1 Chronicles 10:13-14 delivers the verdict on Saul's death: he died for his trespass against the LORD, for the word of the LORD he did not keep, and for asking counsel of a medium instead of inquiring of the LORD—so the LORD killed him and turned the kingdom to David the son of Jesse.
1 Chronicles 10:13-14 interprets everything the chapter has described. These two verses are the Chronicler's own contribution, absent from the parallel in 1 Samuel 31:So Saul died for his trespass which he committed against the LORD (v 13). The opening words, So Saul died (v 13), gather up the whole battle just told, and for his trespass hands down its cause. The word trespass is the same charge Chronicles levels at the eastern tribes who "acted treacherously against the God of their fathers" (1 Chronicles 5:25) and at Judah, "carried away into exile to Babylon for their unfaithfulness" (1 Chronicles 9:1). Breaking faith with God, in the Chronicler's account of history, is the root cause behind lost thrones and lost lands. The phrase which he committed against the LORD (v 13) locates the offense above every earthly explanation: Philistine archers shot the arrows on Gilboa, and the decisive breach ran between the king and his God.
The first specification is disobedience: Sauldiedbecause of the word of the LORD which he did not keep (v. 13). Two episodes from Samuel stand behind this clause. At Gilgal, Saul grew impatient waiting for Samuel and offered the burnt offering himself, and Samuel told him, "You have acted foolishly; you have not kept the commandment of the LORD your God... your kingdom shall not endure" (1 Samuel 13:13-14). Later, commanded to devote Amalek to destruction, Saul spared King Agag and the best of the flocks, and heard the sentence that sealed his reign: "Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, He has also rejected you from being king" (1 Samuel 15:23), with its enduring lesson, "to obey is better than sacrifice" (1 Samuel 15:22). The pattern in both episodes is partial obedience presented as full obedience—religious activity substituted for submission to what God actually said. The Chronicler compresses both stories into one clause: there was a word of the LORD, and the king did not keep it.
The second specification is where Saulturned instead: and also because he asked counsel of a medium, making inquiry of it (v 13). The night before Gilboa, Saul disguised himself and visited the medium at En-dor, asking her to conjure up Samuel (1 Samuel 28:7-8). The law of Moses had barred this door absolutely: "Do not turn to mediums or spiritists; do not seek them out to be defiled by them" (Leviticus 19:31), and it warned that God would set His face against the person who did (Leviticus 20:6; Deuteronomy 18:10-12). Saul knew the standard well—he had himself "removed from the land those who were mediums and spiritists" (1 Samuel 28:3). The king enforced God's law publicly and broke it privately in his hour of fear. Making inquiry of it, seeking guidance from the realm of the dead, was the final open act of a heart that had stopped trusting the living God.
The third clause names the failure beneath the other two: Sauldid not inquire of the LORD (v 14). The book of Samuel records that before the battle "Saul inquired of the LORD," and "the LORD did not answer him, whether by dreams or by Urim or by prophets" (1 Samuel 28:6), and the two statements ask to be read together honestly. Saul made a formal approach at the end, under the shadow of the Philistine army; when the answer delayed, he abandoned the LORD's silence for the medium's voice within a single day. An inquiry that gives up on God and walks to En-dor by nightfall reveals its own character. Seeking the LORD in Scripture is a posture of the heart sustained over a life—the very thing Saul's career lacked. Chronicles itself will soon note the same neglect in another form, when David gathers Israel to bring up the ark "for we did not seek it in the days of Saul" (1 Chronicles 13:3). Measured across his reign, the verdict stands: the king consulted the LORD as a last resort and the medium as a real one, and a last-resort God is a god already abandoned. The verdict weighs the whole man, and the whole man did not inquire of the LORD (v 14).
The indictment gains color from the man who received the kingdom. David's story is stitched together with the opposite habit: "David inquired of the LORD" before Keilah (1 Samuel 23:2, 4), after the disaster at Ziklag (1 Samuel 30:8), and twice more when he faced the Philistines as king (2 Samuel 5:19, 23). The contrast is the Chronicler's whole case in miniature. Two kings faced the same enemies with the same God available; one asked counsel of a medium (v 13), and one askedcounsel of the LORD, again and again, as a way of life. The kingdom followed the asking.
