1Sa 9:25-27
When the sacrificial meal was over, Samuel and Saul went down from the high place into the town, and he (Samuel) talked with him upon the roof (of the house into which Samuel had entered). The flat roofs of the East were used as placed of retirement for private conversation (see at Deu 22:8). This conversation did not refer of course to the call of Samuel to the royal dignity, for that was not made known to him as a word of Jehovah till the following day (1Sa 9:27); but it was intended to prepare him for that announcement: so that O. v. Gerlach's conjecture is probably the correct one, viz., that Samuel “talked with Saul concerning the deep religious and political degradation of the people of God, the oppression of the heathen, the causes of the inability of the Israelites to stand against these foes, the necessity for a conversion of the people, and the want of a leader who was entirely devoted to the Lord.”