This sheet on Leviticus 20 was written by Moshe Sokolow for 929 and can also be found here
After railing against child sacrifice (molekh, vs. 2-5), the Torah cautions against two magical practices it calls ‘Ob (ghost) and Yid`oni (familiar), threatening its practitioners with premature death (kareit).
The evidence of the books of Samuel, Kings, and Isaiah indicates that these practices were actually followed by some Israelites; they were tolerated by ignoble rulers and were prosecuted by righteous ones.
One such righteous ruler was King Saul of whom it was said that he “removed the ‘Ob and Yid`oni from the country” (1 Samuel 28:3). However, when his final battle against the Philistines began to turn against him and he experienced a premonition of his own death, Saul approached a sorceress (ba`alat ‘Ob) of Ein-Dor and asked her to raise up for him the spirit of Samuel the prophet (1 Samuel 28:7 ff.).
The woman complied and raised up “an elderly man wrapped in a cloak” (v. 14) whom Saul recognized as Samuel. The prophet rebuked the king for disturbing his peace and notified him that on the morrow he and his sons “would be with me”—i.e., dead, as it came, indeed, to pass.
Our Sages and exegetes split over the question whether the witch actually raised Saul from the dead; whether it was an illusion (so the Gaon Shmuel bar Hofni), or God allowed it to transpire miraculously (much to the surprise of the witch) in order to impress its lesson on Saul (so Sa`adyah Gaon and Hai Gaon).
Bearing in mind, additionally, that the Egyptian sorcerers were able to replicate several of the wonders performed by Aaron and Moses, we seem, inescapably, obliged to answer our opening question in the affirmative: Magic seemed to work, but the mechanism by which it did so remains obscure.
Dr. Moshe Sokolow is Associate Dean of the Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration, Yeshiva University
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