first appear in Exodus 28:30 as a part of a holy directive to incorporate them in the High Priest’s breastpiece. In reading the context of the passage, we could be easily convinced that the Urim and the Thummim were stones, as many of today’s experts believe. Beginning in the seventeenth verse, the breastpiece was prescribed by God, through Moses, to be mounted with “four rows of precious stones” in the following order: ruby, topaz, and beryl for the first row; turquoise, sapphire, and emerald for the second; jacinth, agate, and amethyst for the third; and chrysolite, onyx, and jasper for the fourth (verses 17 to 19). They were to represent the Twelve Tribes of Israel, with each stone bearing an engraving of the name of one tribe (verse 21). God stipulated that the breastpiece be securely worn by the High Priest as he conducts his duties in a sacred chamber called “the Holy Place” (verse 29). God wanted to see the high priest bearing the “names of the sons of Israel over his heart…as a continuing memorial before the Lord.” By the end of this verse, the Urim and the Thummim are significantly mentioned to be “put…in the breastpiece, so they may be over Aaron’s heart whenever he enters the presence of the Lord” (verse 30). Consequently:

“Thus Aaron will always bear the means of making decisions for the Israelites over his heart before the Lord.”

As the Twelve Tribes of Israel were ordered to be represented with gemstones, so we quickly conclude that the Urim and the Thummim were likewise symbolized. And because it was a “means of making decisions,” coupled with our understanding of simplified emblems that go in almost any method of divination, the Urim and the Thummim were portrayed as an ancient form of cleromancy. And because of the incorporation of this pair upon the vestment, the breastpiece became known as the “breastpiece of decision” (New International Version) or “breastpiece of judgment” (King James Version).


Judging by the Scriptures alone, it may not be entirely inaccurate to see the Urim and the Thummim as stones. In the last passage above, these were prescribed to be “put…in the breastpiece.” In Leviticus 8:8, Moses, while dressing up his brother Aaron as an initial part of his ordination as high priest, “put the Urim and the Thummim in the breastpiece.” In the original Hebrew and Greek Septuagint renditions of 1 Samuel 14:41, King Saul employs the “stones” in divining an individual guilty of breaking faith, who later turns out to be his own son Jonathan:

“Why have you not answered your servant today? If the fault is in me or my son Jonathan, respond with Urim, but if the men of Israel are at fault, respond with Thummim.”

Then proceeding to the latter part of the verse, regular translations plainly state that “Jonathan and Saul were taken by lot, and the men were cleared.” And finally the succeeding verse: “Saul said, ‘Cast the lot between me and Jonathan my son.’”

At least in this instance, the Urim and the Thummim were treated as sacred lots. The New Living Translation of the Bible follows this impression in dealing with the relics, as can be seen in Numbers 27:21, Deuteronomy 33:8, 1 Samuel 14:41 to 42, 28:6, Ezra 2:63, and Nehemiah 7:65.

In being sacred lots, therefore, the mode of consultation would naturally be in a yes-no format. This was the way David sought God’s specific guidance—twice, the second time for confirmation, which God graciously granted—in 1 Samuel 23 when he battled the Philistines:

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“he inquired of the Lord, saying, ‘shall I go and attack these Philistines?’ The Lord answered him, ‘Go, attack the Philistines and save Keilah.’ Once again David inquired of the Lord, and the Lord answered him, ‘Go down to Keilah, for I am going to give the Philistines into your hand’” (verses 2 and 4).

In the same chapter, David made another inquiry, again twice: “’Will the citizens of Keilah surrender me to him? Will Saul come down, as your servant has heard? O Lord, God of Israel, tell your servant.’ And the Lord said, ‘He will.’ Again David asked, ‘Will the citizens of Keilah surrender me and my men to Saul?’ And the Lord said, ‘They will’” (verses 11 to 12).

Then in the thirtieth chapter, David consults the stones: “’Shall I pursue this raiding party? Will I overtake them?’ ‘Pursue them,’ he answered. ‘You will certainly overtake them and succeed in the rescue’” (verse 8).

By the second chapter of Second Book of Samuel, there no longer was any doubt that David kept using the stones, this time for his coronation as king: “In the course of time, David inquired of the Lord. ‘Shall I go up to one of the towns of Judah?’ he asked. ‘The Lord said, ‘Go up’” (verse 1).

The passage following this is very intriguing in that God, through the stones, identified precisely where David was supposed to go, responding to David’s detailed question: “’Where shall I go?’ ‘To Hebron,’ the Lord answered.”

Another similar response is found back in 1 Samuel 10, when the leaders inquired where Saul was as he purposely hid himself in timidity during his coronation as king: “’Has the man come here yet?’ And the Lord said, ‘Yes, he has hidden himself among the baggages’” (verse 22).

In 2 Samuel 5: 23 to 25, God provides specific instructions on routing the Philistine army: “’Do not go straight up, but circle around behind them and attack them in front of the balsam trees. As soon as you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the balsam trees, move quickly, because that will mean the Lord has gone out in front of you to strike the Philistine army.’”

It will, therefore, be entirely inaccurate to believe that the “stones” only responded to the yes-no mode. The information on how the accurate answers were ever gleaned may have been largely lost along with the stones, probably in one of the major destructions of Jerusalem, beginning with the Babylonian invasion in 586 B.C.

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Any inquiry made to the Lord from the time of the institution of the high priesthood was mostly done through the use of the Urim and the Thummim. In most of the passages above, there was a priestly vestment that needed to be present in order for the Urim and the Thummim to be managed: the ephod. [There be more!]

Saul and Sorcery: Pieces of the Earth

It is almost settled that the witch of Endor used a jar (or, jars) of clay to divine the Prophet Samuel’s ghost. It was a method that may have originated from the Egyptians. It was not, however, the only fashion in town, and Saul, as revealed in 1 Samuel 28:8, seemed to have expected the witch to utilize a divining method popular among his people during his time. He told the witch, “I pray thee, divine unto me by the familiar spirit, and bring me him up, who I shall name unto thee” (King James Version). “Divine” in this passage was the Hebrew word qacam which meant, “to determine by magic scroll or lot.”

