Leviticus 19:31

Familiar spirits. From ’oboth, literally, “[skin] bottles,” as in Job 32:19. This is the first use of the word in the Bible. Use of the word to designate spirit mediums seems to have been due to their unnatural, indistinct, and sonorous quality of voice, such as might have been produced by speaking into a “bottle” or other receptacle. The word translated “mutter” in Isa. 8:19 means “to murmur,” “to whisper,” “to growl.” It also means “to meditate [out loud],” as when a person addresses himself in a low voice resembling a sigh (see Ps. 143:5). The word translated “peep” is from saphaph, a word that imitates the mumbling of a medium. In Isa. 29:4 saphaph is rendered “whisper,” and in Isa. 38:14, “chatter.” The LXX usually renders ’oboth as eggastrimuthoi, “ventriloquists,” implying the projection of the voice to the stomach in low and grave sepulchral tones. Ventriloquism would readily lend itself to magical purposes.

’Oboth is feminine, suggesting that spirit mediums were usually women. A medium was said to “have” a “familiar spirit.” She was not possessed by a “familiar spirit,” but possessed the “spirit.” A literal rendering of 1 Sam. 28:7 would be, “a woman, the mistress of a familiar spirit.” Used as a noun the English word “familiar” means “an intimate,” “a companion.” “Familiar spirit” might therefore appropriately be “intimate spirit” or perhaps “companion spirit,” that is, one that consorted with the medium and might be summoned by its “mistress” and told what to do. The possessor, or “mistress,” of the ’ob usually stooped while speaking as a medium, and according to Isa. 29:4 spoke as if “out of the ground.” This may account for the fact that when Saul consulted the witch at Endor, she “saw gods ascending out of the earth” (1 Sam. 28:13), and explain why Saul “stooped with his face to the ground” (v. 14) to converse, as he thought, with Samuel (vs. 15-19).

The “teraphim” of the OT (see on Gen. 31:19) seem, at times at least, to have been used by spirit mediums as “props” for pretended communication with the dead, often with the aid of ventriloquism. In Zech. 10:2 it is stated that “the teraphim utter nonsense” (RSV) when inquired of. In at least one instance the word “teraphim” refers to an image so closely resembling a human being that it deceived messengers sent by Saul into thinking that David himself was lying in bed (1 Sam. 19:12-17). A ventriloquist could easily simulate conversation with an image in a manner sufficiently realistic to convince superstitious minds that the spirits of the dead were speaking. It would be only natural for the devil to control the words of a spirit medium in harmony with his own purposes.