1 Now there was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year; and David ainquired of the Lord. And the Lord answered, “Itis because of Saul and his1 bloodthirsty house, because he killed the Gibeonites.”
2 So the king called the Gibeonites and spoke to them. Now the Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel, but aof the remnant of the Amorites; the children of Israel had sworn protection to them, but Saul had sought to kill them bin his zeal for the children of Israel and Judah.
3 Therefore David said to the Gibeonites, “What shall I do for you? And with what shall I make atonement, that you may bless athe inheritance of the Lord?”
4 And the Gibeonites said to him, “We will have no silver or gold from Saul or from his house, nor shall you kill any man in Israel for us.” So he said, “Whatever you say, I will do for you.”
5 Then they answered the king, “As for the man who consumed us and plotted against us, that we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the territories of Israel,
6 let seven men of his descendants be delivered ato us, and we will hang them before the Lordbin Gibeah of Saul, cwhom the Lord chose.” And the king said, “I will give them.”
7 But the king spared aMephibosheth the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, because of bthe Lord’s oath that was between them, between David and Jonathan the son of Saul.
8 So the king took Armoni and Mephibosheth, the two sons of aRizpah the daughter of Aiah, whom she bore to Saul, and the five sons of1 Michal the daughter of Saul, whom she2 brought up for Adriel the son of Barzillai the Meholathite;
9 and he delivered them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them on the hill abefore the Lord. So they fell, all seven together, and were put to death in the days of harvest, in the first days, in the beginning of barley harvest.
10 Now aRizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth and spread it for herself on the rock, bfrom the beginning of harvest until the late rains poured on them from heaven. And she did not allow the birds of the air to rest on them by day nor the beasts of the field by night.
11 And David was told what Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, the concubine of Saul, had done.
in his zeal to the children of Israel and Judah—Under pretense of a rigorous and faithful execution of the divine law regarding the extermination of the Canaanites, he set himself to expel or destroy those whom Joshua had been deceived into sparing. His real object seems to have been, that the possessions of the Gibeonites, being forfeited to the crown, might be divided among his own people (compare I Samuel 22:7). At all events, his proceeding against this people was in violation of a solemn oath, and involving national guilt. The famine was, in the wise and just retribution of Providence, made a national punishment, since the Hebrews either assisted in the massacre, or did not interpose to prevent it; since they neither endeavored to repair the wrong, nor expressed any horror of it; and since a general protracted chastisement might have been indispensable to inspire a proper respect and protection to the Gibeonite remnant that survived.
Other Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown entries containing 2 Samuel 21:2:
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