_THE FAMINE._
2 SAMUEL xxi. 1-14.
We now enter on the concluding part of the reign of David. Some
of the matters in which he was most occupied during this period
are recorded only in Chronicles. Among these, the chief was his
preparations for the building of the temple, which great work was
to be undertaken by his son. In the concluding part of Samuel the
principal things recorded are two national judgments, a famine and
a pestilence, that occurred in David's reign, the one springing
from a transaction in the days of Saul, the other from one in the
days of David. Then we have two very remarkable lyrical pieces, one
a general song of thanksgiving, forming a retrospect of his whole
career; the other a prophetic vision of the great Ruler that was to
spring from him, and the effects of His reign. In addition to these,
there is also a notice of certain wars of David's, not previously
recorded, and a fuller statement respecting his great men than we
have elsewhere. The whole of this section has more the appearance
of a collection of pieces than a chronological narrative. It is by
no means certain that they are all recorded in the order of their
occurrence. The most characteristic of the pieces are the two songs
or psalms--the one looking back, the other looking forward; the one
commemorating the goodness and mercy that had followed him all the
days of his life, the other picturing goodness still greater and
mercy more abundant, yet to be vouchsafed under David's Son.
The conjunction "then" at the beginning of the chapter is replaced
in the Revised Version by "and." It does not denote that what is
recorded here took place immediately after what goes before. On
the contrary, the note of time is found in the general expression,
"in the days of David," that is, some time in David's reign. On
obvious grounds, most recent commentators are disposed to place
this occurrence comparatively early. It is likely to have happened
while the crime of Saul was yet fresh in the public recollection. By
the close of David's reign a new generation had come to maturity,
and the transactions of Saul's reign must have been comparatively
forgotten. It is clear from David's excepting Mephibosheth, that the
transaction occurred after he had been discovered and cared for.
Possibly the narrative of the discovery of Mephibosheth may also be
out of chronological order, and that event may have occurred earlier
than is commonly thought. It will remove some of the difficulties of
this difficult chapter if we are entitled to place the occurrence at
a time not very far remote from the death of Saul.
It was altogether a singular occurrence, this famine in the land
of Israel. The calamity was remarkable, the cause was remarkable,
the cure most remarkable of all. The whole narrative is painful and
perplexing; it places David in a strange light,--it seems to place
even God Himself in a strange light; and the only way in which we
can explain it, in consistency with a righteous government, is by
laying great stress on a principle accepted without hesitation in
those Eastern countries, which made the father and his children "one
concern," and held the children liable for the misdeeds of the father.
1. As to the calamity. It was a famine that continued three
successive years, causing necessarily an increase of misery year
after year. There is a presumption that it occurred in the earlier
part of David's reign, because, if it had been after the great
enlargement of the kingdom which followed his foreign wars, the
resources of some parts of it would probably have availed to supply
the deficiency. At first it does not appear that the king held that
there was any special significance in the famine,--that it came as
a reproof for any particular sin. But when the famine extended to a
third year, he was persuaded that it must have a special cause. Did
he not in this just act as we all are disposed to do? A little trial
we deem to be nothing; it does not seem to have any significance or
to be connected with any lesson. It is only when the little trial
swells into a large one, or the brief trouble into a long-continued
affliction, that we begin to inquire why it was sent. If small trials
were more regarded, heavy trials would be less needed. The horse that
springs forward at the slightest touch of the whip or prick of the
spur needs no heavy lash; it is only when the lighter stimulus fails
that the heavier has to be applied. Man's tendency, even under God's
chastenings, has ever been to ignore the source of them,--when God
"poured upon him the fury of His anger and the strength of battle,
and it set him on fire round about, yet he knew not; and it burned
him, yet he laid it not to heart" (Isa. xlii. 25). Trials would
neither be so long nor so severe if more regard were had to them in
an earlier stage; if they were accepted more as God's message--"Thus
saith the Lord of hosts, Consider your ways."
2. The cause of the calamity was made known when David inquired of
the Lord--"It is for Saul and his bloody house, because he slew the
Gibeonites."