Then comes the sentence, with God as the subject of both verbs: Therefore He killed him and turned the kingdom to David the son of Jesse (v 14). The statement is bracing. Philistine archers, a failed armor bearer, and Saul's own sword all played their parts, yet Scripture assigns the death to the LORD—He killed him—and the transfer of the crown to Him as well: He turned the kingdom to David the son of Jesse (v 14). God's judgments work through ordinary agents on ordinary battlefields, and history's verdicts belong finally to Him. Samuel had spoken this outcome in advance—"The LORD has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to your neighbor, who is better than you" (1 Samuel 15:28)—and on Gilboa the tearing became visible. The same sovereign hand that removed the king had already prepared his replacement, sending Samuel to Bethlehem years earlier to anoint a shepherd boy while Saul still reigned (1 Samuel 16:1, 13).
The final phrase carries the weight of the whole chapter: God turned the kingdom to David the son of Jesse (v 14). The kingdom outlived the king who lost it—it changed hands, because it had always belonged to the LORD to give. The next chapters keep using this very verb: the armed men who streamed to Hebron came "to turn the kingdom of Saul to him, according to the word of the LORD" (1 Chronicles 12:23). Here is the hinge on which all of Chronicles swings. Nine chapters of genealogy ran from Adam to Saul's house; one chapter buries that house; and from the next verse onward the book belongs to David, the temple, and the promises attached to his throne. For the community that first received Chronicles—exiles returned from Babylon under foreign rule, with no king of their own—the message ran in both directions. Unfaithfulness has real consequences: a trespass can cost a kingdom, as it had cost them their land (1 Chronicles 9:1). And hope has a real foundation: the God who turned the kingdom once, according to His word, still governed their history and still kept His promises to the line of David the son of Jesse—promises Israel's prophets carried forward to a coming Shepherd-King from Bethlehem (Micah 5:2). The chapter that begins with Israel in flight ends with God in complete control.
1 Chronicles 10:13-14
13 So Saul died for his trespass which he committed against the LORD, because of the word of the LORD which he did not keep; and also because he asked counsel of a medium, making inquiry of it,
14 and did not inquire of the LORD. Therefore He killed him and turned the kingdom to David the son of Jesse.
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1 Chronicles 10:13-14 meaning
1 Chronicles 10:13-14 interprets everything the chapter has described. These two verses are the Chronicler's own contribution, absent from the parallel in 1 Samuel 31: So Saul died for his trespass which he committed against the LORD (v 13). The opening words, So Saul died (v 13), gather up the whole battle just told, and for his trespass hands down its cause. The word trespass is the same charge Chronicles levels at the eastern tribes who "acted treacherously against the God of their fathers" (1 Chronicles 5:25) and at Judah, "carried away into exile to Babylon for their unfaithfulness" (1 Chronicles 9:1). Breaking faith with God, in the Chronicler's account of history, is the root cause behind lost thrones and lost lands. The phrase which he committed against the LORD (v 13) locates the offense above every earthly explanation: Philistine archers shot the arrows on Gilboa, and the decisive breach ran between the king and his God.
The first specification is disobedience: Saul died because of the word of the LORD which he did not keep (v. 13). Two episodes from Samuel stand behind this clause. At Gilgal, Saul grew impatient waiting for Samuel and offered the burnt offering himself, and Samuel told him, "You have acted foolishly; you have not kept the commandment of the LORD your God... your kingdom shall not endure" (1 Samuel 13:13-14). Later, commanded to devote Amalek to destruction, Saul spared King Agag and the best of the flocks, and heard the sentence that sealed his reign: "Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, He has also rejected you from being king" (1 Samuel 15:23), with its enduring lesson, "to obey is better than sacrifice" (1 Samuel 15:22). The pattern in both episodes is partial obedience presented as full obedience—religious activity substituted for submission to what God actually said. The Chronicler compresses both stories into one clause: there was a word of the LORD, and the king did not keep it.
