For his bloody house. — Better, for the blood-guilty house. Saul’s family and descendants are regarded, according to the universal ideas of the times, as sharers in his guilt. The story of the Gibeonites and of Joshua’s league with them is told in Joshua 9, but Saul’s attempt to destroy them is mentioned only here. It is plain, from what is said of them in 2 Samuel 21:8, that they had never become incorporated with the Israelites by circumcision, but remained a distinct people. Saul’s sin consisted in the violation of the solemn oath, in the Lord’s name, by which the nation of Israel was bound to the Gibeonites. “His zeal” in that case was of the same ungodly character with many other acts of his reign, in which pride, arrogance, and self-will were cloaked under a zeal for God’s honour and His people’s welfare.
The Amorites. — More precisely, the Gibeonites were Hivites (Joshua 9:7); but they are called Amorites (=mountaineers) as a frequent general name for the old people of Palestine.
Two questions are often asked in connection with this narrative: (1) Why the punishment of Saul’s sin should have been so long delayed? and (2) why it should at last have fallen upon David and his people, who had no share in the commission of the sin? The answer to both questions is in the fact that Israel both sinned and was punished as a nation. Saul slew the Gibeonites, not simply as the son of Kish, but as the king of Israel, and therefore involved all Israel with him in the violation of the national oath; and hence, until the evil should be put away by the execution of the immediate offender or his representatives, all Israel must suffer. The lesson of the continuity of the nation’s life, and of its continued responsibility from age to age, was greatly enhanced by the delay. Besides this, there were so many other grievous sins for which Saul was to be punished, that it was hardly possible to bring out during his lifetime the special Divine displeasure at this one.