The history of the crime for which this famine was sent can be gathered
only from incidental notices. It appears from the narrative before
us that Saul "consumed the Gibeonites, and devised against them that
they should be destroyed from remaining in any of the coasts of
Israel." The Gibeonites, as is well known, were a Canaanite people,
who, through a cunning stratagem, obtained leave from Joshua to dwell
in their old settlements, and being protected by a solemn national
oath, were not disturbed even when it was found out that they had been
practising a fraud. They possessed cities, situated principally in
the tribe of Benjamin; the chief of them, Gibeon, "was a great city,
one of the royal cities, greater than Ai." In the time of Saul they
were a quiet, inoffensive people; yet he seems to have fallen on them
with a determination to sweep them from all the coasts of Israel.
Death or banishment was the only alternative he offered. His desire to
exterminate them evidently failed, otherwise David would have found
none of them to consult; but the savage attack which he made on them
affords an incidental proof that it was no feeling of humanity that led
him to spare the Amalekites when he was ordered to destroy them.
We are not told of any offence that the Gibeonites had committed;
and perhaps covetousness lay at the root of Saul's policy. There
is reason to believe that when he saw his popularity declining
and David's advancing, he had recourse to unscrupulous methods of
increasing his own. Addressing his servants, before the slaughter of
Abimelech and the priests, he asked, "Hear now, ye Benjamites; will
the son of Jesse give you fields and vineyards, that all of you have
conspired against me?" Evidently he had rewarded his favourites,
especially those of his own tribe, with fields and vineyards. But
how had he got these to bestow? Very probably by dispossessing the
Gibeonites. Their cities, as we have seen, were in the tribe of
Benjamin. But to prevent jealousy, others, both of Judah and of
Israel, would get a share of the spoil. For he is said to have sought
to slay the Gibeonites "in his zeal for the children of Israel and
Judah." If this was the way in which the slaughter of the Gibeonites
was compassed, it was fair that the nation should suffer for it. If
the nation profited by the unholy transaction, and was thus induced
to wink at the violation of the national faith and the massacre of
an inoffensive people, it shared in Saul's guilt, and became liable
to chastisement. Even David himself was not free from blame. When he
came to the throne he should have seen justice done to this injured
people. But probably he was afraid. He felt his own authority not
very secure, and probably he shrank from raising up enemies in those
whom justice would have required him to dispossess. Prince and
people therefore were both at fault, and both were suffering for the
wrongdoing of the nation. Perhaps Solomon had this case in view when
he wrote: "Rob not the poor because he is poor, neither oppress the
afflicted in the gate; for the Lord will plead their cause, and spoil
the soul of those that spoiled them."
But whatever may have been Saul's motive, it is certain that by his
attempt to massacre and banish the Gibeonites a great national sin
was committed, and that for this sin the nation had never humbled
itself, and never made reparation.
3. What, then, was now to be done? The king left it to the Gibeonites
themselves to prescribe the satisfaction which they claimed for
this wrong. This was in accordance with the spirit of the law that
gave a murdered man's nearest of kin a right to exact justice of
the murderer. In their answer the Gibeonites disclaimed all desire
for compensation in money; and very probably this was a surprise to
the people. To surrender lands might have been much harder than to
give up lives. What the Gibeonites asked had a grim look of justice;
it showed a burning desire to bring home the punishment as near as
possible to the offender: "The man that consumed us, and that devised
against us that we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the
coasts of Israel, let seven men of his sons be delivered unto us, and
we will hang them up unto the Lord in Gibeah of Saul, whom the Lord
did choose." Seven was a perfect number, and therefore the victims
should be seven. Their punishment was, to be hanged or crucified, but
in inflicting this punishment the Jews were more merciful than the
Romans; the criminals were first put to death, then their dead bodies
were exposed to open shame. They were to be hanged "unto the Lord,"
as a satisfaction to expiate His just displeasure. They were to be
hanged "in Gibeah of Saul," to bring home the offence visibly to him,
so that the expiation should be at the same place as the crime. And
when mention is made of Saul, the Gibeonites add, "Whom the Lord did
choose." For Jehovah was intimately connected with Saul's call to the
throne; He was in some sense publicly identified with him; and unless
something were done to disconnect Him with this crime, the reproach
of it would, in measure, rest upon Him.