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Despite the sanctions against it, the esoteric art of divination, whether for good or for bad, have had its part in Israelite history and culture. Cleromancy, or the casting or drawing lots, was the most popular methods of divination employed by the common folk when deciding difficult and doubtful matters. Although Deuteronomy 18:10 expressed the uncompromising and relentless hostility God has waged against the one who “practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens… or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead,” the lot was given Divine sanction in Numbers 26:55 in partitioning Canaan among the Israelite tribes. The verse following this implies the indisputable conclusiveness of the lot.

The system of the lot as shown in Joshua 7:14 to 19 was used to pinpoint an offender from out of all the twelve tribes of Israel. This was God’s divine instruction to Joshua:

“In the morning, present yourselves tribe by tribe. The tribe that the Lord takes shall come forward clan by clan; the clan that the Lord takes shall come forward family by family; and the family that the Lord takes shall come forward man by man.”

It was also in this way Saul was chosen as king: “When Samuel brought all the tribes of Israel near, the tribe of Benjamin was chosen. Then he brought forward the tribe of Benjamin, clan by clan, and Matri’s clan was chosen. Finally Saul son of Kish was chosen” (1 Samuel 10:20 to 21).

In choosing what army among the twelve tribes would lead an assault, the lot was also consulted in Judges 20:9: “We’ll go up against it as the lot directs.”

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Among the priests the lot was referred to in determining what ministerial function to perform. This was seen in Luke 1:9 when Zechariah was tasked to serve in the Temple. In Leviticus 16:8, the choice of the ceremonial scapegoat depended on the lot. As we know today, the scapegoat represented Jesus, God’s “sin offering” (verse 9). On the day of His crucifixion, lots were cast over His garments (John 19:24).

In the New Testament, the Apostles elected Matthias as Judas Iscariot’s replacement to fulfill the prophetic requirement stated in Psalm 109:8, through lot preceded by a prayer for guidance: “’Lord you know everyone’s heart. Show us which of these two [Joseph called Barsabbas (also known as Justus) and Matthias] you have chosen to take over this apostolic ministry, which Judas left to go where he belongs.’ Then they drew lots, and the lot fell to Matthias; so he was added to the eleven apostles” (Acts 1:24 to 26).

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Probably the most celebrated use of the lot was the one that tossed the Prophet Jonah overboard into the Mediterranean to get swallowed by a giant fish.

“Then the sailors said to each other, ‘Come let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.’ They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah” (Jonah 1:7).

There are experts who believe that the art of lot casting came from the pagans. The sailors in Jonah 1 were foreigners each of who worshiped and “cried out to his own god” in the wake of the squall (verse 5). The soldiers who gambled for Jesus’ garments were Roman pagans whose over familiarity with the lot led them to toy with its significance and serve their own gain. It may also be, on the other hand, a coincidence that this trapping appears in both the cultures of the Israelites and the foreign neighbors.

The story of the Israelite custom of lot casting may have had its origins from a mysterious pair of words that literally mean “lights” and “perfections” that seem to predate Moses. The Bible calls it the Urim and the Thummim, an aspect of the ancient Israelite civilization that we virtually know nothing about. [We got more so stay tuned!]

[Also, I keep forgetting this, the passages of Scripture you see in the articles are lifted from the New Internation Version--nice piece of translation--unless otherwise indicated, coz we just gotta use the others like the King James Version, the New International, New King James, and when I get the cash I'll be purchasing the Wuest and all those cool versions!]

Saul and Symbols: The Spear of Destiny

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The ground symbolized Saul's corruption. Another thing that came to be identified with Saul was his spear.

Though not as significant as the sword, the Bible also provides a unique symbolic worth to the spear, particularly in relation to judgment. The name Methuselah literally holds the meaning “he holds a spear.” Methuselah is the man in the Bible who held the oldest length of years alive, at 969, outliving his son Lamech by 374 years. He lived in the time of his grandson Noah, who coincidentally was born in the year Adam died.  Some Bible scholars attest that while Methuselah lived, he guided Noah in the ways of the Lord, the way Adam did with Noah’s fathers.

While Noah’s name meant “comfort,” Methuselah’s implicated judgment. His name was launched from the hand of God like a spear through the ages, keeping the integrity of Godly worship alive in a world that sank deep into corruption through the influence of the House of Cain. In the year of his death, the Noahic Flood fell. The Methuselah spear had hit its mark.

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While the sword and the spear were common in the ancient world, a private citizen would favor the first one over the latter to have in his hand and home. A spear was long with a length that can only be useful in the wideness of the battlefield, not in the constricted confines of a home or the crowded streets and tight backstreets of a city. A common civilian wielding a spear in a fight would be in more trouble than when unarmed. In the grip of a trained soldier, however, the spear was a thing of terror.

In prophesying about the destruction of Jerusalem, the Prophet Jeremiah foretold of an army coming from the north, “armed with bow and spear” (Jeremiah 6:23), cruel and merciless, a suddenly descending destroyer (verse 26). And as surely as the sword causes terrible destruction, the spear in the hands of an invading force sent as judgment brought appalling brutality:

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“Charging cavalry, flashing swords and glittering spears! Many casualties, piles of dead, bodies without number, people stumbling over corpses—“ (Nahum 3:3).

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Death through the goring spear is a humiliating way to die. King Saul, in his murderous fantasy, dreamt the last years of his life on the throne impaling David with his trusty stick.

“Saul had a spear in his hand and he hurled it, saying to himself, ‘I’ll pin David to the wall’” (1 Samuel 18:10-11).

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On three occasions, Saul transformed his home into a dart gallery; on the first two setsDavid was the bulls’ eye; on the last, the King’s Prince Jonathan. On those three occasions, the spear missed its intended mark. Apparently, the weapon was not intended on David or Jonathan, but on someone else. Yet from then on, it almost seemed like Saul and that spear became inseparable, be it on a hill outside his home in Gibeah (1 Samuel 22:6) or on a countrywide tour in vicious pursuit of David. One was safe to suspect that Saul may have even christened that oversized toothpick with a name such as The Impaler (or Vlad). The farthest distance his spear had gone from his hand was a few inches from his head while he lay asleep on the hill of Hakilah (1 Samuel 26:7). On that night, David and one of his men snuck into the middle of the camp, came within a whisker’s distance to the King and kidnapped Mr. Spear.

