Please read carefully through the arguments and counterarguments.
Interpretation 1: Yes, he did
Summary: Yes, even though God had forbidden it, this medium was able to bring the spirit of Samuel back into contact with King Saul after his death.
Arguments in favour of this view:
1. It says in 1 Samuel 28:12 that the woman saw Samuel. And it actually states in 1 Samuel 28:15 that Samuel spoke to Saul.
2. Later in the Bible we also read of people who appear on earth again after their deaths: Moses and Elijah (Matthew 17:1–3; Mark 9:2–4; Luke 9:28–31). We also read of the departed saints who are raised from their graves after Christ’s death on the cross and appear in Jerusalem on his resurrection day (Matthew 27:52–53).
3. Why would God have so pertinently forbidden the conjuring up of the spirits of the dead (Leviticus 19:31, Leviticus 20:6 and Leviticus 20:27; Deuteronomy 18:10–11), and why would Saul himself have removed all necromancers and mediums from the land at the beginning of his reign, if it was not possible at all to conjure up the spirits of dead people?
4. Samuel’s announcement that Saul and his sons would die in the battle against the Philistines has proven true.
Arguments against this view:
1. It is not plausible that God would have still passed on a message to Saul through a medium that he had pertinently forbidden, after failing to respond to all other attempts by the king to consult the LORD (1 Samuel 28:6).
2. This account starts with what had already been communicated in 1 Samuel 25:1, that is, that Samuel had died and was buried. This repetition serves to emphasize that Samuel’s task as a prophet here on earth is done!
3. Saul did not get to see Samuel. We only read that the woman, as a medium, saw Samuel. She would also have passed on Samuel’s words as she claimed to hear them. When Samuel is mentioned in this chapter, it is the Samuel
whom the medium thinks he called for, and not the deceased prophet himself. It is similar to how the apostle Paul writes in Romans 9:6 that not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel.
So the woman also saw in her imagination only the person of Samuel as she had known him on earth: an old man wearing a robe (1 Samuel 28:14).
4. Moses and Elijah appeared to Christ in heavenly light, not in their earthly appearance of old. And neither they, nor the saints who reappeared from their graves after Christ’s death, appeared because they had been summoned by a medium. God himself sent them back for a short while. Moreover, the word appeared
in Matthew 27:53 indicates that they only became visible for a moment, without also speaking to the people to whom they appeared. They merely served as signs of the resurrection from the dead, and this intended to remind Jerusalem of what Jesus had said about his resurrection from the dead.
5. When God forbade his people to consult mediums or necromancers it was not because these people were in fact capable of making the dead reappear. With this prohibition he sought to teach his people not to seek their security and peace with such wizards, as things that could only be found by trusting in him.
6. When the medium understood that it was Saul himself who asked her to summon Samuel, she managed, under the influence of diabolical spirits, to penetrate into Saul’s mind. In this way she managed for Saul’s own conscience to be speaking.
7. What Saul was told, through the medium who summoned Samuel
in her imagination, is not a new prophecy. It is a repetition of what Saul had already heard from Samuel’s mouth more than once. And it is the conclusion that Saul had already drawn for himself: the road ahead is definitely a dead end for him! It is also no new revelation that his sons would die along with him: Samuel had already let it be known twice that none of his sons would succeed Saul as king (see 1 Samuel 13:13–14 and 1 Samuel 15:28). He had also already understood that David would be his successor (see 1 Samuel 28:17; 1 Samuel 20:30–31.)
8. What the woman relayed as a message from Samuel
was not a prophecy, but a message of doom. Fortune-telling communicates an inevitable future, while prophecy makes an appeal to repent. For with God, there is always a way out. Saul does not receive such a final call from the Samuel
called by the medium.
Interpretation 2: No, he did not
Summary: No, this medium was not able to bring the spirit of Saul back into contact with King Saul after his death.
Arguments in favour of this view:
See the arguments against the view in Interpretation 1.
We may add here that the LORD did allow and use this message from the Samuel
who had been summoned by a medium at Saul’s request. When Saul would not listen obediently to what the LORD had told him, but had rejected these words in rebellion, the prophet Samuel had already warned that this sin would lead to consulting fortune-tellers (1 Samuel 15:22–23). The LORD now confronts him with this warning through the mouth of a medium (1 Samuel 28:18). God uses her as a megaphone aimed at Saul’s own conscience: the voice he had silenced all the time.
11 Then the woman said, “Whom shall I bring up for you?” He said, “Bring up Samuel for me.”