The Gibeonites and the Famine
1 There was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year; and David sought the face of Yahweh. Yahweh said, “It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he put the Gibeonites to death.” 2 The king called the Gibeonites and said to them (now the Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel, but of the remnant of the Amorites, and the children of Israel had sworn to them; and Saul sought to kill them in his zeal for the children of Israel and Judah); 3 and David said to the Gibeonites, “What should I do for you? And with what should I make atonement, that you may bless Yahweh’s inheritance?” 4 The Gibeonites said to him, “It is no matter of silver or gold between us and Saul or his house; neither is it for us to put any man to death in Israel.” He said, “I will do for you whatever you say.” 5 They said to the king, “The man who consumed us and who plotted against us, that we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the borders of Israel, 6 let seven men of his sons be delivered to us, and we will hang them up to Yahweh in Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of Yahweh.” The king said, “I will give them.” 7 But the king spared Mephibosheth the son of Jonathan the son of Saul, because of Yahweh’s oath that was between them, between David and Jonathan the son of Saul. 8 But the king took the two sons of Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, whom she bore to Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth; and the five sons of Merab the daughter of Saul, whom she bore to Adriel the son of Barzillai the Meholathite. 9 He delivered them into the hands of the Gibeonites; and they hanged them on the mountain before Yahweh, and all seven of them fell together. They were put to death in the days of harvest, in the first days, at the beginning of barley harvest. 10 Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth and spread it for herself on the rock, from the beginning of harvest until water poured on them from the sky. She allowed neither the birds of the sky to rest on them by day, nor the animals of the field by night. 11 David was told what Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, the concubine of Saul, had done. 12 So David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son from the men of Jabesh Gilead, who had stolen them from the street of Beth Shan, where the Philistines had hanged them in the day that the Philistines killed Saul in Gilboa; 13 and he brought up from there the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son. They also gathered the bones of those who were hanged. 14 They buried the bones of Saul and Jonathan his son in the country of Benjamin in Zela, in the tomb of Kish his father; and they performed all that the king commanded. After that, God answered prayer for the land.
A three-year famine traced to a broken oath, seven of Saul's descendants executed for it — and a mother on a rock who shames a king into a burial.
There was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year; and David sought the face of Yahweh. Yahweh said, “It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he put the Gibeonites to death.”
The oath in question was sworn centuries earlier, obtained by deception, and honored anyway Joshua 9:15 Joshua 9:19. Saul broke it in his zeal for the children of Israel 2 Samuel 21:2 — a massacre committed out of patriotism, and no less a crime for that. The episode's premise is that a national promise made in God's name binds the nation until it is answered, and that zeal for one's own people is not a defense.
The Gibeonites said to him, “It is no matter of silver or gold between us and Saul or his house; neither is it for us to put any man to death in Israel.” He said, “I will do for you whatever you say.”
The Gibeonites refuse compensation and refuse to act on their own authority, then name their terms: seven of Saul's sons, executed at Saul's own town 2 Samuel 21:6. It is the harshest passage in the book, and the narrative reports it as their demand and David's concession rather than as God's instruction — the oracle named the cause of the famine and did not prescribe this remedy. The law forbade putting children to death for their fathers Deuteronomy 24:16, which is the tension readers should feel rather than resolve: an ancient blood-guilt settlement, conceded by a king under pressure, recorded without approval.
But the king spared Mephibosheth the son of Jonathan the son of Saul, because of Yahweh’s oath that was between them, between David and Jonathan the son of Saul.
One oath is being answered by killing and another is keeping a man alive in the same sentence. David's covenant with Jonathan holds even here — the book's steadiest thread — and the spared man is the one who eats at his table.
Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth and spread it for herself on the rock, from the beginning of harvest until water poured on them from the sky. She allowed neither the birds of the sky to rest on them by day, nor the animals of the field by night.
And then the passage is taken over by a woman with no power at all. Rizpah — Saul's concubine, whose name once started a quarrel between a general and a puppet king 2 Samuel 3:7 — camps on the rock beside the bodies of her two sons through the whole dry season, driving off birds by day and animals by night. Months of it. She cannot undo the executions; she can refuse to let them be desecrated, and she does, in public, until the rains come.
David was told what Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, the concubine of Saul, had done.
Her vigil moves the king to do what should have been done years earlier: he collects the bones of Saul and Jonathan from Jabesh Gilead and buries them, with the seven, in the family tomb at Kish's grave 2 Samuel 21:12–14. Only then does the land's judgment lift. A grieving woman's stubbornness, and not a royal policy, is what finally puts Israel's first king to rest.
held with reason What this mark means