Saul’s devotion to the spear was symbolic of his obsession to several things, his disobedience to God being foremost. His lust for the throne was another. Even when it meant certain death, Saul proved that there was nothing that would make him relinquish his grip on the power of being the firstborn over all Israel. His heart was so hardened that not even a slap on the face with a demonic spirit during worship (1 Samuel 18:10) would give him a clue that God had abandoned him.

On the night before he died, Saul risked his life and the lives of his two men by plunging into Philistine territory incognito to find a witch who would conjure up the ghost of the Prophet Samuel. The passage in 1 Samuel 28:5-7 recounts the desperation of Saul:


“When Saul saw the Philistine army [gathered at Shunem, adjacent his camp at Gilboa], he was afraid; terror filled his heart. He inquired of the Lord, but the Lord did not answer him by dreams or Urim or prophets. Saul then said to his attendants, ‘Find me a woman who is a medium, so I may go and inquire of her.’”

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Just as he was inclined on several occasions to hurl the spear at David, the Lord’s anointed, Saul’s rebellion had gone full circle when he launched out, like a spear in the night, to Endor. On the next day, as Israelite losses mounted all the way to their camp on Gilboa, an eyewitness gave an account of Saul “leaning on his spear, with the chariots and riders almost upon him” (2 Samuel 1:6). Even in death, that spear remained in his hand.

The spear of Saul was never heard of again after his death in Gilboa. It might have appeared that his spear had finally struck its mark: the mark God intended for the rebellious King Saul.

On several important junctures in the Scripture, it took a spear to pronounce the judgment

of God. In Numbers 25:7, the Hebrew priest Phinehas drove a spear through the bodies of a fornicating Israelite and his consort to turn the wrath of God against His idolatrous people. According to the story, this act of Phinehas stopped a God-sent plague that had by then killed 24,000 people (verses 8 and 9). A great reward was lavished on Phinehas that day: God promised “making a covenant of peace with him” (verse 12), that the man “and his descendants will have a covenant of a lasting priesthood, because he was zealous for the house of his God and made atonement for the Israelites” (verse 13). But at the opposite end of this tribute, God commanded Moses to “treat the Midianites as enemies and kill them” (verse 17) for luring all Israel into false worship to the false god of Peor and the matter regarding the Israelite and his Midianite paramour.

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In the eighth chapter of Joshua, God commands the Israelite general to attack the city of Ai. Through His Spirit, God provides Joshua with the scheme on how the invasion will be executed: by ambush (verse 2). Upon completing the first phase of the plan to lure the soldiers of Ai out of the city, God told Joshua to hold out toward Ai the spear that was in his hand (verse 18); Joshua did as commanded. Later in the account, it was said that “Joshua did not draw back the hand that held out his javelin until he had destroyed all who lived in Ai” (verse 26). This was how the carnage went down:

“As soon as [Joshua] did this, the men in the ambush rose quickly from their position and rushed forward. They entered the city and captured it and quickly set it on fire. The men of Ai looked back and saw the smoke of the city rising against the sky, but they had no chance to escape in any direction, for the Israelites who had been fleeing toward the desert had turned back against their pursuers. The men of the ambush also came out of the city against them, so that they were caught in the middle, with Israelites on both sides. Israel cut them down, leaving them neither survivors nor fugitives. When Israel had finished killing all the men of Ai…all the Israelites returned to Ai and killed those who were in it. Twelve thousand men and women fell that day—all the people of Ai. So Joshua burned Ai and made it a permanent heap of ruins, a desolate place to this day. He hung the king of Ai on a tree and left him there until evening” (verses 19-20, 22, 24-25, 28-29).

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Another effective use of the spear is for blocking the path of an enemy. In Psalm 35:3, an impassioned King David called on God to “brandish the spear and javelin” against his pursuers. An invasion of spearmen, therefore, meant no escape. Hence, when God told Joshua to lift up his spear against Ai, Joshua understood that the judgment upon the city was irreversible. On the other hand, to those who put their trust in God, the spear “shatters" at his command (Psalm 46:9) and turns it back to “pierce [the] head” of the one who brings it (Habakkuk 3:14).

The final mention of the spear is in John 19:34. On the day Jesus died, a spear pierced His side “bringing a sudden flow of blood and water,” fulfilling two prophecies published hundreds of years before:

“These things happened so that the Scripture would be fulfilled: ‘Not one of his bones will be broken,’ and, another Scripture says, ‘They will look on the one they have pierced’” (verses 36 and 37).

The prophetic passages are found in Exodus 12:46, Numbers 9:12, and Psalm 34:20 for the first one; and Zechariah 12:10 for the second.

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According to Isaiah 53:8, it was “by oppression and judgment” that Jesus was “taken away…cut off from the land of the living.” The unalterable role of the spear in judgment had stretched so far, all the way to the top of Golgotha to pierce the side of our Mighty Savior. It was the final act of punishment inflicted upon Him. The prophecies that predated His incarnation never missed Him being pierced, which was, according to the Prophet Isaiah, “for our transgressions” and our healing (Isaiah 53:5).

Throughout the ages of seeking the life of David who was never meant to die by it, the spear had hit its mark—on the side of his Descendant, the Firstborn from among the dead (Colossians 1:18).

