2 Samuel 21: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

A three-year famine leads David to ask the LORD why, and the answer is that Saul had killed the Gibeonites, breaking Israel's oath to spare them. David asks the Gibeonites what they want, and they ask for seven of Saul's male descendants, who are handed over and hanged; Rizpah then guards the bodies until rain falls. David gathers the bones of Saul and Jonathan and buries them in his father Kish's tomb at Zela, along with the bones of the men who were hanged, and after that God answers the prayers made for the land. The chapter closes with four short accounts of battles against Philistine warriors descended from the giant, including one in which David nearly dies.

Claim by Claim

1. 21:1
   • There was a famine in the days of David.
   • The famine lasted three years, year after year.
   • David sought the face of the LORD.
   • The LORD said the famine was because of Saul and his house of bloodshed.
   • The LORD said Saul had put the Gibeonites to death.
2. 21:2
   • The king summoned the Gibeonites.
   • The king spoke to the Gibeonites.
   • The Gibeonites were not from among the children of Israel.
   • The Gibeonites were from the remnant of the Amorites.
   • The children of Israel had sworn an oath to the Gibeonites.
   • Saul had sought to strike the Gibeonites down.
   • Saul acted in his zeal for the children of Israel and Judah.
3. 21:3
   • David asked the Gibeonites what he should do for them.
   • David asked with what he should make atonement.
   • David's purpose was that the Gibeonites might bless the inheritance of the LORD.
4. 21:4
   • The Gibeonites said they had no claim of silver or gold against Saul or his house.
   • The Gibeonites said it was not for them to have any man in Israel put to death.
   • David asked what they were saying he should do for them.
   • David said he would do for them what they said.
5. 21:5
   • The Gibeonites answered the king.
   • The Gibeonites spoke of the man who destroyed them.
   • The Gibeonites said that man plotted against them.
   • The Gibeonites said the plot was that they should be wiped out from remaining within any territory of Israel.
6. 21:6
   • The Gibeonites asked that seven men of Saul's sons be handed over to them.
   • The Gibeonites said they would execute and expose those men before the LORD.
   • The Gibeonites said this would be done at Gibeah of Saul.
   • The Gibeonites called Saul the chosen of the LORD.
   • The king said he would give them.
7. 21:7
   • The king spared Mephibosheth.
   • Mephibosheth was the son of Jonathan.
   • Jonathan was the son of Saul.
   • The king spared him because of the oath before the LORD between David and Jonathan son of Saul.
8. 21:8
   • The king took the two sons of Rizpah daughter of Aiah.
   • Rizpah had borne those two sons to Saul.
   • The two sons were named Armoni and Mephibosheth.
   • The king took the five sons of Michal daughter of Saul.
   • Michal had borne those five sons to Adriel son of Barzillai the Meholathite.
9. 21:9
   • David handed them over into the hands of the Gibeonites.
   • The Gibeonites executed and exposed them on the mountain before the LORD.
   • All seven of them fell together.
   • They were put to death in the days of harvest.
   • They were put to death in the first days, at the beginning of the barley harvest.
10. 21:10
    • Rizpah daughter of Aiah took sackcloth.
    • Rizpah spread the sackcloth out for herself on the rock.
    • She stayed there from the beginning of harvest until water poured down on the bodies from the sky.
    • She did not allow the birds of the sky to settle on the bodies by day.
    • She did not allow the beasts of the field to come by night.
11. 21:11
    • David was told what Rizpah daughter of Aiah had done.
    • Rizpah was the concubine of Saul.
12. 21:12
    • David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son.
    • He took them from the men of Jabesh-gilead.
    • The men of Jabesh-gilead had stolen the bones from the open square of Beth-shan.
    • The Philistines had hanged the bodies there.
    • The Philistines had struck Saul down at Gilboa.
13. 21:13
    • David brought up from there the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son.
    • They gathered the bones of those who had been executed and exposed.
14. 21:14
    • They buried the bones of Saul and Jonathan his son in the land of Benjamin.
    • The burial was at Zela, in the tomb of Kish, Saul's father.
    • They did everything the king had commanded.
    • After that God responded to entreaty for the land.
15. 21:15
    • The Philistines had war with Israel again.
    • David went down, and his servants with him.
    • They fought against the Philistines.
    • David grew faint.
16. 21:16
    • Ishbi-benob was one of the descendants of the giant Rapha.
    • The weight of his spear was three hundred shekels of bronze.
    • He was girded with something new; what the new thing was is left unspecified, and the King James reads it as a new sword.
    • He intended to strike David down.
17. 21:17
    • Abishai son of Zeruiah came to David's help.
    • Abishai struck the Philistine.
    • Abishai killed the Philistine.
    • David's men then swore an oath to David.
    • David's men said he would not go out with them to battle again.
    • David's men said this was so that he would not quench the lamp of Israel.
18. 21:18
    • After this there was again a battle with the Philistines at Gob.
    • Sibbecai the Hushathite struck down Saph.
    • Saph was one of the descendants of the giant Rapha.
19. 21:19
    • There was again a battle with the Philistines at Gob.
    • Elhanan son of Jaare-oregim, a Bethlehemite, killed the brother of Goliath the Gittite.
    • The shaft of that man's spear was like a weaver's beam.
20. 21:20
    • There was yet another battle at Gath.
    • There was a man there of great size.
    • He had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot.
    • His fingers and toes numbered twenty-four in all.
    • He too was born to the giant Rapha.
21. 21:21
    • That man taunted Israel.
    • Jonathan son of Shimeah killed him.
    • Shimeah was David's brother.
22. 21:22
    • These four were born to the giant Rapha in Gath.
    • They fell by the hand of David and by the hand of his servants.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

21:1

"Asked the LORD about it" describes a formal inquiry, usually put to God through a priest as a question expecting a yes-or-no or short answer, not private prayer. The reply assumes a widespread ancient idea, stated plainly in Israel's law, that blood shed without redress leaves a stain on the land itself until the wrong is settled, which is why a killing in the previous reign is given as the cause of a famine now.

