1 Samuel 28 Bible study: The LORD didn't answer

The Philistines camp at Shunem and Saul at Gilboa (28:4). "When Saul saw the army of the Philistines, he was afraid, and his heart trembled greatly" (28:5). Then comes the verse the rest of the chapter hangs on: "When Saul inquired of the LORD, the LORD didn’t answer him by dreams, by Urim, or by prophets" (28:6) (tap inquired and Urim). Each of the three was a way the Law or the book had shown the LORD speaking. Of dreams the LORD had said, "If there is a prophet among you, I, the LORD, will make myself known to him in a vision. I will speak with him in a dream" (Numbers 12:6). Of the Urim, the priest "shall inquire for him by the judgment of the Urim before the LORD" (Numbers 27:21). And the prophet Saul had known was Samuel, whom all Israel knew "was established to be a prophet of the LORD" (3:20); "Now Samuel was dead" (28:3). It has happened to Saul before: "Saul asked counsel of God… But he didn’t answer him that day" (14:37). David, in the same book, inquires and is answered (23:2-4; 30:8). The chapter doesn't say at 28:6 why the LORD didn't answer.

1 Samuel 28:15→leads toLuke 16:29

When the LORD didn't answer him (28:6), Saul said, "Bring Samuel up for me" (28:11), and told him, "Therefore I have called you, that you may make known to me what I shall do" (28:15). Jesus told of a rich man who died and asked Abraham to send Lazarus to his father's house to warn his five brothers (Luke 16:27-28). "But Abraham said to him, ‘They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them.’" (Luke 16:29). Jesus doesn't mention Saul or 1 Samuel 28, so setting the two side by side is a reading. Some hear the same thing in both: the living are pointed to what God has already said, not to the dead, and at Endor the word about the kingdom was the one the LORD had already spoken: "as he spoke by me" (28:17), the words of 15:28. Others read each in its own setting: in what Jesus told, no one is sent from the dead (Luke 16:30-31), while Saul had inquired of the LORD and was not answered (28:6).

אוֹבovsay OHV

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "skin-bottle, necromancer". Strong's: "a necromancer (ventriloquist, as from a jar)". Saul says, "Seek for me a woman who has a familiar spirit" (28:7); his servants answer, "there is a woman who has a familiar spirit at Endor" (28:7); and he tells her, "Please consult for me by the familiar spirit" (28:8). The chapter uses the word five times, and the other two are Saul's own act: he "had sent away those who had familiar spirits and the wizards out of the land" (28:3), as the woman reminds him (28:9). Leviticus has the same word where the WEB says mediums: "Don’t turn to those who are mediums, nor to the wizards" (Leviticus 19:31). Deuteronomy names "someone who consults with a familiar spirit" among those who are "an abomination to the LORD" (Deuteronomy 18:11-12). And Chronicles gives it as one reason Saul died: "he asked counsel of one who had a familiar spirit" (1 Chronicles 10:13).