Saul and Sorcery: The Ground

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In the unraveling of Saul’s life, one can be reminded of the story of the earth. The day God created the earth, He “saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:10). He beheld the seamless completion of His design as He commanded the water under the sky to gather to one place to call up the dry ground which He called “land (verse 9). But on the day sin entered Creation, the ground was cursed with corruption and the womb that delivered the “living creatures, according to their kinds” (1:24) became mankind’s destiny (3:17-19). The earth of God changed from the day of Adam’s disobedience and all its goodness and perfection fled as the ownership of this side of Creation shifted to Satan (John 16:11) and his fallen angels (Ephesians 6:12); and as it aged, it drifted deeper into decay and perdition (Genesis 6:11). For this, God’s heart was “filled with pain” (verse 6), for there was no other recourse to quell the rising tide of putrefaction but to “wipe mankind…from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air” (verse 7). But the Flood that He sent for this destroyed, not the earth, but “all living creatures” (8:21). The Flood did change the earth, life continued to thrive and, a few more years after the great cataclysm, the stain of sin continued to be detected, unerased by the Flood.

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Like the earth, Saul allowed corruption to fill his heart. When he should have abdicated the throne to the stewardship of the Prophet Samuel, he obstinately held on to popular opinion’s false power while he saw no future for him in abiding with God: It could be remembered how his disobedience when he illegally offered the Prophet’s burnt and peace offerings cost his posterity any future chance of succeeding him (1 Samuel 13:13 to 14). Because God had refused to establish his rulership over Israel “for all time,” he later found his opportunity to “set up a monument in his own honor” (15:12) and purposely turn away (verse 11), or betray, God. And just like beholding a rotting antediluvian earth, it “grieved” the Lord (verses 10 and 35).

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God hates corruption. God pronounced judgment over all corruption. He created all things “good” and perfect and He holds a strong aversion to perdition, which is in every way the opposite of His eternal nature. But because of the presence of corruption, He maintains a law requiring the destruction of the corrupt and the corrupted in order to restore the perfection of the latter. This principle is seen in the Scriptures. The corrupted antediluvian earth was drowned the Flood to restore it into the postdiluvian world we now know. By the same principle, because of the corruption of the postdiluvian earth, our world is “reserved for fire” (2 Peter 3:7), when “the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare” (verse 10), before it can be restored as the “new earth” along with the “new heaven” written about in Revelation 21:1.

The human body which welcomed sin had also welcomed and therefore been subject to death in Genesis 3:19. Then because of the wanton violence it embraced, its length of life had been curtailed to “a hundred and twenty years” (6:3), bringing death closer. And as the corruption of sin continued to fester in the postdiluvian culture, God had pronounced destruction on anyone who defiles his own body (1 Corinthians 3:17), which God considers “sacred” (verse 18). The Apostle Paul taught that the human body is “a temple of the Holy Spirit” (6:19), and anyone who “sins against his own body” (verse 18) brings the judgment of destruction upon himself. The Apostle Paul taught that such corruption will hand the offender over to “Satan, so that the sinful nature [that his body] may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord” (5:5). What grieves the Lord is that He gets to watch His creation go down to destruction first before He could raise it up in perfection again:

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“…flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory’” (15:50,53 to 54).

The Apostle Paul continues to teach that it was for this principle that God established “the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:2) to bring corruption to its full circle, then sent His son Jesus to die on the cross and rise incorruptible from death to “give life…to mortal [or corrupted] bodies through his Spirit” (verse 11).

Now where do Saul and the earth fit in all this? The spirit of the Prophet Samuel uttered a very curious passage during Saul’s last night in Endor: “The Lord will hand over both Israel and you to the Philistines, and tomorrow you and your sons will be with me” (1 Samuel 28:19). Also consider the fact that the Prophet came up out of the ground (verse 13). For the last time in Saul’s life, God visually presented Saul his destiny for his betrayal. It was a destiny of judgment that relentlessly chased him down until he finally gets slain by, not the Philistines, but an Amalekite slave he kept alive in his camp (2 Samuel 1:10).

Saul died a humiliating death, but it was not all for nothing. The Prophet Samuel promised that Saul and his sons would be with him, and while it largely meant going down to the grave, it may have also meant waking up in the afterlife delivered from the corruption he surrendered his life to. During the last part of his earthly life, Saul was noted seeking God through “Urim or prophets” (1 Samuel 28:6); before this, he developed the habit of “prophesying in his house” (18:10), even when it no longer mattered in his relationship with God. There indeed was a relationship; in the middle of this relationship, however, was a fix called death, and according to God’s mandate, Saul needed to pass through death in order to bury the corruption in his life and continue the relationship now in the place, no longer in the material sphere, but in the afterlife.

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The earth did not react well to the presence of sin. It was not created with any defense system to resist it and the death it brought. The embrace of sin covered the entire planet with death covering the skies and seeping down to the depths beneath the ground. No longer on its own initiative did the ground produce for man what he needed to survive without the “painful toil” (Genesis 3:17) he had to apply, to violently beat, carve, and disrespect the ground, for the morsels of life left hidden beneath its crust. The edible, delectable, and the pleasurable yields that Adam and Eve enjoyed of the ground turned into “thorns and thistles” (verse 18) that resisted their domination. The ground hated man, its relative formed by the hand of God. It saw man not as the Creator’s spiritual favorite but as the pile of lifeless dust of which he was before it felt the touch and the breath of God. Nevertheless, he shall “return to the ground” (Genesis 3:19), man’s cruel realization of his ultimate place in Creation, in sin. And so begins the humility of man who looks up to God. No longer does he see himself “a little lower than the heavenly beings” (Psalm 8:5), but in the words of Abraham in Genesis 18:27: “I am nothing but dust and ashes.”

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It is therefore more than a coincidence that a “crown of thorns” (Matthew 27:29, Mark 15:17, John 19:2 and 5) found its way on Jesus’ head hours before He was killed on the cross.

It was the humility that Saul forgot in regards to him being chosen as Israel’s king in 1 Samuel 15:17:

“Although you were once small in your own eyes, did you not become the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel.”

