The Philistines came to attack Israel, and King Saul was afraid. Despite what had happened the last time he had sought God’s help, he asked God for advice, but God wouldn’t answer him. (Maybe God was deep in thought, or busy, or traveling, or sleeping…)
Saul wanted to ask God’s prophet Samuel for advice, but by this time Samuel was dead. Saul decided to ask Samuel for advice anyway. So he found a witch and got her to resurrect the spirit of Samuel. He promised her that she would not be punished for what she was doing, which was against God’s law.
Ghost Samuel told Saul that God was now Saul’s enemy, that the Philistines would defeat Israel, that Saul and his sons would die tomorrow, and that Saul’s enemy David would take over Israel. God had decided to do all that to Saul because Saul hadn’t asked God for advice.
Now Saul was even more afraid. He went to war with the Philistines, and they killed all his sons. They also shot Saul with an arrow, but didn’t quite kill him. Saul didn’t want to be tortured and killed by the Philistines, so he tried to kill himself with his own sword. But that didn’t quite kill him either, so he got a passing Amalekite to kill him.
When David found out that his enemy had been killed at his own request by an Amalekite, David didn’t approve, so he had the Amalekite killed.
The end.
The moral of the story
Only kill people who don’t want to die.