2 Samuel 21:1 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Three years, year after year— Houbigant reads it, for three successive years. The crime for which the three years of famine were sent, was the murder of many of the Gibeonites by Saul, with a determined purpose utterly to destroy the remainder; and this contrary to the public oath and faith, which had been given them for their security, in cold blood, in time of peace, when the Gibeonites were unarmed and destitute of assistance, only to shew how zealous he was to oblige the people. This crime was therefore enormous, and highly aggravated; a crime which, if any could be so, was worthy the peculiar interposition of a just God; and which, though the punishment was long deferred, through a train of intervening occurrences, was nevertheless worthy to be retaliated by Providence, upon the first opportunity that was favourable for the purpose. The persons employed with Saul in perpetrating these murders, were those of his own house. He thought the destruction of these Gibeonites so popular a thing, that he was resolved that himself, his family, and relations, should have the whole credit of it. It was for Saul and his bloody house; 2 Samuel 21:1 for which reason the Gibeonites justly said, for us thou shalt not kill any man in Israel; but demanded seven of the sons of Saul, who was the man that consumed them, to be delivered up to them; 2 Samuel 21:4-6. And it is probable, from the choice David made, that the very persons whom he gave up were employed in this butchery, and enriched by the spoils of the Gibeonites, and that for this reason David selected them as a sacrifice to the public justice. The circumstance of Saul's death could be no reason against bringing to justice those of his bloody house who had been the instruments of his cruelty in the destruction of the poor Gibeonites, if any of them were alive after his death, whatever might be the number of years between the commission of the crime, and the inflicting of the vengeance it deserved. The reason why the oracle expressly dictated no act of expiation, was because David only inquired for what reason the famine was sent. When this was known, it was also as well known, that the Gibeonites were to have some proper satisfaction made to them; so that though the oracular response did not dictate in express words any act of expiation, yet it was of such a nature as that David was immediately led to think of an expiation; for he knew, that the shedding of blood was only to be atoned for by the shedding of his or their blood on whom the murder was chargeable; so that the oracle did really dictate, though not in words, the necessity of an expiation, by pointing out the crime for which the famine was sent. See Genesis 9:6. It is not easy to say when the slaughter of the Gibeonites was committed: the Jews indeed pretend, that Saul had taken it into his head, in one of his phrenetic fits of zeal, to cut them all off; but they give us no authority for it. It is therefore generally, and with greater probability, believed to have happened when he slew all the priests and inhabitants of Nob. For the Gibeonites, as we have seen elsewhere, were a kind of servants to the priests, employed in some of the lowest and most laborious offices. See the Univ. Hist.