The corruption of Saul began in his life when he was king, apparently after his lust for the prestige of it. Yet it could be said that had not Saul been chosen as king, he could have made at a certain measure a prophet, for it was in this unique manner how he responded to the touch of God’s Spirit. It was a special spiritual predisposition held by only a select few, as was stressed by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 12 in his teaching concerning church leadership:

“And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles?” (verses 28 to 29)

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In the respect of being a king with the inclination of prophecy, Saul was like David. But while David was a shepherd (1 Samuel 16:11), Saul was a farmer (11:5). This evaluation of their backgrounds lures us to the early pages of the Scriptures where a “tiller of the ground” (Genesis 4:2, King James Version) and a “keeper of sheep” (Ibid.) came before the Lord to seek His favor. Just like Saul, the tiller of the ground fell from grace. And in the same way as the ground refused the toil of the tiller (verse 12), Saul’s goals and ambitions fell to the ground in utter failure. The tiller incurred the curse of God and lost his right as firstborn; Saul lost his right as king, the honor of being Israel’s very first king, the firstborn among all the kings of God’s people. In the story of the tiller, his brother, the keeper of sheep who was also the next heir of God’s favor, gets invited for a walk in the fields and gets slain by the tiller. This murderous scene revolts God so much that when He saw the tendency repeated between Saul and David, He seems to avenge the blood of His favored shepherd by granting David the talent and opportunity to escape Saul’s clutches, and even two chances to turn the tables to death on the one who lusted after his death. Saul’s life pictured what it would have been like if the tiller failed to extinguish the life of the sheep keeper.

Saul and Sorcery: The Omen of the Ground

The earth was a recurring image in Saul’s life that bore the portent of failure. It was as if an inanimate feature of the material sphere was prophesying or maliciously mischieving against him. But then again, even Jesus hinted on the earth’s power to “cry out” (Luke 19:40) in praise and glory. It was a lesson God was willing to provide should His people choose to disobey. And disobey Saul did!

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In 1 Samuel 24, Saul was by then deep in the depravity of his apostasy when his kingly duties were being preoccupied with his lust for David’s head. In the second verse, he and his royal contingent decide to stop a place called the Crags of the Wild Goats for the king to fulfill his faithful duty to contribute to the ground’s productivity. In the third verse, Saul chooses a cave to defecate in. It was a cave where David and his men were hiding deeper in its recess. Anybody with him, and later even Saul, could see that it was David’s golden moment to strike down his tormentor. It was the perfect time and the perfect place provided by the presence of the hollowness of that single piece of gigantic earth. David refused in that he saw his tormentor as “the anointed of the Lord” (verse 6).

But David did more than just spare the life of Saul. Spiritually, it seemed that David acted as a monkey wrench to jam the trend of destruction that the omen of the earth had been indicating. And he not only did it once, but twice. On the second occasion, David was presented with the opportunity to slay the persistently pursuing king as he snuck into Saul’s camp and found him “lying asleep…with his spear stuck in the ground near his head” (1 Samuel 26:7). If during the first time David clipped off a corner of the king’s cloak (24:4), this time he carries away the spear and the water jug that were near Saul’s head (26:11). Then by the time the camp rose to begin another day of murderous hunt, David, from a safe distance, cried out to Saul and pleaded to him to give up the chase by bringing to his attention the missing spear and water jug. Then in the words of David the portent of the earth comes into play:

 “Now do not let my blood fall to the ground far from the presence of the Lord. The king of Israel has come out to look for a flea—as one hunts a partridge in the mountains” (1 Samuel 26:20).

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It is very noteworthy that David captured the imagery of blood falling to the ground, something that should have happened way back when the king’s men devoured Philistine cattle meat in 1 Samuel 14:32.  But above all, the prophetic imagery provided by David portrayed the conclusion God intended on everything Saul had set out to accomplish. Before he unilaterally decided to offer the Prophet Samuel’s burnt and peace sacrifices at Gilgal (1 Samuel 14:9), the earth was a silent and unnoticed omen in the background, only discernable to a seer. But after Saul had consummated his choice to act on his own and succumb to the deception of terror, the failure of all his tasks signified by the earth became a recurring tingle in his ear as well as a glaring figure everywhere he went. The most ominous picture the Lord subtly displayed to Saul, however, was not merely the undoing of specific plans but the ruin and humiliation of him being king, the collapse of his house, and his ignominious death in the hands of his enemies. The idiomatic phrase “fall to the earth” or “fall to the ground” that appear seven times in the King James Version of the Bible meant more than failure of effort; it spoke of death and destruction. Here are some of them:

 In referring to the words spoken by the Prophet Samuel: “The Lord was with Samuel as he grew up, and he let none of his words fall to the ground” (1 Samuel 2:19).

Mentioned earlier, when Saul threatened to execute Jonathan for being the culprit that spoiled his rash vow and his pursuit of the retreating Philistines altogether:  “But the men said to Saul, ‘Should Jonathan die—he who has brought this great deliverance in Israel? Never! As surely as the Lord lives, not a hair of his head will fall to the ground, for he did this today with God’s help’" (1 Samuel 14:45).

When the newly installed King Solomon deliberated whether or not to take down his brother Adonijah: “If he shows himself to be a worthy man, not a hair of his head will fall to the ground; but if evil is found in him, he will die” (2 Samuel 1:52).

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On another note out of 1 Samuel 26, present is the irony of the water jug as it fits the apparatus that may have been used by the witch of Endor to divine the spirit of the Prophet Samuel. Saul was hungry for any message from God and he received the last one that night concerning his death. Any hope of escaping this fate fled and “immediately Saul fell full length to the ground, filled with fear because of Samuel’s words” (1 Samuel 28:20).

An example of a water jug as shown balanced above the head of an Egyptian woman.

The Prophet through his categorical declaration of Saul’s mortal defeat brought the king back to the Amalekite incident where the willful betrayal of God was accomplished. In the narrative, there was no mention anywhere of the ground or of the earth, aside from the ravine where Saul and his men set up their ambush (1 Samuel 15:5). What provided the greatest significance instead was the occurrence of “idolatry” (verse 23) in Samuel’s prophetic rebuke: “…and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.”