Such was the demand of the Gibeonites; and David deemed it right to
comply with it, stipulating only that the descendants of Jonathan
should not be surrendered. The sons or descendants of Saul that were
given up for this execution were the two sons of Rizpah, Saul's
concubine, and along with them five sons of Michal, or, as it is in
the margin, of Merab, the elder daughter of Saul, whom she bare (R.
V.--not "brought up," A. V.) to Adriel the Meholathite. These seven
men were put to death accordingly, and their bodies exposed in the
hill near Gibeah.
The transaction has a very hard look to us, though it had nothing of
the kind to the people of those days. Why should these unfortunate
men be punished so terribly for the sin of their father? How was it
possible for David, in cold blood, to give them up to an ignominious
death? How could he steel his heart against the supplications of
their friends? With regard to this latter aspect of the case, it
is ridiculous to cast reproach on David. As we have remarked again
and again, if he had acted like other Eastern kings, he would have
consigned every son of Saul to destruction when he came to the
throne, and left not one remaining, for no other offence than being
the children of their father. On the score of clemency to Saul's
family the character of David is abundantly vindicated.
The question of justice remains. Is it not a law of nature, it may
be asked, and a law of the Bible too, that the son shall not bear
the iniquity of the father, but that the soul that sinneth it shall
die? It is undoubtedly the rule both of nature and the Bible that
the son is not to be substituted _for_ the father when the father is
there to bear the penalty. But it is neither the rule of the one nor
of the other that the son is never to suffer _with_ the father for
the sins which the father has committed. On the contrary, it is what
we see taking place, in many forms, every day. It is an arrangement
of Providence that almost baffles the philanthropist, who sees that
children often inherit from their parents a physical frame disposing
them to their parents' vices, and who sees, moreover, that, when
brought up by vicious parents, children are deprived of their natural
rights, and are initiated into a life of vice. But the law that
identified children and parents in Old Testament times was carried
out to consequences which would not be tolerated now. Not only were
children often punished because of their physical connection with
their fathers, but they were regarded as judicially one with them,
and so liable to share in their punishment. The Old Testament (as
Canon Mozley has so powerfully shown[4]) was in some respects an
imperfect economy; the rights of the individual were not so clearly
acknowledged as they are under the New; the family was a sort of
moral unit, and the father was the responsible agent for the whole.
When Achan sinned, his whole household shared his punishment. The
solidarity of the family was such that all were involved in the sin
of the father. However strange it may seem to us, it did not appear
at all strange in David's time that this rule should be applied
in the case of Saul. On the contrary, it would probably be thought
that it showed considerable moderation of feeling not to demand the
death of the whole living posterity of Saul, but to limit the demand
to the number of seven. Doubtless the Gibeonites had suffered to an
enormous extent. Thousands upon thousands of them had probably been
slain. People might be sorry for the seven young men that had to die,
but that there was anything essentially unjust or even harsh in the
transaction is a view of the case that would occur to no one. Justice
is often hard; executions are always grim; but here was a nation that
had already experienced three years of famine for the sin of Saul,
and that would experience yet far more if no public expiation should
take place; and seven men were not very many to die for a nation.
The grimness of the mode of punishment was softened by an incident
of great moral beauty, which cannot but touch the heart of every man
of sensibility. Rizpah, the concubine of Saul, and mother of two of
the victims, combining the tenderness of a mother and the courage of
a hero, took her position beside the gibbet; and, undeterred by the
sight of the rotting bodies and the stench of the air, she suffered
neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day nor the beasts
of the field by night. The poor woman must have looked for a very
different destiny when she became the concubine of Saul. No doubt
she expected to share in the glory of his royal state. But her lord
perished in battle, and the splendour of royalty passed for ever
from him and his house. Then came the famine; its cause was declared
from heaven, its cure was announced by the Gibeonites. Her two sons
were among the slain. Probably they were but lads, not yet beyond
the age which rouses a mother's sensibilities to the full. (This
consideration likewise points to an early date.) We cannot attempt
to picture her feelings. The last consolation that remained for her
was to guard their remains from the vulture and the tiger. Unburied
corpses were counted to be disgraced, and this, in some degree,
because they were liable to be devoured by birds and beasts of prey.
