WHAT FEAR DOES

Here is another story for the “Fear makes us do crazy things” file. Saul knew the law; as king, he had issued the decree that “expelled the mediums and spiritists from the land” (1 Samuel 28:3), drawing on commands in the law of Moses (see Deuteronomy 18:10–14). But the prophet Samuel was dead, and God seemed to be silent.

The Philistine army was readying to attack, and Saul was terrified. He asked his advisors to find someone whom he could consult, a medium who might be able to give him some kind of answer. They directed him to a woman at Endor. Despite Saul’s disguise, she was rightly suspicious of this strange visitor. Of all things, it took Saul swearing an oath in God’s name—“As surely as the LORD lives, you will not be punished for this” (1 Samuel 28:10)—for her to agree to his request. But the message Saul received from the apparition of Samuel had no hint of encouragement. Instead, it recapped all his past failures, confirmed that God had left him, and predicted that Saul and his sons would die in battle the next day. Saul heard the message loud and clear. “Immediately Saul fell full length on the ground, filled with fear because of Samuel’s words. His strength was gone, for he had eaten nothing all that day and night” (1 Samuel 28:20).

The only decent thing the woman of Endor did for Saul was to cook him a meal, which he ate only at his advisors’ coaxing. But by looking for answers in all the wrong places, Saul’s fear was only confirmed and compounded, and he went out into the night with an even greater sense of dread, knowing what the next day would bring. If only he could have grasped the truth about the God whom he had so desperately sworn by in seeking another voice.

If only he had sought after God to calm his fears.