2 Samuel 21:1-14 ▼

1 And there was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year. And David inquired of YHWH. And YHWH answered, “Because of Saul and his house is the blood, on account that he killed the Gibeonites.”

2 And the king called the Gibeonites and spoke to them. (And the Gibeonites, they were not of the sons of Israel, for they were only of the remnant of the Amorite. And the sons of Israel had sworn protection to them, and Saul had sought to kill them in his zeal for the sons of Israel and Judah.)

3 And David said to the Gibeonites, “What shall I do for you?, and with what shall I make atonement, that you may bless the inheritance of YHWH?”

4 And the Gibeonites said to him, “We will have no silver or gold from Saul or from his house, and no man to put to death in Israel.” And he said, “What are you? saying I can do for you?.”

5 And they answered to the king, “The man who consumed us and plotted against us, that we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the territories of Israel,

6 let be given to us seven men of his sons, and we will hang them before YHWH in Gibeah of Saul, chosen by YHWH.” And the king said, “I will give them.”

7 And the king had pity on Mephibosheth son of Jonathan son of Saul, because of the oath of YHWH that was between them, between David and between Jonathan son of Saul.

8 And the king took the two sons of Rizpah daughter of Aiah, whom she bore to Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth, and the five sons of Merab daughter of Saul, whom she brought up for Adriel son of Barzillai the Meholathite,

9 and he gave them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them on the hill before the face of YHWH. And they fell seven together, and they were put to death in the days of harvest, in the first days in the beginning of the harvest of barley.

10 And Rizpah daughter of Aiah took sackcloth, and she spread it for herself on the rock, from the beginning of harvest until the late rains poured on them from the heavens. And she did not allow the birds of the heavens to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night.

11 And David was told what Rizpah 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 Jabesh-gilead who had stolen them from the broad place of Beth-shan, where the Philistines had hanged them there after the Philistines had struck down Saul in Gilboa.

13 And he brought up from there the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son, and they gathered the bones of those who had been hanged.

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