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The sin of idolatry is most understood through the crafting of images; and out of all the materials that can be used in fashioning these, God, in His Ten Commandments, warned on using the earth when He decreed, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image…” (Exodus 20:4, King James Version). What significance did God see in the earth that He made it more closely associated to idolatry than the elements of metal and wood? In one of our past study, we have seen how idolatry has been identified with the occult, that those who worship idols actually worship demons, according to the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:19 to 21. In the Old Testament, the psalmist sings:

“All who worship images are put to shame, those who boast in idols—worship him, all you gods!”

The word “gods” used in this passage—this we have mentioned earlier—was the Hebrew elohim or “spirits.” It has been established in 2 Kings 23:24 that idols such as household gods were an integral component in ancient pagan divination and spiritism. As a young boy who frequented the rustic regions of the Philippines, I have often heard stories of familiar spirits roaming the dark corners and the lonely landscapes after dark. When I matured and had given up all fear and belief of these campfire, gaslight, and bedtime fiction, I realized that even Bible characters—grownups, at that—never dismissed the reality of such supernatural phenomena like we do today for the sake of “reason” and “sensibility.” The disciples, for example, panicked when mistook Jesus for “a ghost” when they saw Him treading above the turbulent surface of the lake water in Matthew 14:26. Here is how the gospel writer rendered the scene:

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“When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. ‘It’s a ghost,’ they said, and cried out in fear.”


Jesus lived during the Roman occupation of Israel. The land had just welcomed the Greek culture. Greek philosophy and idolatrous tales of its mythology became popular and even seeped into some aspects of Jewish thought. Before the Greeks, they have emerged from another idolatrous civilization whose founder, Cyrus, was even prophesied beforehand by Isaiah (Isaiah 44:28, 45:1) and Jeremiah (2 Chronicles 36:22 and 23) to liberate the Jews and to rebuild Jerusalem. It was a time of great spiritual corruption as evidenced by the demon possession that was rampant in the land. Though minimally indicated in the New Testament, Jesus’ disciples understood the sight or sound of an unclean spirit skulking somewhere out the window behind the trees or crunching on the rocky path at night. Jesus even alluded to unclean spirits roaming through “arid places seeking rest” (Matthew 12:44). Before Jesus, ghostly sightings were the only supernatural moments known to the disciples, the Jews, and, of course, the pagan world.


Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 12:43 to 45 touched on demonic possession, a phenomenon we understand when an unclean spirit torments a human individual by inhabiting his body. What is it about the human body that attracts demonic fancy? The Bible explains that demons are angelic spirits living apart from the Presence of the Lord. Because of this, they eternally lack the peace of God’s Presence experienced by their faithful counterparts. Man, on the other hand, though existing apart from heaven, maintains a spiritual peace through his physical body. The Apostle Paul taught about this as being “clothed with our heavenly dwelling” (2 Corinthians 5:2). He referred to the human body as a “tent” (verse 4). In the third verse, he spoke about the spirit without a body is “naked,” which he later consolidates into the principle in verses 6 and 8:

“Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.”

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There are therefore two ways to feel and actually be “at home”: either by being “with the Lord” or “in the body,” a body the Apostle earlier referred to as “jars of clay” (2 Corinthians 4:7). A body fashioned out of the dust of the earth (Genesis 2:7). For this reason, the earth holds a special appeal to a spiritual being. Remember that it was on the earth where the “third of the stars of the sky” were flung (Revelation 12:4), and not just on earth but deep “down to the grave, to the depths of the pit” (Isaiah 14:15). The ground became their home, inadequate to embrace them in the peace they needed, but home nonetheless. In the story of the Gadarene demoniac in Matthew 8:30 to 32, the multitude of possessing demons pleaded to Jesus to be sent into a herd of pigs which they immediately sent to their death down a steep bank that slid into the lake. The depth of the lake was a gate called the depth (Job 28:14, 38:16, Matthew 18:6) that opened to the spirits’ home named in Hebrew tongue as Sheol.

But though it has not been explicitly stated in the Scriptures, unclean spirits may also inhabit other products of the earth, like animals; images for worship fashioned out of the earth may likewise qualify for possession, which could be a reason why idols are a fixture in the occult.

Saul embraced the earth (1 Samuel 28:20) after hearing what the spirit of Samuel had to say about his irreversible destiny when he stands to face the Philistine army by daybreak. Greatly shaken, the witch along with his men urged him to eat for he had fed on nothing in the hours before that night (verse 20). From the ground, he sat on a couch and fed on the butchered calf served to them by the witch (verses 23 and 24).

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Saul and Sorcery: Whispers from the Ground

“For dust you are and to the dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19).

The witch was a necromancer, a magician that summoned into the material world spirits of the human departed. In her rituals and in her very words, the most vital component of her craft involved the earth. In 1 Samuel 28:13, she claimed that she saw the Prophet Samuel coming up out of “the ground.” There is a part in Israelite culture which holds that “the grave” (Ecclesiastes 9:10), also known as “the pit,” is the “common destiny” shared by “the righteous and the wicked” (verse 2). In some way we can see where the belief of the Sadducees emerged from. For these materialists, their doctrine bore no provision for the immortality of the human soul, resurrection of the physical body, or any existence of the afterlife. For them, heaven was Israel and hell was either physical death or exile from the Promised Land. If there was any truth to a resurrection, it was in symbolism to repatriation or, in context to contemporary events, the rebirth of the Jewish state of Israel. The core of the Sadducean doctrine was tied to the land of Israel, upon which stood the cornerstone of their faith: the Temple of Solomon. Sadducean culture, according to the outstanding Jewish historian Max I. Dimont, was hewn out of “the letter of the law, not its spirit” (Jews, God and History, Mentor Books: New York, NY, 1994; p.103). It was rigidly fixed to the Temple in Jerusalem, so that when Jerusalem fell to the Roman siege in 135 A.D., the Sadducees disappeared forever.

