“Rizpah”

October 20, 2018

“Rizpah”

Blessings folk!

Let’s look at the story again.

This is serious.
There are some profound truths here.

A couple of points.

There is no account in the Scripture describing Saul doing this exact thing to the Gibeonites.
There are a couple of things to which is may refer, but not the story.

Still, Saul had done something displeasing to God.
It broke covenant.
Either with the Gibeonites or with God…or both.

Due to this, famine had come upon the land.
David sought the Lord as to the cause.
The Lord responded.

We would do well to do likewise.

Seek the Lord.
Listen.
Do as He says.

Now, reread the passage…then the balance of the account that we did not see yesterday.

2 Sa 21:1-9

Now there was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year;
and David sought the presence of the LORD.
And the LORD said,
“It is for Saul and his bloody house, because he put the Gibeonites to death.”

So the king called the Gibeonites and spoke to them (now the Gibeonites were not of the sons of Israel but of the remnant of the Amorites, and the sons of Israel made a covenant with them, but Saul had sought to kill them in his zeal for the sons of Israel and Judah).

Thus David said to the Gibeonites,
“What should I do for you?
And how can I make atonement that you may bless the inheritance of the LORD?”

Then the Gibeonites said to him,
“We have no concern of silver or gold with Saul or his house,
nor is it for us to put any man to death in Israel.”
And he said, “I will do for you whatever you say.”

So they said to the king,
“The man who consumed us and who planned to exterminate us from remaining within any border of Israel,

let seven men from his sons be given to us, and we will hang them before the LORD in Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of the LORD.” And the king said, “I will give them.”

But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan the son of Saul, because of the oath of the LORD which was between them, between David and Saul’s son Jonathan.

So the king took the two sons of Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, Armoni and Mephibosheth whom she had borne to Saul, and the five sons of Merab the daughter of Saul, whom she had borne to Adriel the son of Barzillai the Meholathite.

Then he gave them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them in the mountain before the LORD, so that the seven of them fell together; and they were put to death in the first days of harvest at the beginning of barley harvest.

Now, the balance of the story…

2 Sa 21:10-14

And Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth and spread it for herself on the rock, from the beginning of harvest until it rained on them from the sky; and she allowed neither the birds of the sky to rest on them by day nor the beasts of the field by night.

When it was told David what Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, the concubine of Saul, had done,

then 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 open square of Beth-shan, where the Philistines had hanged them on the day the Philistines struck down Saul in Gilboa.

He brought up the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son from there,
and they gathered the bones of those who had been hanged.

They buried the bones of Saul and Jonathan his son in the country of Benjamin in Zela,
in the grave of Kish his father; thus they did all that the king commanded,
and after that God was moved by prayer for the land.

Rizpah mourned before the bodies.
She protected the bodies from animals.
David heard what Rizpah did.
David was apparently moved of heart.
He gathered the bodies of Saul, Jonathan and their offspring who had been hung to atone for the Giobeonites.
He buried them.

Afterwards God was move by prayer for the land.

Hummm?
What does all that mean?

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