The text is here.
This is a really hard chapter, and I haven’t made sense of it all by any means. David appears to be committing genocide for starters.
Saul is still paying the price of his earlier disobedience. He failed to do what God asked him to in Chapter 15 and so he is about to be annihilated by the Philistines.
Saul, through Samuel, has been given clear instructions from God. How I wish I could hear from God like that, but I don’t think I really understand what that means. If we were to hear clearly from God, as Saul and Samuel did, then God’s words would be final, we would have to obey and there would be consequences if we didn’t. Maybe it is better for us that God’s will for us is often difficult to discern, it gives us some wriggle room.
Dislocated Christians 