Eight Hebrew words, one very strange night at Endor, three sorcerers in Acts, and a bonfire in Ephesus. Then the part the church has to own: the witch hunts.
Witchcraft in the Bible is not pointy hats and broomsticks. It is the attempt to get power, knowledge or control apart from God, usually over other people, through divination, spells, omens and consulting the dead.
Scripture forbids it because it trades trust for control and it feeds on the desperate. Jesus answers it by giving us the Father directly, and nobody needs a back door into a house they have already been invited into.
That definition moves the question off the bookstore shelf and into the human heart.
The Bible has no single word for witchcraft. What it has is a list. Deuteronomy 18 comes as Israel is about to enter Canaan, and Moses names the practices of the nations they will be living beside.
“Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead.”
Deuteronomy 18:10 to 11Divination, the broad word for reading hidden things. Ezekiel 21:21 shows the king of Babylon doing it with arrows, household gods and a liver. It is also the word in 1 Samuel 15:23.
Soothsayer. Lexicons connect the verb to the Hebrew word for cloud, the idea of peering into what is veiled.
Reading omens and signs. Laban uses it in Genesis 30:27, and Joseph's steward uses it of the silver cup in Genesis 44:5.
Sorcery, working effects by spells or substances. Pharaoh's sorcerers in Exodus 7:11, and the feminine form in Exodus 22:18.
Casting spells. The root means to join or bind, so the picture is a charm that ties something down.
Medium. The same word means a leather wineskin in Job 32:19, and Isaiah 8:19 describes these practitioners as those who whisper and mutter.
Spiritist, from yada, to know. A knowing one, somebody claiming inside information about the unseen.
One who seeks the dead. Necromancy, plainly named.
Notice what heads the list: parents burning their children. The ban was never about mood lighting. It sat in a world where religion and cruelty were bound together and the vulnerable paid. Ancient plant lore, like the mandrakes in Genesis 30, often drifted into the same territory.
Every item on the list is a technique for getting something God has not given you: the future, control over events, a word from the dead. The problem is not that it is spooky. The problem is where it goes around.
Keep reading Deuteronomy 18 and the answer is right there. Verse 14 says the nations listen to diviners, “but as for you, the Lord your God has not permitted you to do so.” Then verse 15: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me.” God's answer to divination is not silence. It is a person who speaks, and Peter says in Acts 3:22 that the person is Jesus.
Then there is 1 Samuel 15:23, where Samuel tells Saul that rebellion is like the sin of divination. The Hebrew word is qesem. Saul had kept what God told him to give up. The link is control. Both say, I will get what I want, on my terms.
Isaiah 8:19 puts it in one line: “Should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living?”
At Sound of Heaven we read witchcraft in Scripture as the pursuit of power, guidance or control apart from God, and almost always power over somebody else. That is our position, and it is a moral definition before it is a supernatural one.
We do not believe there are personal demons standing behind the tarot deck waiting to be summoned. Scripture's language of spirits and powers describes something real: deception, fear, compulsion, and the grip a lie gets on a person or a whole community. We have written about that in what the Bible actually says about demons. The harm is real whether or not the ritual does anything. A grieving widow who pays a stranger to speak for her husband has been exploited either way.
So we refuse both errors. The first shrugs and calls it all harmless fun. It is not harmless to the desperate person handing over money, trust and decisions to somebody claiming secret access. The second sees witches behind every door and ends up doing the manipulating itself. Freedom from both comes the same way it always does, by truth replacing a lie, which is what we mean by deliverance.
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
1 Samuel 28 is the strangest scene in the Old Testament, and it deserves to be read carefully rather than used as a proof for anything. Samuel is dead. Saul has expelled the mediums from the land (verse 3). The Philistines are camped for battle, and when Saul inquires of the Lord, there is no answer by dreams, Urim or prophets (verse 6).
So King Saul disguises himself and goes at night to a woman who is an ob, a medium. “Bring up Samuel,” he says. Then verse 12: “When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out at the top of her voice.” She describes an elohim, a ghostly figure coming up out of the earth, an old man in a robe. The figure repeats the judgment Samuel gave in life and tells Saul he will die the next day.
God overrode the session and sent Samuel. Her scream suggests something she did not expect or control. Origen argued in the third century that Samuel truly appeared.
It was not Samuel at all. Eustathius of Antioch wrote a whole treatise against Origen arguing this, and the Greek translators called the woman an engastrimythos, a belly-talker.
The narrator reports the scene from Saul's side and never explains the mechanics, because the point is the verdict, not the method.
1 Chronicles 10:13 says Saul died because he was unfaithful and “even consulted a medium for guidance.” The later writer judges the visit, not the vision.
Honestly, this is an open question, and faithful readers have landed in all three places for eighteen centuries. The lesson is not open. Saul refused God's word when it was plain, then went looking for it through the back door and heard only his own ruin. We look at the wider question in what the Bible says about ghosts and in what a medium is.
Luke keeps running the gospel into magic, and every encounter turns on power and money.
Simon had amazed the city with sorcery, and people called him “the Great Power of God.” He believes, sees the Spirit given, and offers the apostles money for the ability. Peter answers, “May your money perish with you.” Our word simony comes from him.
A Jewish sorcerer attached to the proconsul Sergius Paulus tries to turn him from the faith. He is left blind “for a time,” and the proconsul believes.
A slave girl predicts the future and earns a great deal for her owners. When Paul sets her free, the owners drag him to court because their hope of making money was gone. Divination here is plainly a business built on a person.
New believers who had practiced sorcery confess openly and burn their scrolls publicly. The value came to fifty thousand drachmas.
