Witchcraft and divination in the Hebrew Bible

Various forms of witchcraft and divination are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh or Old Testament), which are expressly forbidden.

Laws prohibiting various forms of witchcraft and divination can be found in the books of Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

These include the following (as translated in the Revised JPS, 2023 : The forms of divination mentioned in Deuteronomy 17 are portrayed as being of foreign origin; this is the only part of the Hebrew Bible to make such a claim.

[6] The exact difference between the three forbidden forms of necromancy mentioned in Deuteronomy 18:11 is a matter of uncertainty; yidde'oni ("wizard") is always used together with ob ("consulter with familiar spirits"),[7] and its semantic similarity to doresh el ha-metim ("necromancer", or "one who directs inquiries to the dead") raises the question of why all three are mentioned in the same verse.

[citation needed] The Jewish tractate Sanhedrin makes the distinction that a doresh el ha-metim was a person who would sleep in a cemetery after having starved himself, in order to become possessed.