2 Samuel 21:10

_AND RIZPAH THE DAUGHTER OF AIAH TOOK SACKCLOTH, AND SPREAD IT FOR HER UPON THE ROCK, FROM THE BEGINNING OF HARVEST UNTIL WATER DROPPED UPON THEM OUT OF HEAVEN, AND SUFFERED NEITHER THE BIRDS OF THE AIR TO REST ON THEM BY DAY, NOR THE BEASTS OF THE FIELD BY NIGHT._ Rizpah ... took sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, х_ HASAQ_ (H8242)] - the sackcloth garment of widowhood, and, reclining upon it, kept watch, as the relatives of executed persons were accustomed to do, day and night, to scare the birds and beasts of prey away from the remains exposed on the low-standing gibbets (Psalms 79:2: cf. Homer's 'Iliad,' and the story of the Ephesian matron). On that shadeless rock she would be exposed to the fierce heat of the sun during the whole of a Syrian summer; for the execution took place in spring, about the time, of t

10-14 That a guilty land should enjoy many years of plenty, calls for gratitude; and we need not wonder misused abundance should be punished with scarcity; yet how few are disposed to ask of the Lord concerning the sinful cause, while numbers search for the second causes by which he is pleased to work! But the Lord will plead the cause of those who cannot or will not avenge themselves; and the prayers of the poor are of great power. When God sent rain to water the earth, these bodies were buried, for then it appeared that God was entreated for the land. When justice is done on earth, vengeance from heaven ceases. God is pacified, and is entreated for us through Christ, who was hanged on a tree, and so made a curse for us, to do away our guilt, though he was himself guiltless....

Verse 2 Samuel 21:10. _RIZPAH - TOOK SACKCLOTH_] Who can read the account of Rizpah's maternal affection for her sons that were now hanged, without feeling his mind deeply impressed with sorrows? Did God require this sacrifice of Saul's sons, probably all innocent of the alleged crime of their father? Was there no other method of averting the Divine displeasure? Was the requisition of the Gibeonites to have Saul's sons sacrificed to God, to be considered as an oracle of God? Certainly not; God will not have man's blood for sacrifice, no more than he will have swine's blood. The famine might have been removed, and the land properly purged, by offering the sacrifices prescribed by the law, and by a general humiliation of the people. _UNTIL WATER DROPPED UPON THEM_] Until the time of the _autumnal_ rains, which in that country commenc

DROPPED - Rather, “poured,” the proper word for heavy rain Exodus 9:33. The “early rain,” or heavy rain of autumn, usually began in October, so that Rizpah’s devoted watch continued about six months. How rare rain was in harvest we learn from 1 Samuel 12:17; Proverbs 26:1. The reason of the bodies being left unburied, contrary to Deuteronomy 21:23, probably was that the death of these men being an expiation of the guilt of a violated oath, they were to remain until the fall of rain should give the assurance that God’s anger was appeased, and the national sin forgiven....

EXPOSITION 2 SAMUEL 21:1 THERE WAS A FAMINE IN THE DAYS OF DAVID; Hebrew, _and there was. _There is an entire absence of any mark of time to show in what part of David's reign this famine took place. It does not even follow, from the mention of Mephibosheth's name, that it must have happened at a time subsequent to the sending for that prince from Machir's house; for it may have been the search after the descendants of Saul which made David remember the son of his old friend. The burial, however, of the bones of Saul and Jonathan as an act of respect to the slaughtered king makes it probable that the narrative belongs to the early part of David's reign, as also does the apparent fact that the seven victims were all young and unmarried. Mephibosheth, we read, had a young son when David sent for him. Now, he was five years old whe

AND RIZPAH THE DAUGHTER OF AIAH TOOK SACKCLOTH,.... Both as a token of mourning for her sons, and as fittest to defend from the weather, the heat by day of cold by night: AND SPREAD IT FOR HER UPON THE ROCK; the hill on which her sons were hanged; this she spread as a canopy or tent to sit under, and be covered with it; not to cover the bodies with it, but herself, and where she sat to mourn the loss of her sons, and to watch their bodies, that they might not be devoured by birds and breasts of prey, as after observed: and here she sat FROM THE BEGINNING OF HARVEST UNTIL WATER DROPPED ON THEM OUT OF HEAVEN; that is, as the Jews say n, from the sixteenth of Nisan, when barley harvest began, to the seventeenth of Marchesvan, when the former rain fell; that is, from the beginning of April to the beginning of October: but it is not likely that she continued so long watching the bodies, nor...

IV. THE APPENDIX TO THE HISTORY OF DAVID 1. The Famines and the Wars with the Philistines CHAPTER 21 _ 1. The Famine and the Gibeonites (2 Samuel 21:1)_ 2. The Wars with the Philistines (2 Samuel 21:15) The fourth section of the second book of Samuel is an appendix to the history of David. When the great famine happened in the days of David we do not know. After the famine had returned year after year, for three years, David inquired of the Lord. Why did he not inquire in the first year? It is an evidence of the low spiritual state which prevailed at that time. The answer which David received revealed the cause of the judgment which rested upon the land. It was Saul and the blood-guilt in having slain the Gibeonites. The story of the Gibeonites is recorded in...

1 SAMUEL 21-24. These Chapter s form an appendix of material from various sources. One of the editors, perhaps the one to whom the book substantially owes its present form, seems to have met with difficulties in an attempted rearrangement of some of the material; finding no other convenient place for 2 Samuel 21:1 Samuel 24, he added them at the end, as a kind of appendix. He or someone else inserted between them the catalogue of heroes (2 Samuel 21:15; 2 Samuel 23:8); later on someone inserted 1 Samuel 22 and 1 Samuel 23:8 in the middle of the catalogue. The reader must remember that ancient editors and scribes had no

_spread it_ As a rough tent to shelter her while she watched the corpses. The usage of the word is decisive against understanding it to mean _spread it under her for a bed_, as is done by the Vulg. and most commentators. _dropped upon them_ WAS POURED UPON THEM (cp. Exodus 9:33): that is, until heavy rains shewed that the crime was expiated and the judgment of drought withdrawn. The bodies were left hanging, instead of being taken down on the day of execution (Deuteronomy 21:23), until assurance was given that the satisfaction had been accepted. If the rain did not fall until the usual season, Rizpah must have kept her devoted watch for six months, from April to October. _neither the birds … nor the beasts_ To become the prey of bird and beast the certain fate of an unbu

AND RIZPAH THE DAUGHTER OF AIAH, &C.— Commentators have justly observed from hence, that the hanging of these carcases for so long a time in the open air, could not be in consequence of any command from David, because it was an open violation of the law of God, Deuteronomy 21:22 which commanded that the carcases of all those who were hanged should not remain even one night upon the tree; and the reason of the law, namely, _lest the land be defiled,_ held strong in the present case, inasmuch as the stench of so many carcases for so long a time in a malignant drought, and at the hottest season of the year, might have added a pestilence to the famine; a danger, which it is impossible to imagine that David would deliberately devise both against his people and himself, and consequently demonstrates itself imposed upon him by a superior power; confuting all the little cavils o