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 Jehovah, Jehovah answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets.

And he consulted the Lord, and he answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by priests, nor by prophets.

And Saul inquired of Jehovah; but Jehovah did not answer him, either by dreams, or by Urim, or by prophets.

and Saul asketh at Jehovah, and Jehovah hath not answered him, either by dreams, or by Urim, or by prophets.

And when Saul went for directions to the Lord, the Lord gave him no answer, by a dream or by the Urim or by the prophets.

When Saul inquired of the LORD, The LORD did not answer him, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets.

And he consulted the Lord. But he did not respond to him, neither by dreams, nor by priests, nor by prophets.

When Saul inquired of the Lord - It is said 1-Chronicles 10:14 that one reason why the Lord killed Saul, and gave his kingdom to David, was because he inquired not of the Lord. The explanation of this apparent discrepancy is to be found in the fact that inquiring of the familiar spirit was positively antagonistic to inquiring of the Lord. That Saul received no answer - when he "inquired of the Lord" by dreams, which was an immediate revelation to himself; by Urim, which was an answer through the high priest clothed in the ephod; or by prophets, which was an answer conveyed through some seer speaking by the Word of the Lord 1-Samuel 22:5 - was a reason for self-abasement and self-examination, to find out and, if possible, remove the cause, but was no justification whatever of his sin in asking counsel of familiar spirits.

The Lord answered him not - He used the three methods by which supernatural intelligence was ordinarily given: -
1. Dreams. - The person prayed for instruction; and begged that God would answer by a significant dream.
2. Urim. - This was a kind of oracular answer given to the high priest when clothed with the ephod, on which were the Urim and Thummim. How these communicated the answer, is not well known.
3. Prophets. - Who were requested by the party concerned to consult the Lord on the subject in question, and to report his answer. The prophets at that time could only be those in the schools of the prophets, which Samuel had established at Naioth and Gibeah. These were the only successors of Samuel that we know of.

And when Saul enquired of the LORD, the LORD answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by (c) Urim, nor by prophets.
(c) Meaning, the high priest, (Exodus 28:30).

And when Saul inquired of the Lord,.... And this being not done truly and heartily, nor continued in, it was as if he had not inquired, and especially after he had inquired of one that had a familiar spirit, as Kimchi observes; for so it is said, 1-Chronicles 10:14,
the Lord answered him not, neither by dreams; which he dreamed himself, from whence he could not conclude anything relating to the will of God; so the Targum,"the Lord did not receive his prayer even by dreams;''or by dreamers, diviners, who pretended to give answers by dreams:
nor by Urim; there being no priest to consult in this way, Abiathar having fled with the ephod, in which were the Urim and Thummim, to David, 1-Samuel 23:9; though some think that he sent to Abiathar, who was with David, to inquire for him; and others that he made another ephod with Urim, and appointed another priest to consult by them; neither of which are probable:
nor by prophets; of which there was a school not far from him, even at Naioth in Ramah, of which Samuel in his lifetime was president; but neither by the one nor the other could Saul get an answer from God, who for his sins had departed from him.

In his anxiety he inquired of the Lord; but the Lord neither answered him by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets, that is to say, not by any of the three media by which He was accustomed to make known His will to Israel. בּיהוה שׁאל is the term usually employed to signify inquiring the will and counsel of God through the Urim and Thummim of the high priest (see at Judges 1:1); and this is the case here, with the simple difference that here the other means of inquiring the counsel of God are also included. On dreams, see at Numbers 12:6. According to Numbers 27:21, Urim denotes divine revelation through the high priest by means of the ephod. But the high priest Abiathar had been with the ephod in David's camp ever since the murder of the priests at Nob (1-Samuel 22:20., 1-Samuel 23:6; 1-Samuel 30:7). How then could Saul inquire of God through the Urim? This question, which was very copiously discussed by the earlier commentators, and handled in different ways, may be decided very simply on the supposition, that after the death of Ahimelech and the flight of his son, another high priest had been appointed at the tabernacle, and another ephod made for him, with the choshen or breastplate, and the Urim and Thummim. It is no proof to the contrary that there is nothing said about this. We have no continuous history of the worship at the tabernacle, but only occasional notices. And from these it is perfectly clear that the public worship at the tabernacle was not suspended on the murder of the priests, but was continued still. For in the first years of David's reign we find the tabernacle at Gibeon, and Zadok the son of Ahitub, of the line of Eleazar, officiating there as high priest (1-Chronicles 16:39, compared with 1-Chronicles 6:8 and 1-Chronicles 6:53); from which it follows with certainty, that after the destruction of Nob by Saul the tabernacle was removed to Gibeon, and the worship of the congregation continued there. From this we may also explain in a very simple manner the repeated allusions to two high priests in David's time (2-Samuel 18:17; 2-Samuel 15:24, 2-Samuel 15:29, 2-Samuel 15:35; 1-Chronicles 15:11; 1-Chronicles 18:16). The reason why the Lord did not answer Saul is to be sought for in the wickedness of Saul, which rendered him utterly unworthy to find favour with God.