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.)
The king called the Gibeonites - i:e., David called the small remnant of them that survived, chiefly of the Beerothites (1 Samuel 22:7), and his addressing them was in consequence of the answer he had received from the oracle of Yahweh. Whether his consultation with the Gibeonites, as to the satisfaction they required was David's own spontaneous act, or commanded by God is not said; but the latter is most probable as a statue was involved which none but God Himself could dispense with (Deuteronomy 24:16).
In his zeal to the children of Israel and Judah. Under pretence of a rigorous and faithful execution of the divine law regarding the extermination of the Canaanites, Saul had set himself to expel or destroy those whom Joshua had been deceived into sparing. His real object seems to have been, that the possessions of the Gibeonites, being forfeited to the crown, might be divided among his own people (cf. 1 Samuel 22:7). At all events, his proceeding against this people being in violation of a solemn oath, and involving national guilt, the famine was, in the wise and just retribution of Providence, made a national punishment, since the Hebrews either assisted in the massacre or did not interpose to prevent it; since they neither endeavoured to repair the wrong nor express any horror of it; and since a general protracted chastisement might have been indispensable to inspire a proper respect and protection to the Gibeonite remnant that survived.