David has been living a relatively quiet life, but now the Philistines gather to fight against Israel and Achish tells David that he and his men must join them. David promises that Achish will see what his servant can do, which sounds ominously ambiguous to me, but is enough to convince the king to make David his bodyguard. Saul is terrified when he sees the Philistine camp and so he enquires of the Lord, but he receives no answer by dreams or by prophets or by Urim, generally understood to be one of two stones used to discern the will of God. Having exhausted all of the legitimate methods of seeking spiritual help, Saul tells his attendants to find a medium. He has previously expelled all mediums and spiritists from Israel, so it is clear that he knows what he is doing is against God's law, but it is possible that he feels God has abandoned him so he sees no reason why he should not abandon God. I think a lot of people react like that, but it only leads to a vicious cycle where we find ourselves sinker deeper and deeper into despair while drifting futher and further from our lifeline. I know because I've been there...but I also know there's always a way back.
Saul finds a medium and goes to see her in disguise. She is wary at first as she thinks it is a trap and knows she will be punished if she is caught, but Saul reassures her and she agrees to call up a spirit for him. Saul asks her to bring up Samuel and so she does, at which points she realises who her myserious visitor is. Samuel asks why he has been disurbed, and Saul replies that the Philistines are fighting against him and God has turned away from him, and so he wants to ask him what to do. Samuel says that the Lord has done what he predicted and given the kingdom to David, and that tomorrow Saul and his sons will die. He also warns that tomorrow the Lord will hand Israel over to the Philistines, so it seems things will not be an easy ride for Saul'ss successor, but that will be a story for another day. Saul collapses from fear and weakness, and so the medium and his attendants convince him to eat before he leaves to consider all that he has heard.
It may seem strange that religion can be open to spirituality and prophecy and yet condemn spiritualism and divination, but I think the point is that in spiritual matters it is God that we need to seek. The occult is a complex issue and I can only touch on it here, but I think the important thing to remember is that it must be taken seriously because it is real, but it must also be avoided because it is dangerous. It's easy to dismiss the occult as superstition or trickery, but God wouldn't bother to warn us against it if that were the case, and the medium clearly had power because she was able to raise the spirit of Samuel. The problem is that the power did not come from God and that means it did not come from a good place. Things appear to have worked out okay as Samuel has spoken the word of the Lord, but maybe Saul wasn't supposed to hear that word. God doesn't forbid occult practices because he's a spoilsport or he wants all the power to himself, he forbids them because he knows that they can be harmful and destructive and he wants to protect us.
Back with the Philistines, the rulers still do not trust David and tell the king to send him back or he will turn against them. Achish bends under the pressure and calls David to tell him that though he has found no fault in him, he must go back because the rulers do not approve of him. David does as he is told even though he is not happy about it, and it is just as well because the Amalekites have attacekd the Negev, destroying Ziklag and capturing the people, including David's wives. David David's men begin to turn against him, but he finds new strength and summons the priest to ask if he should pursue the raiding party. The priest says yes and so David sets out with six hundred men, although two hundred have to stop as they are too weak to continue. In a wonderful stroke of luck or providence, the hunting party comes across an Egyptian slave who has been abandoned by the Amalekites, and he promises to lead them to the men they seek. David and his men attack the Amalekites and recapture all that they had taken, sharing the plunder among all six hundred men, despite a number protesting that only the four hundred who fought should be rewarded.
While David avenges Ziklag the Philistines attack the Israelites, killing Saul's sons and injuring Saul himself. Saul instructs his armour-bearer to kill him so that the Philistines cannot take him, but the armour-bearer is afraid and will not do it, and so Saul takes his own life. Saul believed that the Philistines would kill him that day because of the words spoken by Samuel when the medium raised his spirit, and it was that belief that led him to take his own life. If he hadn't, maybe the battle would have turned, or maybe Saul would have escaped, or maybe he would have fought on and died in battle. We'll never know because Saul called on a power that was not of God, and it drove him to despair and to suicide. God tells us what he needs us to hear and he doesn't tell us what he knows will harm us, and that's why we shouldn't seek for answers anywhere else.
When the Philistines find Saul's body, they cut off his head and pin his body to a wall as a rather gruesome trophy, but the valiant men of Jabesh Gilead take his body and the bodies of his sons so that they can burn and bury them, and they fast for seven days. It seems that Israel has fallen to the Philistines as Samuel prophesied, but we must wait until 2 Samuel to see how things turn out.
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