For the witch, however, there was great respect for the existence of spirits, ancestral spirits, as far as her occult was concerned that inhabited the infernal regions of the earth. This is how she beheld “gods ascending out of the earth” (King James Version). For her ritual, the original Hebrew term for “familiar spirit,” or ôwb, hints on the use of an apparatus that helped produce a hollow sound, either a water-skin or earthen jar. For some Bible scholars and historians, the latter could have been most probably used. While the water-skin made for a good texture of the human flesh, man was more affiliated with the earth. In representing the human body, God and His writers in both the Old and New Testaments used the earth, be it as the ground or in its clay and manufactured form as pottery, as the prime symbol. In Leviticus 6:28, for example, a priestly ritual that regards breaking a clay pot on which a sacrificial meat was cooked represented the earthly body of Jesus Christ. In Leviticus 11, it was prescribed that a vessel—“whether…of wood, cloth, hide or sackcloth” (verse 32)—which any one the specified creatures in verses 29 and 30 touches “will be unclean” (verse 32). But if the vessel was a clay pot, “everything in it will be unclean, and you must break the pot” (verse 33). Figuratively, the earth became irredeemably corrupt once touched by sin; and since the human body came from the earth it received the full brunt of corruption: death (Genesis 3:19).

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The earth, with its supple property to be shaped as a container, has been the perfect representative of man’s spiritual corruption and mortality. In 2 Timothy 2:20, the Apostle Paul speaks of vessels of dishonor, by which he probably meant portable latrines popular in households during ancient times, most were those made in clay. The analogy the Apostle Paul makes in this passage is both amazing and appalling. In the twentieth verse of 2 Timothy 2, it says that, “But in a great house here are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some for honor and some for dishonor.” He continues in the twenty-first where he makes his point so highlighted, the shock will stick to the reader until dinner time has past: “Therefore if anyone cleanses himself from the latter, he will be a vessel of honor, sanctified and useful for the Master, prepared for every good work.” Imagine a portable latrine being “cleansed” by a Master, transforming this vessel of ignoble use into a pristine glazed pottery fit for a king to dine on on the most special of occasions. This, of course, is illustrative of the purifying power of the blood of Jesus that has been provided by God in His New Testament. In His Old Testament, well, any earthen pot was broken when ceremonially used by the priest (Leviticus 6:28) or when a lizard falls on it (Leviticus 11:32). But in these earthen jars, the Apostle Paul does not deny God’s sovereign choice to keep in them His “treasure” so that the excellence of God may be fully seen and understood by the perishing world of clay (2 Corinthians 4:7).

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And in this earthen ware, the witch was believed to have whispered into to “bring up” (1 Samuel 28:11) “an old man wearing a robe” (verse 14).

Throughout the account of Saul, there were several elements that persistently appeared and have come to be associated with his destiny. One of these was the earth. Immediately after being crowned king, Saul went farming. Obviously, Saul loved farming. After being anointed, the Prophet Samuel gave Saul a long detailed prediction of events that the young king would encounter on his way back home. The main concern above all these encounters was Saul being baptized in the Spirit of the Lord. In 1 Samuel 10:6, the man of God briefs the king:

“The Spirit of the Lord will come upon you in power, and you will prophesy with them [the prophets]; and you will be changed into a different person.”

After this was an instruction for Saul to pursue: “Once these signs are fulfilled, do whatever your hand finds to do, for God is with you” (verse 7).

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For the rest of the tenth chapter, it was apparent that Saul was yet to find something specific for his hand to do. In the eleventh, he finally decides. In the fifth verse, he actually goes back to farming. This is the first association we find of him with the earth. The next implication of Saul’s relationship with the earth is in 1 Samuel 13:6 where the Israelites, upon witnessing the frighteningly massive Philistine army at Micmash, scrambled in panic to hide in “caves and thickets, among the rocks, and in pits and cisterns.” In the ninth verse, the king decides to take matters into his own hands and offer up the burnt and fellowship offerings himself; it was a task prescribed for the Prophet Samuel to accomplish, not the king. Furthermore, the sacrifice was not offered on the mandatory altar of earth prescribed by Moses in Exodus 20:24. It was during the Israelites’ sin of engorging bloodied meat in 1 Samuel 14:35 when it occurred for the first time to Saul to construct the altar of earth.

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It seems that every time the earth comes into the picture, it was during Saul’s time of spiritual weakness and compromise. The story of the Israelites devouring meat with blood still in it was another incident where the earth is mentioned yet again. Here, it appears several times. First, the battle with the Philistines started in a Philistine outpost on a cliff overlooking a pass which Saul’s son Jonathan daringly crossed to engage twenty of its soldiers (1 Samuel 14:4 to 14).  To Jonathan God granted the victory, for from this great piece of towering earth, the skirmish he sparked went on to sweep over the immense Philistine camp with deadly mayhem: “…the Philistines [were] in total confusion, striking each other with their swords” (verse 20).

But while the symbol of the earth signaled wonders for Jonathan, it was sadly not the same for Saul. While the Israelites chased down the Philistines out of Micmash, Saul became so possessed with his zeal that he decided to compel his entire army under a vow of a fast until they have overtaken the retreating Philistines. Instead of zeal and rejoicing, “the men of Israel were in distress that day” because of the vow they were forced to swallow (14:24). On the succeeding verse, the Scriptures give up the portent:

“The entire army entered the woods, and there was honey on the ground” (verse 25).

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All of that honey which God provided to refresh His army after those days of standing in fear, famished but numb to its pangs, as they stood in the face of a force “as numerous as the sand on the seashore” (1 Samuel 13:5), from which there was no escape. Now, the sudden burst of opportunity propels them from hiding to hot pursuit and in a short moment of exploding into energy, the spasms of hunger begin kicking in. And God had just the thing for that. In a wooded region nearby a rich libation of wild honey freely flowed to the ground, bringing to life a literal depiction of how Moses and the Israelite slaves imagined the Promised Land, “a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8). It was just too bad that Saul’s zeal kept them from being rejuvenated. But not for Jonathan, the hero who ignited Israelite valiance. Clueless of his father’s vow, he reached out his staff at a honeycomb and lapped some life-giving honey with his hand, and “his eyes brightened,” or in other translations, “his strength was renewed” (1 Samuel 14:28). Before all the salivating Israelite soldiers, Jonathan testified: “My father has made trouble for the country. See how my eyes brightened when I tasted a little of this honey. How much better it would have been if the men had eaten today some of the plunder they took from their enemies. Would not the slaughter of the Philistines have been even greater?” (verses 29 to 30)

Saul’s reckless vow instead turned them into a mob of crazed lunatics who acted like a school of sharks in a feeding frenzy. The moment they overtook the Philistines, “they pounced on the plunder and, taking sheep, cattle and calves, they butchered them on the ground and ate them, together with the blood” (verses 32 and 33). Notice the irony: the wild honey which belonged to human lips did not land on human lips, except on Jonathan’s; the rest got soaked up by the ground. Blood which was meant to drip to the ground, did not fall to the ground but went into the consumption of a hunger-crazed Israelite army who gorged it along with animal meat in disobedient abandon for a moment’s satisfaction.

