About the story of 1 Samuel 28, a member of this forum noticed the following:
The WT makes much of the fact that Saul and his sons weren't killed the next day as stated by Samuel through the witch.
So Leloaia gave the following comment:
....It is ironic how the Society denies that there are contradictions in the Bible, and yet is eager to make this into a contradiction in order to deny the basic sense of the story. Yet it is clear that we do not have a strict chronological progression but a redaction of narrative units that are not linearly sequential. The story in ch. 28 belongs with the story in ch. 31 (both taking Saul's point of view), whereas the Ziklag story in ch. 29-30 (which takes David's point of view) is not directly related to the Saul story in terms of narrative order. So in 28:4, the Philistines are encamped at Shunem and Saul is encamped at Gilboa with the two armies in close proximity (28:5), and Saul's forces are still at Gilboa in 31:1. But in the David-centered story in ch. 29, we learn that the Philistine army is not at Shunem but at Aphek and thus starts at a time prior to the story in ch. 28, at the time when the Philistines were still on the coast at Aphek gathering forces for the battle of Gilboa. This is prior to the encamping of the Philistines at Shunem. Some Philistines questioned David's allegience to their mission and so David and his men were not mustered to the battle at Gilboa but were sent to Philistine land far away in Ziklag, and it took several days for David to reach Ziklag and the David-centered story tells what happened there (ch. 30). It took three days for David to journey from Aphek to Ziklag, but it is not stated how long it took for the Philistine army to move from Aphek to Shunem near Jezreel. All we know is that David left for Ziklag on the same day that the Philistines left Aphek for the valley of Jezreel (29:11). And then sometime later, when the Philistines were already encamped at Shunem, Saul went to En-Dor and was told that he would die the next day. So what is related in ch. 29-30 overlaps with that of ch. 28, 31, with one story telling what happens from Saul's point of view and the other relating what happens from David's point of view. There is no indication that Saul was not killed the next day as prophesied by Samuel, and the story emphasizes that Saul and his sons and his men died together on "that same day" (31:6), which reflects what is predicted in 28:19.
Indeed, the OT is a mess.