Kipper

2 Samuel 21:1-14

¹ Now there was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year. And David sought the face of the Lord. And the Lord said, “There is bloodguilt on Saul and on his house, because he put the Gibeonites to death.”

² So the king called the Gibeonites and spoke to them. Now the Gibeonites were not of the people of Israel but of the remnant of the Amorites. Although the people of Israel had sworn to spare them, Saul had sought to strike them down in his zeal for the people of Israel and Judah.

³ And David said to the Gibeonites, “What shall I do for you? And how shall I make atonement, that you may bless the heritage of the Lord?”

⁴ The Gibeonites said to him, “It is not a matter of silver or gold between us and Saul or his house; neither is it for us to put any man to death in Israel.” And he said, “What do you say that I shall do for you?”

⁵ They said to the king, “The man who consumed us and planned to destroy us, so that we should have no place in all the territory of Israel,

⁶ let seven of his sons be given to us, so that we may hang them before the Lord at Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of the Lord.” And the king said, “I will give them.”

⁷ But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Saul’s son Jonathan, because of the oath of the Lord that was between them, between David and Jonathan the son of Saul.

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

⁹ and he gave them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them on the mountain before the Lord, and the seven of them perished together. They were put to death in the first days of harvest, at the beginning of barley harvest.

¹⁰ Then Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth and spread it for herself on the rock, from the beginning of harvest until rain fell upon them from the heavens. And she did not allow the birds of the air to come upon them by day, or the beasts of the field by night.

¹¹ When David was told what Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, the concubine of Saul, had done,

¹² David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of his son Jonathan from the men of Jabesh-gilead, who had stolen them from the public square of Beth-shan, where the Philistines had hanged them, on the day the Philistines killed Saul on Gilboa.

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

¹⁴ And they buried the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan in the land of Benjamin in Zela, in the tomb of Kish his father. And they did all that the king commanded. And after that God responded to the plea for the land.

A major difficulty many folks have while trying to read the Bible is that some of the stories are just a little too weird. They push up against our western sensibilities and we have a hard time with God as we’ve drawn Him (and there’s a problem right there) allowing some of these things to happen; and sometimes it even looks like He approves of them! Today’s reading from 2 Samuel is just such a story. But instead of throwing up our hands and declaring the Bible too difficult or not worth the effort as Christ followers it behooves us to burrow in and figure it out, digging a little deeper to see what is going on and what we can learn.

The remaining four chapters of 2 Samuel are not chronologically placed. The stories listed in these chapters are flashbacks to events that happened at various times throughout David’s reign. Again, this bumps into our western way of thinking. We like our stories to be in a more linear fashion. For the ancient Hebrew, this was not the way they thought. They had a more circular way of telling stories and would often retell a story from a different perspective or circle back to insert details that had not previously been mentioned.

Way back, in the book of Joshua, we find God’s people making a covenant with the Gibeonites. When the Children of Israel were given the Promised Land by God, there were many people groups who were displaced, among them were the Gibeonites. At that time, they struck a deal with Joshua and agree to live among God’s people in peace. Six hundred years later, along comes Saul as Israel's first king and he completely disregards that treaty, killing a large number of the Gibeonites. This breach causes a holy God to look down upon His people and demand justice for those who have been treated poorly. The nation is struck with a famine and David turns to God to find out why. After God reveals the source of His anger, David goes to the Gibeonites and asks them what is to be done in order to satisfy them. If you look at verse 3, you will find that David uses the word atonement (כָּפַר – kipper with which we associate Yom Kipper, the most sacred of holy days for the Jewish nation – the Day of Atonement). God demands atonement to be made for this crime committed by David's predecessor. This word carries a great deal of weight, for it means propitiation (to pay the price or ransom) and expiation (to make up for the crime and make restitution). The New Testament calls Christ “the propitiation for our sins”, for He paid the full price in His sacrifice for us. The use of the word in our reading for today probably carries both meanings. So, David is seeking to pay the Gibeonites back for the crime committed and to make up for their loss. Needless to say, what they want in restitution is difficult. But David follows through and seven of Saul’s male heirs are killed. (David spares Mephibosheth out of respect to his personal covenant with Jonathan.) Despite the gruesomeness of the killing of these seven men, David then goes to the effort to make sure that Saul, Jonathan, and the seven men are buried with honor.

Before we think to cruelly of God for exercising His wrath in this way, remember that He too gave up a Son in payment for our sin. He did not hold back when it came time to pay the price. His justice is perfect and our sin is great. While my response to the killing of my family members would have been very similar to that poor woman (Rizpah) who watched over the bodies as they hung on posts as a testament to price having been paid, I have to assume at all times that God always does the right thing. We don’t always have to understand why God does what he does. We just have to know He’s right to do it.