yiddoni

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• Both are forbidden together in the Law's lists of ways Israel must not consult the dead, named as a matched pair the people are to shun.Lev 19:31
• Both are swept away side by side in the reforms of reforming kings and rebuked together by the prophets, always condemned as a set.2Ki 23:24

• Stands on its own, without its partner word: the woman at Endor is described as controlling one, and Saul turns to it to bring the dead prophet Samuel up to speak.1Sa 28:71Ch 10:13
• Can name the thin, whispering voice that seems to rise from the dust when the dead are summoned, picturing the ghostly sound itself rather than the practitioner.Isa 29:4
• Carries an ordinary, unrelated everyday sense the partner word never has: a leather wineskin swollen and about to burst with new wine.Job 32:19

• It never stands alone. In every single verse it is bolted to the word for a medium, so it works less as a job title on its own than as half of a fixed phrase for people who deal in spirits.Lev 19:31Lev 20:272Ki 23:24
• The hidden knowledge is sought from the dead. Where the practice is spelled out, the same passage speaks of inquiring of the departed, and the prophet's complaint is that people are asking the dead on behalf of the living instead of asking their God.Isa 8:19Deu 18:11
• It carries the death penalty in Israel's law and becomes a fixed item in the record of the kings: one king installs these people in Jerusalem, and a later reformer burns them out of the land along with the household idols.Lev 20:272Ki 21:62Ki 23:242Ch 33:6

• Both appear in the same short roster of banned ways to get hidden knowledge in Deuteronomy 18, and both are answered there by the same alternative: God will raise up a prophet, and Israel is to listen to him instead of to the nations' specialists.Deu 18:10Deu 18:14Deu 18:11
• They meet on the night at Endor. The king who had cleared these people out of the land goes in disguise and asks a woman to do this very thing for him by a spirit, the one episode where getting a word from the dead and practicing the craft are the same errand.1Sa 28:31Sa 28:91Sa 28:8
• Both are charged against nations outside Israel as well as against Israel itself, so the objection is not that the practice is foreign but that it reaches for the future by some route other than the LORD.Isa 19:3Jer 27:9Ezk 21:21

• It names an act, and the text can describe exactly how the act is performed: the king of Babylon halts where the road forks, shakes his arrows, consults his household images, and inspects a liver.Ezk 21:21
• It describes a working office that people hold and are consulted for practical decisions. Balaam is remembered by this title, the Philistines summon their priests and these men to ask how the ark should be sent home, and Isaiah can even list such a man among the leaders a society leans on, beside the judge and the prophet.Jos 13:221Sa 6:2Isa 3:2
• It is the standard charge against counterfeit prophecy inside Israel. Prophets are accused of doing this for money, of seeing lies while claiming to speak for God, and the word is set opposite genuine revelation rather than opposite ordinary life.Mic 3:11Ezk 13:9Zec 10:2Jer 29:8

• Names a kind of person you could go to rather than an act you could perform, so the law forbids turning to them and the histories speak of them as a group living in the land.Lev 19:31Deu 18:111Sa 28:9
• Its business is the dead: Isaiah pictures people questioning these figures on behalf of the living, and the woman Saul visits is asked to bring up a man who has died.Isa 8:191Sa 28:3Lev 20:6
• Because these are people, they can be cleared out of a country: Saul drove them from the land, Josiah swept them away, and the law orders that they be put to death.1Sa 28:32Ki 23:24Lev 20:27
• It never stands on its own in the Bible: every time it appears it is coupled with the word for a medium, so it always arrives as half of a fixed pair rather than as an independent term.Lev 20:27Isa 19:3Deu 18:11

• Both name ways of reaching for hidden knowledge from a source other than the LORD, and the account of Manasseh sets them side by side as parts of one evil.2Ki 21:6
• Both turn up inside the same long catalogues of forbidden practice, bundled with burning a child, reading omens and sorcery, so the Bible treats them as one field of activity rather than as separate skills.2Ch 33:6

• Names something a person does, so the ban falls on the doing of it and a whole nation can be charged with the habit rather than with harboring a class of professionals.Lev 19:26Deu 18:102Ki 17:17
• Outside the law codes the stories report it without condemning anyone: Laban says he found out this way that the LORD had blessed him, and Joseph's household speaks of his cup as the thing he uses for it.Gen 30:27Gen 44:5Gen 44:15
• What gets read is an ordinary sign in the world at hand, a cup, a stretch of good fortune, a stranger's chance word, rather than a message brought back from the dead.1Ki 20:33Gen 44:5Gen 30:27

• It is tied to the dead. Wherever it appears it stands beside the medium who calls up the departed, so the word carries the specific idea of getting answers out of the spirit world instead of from God.Isa 8:19Deu 18:11
• It names a standing presence in the land, a kind of person a king can drive out or bring back, rather than something a person does on one occasion.1Sa 28:32Ki 21:62Ki 23:24
• The warning falls on the ordinary person who goes looking for one: turning to them is what defiles the inquirer, and God sets his face against the one who seeks them out.Lev 19:31Lev 20:6
• Even outside Israel it describes a frightened nation running to its spirits for guidance, so the picture is always one of consultation for hidden information.Isa 19:3

• Both name ways of reaching for power or knowledge that Israel is forbidden to use, and the law packs them into one list of things the nations do that Israel must not.Deu 18:11Deu 18:10
• Both serve as markers of how far a king has fallen, set side by side in the record of Manasseh as the same slide into what God calls evil.2Ch 33:6

• It belongs to the trained specialists of a royal court, called in alongside the wise men to match a sign or to deliver on a king's demand.Exo 7:11Dan 2:2
• It is a thing done, an act of power meant to bend events, so the law strikes at the practitioner for doing it rather than at anyone who consults.Exo 22:18Deu 18:10
• It is judged in the company of ordinary human wrongdoing, listed with adultery, lying under oath, and cheating a worker of his pay.Mal 3:5