Now Samuel was dead. — A statement here repeated to introduce the strange, sad story which follows. The LXX., followed by the Vulg. and Syriac Versions, omitted it, not understanding the reason for its repetition.
And Saul had put away those that had familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land. — This statement is also inserted explanatory of what follows. In other words, the compiler says: “Now Samuel, whom Saul was so anxious to see, was dead and buried, and the possessors of familiar spirits, whose aid Saul was about to invoke to carry out his purpose, had long since been put out, by his own order, from the land.” “Those that had familiar spirits” — those that had at their command ôboth, rendered “familiar spirits,” the plural form of ôb, a word which has never been explained with any certainty. Scholars think they can connect it with ôb, to be hollow, and ôb is then “the hollow thing,” or “bag;” and so it came to signify, “one who speaks in a hollow voice.” It hence appears to mean the distended belly of the ventriloquist, a word by which the LXX. always render ôb. It thus is used to designate the male or female ventriloquist, as in 1 Samuel 27:3; 1 Samuel 27:9, and Deuteronomy 18:11, &c., and also the spirit which was supposed to speak from the belly of the ventriloquist; in this sense it is so used in 1 Samuel 27:8-9, and Isaiah 29:4. This is the explanation given by Erdmann in Lange, and the Bishop of Bath and Wells in the Speaker’s Commentary.
The wizards. — Literally, the wise people. These are ever connected with the ôboth, “those that had familiar spirits.” The name seems to have been given in irony to these dealers in occult and forbidden arts. The Mosaic command respecting these people was clear and decisive: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch.(or wizard) to live” (Exodus 22:18; Leviticus 20:27). Saul, in his early zeal, we read, had actively put in force these edicts of Moses, which apparently, in the lax state of things which had long prevailed in Israel, had been suffered to lie in abeyance.