Do Not Consult the Yidoni (Familiar Spirit)
Ov and Yidoni — Two Distinct Categories
Leviticus 19:31 pairs the Ov and the Yidoni in a single verse as the paradigmatic form of forbidden spirit-consultation. The two categories appear together five times in the Torah and the Nevi'im, always paired, always prohibited together. This consistent pairing suggests the Torah intends them as two poles of a single category — together they cover the full range of practitioners who claim to access hidden knowledge through unauthorized spiritual channels.
The distinction between them is methodological. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 65b) describes the Yidoni as operating through the bone of a specific bird placed in the mouth, using it as a medium through which the practitioner speaks words claimed to convey hidden knowledge. Where the Ov claims to channel the dead specifically (necromancy), the Yidoni claims a different form of occult knowledge — the root y-d-a (to know) suggests a practitioner of hidden knowing. The Torah prohibits both because the method — unauthorized access to spiritual knowledge — is the same, whatever the specific technique.
Josiah's Reform and the Eradication of the Yidoni
2 Kings 23:24: “Moreover the workers with familiar spirits (Ovot), and the wizards (Yideonim), and the images, and the idols, and all the abominations that were spied in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, did Josiah put away, that he might perform the words of the law which were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of the LORD.” Josiah’s reform is one of the most detailed acts of religious restoration in the Nevi'im. The Ov and Yidoni practitioners are listed alongside images and idols — not as a minor afterthought but as a core category of abomination requiring elimination.
The specific note that this purge was grounded in “the words of the law which were written in the book” — the recovered scroll of Deuteronomy — makes Josiah's reform a direct application of Torah law to national life. Deuteronomy 18:11 explicitly includes the Ov and Yidoni in its list of prohibited occult practices. Josiah identified what the text required and acted on it. His is the cleanest example in the Nevi'im of a king reading the Torah and systematically implementing its prohibitions.
“To Be Defiled By Them” — The Spiritual Cost of Consulting
Leviticus 19:31 does not prohibit the Ov and Yidoni because they are frauds. It prohibits consulting them because the act of seeking them out produces a specific spiritual effect: defilement (tum'ah). Leviticus 20:6 amplifies this: “And the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, to go a whoring after them, I will even set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people.” The consequence is severe: God turns his face away.
The language “to go a whoring after them” (liznot achareihem) is the Torah’s most intense language for covenant betrayal — the same language used for idolatry. Consulting the Yidoni is not categorized as mere superstition but as covenant adultery. The practitioner is a competing spiritual authority; consulting them is an act of infidelity toward the God of Israel. This framing — spiritual adultery — explains why the prohibition carries the specific response it does: God’s face turning away. The covenant relationship requires exclusivity; seeking another “knower” violates that exclusivity at the most fundamental level.
- Saul — His command to expel Ovot and Yidoni practitioners (1 Sam 28:3), then his own violation of this command, frames the entire tragic arc of his kingship around the Ov/Yidoni prohibitions.
- Josiah — The most direct implementer of commandment #345 in the Nevi'im, specifically naming the Yidoni practitioners in his purge grounded in the recovered book of the law (2 Kings 23:24).
- Manasseh — Josiah's grandfather, who made the Ov and Yidoni practices normative in Yehudah: “he used enchantments, and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards” (2 Kings 21:6). The contrast between Manasseh's practice and Josiah's reform is the Nevi'im's extended illustration of commandments #344–345.
Read the source passage in the Torah reader.
Read in the Torah Reader — Leviticus 19:31