such as the Gibeonites) would feel that they might cry to God for vengeance, and expect it from the Just and

True One; and how the sternest lessons concerning public breach of faith and public crimes would be of the

deepest national importance after such a reign as that of Saul.

The story itself may be told in few sentences. For some reason unrecorded - perhaps in the excess of his

carnal zeal, but certainly without sufficient grounds - Saul had made havoc among the Gibeonites, in direct

contravention of those solemn engagements into which Israel had entered, and which up to that time had

been scrupulously observed. When, afterwards, a famine desolated the land for three years, and David

sought the face of Jehovah, he was informed that it was due to the blood-guilt40 which still rested on the

house of Saul.

Upon this the king summoned the Gibeonites, and asked them what atonement they desired for the wrong

done them, so that the curse which they had invoked might no longer rest on the inheritance of Jehovah.

Their answer was characteristic. "It is not a matter to us of silver or of gold, in regard to Saul and his house,

nor is it ours to put to death any one in Israel." "And he said, What say ye then? and I will do it for you."  41

Then came the demand, made with all the ferocity and irony of which they were capable, that the blood-

vengeance which they, as Gibeonites, did not venture to take, should be executed for them, and that seven

of Saul's descendants should be handed over to them that they might be nailed to the cross - of course after

they were dead, for so the law directed  42 - as they termed it: "To Jehovah in Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of

Terrible as their demand was, it could not be refused, and the two sons of Rizpah, a foreign concubine of

Saul, and five sons of Merab,43 Saul's eldest daughter, were selected as the victims. Then this most

harrowing spectacle was presented.

From the commencement of the barley harvest in April until the early rains of autumn evidenced the removal

of the curse from the land, hung those lifeless, putrescent bodies, which a fierce Syrian sun shriveled and

dried; and beneath them, ceaseless, restless, was the weird form of Saul's concubine. When she lay down at

night it was on the coarse hair-cloth of mourners, which she spread upon the rock; but day and night was

she on her wild, terrible watch to chase from the mangled bodies the birds of prey that, with hoarse croaking,

swooped around them, and the jackals whose hungry howls woke the echoes of the night. Often has Judaea

capta been portrayed as weeping over her slain children. But as we realize the innocent Jewish victims of

Gentile persecution in the Middle Ages, and then remember the terrible cry under the Cross, this picture of

Rizpah under the seven crosses, chasing from the slaughtered the vultures and the jackals, seems ever to

come back to us as its terrible emblem and type.

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

went [himself] 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 street of Bethshan, where the Philistines had hanged them, when the

Philistines had slain Saul in Gilboa. 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 crucified. And the bones of Saul and

Jonathan his son buried they in the country of Benjamin in Zelah, in the sepulcher of Kish his father."

2. The Pestilence. - In regard to this event, it is of the greatest importance to bear in mind that it was sent in

consequence of some sin of which Israel, as a people, were guilty. True, the direct cause and immediate

occasion of it were the pride and carnal confidence of David, perhaps his purpose of converting Israel into a

military monarchy. But this state of mind of their king was, as we are expressly told (2 Samuel 24:1), itself a

judgment upon Israel from the Lord, when Satan stood up to accuse Israel, and was allowed thus to

influence David (1 Chronicles 21:1). If, as we suppose, the popular rising under Absalom and Sheba was that

for which Israel was thus punished, there is something specially corresponding to the sin alike in t he desire

of David to have the people numbered, and in the punishment which followed. Nor ought we to overlook

another Old Testament principle evidenced in this history, that of the solidarity of a people and their rulers.