Came no more to see Saul... — Once more the old friends met together in life (see 1 Samuel 19:24), but the interview on this occasion was not of Samuel’s seeking; nor does it appear then that any communication passed between them. When next the seer and the king spoke together, the seer belonged to another and a different world. “After this, Samuel came no more to him, bearing messages and commands, and giving him counsel and guidance from God. Saul’s kingship, though still one de facto, yet from this time lost its theocratic relation. God’s ambassador was recalled from him; the intercourse of the God of Israel with Saul through His Spirit came to an end, because Saul, sinking step by step away from God, had, by continued disobedience and increasing impenitence, given up communion with God.” — Lange.
Nevertheless Samuel mourned for Saul. — The old seer, who had known Saul from the days of his splendid youthful promise, had indeed good reason to mourn. He, no doubt, loved him much, and regarded him as his own adopted child. On Saul he had built up all his hopes for the future of the Israel he loved so well. There was besides so much that was great and noble in the character of that first Hebrew king: he was the bravest of the brave, a tried and skilful general, possessed too of many of those high gifts which belong to men like Saul and David, and which enable them to be the saviours and regenerators of their country. This first great king only lacked one thing: true faith in that God who loved Israel with a peculiar love. Saul through his chequered career never really leaned on the Arm of the Mighty One of Jacob. No doubt, too, Samuel already perceived in the brilliant but headstrong king the first beginning of that terrible malady which over-shadowed the meridian and clouded the latter years of Saul — signs of that dread visitant, insanity, were, no doubt, visible to Samuel when the old man began to mourn for Saul.