And when Saul inquired of the LORD, the LORD answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets.
And when Saul inquired of the Lord. Since it was a part of the official duty of the high priest to ask counsel for rulers in all matters affecting the national interests of Israel, we find Joshua in early, as well as David at a later period, frequently employing the agency of that high dignitary for consulting God in emergencies where his own sagacity was an insufficient guide. It appears that Saul also, in the brief period of his theocratic allegiance, inquired of the Lord through the same medium (1 Samuel 14:18-19). But he had long discontinued such applications, his impulsive and wayward temper driving him to neglect them, probably from the day that God gave him no answer (1 Samuel 14:37).
The Lord answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets. These were the three recognized modes of divine revelation (Jeremiah 23:25-28; Joel 2:28). A knowledge of God's will with reference to present duty, no less than to future events, was communicated in dreams sometimes to private persons (Genesis 20:3; Genesis 28:12; Genesis 37:5-11; Genesis 40:5-21; Genesis 41:1-32: cf. Daniel 4:5-17), at other times by means of the high priest's Urim (see the note at Exodus 28:29-30; Leviticus 8:5-9; Numbers 27:21) and by prophets (Numbers 12:6; Isaiah 29:10). The latter two modes are specified as distinct from the former. But in consequence of Saul's persistent rebellion and apostasy, these privileges were all withdrawn from him. No vision from the Lord was given him in trance or dream (1 Samuel 19:24); no announcement of the divine will could be obtained by Urim, because the high priest's family had been barbarously massacred, and Abiathar, the only survivor, who carried an ephod with him in his flight from Nob (1 Samuel 22:20; 1 Samuel 23:6), was associated with David's exiled followers; and no prophet was there to guide and support him, because Samuel, his faithful counselor, had sorrowfully left him to himself, and was now dead.
In the extremity of his distress, how intensely did Saul long for the restoration of those forfeited privileges,-to learn the will of God at the mouth of the prophet, or by the pectoral of the high priest, or to be told what he should do through some vision of the night! The saddest and most melancholy aspect of the case is, that in his agony of mind he never dreamt of asking for pardon of his sins, but only for counsel in his backsliding fortunes. His real character was now unveiled, and his resolution to consult a witch, one of these traders in unlawful arts, whom he had formerly set himself with apparent zeal to extirpate, was the re-action of his hypocrisy-a wild and desperate expedient for relieving himself from the misery which he despaired of relieving by legitimate means.