Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Samuel 9:25

"And when they were come down from the high place into the city, he communed with Saul upon the housetop." — 1 Samuel 9:25 (ASV)

And when they were come down. —After the public sacrificial meal at which such notable honors were shown to the Benjamite stranger and his servant, the prophet-judge detained Saul from continuing his journey homeward and persuaded him to remain as his guest that night at Ramah. He conducted him to the flat roof of his house, often a favorite place in the East for quiet conversation or rest, and where an honored guest was frequently lodged for the night. There, the prophet had a long interview with his young guest. The conversation that evening probably did not focus on the royal dignity so soon to be conferred on Saul; Samuel spoke at length about that, we know, on the following morning.

The solemn words of the old man that evening on the house-top in “Ramah of the Watchers” referred, no doubt, to the sad religious and political decline of the people of God, from which he (Samuel) had labored, not unsuccessfully, to rescue them, and to “the opposition of the heathen nations, the causes of the impotency of Israel to oppose their enemies, the necessity of a religious change in the people, and of a leader thoroughly obedient to the Lord.”—Otto von Gerlach, quoted in Lange.

It has been suggested that this conversation was the connecting link between that on the height (1 Samuel 9:19–20) and the communication Samuel made to Saul the following morning. The Septuagint reads here, instead of “communed with Saul on the top of the house,” “they strewed a couch for Saul on the top of the house, and he lay down.” But the Chaldee and Syriac Versions agree with the Hebrew text. This strange Septuagint variation is apparently a correction. These Greek translators could not understand a conversation between the prophet and Saul taking place in the evening, when the announcement of the crown was made so formally on the following morning. Why did Samuel not tell Saul of God’s intention during that evening spent together?