2 Samuel 21:1-22 - Sutcliffe's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

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Bible Comments

2 Samuel 21:1. There was a famine three years, and in succession. Men, under the aspects of dying, like the seamen in Jonah's case, are led to the profoundest researches of conscience.

2 Samuel 21:8. The five sons of Michal the daughter of Saul. Merab, not Michal, was married to Adriel. Therefore the sons are called Michal's after the Hebrew manner of speaking, because as a mother, having no children of her own, she had undertaken to bring them up. See Genesis 16:2; Genesis 30:3; Genesis 1:23; Ruth 4:17. So Jeremiah's uncle is put for his uncle's son: Jeremiah 32:12.

2 Samuel 21:9. Hanged them in the hill in the beginning of barley harvest. These seven were religiously slain as victims to the Lord. It is very remarkable that the druids every five years, and at the vernal equinox, which is the beginning of barley harvest, did offer human sacrifices to the Lord. There cannot be a doubt but all human victims were instituted from a corrupt notion of the words of God to Adam, that the serpent should bruise the heel, or occasion the death of Christ, which really took place at the jewish passover, or the vernal equinox. The whole gentile world had once this horrid but mysterious practice. The Hindoos still keep this custom. The Burmese every five years offer up a young man about twenty five years of age. This is affirmed by the missionaries, since the English have invaded that country.

2 Samuel 21:10. Until water dropped; that is, till rain fell, indicating that heaven was pacified by sending fruitful showers. She stayed till the rain forced her away.

REFLECTIONS.

This extraordinary occurrence seems to have been long delayed in regard to chronology, that it might not interrupt the tragic history of David's fall, and David's troubles. This will farther appear, if it be considered, that no intimation is given of any of the seven victims of justice being married: whereas if the history be in its proper place, they might have been about forty years of age. Be that as it may, the history is very instructive. We learn from it, that a covenant once sworn and contracted is of sacred obligation; for the God of truth ever lives the witness and guardian of every fair compact between man and man. To the Gibeonites, Joshua and the elders had sworn that they should live. Now it is supposed, while Saul in his zeal was expelling witches and wizards from the land, that he slew many of the Gibeonites under those pretexts, whom he wished in reality to expel. We learn also, that innocent blood has a voice which pierces heaven; and though the delinquents may sometimes be long reprieved, having a part to act in the scheme of providence, yet in the issue vengeance will overtake the impenitent. Yes, and that vengeance will come likewise on the children of guilty parents, when those children shall approve of the deeds of their fathers. Hence the famine was not because of Saul only, but because of his bloody house. Abner, Ishbosheth, and Sheba, were all bloody men; and the Lord requited them in kind. Farther, when a nation delays to execute justice, and to grant the injured redress; (and what men had ever fairer claims than the Gibeonites?) then the whole land is implicated in the guilt, and they are punished in a correspondent way. The land was deeply stained with innocent blood; and justice having been long delayed, no man troubled himself about the guilt. God therefore asserted his rights, by withholding the promised plenty from the earth. What an argument is this to legislators and magistrates for the suppression of vice, and the reformation of manners. Those theatres, those haunts of infamy, those schools of infidelity, those glaring instances of apostasy from the sound faith and religion of our fathers, may in the issue be of serious consequence to us as a nation. We are severe enough against depredations committed on our property; but with regard to the insults offered to heaven we are strangely indifferent, as though we were fated to suffer our crimes to accumulate till the vengeance bursts in total destruction. This chapter closes with David's fourth and last war with Philistia, in which the giants were all slain, and the Philistines for ever ruined as a nation. Then David sung a psalm of the sublimest praise to God. So Jesus, reigning at the Father's right hand, shall vanquish all his foes, and fill the church with peace and joy, and all the glory of the millenium day.

Related Commentaries of 2 Samuel 21:1

2 Samuel 21:1-22

1 Then there was a famine in the days of David three years, year after year; and David enquireda of the LORD. And the LORD answered, It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites.

2 And the king called the Gibeonites, and said unto them; (now the Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel, but of the remnant of the Amorites; and the children of Israel had sworn unto them: and Saul sought to slay them in his zeal to the children of Israel and Judah.)

3 Wherefore David said unto the Gibeonites, What shall I do for you? and wherewith shall I make the atonement, that ye may bless the inheritance of the LORD?

4 And the Gibeonites said unto him, We will have no silver nor gold of Saul, nor of his house; neither for us shalt thou kill any man in Israel. And he said, What ye shall say, that will I do for you.

5 And they answered the king, The man that consumed us, and that devisedb against us that we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the coasts of Israel,

6 Let seven men of his sons be delivered unto us, and we will hang them up unto the LORD in Gibeah of Saul, whom the LORD did choose. And the king said, I will give them.

7 But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan the son of Saul, because of the LORD'S oath that was between them, between David and Jonathan the son of Saul.

8 But the king took the two sons of Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, whom she bare unto Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth; and the five sons of Michalc the daughter of Saul, whom she brought up for Adriel the son of Barzillai the Meholathite:

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.

10 And Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night.

11 And it was told David what Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, the concubine of Saul, had done.

12 And David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son from the men of Jabeshgilead, which had stolen them from the street of Bethshan, where the Philistines had hanged them, when the Philistines had slain Saul in Gilboa:

13 And he brought up from thence the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son; and they gathered the bones of them that were hanged.

14 And the bones of Saul and Jonathan his son buried they in the country of Benjamin in Zelah, in the sepulchre of Kish his father: and they performed all that the king commanded. And after that God was intreated for the land.

15 Moreover the Philistines had yet war again with Israel; and David went down, and his servants with him, and fought against the Philistines: and David waxed faint.

16 And Ishbibenob, which was of the sons of the giant,d the weight of whose spear weighed three hundred shekels of brass in weight, he being girded with a new sword, thought to have slain David.

17 But Abishai the son of Zeruiah succoured him, and smote the Philistine, and killed him. Then the men of David sware unto him, saying, Thou shalt go no more out with us to battle, that thou quench not the lighte of Israel.

18 And it came to pass after this, that there was again a battle with the Philistines at Gob: then Sibbechai the Hushathite slew Saph, which was of the sons of the giant.f

19 And there was again a battle in Gob with the Philistines, where Elhanan the son of Jaareoregim,g a Bethlehemite, slew the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's beam.

20 And there was yet a battle in Gath, where was a man of great stature, that had on every hand six fingers, and on every foot six toes, four and twenty in number; and he also was born to the giant.h

21 And when he defiedi Israel, Jonathan the son of Shimea the brother of David slew him.

22 These four were born to the giant in Gath, and fell by the hand of David, and by the hand of his servants.