2 Samuel 21:9

_AND HE DELIVERED THEM INTO THE HANDS OF THE GIBEONITES, AND THEY HANGED THEM IN THE HILL BEFORE THE LORD: AND 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._ They hanged them in the hill before the Lord. Deeming themselves not bound by the criminal law of Israel (Deuteronomy 21:22), their intention was to let the bodies hang until God, propitiated by this offering, should send rain upon the land, because the lack of it had occasioned the famine. It was a pagan practice to gibbet men with a view of appeasing the anger of the gods in seasons of famine; and the Gibeonites, who were a remnant of the Amorites (2 Samuel 21:2), though brought to the knowledge of the true God, were not it seems, free fr

1-9 Every affliction arises from sin, and should lead us to repent and humble ourselves before God; but some troubles especially show that they are sent to bring sin to remembrance. God's judgments often look a great way back, which requires us to do so, when we are under his rebukes. It is not for us to object against the people's smarting for the sin of their king; perhaps they helped him. Nor against this generation suffering for the sin of the last. God often visits the sins of the fathers upon the children, and he gives no account of any matters. Time does not wear out the guilt of sin; nor can we build hopes of escape upon the delay of judgments. If we cannot understand all the reasons of Providence in this matter, still we have no right to demand that God should acquaint us with those reasons. It must be right, because it is the will of God, and in the end it will be proved to be...

Verse 2 Samuel 21:9. _IN THE BEGINNING OF BARLEY HARVEST._] This happened in Judea about the vernal equinox, or the 21st of _March_....

IN THE FIRST DAYS - The barley harvest (about the middle or toward the end of April) was earlier than the wheat harvest Exodus 9:31; Ruth 1:22....

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 HE DELIVERED THEM INTO THE HANDS OF THE GIBEONITES,.... The two sons of Rizpah and the five sons of Merab, two sons of Saul and five grandsons: AND THEY HANGED THEM IN THE HILL BEFORE THE LORD; in the hill at Gibeah, that they might be seen by all that passed by, and serve to deter from such evils, which brought on them that punishment; gibbetings or crucifixions were commonly made on hills and mountains l: the phrase, "before the Lord", is either the same as "unto the Lord", 2 Samuel 21:6; to make atonement to the Lord, and in his sight; or it denotes that it was done publicly before the sun, and in the sight of it; for it cannot mean before the ark, the symbol of the divine Presence, for that was not there: AND THEY FELL [ALL] SEVEN TOGETHER; they were hanged together, and died at one and the same time: and were put to death in t

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

_in the first_days] Barley harvest preceded wheat harvest, and began about the middle or end of April. Cp. Exodus 9:31-32; Ruth 1:22; Ruth 2:23....

AND HE DELIVERED THEM INTO THE HANDS OF THE GIBEONITES— David had given Saul his oath, that "he would not cut off his seed after him, nor destroy his name out of his father's house." Had Saul's family committed crimes worthy of death, David's oath would have been no reason against punishing them according to their deserts; and such punishment, if deserved, had been no breach of his oath. If David did not cut off his seed after him, so as to destroy his name out of his father's house, he did not violate his oath to Saul. Now David did not cut off one single person of Saul's family, whose death had a tendency to destroy his name out of his father's house. The seed is always reckoned by the males, and not the females of a family; and the name in a father's house could only be preserved by the male descendants. But David gave up only two bastards, the sons of Rizpah, Saul's concubine, who we...