Isaiah 8:19-22

NECROMANCY

Isaiah 8:19. Seek unto them, &c.

As bearing upon the doctrine of necromancy, an exhaustive discussion of these verses would involve the following points:

1. Under the instigation of a prurient curiosity, or under the pressure of affliction, godless men are wont to seek knowledge and help from the spirits of the dead.
2. Hence, in every age of the world and in every nation of universal history, there have been necromancers, wizards, &c., known by various names, practising various arts of divination and legerdemain; playing with the credulity of men and women, and claiming access to supernatural knowledge and power. The spirits of modern times are the latest species of this genus of necromancers.
3. This passage implies irresistibly that God frowns upon and condemns necromancy in whatever form.
4. The expostulations, rebukes, and threatenings of the Lord, through His prophet in this passage, assumes it to be impossible for man to get knowledge or help for the living from the dead. The power of God to send back to earth the spirits of the dead is quite another thing; yet as to this the practical question is—Does He see fit to use it?

5. Hence, to discard the light of God’s revealed Word and to seek light and help from the dead, is to hurl oneself against the impermeable and impassable wall with which God has shut in the living of our world, and involves both positive conflict against God and contemptuous rejection of His Divine Word.
6. As Satan has a natural sympathy with everything abhorrent to God and ruinous to man, we ought to look for his hand in these agencies of necromancy, to whatever extent God may give him scope and range for action. What these limits may be, who can tell? It is man’s wisdom to keep himself utterly aloof from the sphere of Satan’s agencies and temptations.
7. Necromancers and spirits practically league themselves with Satan against God, and should be aware that his lot must be theirs, and their end be as their works, no dawn of day ever breaking forth on the midnight of their gloom.—Henry Cowles, D.D. Commentary on Isaiah, pp. 68, 69.