2 Samuel 3:7, 21:1-14 · Women of Scripture · An Iconic Story
Rizpah
Gustave Doré, Doré's English Bible (1866), public domain
THE ARTWORKDoré draws the vigil of 2 Samuel 21:10: Rizpah alone on the rock, driving the birds of prey off the bodies of the hanged men. The engraving gives the scene its true scale, one woman against the open sky and the carrion birds, holding her ground through a watch the text measures in months.
Summary
Summary
A three-year famine, read as judgment for Saul's broken oath to the Gibeonites, ends with seven of Saul's male descendants handed over and hanged. Rizpah, mother of two of them, keeps vigil over the bodies for five months, guarding them from scavengers and saying nothing the text records. Her vigil reaches David, who buries Saul and Jonathan's bones at last, and the chapter closes: God was entreated for the land.
- Saul's broken oath to the Gibeonites, generations old, is read as the cause of a three-year famine David inquires of the LORD about.
- The Gibeonites refuse money and ask for seven of Saul's sons to be hanged; the text presents this as the price settled on, not a direct command from God.
- Rizpah spreads sackcloth on a rock and guards the bodies from birds by day and beasts by night, from barley harvest until the rain, five months, without one recorded word.
- News of her vigil moves David to finally bury Saul and Jonathan's long-unburied bones, along with the seven who were hanged.
- The chapter closes, "after that God was entreated for the land": a short line carrying the weight of the whole vigil.
A Famine, an Oath, and a Reckoning
2 Samuel 21:1-9, told plainly
A three-year famine drives David to inquire of the LORD. The answer points backward, to a broken oath: Saul had moved against the Gibeonites, a people Israel had sworn generations earlier to spare.
During the reign of David there was a famine for three successive years, and David sought the face of the LORD. And the LORD said, “It is because of the blood shed by Saul and his family, because he killed the Gibeonites.”The famine is read as judgment for a specific broken oath, not a general or unexplained calamity.
The Gibeonites met the children of Israel, and although other nations were slaughtered, they were kept for hewers of wood and drawers of water. And of such value were they in God's eyes that the family of Saul was destroyed for the wrong done to them.
Jerome· Against Jovinianus (4th century), on 2 Samuel 21:1
David asks the Gibeonites directly what would satisfy them. They refuse silver and gold and name a price instead: seven of Saul’s male descendants, handed over and hanged.
let seven of his male descendants be delivered to us so that we may hang them before the LORD at Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of the LORD.” “I will give them to you,” said the king.The Gibeonites name their own price. David grants it: "I will give them."
And he delivered them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them on the hill before the LORD. So all seven of them fell together; they were put to death in the first days of the harvest, at the beginning of the barley harvest.The timing is precise: the first days of harvest, the beginning of the barley harvest, the exact date Rizpah's vigil will begin from.
The Vigil, and Her Silence
2 Samuel 21:10-11: five months, and not one recorded word
Two of the seven hanged were Rizpah’s own sons. She spreads sackcloth on a rock and stays, guarding their bodies from the birds of the air by day and the beasts of the field by night, for five months, from the beginning of the barley harvest until the rains finally came.
And Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth and spread it out for herself on a rock. From the beginning of the harvest until the rain from heaven poured down on the bodies, she did not allow the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night.Barley harvest falls in April; the rains that end her vigil would not come until autumn. Five months, alone, on a rock.
Spread it - As a tent to dwell in: being informed that their bodies were not to be taken away speedily, as the course of the law was in ordinary cases, but were to continue there until God was intreated, and removed the present judgment.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765), on 2 Samuel 21:10
Scripture records no word from her, not one. Every other named woman in this small corpus of stories speaks at some point; Rizpah’s entire presence in the text is action, sustained for five months, and nothing else. The silence is the text’s own choice, not an absence this page fills in.
What Her Vigil Accomplished
2 Samuel 21:11-14: David moves, and the land is entreated
When David was told what Saul’s concubine Rizpah, daughter of Aiah, had done,Word of what Rizpah had done reaches David. It moves him to act.
David - Who heard it with so much approbation, that he thought fit to imitate her piety, being by her example provoked to do what hitherto he had neglected, to bestow an honourable interment on the remains of Saul and Jonathan, and, with them, upon those that are now put to death, that the honour done to them herein, might be some comfort to this disconsolate widow.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765), on 2 Samuel 21:11
David goes and retrieves the bones of Saul and Jonathan, long unburied since the Philistines had hung their bodies at Beth-shan, and buries the whole group, Saul, Jonathan, and the seven who were hanged, together in the family tomb.
And they buried the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan in Zela in the land of Benjamin, in the tomb of Saul’s father Kish. After they had done everything the king had commanded, God answered their prayers for the land.The chapter's closing line, seven words that carry the whole vigil's weight: after that God was entreated for the land.
After that - After those things were done which were before related; that is, after they were hanged up: for by that God was pacified, and not by their burial.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765), on 2 Samuel 21:14
Wesley draws a distinction worth keeping: the text credits the justice already carried out, not the later burial, with satisfying what the famine demanded. What Rizpah’s vigil accomplished was not the land’s healing directly; it was moving David to give Saul’s whole house, guilty and grieved together, an honorable burial at last.
The Hard Justice of the Passage
held as the text itself holds it, not resolved past what it says
The passage does not record God directly commanding that seven men be handed over and killed. It records a famine read as judgment for a broken oath, a price the Gibeonites themselves named, and a king who granted it. The commentary pool itself does not smooth this over.
He that is thus left hanged is accursed; therefore ordinary malefactors must not be so abused; but therefore these must, because they were sacrificed, not to the justice of the nation, but for the crime of the nation (no less a crime than the violation of the public faith) and for the deliverance of the nation from no less a judgment than a general famine.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on 2 Samuel 21:10
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.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1832), on 2 Samuel 21:10
Clarke raises the question directly rather than answering it for the reader: whether this was truly what God required, or a severe justice the ancient world’s own customs supplied and God did not overrule. This page holds the question open the same way the text does, rather than closing it either direction.
What the Text Doesn't Say
the silences are not gaps to be filled
What became of Rizpah afterward?
Once the burial is complete, Rizpah disappears from the narrative. No further word of her is recorded anywhere in Scripture.
How old were her sons?
Armoni and Mephibosheth (a different man from Jonathan’s son of the same name) are named only as Saul’s sons by Rizpah. Their ages, and any part they may or may not have had in Saul’s own actions against the Gibeonites, are never stated.
A Vigil That Moved a King
Rizpah says nothing the text records and does everything the text remembers her for. Five months on a bare rock, refusing to let scavengers touch what was left of her sons, reached a king who had let Saul and Jonathan lie unburied for years. Her silence carried further than most speeches in Scripture do.
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