The second specification is where Saul turned instead: and also because he asked counsel of a medium, making inquiry of it (v 13). The night before Gilboa, Saul disguised himself and visited the medium at En-dor, asking her to conjure up Samuel (1 Samuel 28:7-8). The law of Moses had barred this door absolutely: "Do not turn to mediums or spiritists; do not seek them out to be defiled by them" (Leviticus 19:31), and it warned that God would set His face against the person who did (Leviticus 20:6; Deuteronomy 18:10-12). Saul knew the standard well—he had himself "removed from the land those who were mediums and spiritists" (1 Samuel 28:3). The king enforced God's law publicly and broke it privately in his hour of fear. Making inquiry of it, seeking guidance from the realm of the dead, was the final open act of a heart that had stopped trusting the living God.
The third clause names the failure beneath the other two: Saul did not inquire of the LORD (v 14). The book of Samuel records that before the battle "Saul inquired of the LORD," and "the LORD did not answer him, whether by dreams or by Urim or by prophets" (1 Samuel 28:6), and the two statements ask to be read together honestly. Saul made a formal approach at the end, under the shadow of the Philistine army; when the answer delayed, he abandoned the LORD's silence for the medium's voice within a single day. An inquiry that gives up on God and walks to En-dor by nightfall reveals its own character. Seeking the LORD in Scripture is a posture of the heart sustained over a life—the very thing Saul's career lacked. Chronicles itself will soon note the same neglect in another form, when David gathers Israel to bring up the ark "for we did not seek it in the days of Saul" (1 Chronicles 13:3). Measured across his reign, the verdict stands: the king consulted the LORD as a last resort and the medium as a real one, and a last-resort God is a god already abandoned. The verdict weighs the whole man, and the whole man did not inquire of the LORD (v 14).
The indictment gains color from the man who received the kingdom. David's story is stitched together with the opposite habit: "David inquired of the LORD" before Keilah (1 Samuel 23:2, 4), after the disaster at Ziklag (1 Samuel 30:8), and twice more when he faced the Philistines as king (2 Samuel 5:19, 23). The contrast is the Chronicler's whole case in miniature. Two kings faced the same enemies with the same God available; one asked counsel of a medium (v 13), and one asked counsel of the LORD, again and again, as a way of life. The kingdom followed the asking.
Then comes the sentence, with God as the subject of both verbs: Therefore He killed him and turned the kingdom to David the son of Jesse (v 14). The statement is bracing. Philistine archers, a failed armor bearer, and Saul's own sword all played their parts, yet Scripture assigns the death to the LORD—He killed him—and the transfer of the crown to Him as well: He turned the kingdom to David the son of Jesse (v 14). God's judgments work through ordinary agents on ordinary battlefields, and history's verdicts belong finally to Him. Samuel had spoken this outcome in advance—"The LORD has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to your neighbor, who is better than you" (1 Samuel 15:28)—and on Gilboa the tearing became visible. The same sovereign hand that removed the king had already prepared his replacement, sending Samuel to Bethlehem years earlier to anoint a shepherd boy while Saul still reigned (1 Samuel 16:1, 13).
The final phrase carries the weight of the whole chapter: God turned the kingdom to David the son of Jesse (v 14). The kingdom outlived the king who lost it—it changed hands, because it had always belonged to the LORD to give. The next chapters keep using this very verb: the armed men who streamed to Hebron came "to turn the kingdom of Saul to him, according to the word of the LORD" (1 Chronicles 12:23). Here is the hinge on which all of Chronicles swings. Nine chapters of genealogy ran from Adam to Saul's house; one chapter buries that house; and from the next verse onward the book belongs to David, the temple, and the promises attached to his throne. For the community that first received Chronicles—exiles returned from Babylon under foreign rule, with no king of their own—the message ran in both directions. Unfaithfulness has real consequences: a trespass can cost a kingdom, as it had cost them their land (1 Chronicles 9:1). And hope has a real foundation: the God who turned the kingdom once, according to His word, still governed their history and still kept His promises to the line of David the son of Jesse—promises Israel's prophets carried forward to a coming Shepherd-King from Bethlehem (Micah 5:2). The chapter that begins with Israel in flight ends with God in complete control.