Verse 11
11. A charmer Hebrew, spell-binder, one who binds by incantations, pretends to subdue some dreadful enemy. In Psalms 58:5, the word is applied to the serpent charmer.
A consulter with familiar spirits שׁאל אוב , one who consults a sorcerer. אוב properly denotes a leathern bottle for carrying water or wine: then it was applied to the “hollow belly of conjurers,” in which the conjuring spirit, πυθων , resides, and speaks hollow, as if out of the earth; then it was used for this spirit which was interrogated for enchantment, and sometimes for the enchanter himself. The Septuagint usually renders אוב by εγγαστριμυθος , ventriloquist. In Acts 16:16, the woman who had a pythonic spirit was regarded by the heathen inhabitants of Philippi as inspired by Apollo; in later times, a pythonic spirit was considered the same as a ventriloquist, εγγαστριμυθος . Augustine, indeed, calls this female slave ventriloqua femina. Comp. Leviticus 19:31; Leviticus 20:27.
A wizard A knowing one. The meaning of the word must be, one who claims extraordinary wisdom and foresight.
A necromancer One who makes inquiry of the dead, referring to those who pretended to have power to secure answers from the spirits of the departed. All these are only species of the same genus.
They are false prophets. They pretend to possess supernatural powers, to foresee the future, to protect from evil, to have communion with deity.*
[*In Thomson’s The Land and The Book, (vol. i, p. 214, et seq.,) may be found a long account of the modern pretenders to supernatural powers, “clumsy imitators of these ancient adepts.”]
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