Paul carries the same idea into his letters. In Galatians 5:20 witchcraft is pharmakeia, a word tied to drugs, potions and poisons, and he lists it beside idolatry, hatred and factions as works of the flesh. It is filed with the ways people use and dominate each other. The same word family appears in Revelation 9:21, 18:23, 21:8 and 22:15, where a first-century Babylon and its merchants lead the nations astray by magic spell.
Who burned the magic scrolls in Ephesus?
Acts 19:18 to 19 says believers came and openly confessed, and those who had practiced sorcery brought their own scrolls. Nobody seized anything from anyone. It was repentance, not a raid, which matters for everything in the next section.
Exodus 22:18 in the King James reads “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” The Hebrew is the feminine form of kashaph, a sorceress, and the Greek translators rendered it pharmakos, a word that could mean a poisoner. It sits in Israel's old covenant civil code.
Christians turned it into a death warrant. Historian Daniel Gullotta notes that it was “one of the key biblical passages often cited in witch trials”, and he gives the scale: an estimated 100,000 people prosecuted for witchcraft in Europe and colonial America between 1400 and 1775, around 50,000 of them executed. The Massachusetts Body of Liberties of 1641 made it law, “If any man or woeman be a witch, (that is hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit,) They shall be put to death.” It cited Exodus 22:18 as its authority. In Salem in 1692, nineteen people were hanged, Giles Corey was pressed to death under stones, and others died in jail.
We call that what it was: a grave wrong, done in Jesus' name, to neighbors who were practicing nothing. Fear produced the very thing it claimed to fight: accusation, coercion, forced confessions, power over the powerless. Jesus never executed anybody. When a crowd brought Him a woman to stone, the accusers walked away one by one.
“Charismatic witchcraft” and “Jezebel spirit” get thrown at people who disagree with a leader, ask hard questions, or are simply strong women. That is accusation dressed up as discernment.
Manipulating people with spiritual language, prophesying to control decisions, using fear to keep someone in line. When that happens in a pulpit, it is closer to what Deuteronomy forbids than any novel is.
The same fear showed up in December 2001, when a church in New Mexico held a bonfire of Harry Potter books. Compare it with Ephesus. There, people burned their own scrolls after confessing their own practice. Here, people burned children's fiction to warn everyone else. Fiction about wizards is not Deuteronomy 18. Parents can choose wisely for their homes, as with Halloween, without treating a story as a spell. And if you have been handed the Jezebel label, read what that phrase does and does not mean.
Maybe you went to a psychic after a death, or spent years in tarot, spells or the occult, and now you are carrying fear or shame about it. There is nothing hanging over you. The people in Ephesus did not earn their way back. They told the truth and walked into the light.
And if you were the one accused, controlled or spiritually labeled, you did not imagine it and you are not what they called you. We would be glad to pray with you.
Every practice on the Deuteronomy list grows from fear of the future, fear of losing control, and grief for the dead. Scripture does not mock those needs. It answers them with a person.
In Jesus we are not left guessing what God is like or what He intends. He is the prophet Moses promised, the full word of the Father, and the Kingdom He brought is here now. The gifts of the Spirit are active today, given for love, never for power over other people. You do not have to read omens when you can ask your Father. You do not have to bind anyone with words when you have been set free yourself.
For related reading, see familiar spirits, astrology in the Bible, and what we believe.
Witchcraft in the Bible is reaching around God for power, knowledge or control, usually over someone else, and Jesus ends the need for it by giving us the Father face to face, while the witch hunts show that fear can commit the same sin it claims to fight.
Past practice, a painful label, or questions you have never been able to ask out loud. Send it in and someone from Sound of Heaven will pray with you.
In Scripture, witchcraft means trying to get power, knowledge or control apart from God, usually over other people. Deuteronomy 18:10 to 11 lists eight practices, including divination, omens, sorcery, spells, mediums, spiritists and consulting the dead. Paul uses the Greek word pharmakeia in Galatians 5:20 and files it beside idolatry, hatred and factions. The common thread is not spookiness but control: going around God to gain control over the future, events or people, and very often exploiting someone vulnerable along the way.
Reading fiction is not what the Bible means by witchcraft. Deuteronomy 18 is about real attempts to gain hidden knowledge or control, not about stories that feature wizards. Parents can still choose what fits their family and their children's ages. What Scripture actually warns against is seeking guidance or power apart from God, and manipulating people, and those can happen with no fantasy novel anywhere in sight.
Christians have disagreed about this since the early church. Origen argued that Samuel truly appeared, and the woman's scream in 1 Samuel 28:12 suggests something she did not expect. Eustathius of Antioch wrote against him, arguing it was a deception and not Samuel at all. Others read the scene as told from Saul's side without explaining how it worked. What is clear is the verdict: 1 Chronicles 10:13 says Saul died partly because he consulted a medium for guidance.
Pharmakeia is the Greek word translated witchcraft or sorcery in Galatians 5:20, and it also appears in Revelation 18:23. It is related to words for drugs, potions and poisons, which is where the English word pharmacy comes from. In the ancient world magic and potions often went together. Paul lists pharmakeia among the works of the flesh alongside idolatry, hatred and factions, which shows he saw it as a way people use and control one another rather than as a harmless hobby.
Exodus 22:18 belongs to Israel's old covenant civil law. The Hebrew word is the feminine form of kashaph, a sorceress, and the Greek translators used pharmakos, which could mean a poisoner. It was never a command for the church. Tragically, Christians used it to justify witch trials in Europe and colonial America, including Salem in 1692, where nineteen people were hanged. Read through Jesus, who executed no one, that use of the verse was a grave wrong.