1 Samuel 28:13-14

1 Samuel 28:13-14. For what sawest thou?— It should be rendered, but what sawest thou? The word translated Gods, is אלהים elohim. The Chaldee renders it, a messenger of the Lord. Houbigant thinks that she speaks after the manner of idolators, who used to address in the plural the gods whom they worshipped; a custom which they transferred to their Genii, and even to the souls of the departed which they evoked. Saul, acquainted with this language, sufficiently understood that the woman saw only one ascending from the earth, though she spoke in the plural. The woman thought that Samuel ascended out of the earth; and from the description which she gave, Saul knew it to be Samuel; (see chap. 1 Samuel 15:27.) though it is possible that at the same moment Saul knew it was Samuel himself; for the word וידע vaiiedang, rendered perceived, may as well be rendered knew; and his stooping to the ground seems to prove this. Dr. Delaney observes, that when Samuel denounced God's judgments upon Saul, he was clad in a mantle, which Saul tore on that occasion. He now came to repeat and to ratify the sentence then denounced; and, to strike him with fuller conviction, he appears in the same dress, the same mantle in which he denounced that sentence; and since he now again denounced a division of the kingdom from Saul, why may we not presume that the mantle showed now the same rent which was the emblem of that division? Is it irrational to suppose, that when he spoke of this division, he held up the mantle, and pointed to the rent? It is well known, that the prophets were men of much action in their speaking, and often illustrated their predictions by emblems; and such actions as I now mention, I think, could hardly be avoided on this occasion.