Saul’s plan to plunder the Philistines never moved on from there. The victory he prayed for in initiating the vow ran aground and almost cost the life of Jonathan. The Israelite army rose into Jonathan’s defense and in an impassioned statement, the earth appears once again, this time in their words:

“Should Jonathan die—he who has brought about this great deliverance in Israel? Never! As surely as the Lord lives, not a hair of his head will fall to the ground, for he did this today with God’s help” (verse 45).

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Saul and Sorcery: Spirits from the Earth

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“I saw gods ascending out of the earth” (1 Samuel 28:13, King James Version).

Now we come to what is probably the most unnerving part of Saul's life. The final prophecy of the Prophet Samuel from beyond the grave revealed the eventuality of Saul's betrayal of God's trust and the bursting of the supernatural cyst that had consumed and festered in his life.

Mere existence became Saul’s only lot after twisting his mandate on the Amalekites. He no longer had any business holding on to his position as king and it was necessary—spiritually vital—for him to relinquish the throne. But Saul’s thirst for the position got the better of him and despite the Prophet Samuel’s declaration that the anointing of the Holy Spirit had abandoned him, he turned to popular opinion in an attempt to counter weigh the flight of the Holy Spirit. So for what could have been about two years of pretending that everything returned business as usual was on the contrary a constant struggle for survival as Saul tried to make it through a day lost, alone, maintaining a precarious balance along a tightrope that hovered over insanity. But by this point, God’s mercy over Saul’s life continued to be evident in the single fact that this virtually dethroned king was given the courtesy to abdicate on his own for it was the only way to redeem his life. This could have been an example of the matter that the Apostle Paul taught in 1 Corinthians 3:15 about the believer whose life being saved “only as one escaping through the flames,” but all his works for God “burned up” in the Day of testing. A literal depiction of this principle was Lot in Genesis 19 whose life was spared when God overthrew the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and the immediate region surrounding these (verse 25). Saul continued to face hope; all he had to do was abandon his dreams of the throne for punishment was about to descend upon it, for the man after God’s own heart had already been anointed and God’s Spirit had already chosen him—after the very moment Saul betrayed God and His directive.

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And judgment did come. In 1 Samuel 28:5, it said that, “When Saul saw the Philistine army [at Shunem], he was afraid; terror filled his heart.” It was the same fear that seized him way back in the thirteenth chapter when he beheld the mighty Philistine army “as numerous as the sand on the seashore” (verse 5) at Micmash, and when Goliath taunted the Israelites for forty days when not one of God’s warriors was willing to face the Philistine champion. In each of the occasions, so great was the dread Saul felt that it made his life flash before his eyes. He feared each battle to be his last as if some prophecy from the Prophet Samuel had told him so. Until this encounter with the Philistine army at Shunem in 1 Samuel 28, there had been no such prophecy foretelling the death of Saul. All there was was his fear. But on the night he consulted a medium, the spirit of the Prophet Samuel returns to finally confirm the fear: “…tomorrow you and your sons will be with me” (verse 19). If the days after Saul’s disobedience cost him his crown, the one night when he came to a medium meant his doom. It was a second act of violation against God’s Law and he set himself on a one-way course to destruction.

The witch told King Saul that she saw “gods ascending out of the earth” (1 Samuel 28:13, King James Version). The original Hebrew used for “gods” is elohim, a plural form of the singular el employed to address magistrates and judges like the Prophet Samuel, and to spiritual beings like angels and gods. Its plural use in referring to a single person is an expression of deference to the person’s supremacy. Though elohim can be commonly applied to other—false—deities and human authority figures, it is one of the most frequently used words in the Old Testament to refer to God. Other reliable Bible versions, however, chooses to specifically translate the “elohim” of 1 Samuel 28:13 as “a spirit,” as did the New International and the New King James, “a spirit coming up out of the ground.” Having been a man of God, should not have the Prophet Samuel descended from heaven? If then, what was the Prophet Samuel—if indeed it was the Prophet Samuel—doing in the ground?

Here we turn to the sovereignty of God. Many times we modern believers have imprisoned our expectations of God to produce a limited, almost mortal, picture of this Eternal Person. We have lost the very significance why we have enthroned Him in heaven at all. Consider these passages in Psalm 115:3, “Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him”; and in 135:6, “The Lord does whatever pleases him, in the heavens and on the earth, in the seas and all their depths.”

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So in the same way as Jesus chose to die and descend to the grave just to demonstrate that nothing—neither sin nor death—could hold Him in the grave forever, God decided to manifest His supremacy by performing a little supernatural surgery in King Saul’s affair.  So He forged a passage, so to speak, running from heaven, through hell, and emerging in that little dark witch’s hovel in Endor for one last prophecy: a prophecy articulating His frustration over a beloved son who chose to distrust and betray Him in a task he was established for. That night, every demonic cohort who impersonated human souls stood away and helplessly watched God and the Prophet Samuel rend their dark realm in power and authority. The witch through her black magic saw this and she too was helpless to stop it; she was no longer in control. That night, the secret meeting came face to face with “the finger of God” (Exodus 8:19).

The witch suspected that such a sight can only occur in behalf of one whom God and the Prophet Samuel were closely associated to. It was this point when she shrieks, “You are Saul!” (1 Samuel 28:12) It was the intervention of God that gave Saul’s cover away.

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