Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

Today we finished our 10th book of the Bible. Congratulations! And we opened with a bit of a cliffhanger.

The Philistines, led by Akish, are going to attack the

Israelites, and Akish is relying on his old buddy David to help him out. After all, David has

been making raids on Israel for a while now, right? No? Uh-oh. What will David do? Then the

narrative breaks. Cut to Saul. Not long ago, he had his second encounter with David where David could have

killed him. When you've had two near-death experiences and your life has been spared, it might shake you up a bit.

Not only that, but your country's prophet, who is one of your former mentors, recently died. You're

being tormented by a demon, you're about to lose your job, and you're being attacked by one of your long-standing enemies.

I'm not trying to excuse what Saul does here. On the contrary, I'm trying to paint a picture of what he's going through when he makes these poor decisions.

He tries to inquire of God, but that falls through. And here's something interesting that we'll see as a pattern in scripture. When someone

asks God for direction, but they aren't following the existing direction God has already given them,

God often won't tell them anything new. We saw this earlier with Saul in 1437. And Saul is still

walking in unrepent sin, which is why God rejected him as king.

It's all connected. So when Saul goes to God to ask what to do about the Philistines,

God doesn't answer him. And instead of repenting, Saul decides to double down on his sin.

He disguises himself and goes to consult a medium, which God has strictly forbidden.

Not to mention the fact that Saul was supposed to put all the mediums to death, not just banish them. Saul is seeking answers

from the enemies of Yahweh. He asked the medium to help him communicate with the dead, specifically

Samuel. It seems that what happens here is not a normal occurrence for this medium,

because when she calls up Samuel and he actually shows up, she is shocked. She actually screams.

So we can probably assume that whatever measure of power she normally operates in,

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