Then there was a famine in the days of David three years, year after year; and David inquired of the LORD. And the LORD answered, It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites.
Then there was a famine in the days of David three years, year after year. For the first two seasons the scarcity did not cause much anxiety, since David and the officers of his government probably regarded it as the natural consequence of neglecting the cultivation of the land chafing the troubles occasioned by Absalom and Sheba, and hoped that the internal resources of the country would be sufficient to supply the wants of the population. But a famine which continued over three years in succession, and the severity of which was unceasingly felt, at length produced alarm, and drove those in authority to supplicate the counsel and aid of God.
It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites. It was declared not to have originated in any natural causes, but to have been inflicted by the immediate hand of God, and the moral cause of the judgment was made known to him. The sacred history has not recorded either the time or the reason of this massacre. Some I think that they were sufferers in the atrocity perpetrated by Saul at Nob (1 Samuel 22:19), where many of them may have resided as attendants of the priests; while others suppose it more probable that the attempt was made afterward, with a view to regain the popularity he had lost throughout the probable that the attempt was made afterward, with a view to regain the popularity he had lost throughout the nation by that execrable outrage.