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.
After that God was entreated for the land. It has been conjectured, from various circumstances recorded in the course of this book, that the surrender of seven of Saul's descendants, as compensation for the blood of the Gibeonites, took place at an earlier period in David's reign over Israel than appears from the position which the incident holds in the inspired record. The allusion to Saul's violent rapacity toward the Gibeonites as recent (2 Samuel 21:1), the execration which the execution of Saul's family excited against David among the Benjamites, and which was embodied in the insults which Shimei poured upon him in the time of his flight (2 Samuel 16:7-8), together with the significant language of Mephibosheth (2 Samuel 19:28) concerning the violent extinction of all his family, all seem to indicate the date of the transaction to have been not long after the establishment of David at Jerusalem. Some have hinted the suspicion that his ready consent to deliver up the seven victim for execution arose from his secret wish and policy to rid himself, by the extirpation of the Sauline dynasty, of all rivals who might disturb his peaceful occupation of the throne. But such a suspicion is injurious to the memory of David, and totally inconsistent with his spontaneous act of generous kindness in removing the bones of Saul and Jonathan to the ancestral grave at Zelah.
The fact is, that the consignment of Saul's grandchildren to execution was a painful but inevitable necessity. According to the state of society and the customs of the age and country, David could not have withheld the persons of the youths, seeing that the Gibeonites had refused 'the price of blood.' The record of the severe punishment on the posterity of Saul, on account of the slaughter of the Gibeonites, affords a minute but interesting evidence of the truth of the narrative respecting the national league which was formed by Israel with that people. It must have led the ancient Israelites to inquire, if they had any doubt upon the subject, whether, and in what circumstances, such a league a was formed; and the undesigned coincidence between this passage and the relation given in the ninth chapter of Joshua should be sufficient to remove scepticism from the mind of the modern reader.