Rizpah could not prevent the exposure, but she could try to prevent
the wild animals from devouring them. The courage and self-denial
needed for this work were great, for the risk of violence from wild
beasts was very serious. All honour to this woman and her noble
heart! David appears to have been deeply impressed by her heroism.
When he heard of it he went and collected the bones of Jonathan and
his sons, which had been buried under a tree at Jabesh-gilead, and
likewise the bones of the men that had been hanged; and he buried the
bones of Saul and Jonathan in Zelah, in the sepulchre of Kish, Saul's
father. And after that God was entreated for the land.
We offer a concluding remark, founded on the tone of this narrative.
It is marked, as every one must perceive, by a subdued, solemn tone.
Whatever may be the opinion of our time as to the need of apologizing
for it, it is evident that no apology was deemed necessary for the
transaction at the time this record was written. The feeling of all
parties evidently was, that it was indispensable that things should
take the course they did. No one expressed wonder when the famine
was accounted for by the crime of Saul. No one objected when the
question of expiation was referred to the Gibeonites. The house of
Saul made no protest when seven of his sons were demanded for death.
The men themselves, when they knew what was coming, seem to have been
restrained from attempting to save themselves by flight. It seemed as
if God were speaking, and the part of man was simply to obey. When
unbelievers object to passages in the Bible like this, or like the
sacrifice of Isaac, or the death of Achan, they are accustomed to say
that they exemplify the worst passions of the human heart consecrated
under the name of religion. We affirm that in this chapter there is
no sign of any outburst of passion whatever; everything is done with
gravity, with composure and solemnity. And, what is more, the graceful
piety of Rizpah is recorded, with simplicity, indeed, but in a tone
that indicates appreciation of her tender motherly soul. Savages
thirsting for blood are not in the habit of appreciating such touching
marks of affection. And further, we are made to feel that it was a
pleasure to David to pay that mark of respect for Rizpah's feelings in
having the men buried. He did not desire to lacerate the feelings of
the unhappy mother; he was glad to soothe them as far as he could. To
him, as to his Lord, judgment was a strange work, but he delighted in
mercy. And he was glad to be able to mingle a slight streak of mercy
with the dark colours of a picture of God's judgment on sin.
To all right minds it is painful to punish, and when punishment
has to be inflicted it is felt that it ought to be done with great
solemnity and gravity, and with an entire absence of passion and
excitement. In a sinful world God too must inflict punishment. And
the future punishment of the wicked is the darkest thing in all the
scheme of God's government. But it must take place. And when it does
take place it will be done deliberately, solemnly, sadly. There will
be no exasperation, no excitement. There will be no disregard of the
feelings of the unhappy victims of the Divine retribution. What they
are able to bear will be well considered. What condition they shall
be placed in when the punishment comes, will be calmly weighed. But
may we not see what a distressing thing it will be (if we may use
such an expression with reference to God) to consign His creatures
to punishment? How different His feelings when He welcomes them to
eternal glory! How different the feelings of His angels when that
change takes place by which punishment ceases to hang over men, and
glory takes its place! "There is joy in the presence of the angels
of God over one sinner that repenteth." Is it not blessed to think
that this is the feeling of God, and of all Godlike spirits? Will you
not all believe this,--believe in the mercy of God, and accept the
provision of His grace? "For God so loved the world that He gave His
only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish,
but should have eternal life."
FOOTNOTE:
[4] Lectures on the Old Testament. Lecture V.: "Visitation of Sins of
Fathers on Children."