1And there was a famine in the days of David three years, year after year. And David sought out the presence of the LORD. And the LORD said, “On account of Saul and on account of the house of bloodguilt, because he put the Gibeonites to death.” 2And the king called to the Gibeonites and said to them—and the Gibeonites were not of Israelite stock but from the remnant of the Amorites, and the Israelites had vowed to them, but Saul sought to strike them down in his zeal for the Israelites and for Judah. 3And David said to the Gibeonites, “What shall I do for you and how shall I atone, that you may bless the LORD’s heritage?” 4And the Gibeonites said to him, “We have no claim of silver and gold against Saul and his house, and we have no man in Israel to put to death.” And he said, “Whatever you say, I shall do for you.” 5And they said to the king, “The man who massacred us and who devastated us—we were destroyed from having a stand in all the territory of Israel—6let seven men of his sons be given to us, that we may impale them before the LORD at Gibeah of Saul, the LORD’s chosen.” And the king said, “I will give them.” 7And the king spared Mephibosheth son of Jonathan son of Saul because of the LORD’s vow that was between them, between David and Jonathan son of Saul. 8And the king took the two sons of Rizpah daughter of Aiah, whom she had born to Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth, and the five sons of Merab daughter of Saul, whom she had born to Adriel son of Barzillai the Meholathite. 9And he gave them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they impaled them on the hill before the LORD, and the seven of them fell together. And they were put to death in the first days of the harvest, the beginning of the barley harvest. 10And Rizpah daughter of Aiah took sackcloth and stretched it out over herself on the rock from the beginning of the harvest till the waters poured down on them from the heavens, and she did not allow the fowl of the heavens to settle on them by day nor the beasts of the field by night. 11And David was told what Rizpah daughter of Aiah, Saul’s concubine, had done. 12And David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son from the notables of Jabesh-Gilead who had stolen them from the square of Beth-Shan, where the Philistines had hanged them on the day the Philistines struck down Saul at Gilboa. 13And he brought up from there the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son, and they collected the bones of the impaled men. 14And they buried the bones of Saul and of Jonathan his son in the territory of Benjamin in Zela, in the tomb of Kish his father, and they did all that the king had charged. And God then granted the plea for the land.
15And once again there was fighting between the Philistines and Israel, and David went down, and his servants with him, and they did battle with the Philistines, and David grew weary. 16And Ishbi-Benob, who was of the offspring of the titan, the weight of his weapon three hundred weights of bronze, and he was girded with new gear—he meant to strike down David. 17And Abishai son of Zeruiah came to his aid and struck down the Philistine and put him to death. Then David’s men swore to him, saying, “You shall not sally forth with us again to battle, lest you snuff out the lamp of Israel.”
18And it happened thereafter that once again there was fighting with the Philistines, at Gob. Then did Sibbecai the Hushathite strike down Saph, who was of the offspring of the titan. 19And once again there was fighting with the Philistines at Nob, and Elhanan son of Jair the Bethlehemite struck down Goliath the Gittite, and the shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s beam.
20And once again there was fighting, at Gath. And there was a man of huge measure, who had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot, twenty-four in all, and he, too, was sprung from the titan. 21And he insulted Israel, and Jonathan son of Shimei, David’s kinsman, struck him down. 22These four were sprung from the titan, and they fell at the hand of David and at the hand of his servants.
CHAPTER 21 NOTES
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Chapters 21–24 appear to be a series of appendices to the David story proper, manifestly written by different writers in styles that exhibit notable differences from that of the main narrative, and also certain differences in ideological assumptions and even in what are presumed to be the narrative data of David’s history. It should, however, be kept in mind that creating a collage of disparate sources was an established literary technique used by the ancient Hebrew editors and sometimes by the original writers themselves. Recent critics have abundantly demonstrated the compositional coherence of chapters 21–24 and have argued for some significant links with the preceding narrative. For that reason, it may be preferable to think of this whole unit as a coda to the story rather than as a series of appendices. The structure of the chapters is neatly chiastic, as follows: a story of a national calamity in which David intercedes; a list (chapter 21); a poem (chapter 22); a poem; a list (chapter 23); a story of a national calamity in which David intercedes (chapter 24). The temporal setting of these materials is unclear but they seem to belong somewhere in the middle of David’s career, and do not follow from the late point in his reign reported in the immediately preceding account of the rebellion of Sheba son of Bichri. The editors placed these chapters here, rather than after David’s death, and then set the account of his last days, which they interrupt, at the beginning of 1 Kings in order to underline the dynastic continuity between David’s story and Solomon’s, which then immediately follows as the first large unit of the Book of Kings.
