Two of 2 Samuel’s closing chapters gather up loose ends of David’s reign. A three-year famine turns out to be the unpaid debt of Saul’s massacre of the Gibeonites; the reckoning falls on seven of Saul’s descendants, and Saul’s concubine Rizpah keeps watch over the bodies through the whole harvest. And a roll of David’s mighty men, at the head of which stand three who broke an enemy line for a cup of water their king would not drink.
A study in 2 Samuel 21, 23 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 8 min read
It Is For Saul, And For His Bloody House
“Then there was a famine in the days of David three years, year after year; and David enquired of the LORD. And the LORD answered, It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites… Wherefore David said unto the Gibeonites, What shall I do for you? and wherewith shall I make the atonement, that ye may bless the inheritance of the LORD?”
2 Samuel 21:1-3
The Gibeonites had been guaranteed their lives by a national oath in Joshua’s day (Joshua 9). Saul, in his zeal for Israel, had broken that oath and killed them — and years after Saul is dead, the land is still under the weight of it. A broken covenant does not expire with the man who broke it; it waits for someone to settle it.
Rizpah Suffered Neither Bird Nor Beast
“And Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night… And after that God was intreated for the land.”
2 Samuel 21:10-14
The hard part of this chapter is the seven men handed over to die for Saul’s crime; Scripture reports it without softening it, and it belongs to an era of corporate guilt and blood-atonement that the cross would one day answer once for all. What the narrator lingers on is Rizpah — a mother on a rock beside her sons’ bodies, all through the barley and wheat harvest, driving off the vultures by day and the jackals by night, until the rains come. Her grief moves David to bury Saul’s and Jonathan’s bones properly at last, “and after that God was intreated for the land.” One woman’s refusal to let the dead be dishonoured shames a kingdom into doing right.
The Blood Of The Men That Went In Jeopardy Of Their Lives
“And David longed, and said, Oh that one would give me drink of the water of the well of Beth-lehem, which is by the gate! And the three mighty men brake through the host of the Philistines, and drew water out of the well of Beth-lehem… nevertheless he would not drink thereof, but poured it out unto the LORD. And he said, Be it far from me, O LORD, that I should do this: is not this the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives?”
2 Samuel 23:15-17
Homesick in a cave, David sighs for a drink from the well of his boyhood — and three of his men take it as an order, cut through a Philistine garrison, and bring it back. David will not drink it. To swallow water bought with that risk would be to treat their lives as cheap; instead he pours it out as an offering to God. A lifetime of war had not taught him to hold human life lightly.
“David had been a man of war, much of his life had been spent amid scenes of violence; but of all who have passed through such an ordeal, few indeed have been so little affected by its hardening, demoralizing influence as was David.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 736
He That Ruleth Over Men Must Be Just
“Now these be the last words of David. David the son of Jesse said, and the man who was raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet psalmist of Israel, said, The Spirit of the LORD spake by me, and his word was in my tongue. The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me, He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds.”
2 Samuel 23:1-4
David’s last recorded words are not about himself — they are a description of the king Israel still needs: one who rules “just, ruling in the fear of God,” like sunrise on a cloudless morning after rain. David had been that king at his best and had fallen badly short of it. The portrait is really a prophecy, waiting for the Son of David of whom it could be said without qualification. The “sweet psalmist of Israel” signs off pointing past himself.
