Did Saul enquire of the Lord, or fail to enquire of him?

The two books use different Hebrew verbs, and the difference fits what Saul did. In 1 Samuel 28:6 Saul ‘asked’ (sha’al, Strong’s H7592) of the Lord: a single request for an oracle, made in fear when he saw the Philistine army (28:5). When no answer came, he went at once to a medium at Endor, though he himself had put such people out of the land (28:3, 7–9). The Chronicler says that Saul did not ‘seek’ (darash, H1875) the Lord. In Chronicles this is a key word for turning to God in trust and obedience, as when Asa “commanded Judah to seek the Lord God of their fathers” (2 Chronicles 14:4; compare 1 Chronicles 22:19; 2 Chronicles 15:2). The Chronicler uses the same verb of what Saul did with the medium (10:13), and then says that Saul never sought the Lord in that way (10:14).

So the books describe the same facts from two sides. Saul made one request of God, but he did not seek him. He had long disobeyed the word of the Lord (10:13), and when God was silent he did not wait, repent or ask again, but turned to what God’s law forbade. Poole, Gill and Jamieson-Fausset-Brown all read the verses this way: an enquiry made so half-heartedly, and so quickly abandoned for a medium, was no true enquiry of the Lord.

Saul had shut the doors himself

Some point out that Saul had killed the priests of Nob, that Abiathar had fled to David with the ephod (1 Samuel 22:18–20; 23:6), and that Samuel was dead (28:3). Saul had cut himself off from the very means by which he now asked for an answer. Gill notes that the Aramaic Targum of Chronicles adds the killing of the priests to the reasons for Saul’s death.