1. David sought out the presence of the LORD. The idiom means to seek an audience (with a ruler), though what is referred to in practical terms is inquiry of an oracle. The rest of the verse gives God’s response to the question put to the oracle. At the very outset, a difference in idiom from the main narrative, where people consistently “inquire of the LORD,” is detectable. The idiom preferred by this new author emphasizes hierarchical relationship rather than the practical business of putting a question to the oracle.
2. and the Gibeonites were not of Israelite stock. The syntactic looseness of this long parenthetical sentence (compare the similar syntax in verse 5) is uncharacteristic of the David story proper.
the Israelites had vowed to them. The story of the vow to do no harm to this group of resident aliens is reported in Joshua 9:15.
but Saul sought to strike them down. There is no way of knowing whether this massacre of Gibeonites by Saul reflects historical fact, but there is not the slightest hint of it in the story of Saul recounted in 1 Samuel. As with the differences of style, one sees here the presence of a distinctly different literary source.
3. What shall I do for you and how shall I atone. The speech and acts of David in this story show nothing of the psychological complexity of the experience-torn David whose story we have been following. He speaks in flat terms, almost ritualistically, fulfilling his public and cultic functions as king. And after this brief initial exchange with the Gibeonites, the writer entirely abandons dialogue, which had been the chief instrument for expressing emotional nuance and complication of motive and theme in the David story.
4. We have no claim of silver and gold . . . we have no man in Israel to put to death. The second clause is really an opening ploy in negotiation: they say they have no claim to execute any Israelite (“claim” in the first clause is merely implied by ellipsis in the Hebrew), suggesting that they are waiting for David to agree to hand Israelites over to them in expiation of Saul’s crime.
Whatever you say, I shall do for you. David’s submissiveness to the Gibeonites reflects a notion of causation and the role of human action scarcely evident in the main narrative. A famine grips the land because its former ruler violated a national vow. Collective disaster can be averted only by the expiatory—indeed, sacrificial—offering of human lives. This archaic world of divine retribution and ritual response is very far from the historical realm of realpolitik in which the story of David has been played out.
6. impale. There is no scholarly consensus on the exact form of execution, except that it obviously involves exhibiting the corpses. Some understand it as a kind of crucifixion.
before the LORD at Gibeah of Saul, the LORD’s chosen. “Before the LORD” is an explicit indication of the sacrificial nature of the killings. Many scholars have doubted that the Saulides would be executed in Saul’s own town and emend this to read “at Gibeon, on the mount of the LORD.” If the phrase “the LORD’s chosen” is authentic, it would be spoken sarcastically by the Gibeonites.
8. Merab. This is the reading of one version of the Septuagint and of many Hebrew manuscripts. The Masoretic Text has “Michal,” who had no children and who, unlike her sister Merab, was not married to Adriel son of Barzillai.
9. the seven of them fell together. Robert Polzin neatly observes that this phrase precisely echoes “they fell together” of 2:16—the account of the beginning of the civil war at this very same place, Gibeon. He also notes how this whole episode is organized around recurring units of three and seven, the latter number shivʿah punning on the reiterated shevuʿah, vow.
the beginning of the barley harvest. This would be in April. The bereaved Rizpah then watches over the corpses throughout the hot months of the summer, until the rains return—heralding the end of the long famine—in the fall.
