1 Samuel 10:8

Thou shalt go down before me to Gilgal. We find in 1 Samuel 13:8-13 a meeting at Gilgal so exactly parallel to what is arranged here that we cannot help looking upon this, again, as a sort of sign to be fulfilled at a later period. It is no argument against it that Gilgal was the place where in the mean while Saul was solemnly inaugurated king; for he was appointed in order that he might deliver Israel from the Philistines ( 1 Samuel 9:16 ), and we may feel sure that this grand purpose would form the subject of conversation between the prophet and the soldier, either on the house-top or the next morning. In this conversation Gilgal would be selected as the place where Saul would assemble Israel for the war of independence (so Rashi and other Jewish interpreters); and so great an enterprise must necessarily be begun with religious rites, and Saul was to wait a full week for the prophet's coming, both to try his faith, which ought to have been confirmed by the fulfilment of the three appointed signs, and in order that the war might be undertaken under the same holy auspices as his own election to the kingdom. The two years' interval, were it really so long, would give time for Saul's character to develop under the forcing influences of royalty, and it would then be proved, when he felt himself every inch a king, whether he was still as amenable to the Divine authority as when he was first summoned from obscurity to mount a kingly throne. But, really, the words in 1 Samuel 13:1 do not justify this conclusion, and most probably the occurrences mentioned in that chapter followed immediately upon Saul's confirmation as king.