10. Rizpah . . . took sackcloth and stretched it out over herself. The verb here is the one generally used for pitching tents, so the translations that have Rizpah spreading the cloth over the rock are misleading. What she does is to make a little lean-to with the sackcloth to shield herself from the summer sun.
she did not allow the fowl of the heavens to settle on them. The antecedent of “them” is of course the corpses. As in the ancient Greek world, leaving a corpse unburied is a primal sacrilege, a final desecration of the sacredness of the human person. Rizpah, watching over the unburied corpses, is a kind of Hebrew Antigone. David had delivered the seven descendants of Saul to the Gibeonites with the single-minded intention of expiating the crime that had caused the famine. Evidently, he gave no thought to the possibility that the Gibeonites would desecrate the bodies of the Saulides after killing them by denying them burial.
11. And David was told what Rizpah . . . had done. Rizpah’s sustained act of maternal heroism finally achieves its end: the king is shaken out of his acquiescence in the Gibeonite inhumanity.
12. David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan. According to the account in 1 Samuel 31, they were cremated. Either this report reflects a conflicting tradition or “bones” here has to be understood as “ashes.”
14. they buried the bones of Saul and of Jonathan his son. . . . And God then granted the plea for the land. It should be noted that the end of the famine does not come with the sacrificial killing of the seven Saulides but only after all of them, together with Saul himself and Jonathan, are given fitting burial in their own place (a biblical desideratum). In this strange story, David is seen handing over the surviving offspring of Saul to be killed, but only for the urgent good of the nation, after which he pays posthumous respect to the line of Saul. It is conceivable that this story reflects an alternative narrative tradition to the more politically complex one of the David story proper through which David is exonerated from what may well have been a widespread accusation that he deliberately liquidated all of Saul’s heirs, with the exception of Mephibosheth.
15. David grew weary. This phrase probably indicates an aging David, though not yet the vulnerable sedentary monarch of the conflict with Absalom.
16. Ishbi-Benob. This name looks as bizarre in the Hebrew as in transliteration and probably betrays a corrupt text. (The textual obscurities that abound in this section in all likelihood reflect the fact that this is an old literary document imperfectly transmitted.) There have been attempts to revocalize the name as a verb, but those in turn necessitate extensive tinkering with other parts of the verse.
of the offspring of the titan. The Hebrew rafah (with a definite article here) elsewhere means “giant.” The ending is feminine and it is not clear whether the reference is to a progenitrix or a progenitor.
the weight of his weapon. The Hebrew for “weapon,” qayin, appears only here, and so the translation is merely inference from context. It might be related to a word that means “metalsmith.” The invocation of the titanic weight of the weapon (spear?) is of course reminiscent of the earlier description of Goliath.
girded with new gear. The Hebrew says simply “girded with new [feminine ending].” Some assume the reference is to sword, which is feminine in Hebrew.
17. You shall not sally forth with us again. This fragmentary episode is obviously remembered because it marks a turning point in David’s career. It is at least consonant with the image of David at Mahanaim asked by his men to stay behind as they go out to the battlefield.
19. Elhanan son of Jair. So he is identified in the parallel report in Chronicles. The Masoretic Text here reads “Elhanan son of Jaʿarey ʾOrgim,” but the last word, ʾorgim, means “weavers,” and seems clearly a scribal duplication of ʾorgim at the very end of the verse.
Elhanan. . . struck down Goliath the Gittite. This is one of the most famous contradictions in the Book of Samuel. Various attempts, both ancient and modern, have been made to harmonize the contradiction—such as the contention that “Goliath” is not a name but a Philistine title—but none of these efforts is convincing. Of the two reports, this one may well be the more plausible. In the literary shaping of the story of David, a triumph originally attributed, perhaps with good reason, to Elhanan was transferred to David and grafted onto the folktale pattern of the killing of a giant or an ogre by a resourceful young man. The writer used this material, as we have seen, to shape a vivid and arresting portrait of David’s debut.
22. These four were sprung from the titan, and they fell at the hand of David. Stylistically, the entire unit from verse 15 to the end of the chapter has the feel of a deliberately formulaic epic catalogue (rather than an actual epic narrative, which the earlier Goliath story in 1 Samuel 17 more closely approximates). Formally, the predominant number three of the famine story is succeeded by four here—just as in biblical poetic parallelism three is conventionally followed by four (for example, Amos 1:3, “For three trespasses of Damascus / and for four, I will not turn it back”).