21:2

The Gibeonites lived in a group of towns a few miles north of Jerusalem. The oath referred to is the treaty in Joshua 9: the Gibeonites disguised themselves as travelers from far away and got Israel's leaders to swear a peace treaty with them, and Israel held to it even after the trick was discovered. "Amorites" is used broadly here for the pre-Israelite peoples of Canaan. Saul's attack on them is not described anywhere else in the Bible.

21:3

"Make up for this wrong" translates a Hebrew word for covering or settling a debt of blood, providing whatever compensation the injured party names so the matter is legally closed. The blessing David asks for is the flip side: a wronged party's curse was thought to keep working until the wrong was settled, and their blessing released it.

21:4

Under the usual custom, a killing could be settled by a payment to the victim's family. Israel's law refused that option for deliberate murder, and the Gibeonites refuse it here too. Their second sentence is difficult in the Hebrew and can be read either as a disclaimer (it is not for us to have Israelites killed) or as a lead-in to the demand they make in the next verses.

21:5

"Coasts" in the King James means borders or territory. It has nothing to do with the sea.

21:6

The Hebrew verb rendered "hang" is rare and its exact sense is uncertain; it may mean impaling or exposing the bodies rather than hanging by the neck. Either way the point is public execution followed by leaving the corpses on display, which is what makes Rizpah's vigil in verse 10 necessary. Gibeah was Saul's home town, so the deaths take place on his own ground. "The one the LORD chose" is ambiguous in the Hebrew: it can refer to Saul, whom God chose as king, or to the place.

21:7

The oath is the one in 1 Samuel 20, where David and Jonathan swore mutual protection extending to each other's descendants.

21:8

There are two men named Mephibosheth in this chapter, Jonathan's son, spared in verse 7, and a son of Saul by Rizpah, handed over here. They are different people. "Michal" is a known problem in the text: elsewhere Michal is said to have had no children, while it was her sister Merab who married Adriel. Some ancient manuscripts read Merab here, and the King James wording "brought up for" may be an attempt to smooth the difficulty.

21:9

Barley was the first grain to ripen, so this is roughly April, the start of the dry season, months before rain would normally fall. That timing is what makes verse 10 remarkable.

21:10

Leaving a body unburied and exposed to scavenging animals was the deepest disgrace an ancient Israelite could suffer, and Israel's law required even an executed criminal to be buried the same day. Rizpah cannot bury the bodies, so she guards them instead, for what would have been several months.

21:11

A concubine was a legally recognized wife of lower rank, whose children had a weaker claim on the father's estate than those of a primary wife. In a royal household the position was politically loaded: taking over a dead or deposed king's concubine was treated as a claim on the throne itself.

21:12

The Philistines were a people settled on the coastal plain to Israel's west, in five main cities including Gath; they were Israel's chief military rival throughout Saul's reign and David's. After Saul died in battle on Mount Gilboa they fastened his body to the wall of Beth-shan, a town they controlled, as a trophy. The men of Jabesh-gilead retrieved it by night because Saul had rescued their town early in his reign (1 Samuel 11).

21:14

Burial in the ancestral family tomb was what everyone hoped for; Saul and Jonathan had been denied it, and this puts it right. "God answered the prayers made for the land" signals the end of the famine that opened the chapter.

21:15

"Waxed faint" means grew exhausted. David is an old man now, and this run of battle stories explains why his soldiers stop him fighting.

21:16

Three hundred shekels of bronze is roughly seven and a half pounds, or three and a half kilograms, a very heavy spearhead. "The sons of the giant" translates a Hebrew phrase meaning descendants of Rapha; it may name an ancestor or refer to the Rephaim, a people remembered in Israelite tradition as unusually tall warriors. It is a description of stock, not a claim that each man was individually a giant.

21:17

"Lamp" is a common image for a family line or a life still burning; a household lamp kept alight through the night stood for the house continuing. David's men are telling him he is too valuable to risk.

21:18

The location of Gob is unknown. The parallel account in 1 Chronicles 20:4 places this fight at Gezer.

21:19

The Hebrew text of Samuel here says simply that Elhanan killed Goliath the Gittite. The words "the brother of" are supplied by the King James translators from the parallel in 1 Chronicles 20:5, which reads "Lahmi the brother of Goliath." Whether Samuel preserves a rival tradition about who killed Goliath, or has suffered a copying error, is disputed. The father's name has similar trouble: "Jaare-oregim" contains the Hebrew word for "weavers," probably picked up by accident from the weaver's beam later in the verse, and Chronicles reads "Jair." A weaver's beam is the thick wooden roller on a loom.

21:20

Six fingers and six toes is a real and not especially rare condition. The detail is given as a mark of the man's unusual physique, alongside his size.

21:21

"Defied" means taunted and challenged, the same thing Goliath did when he dared Israel to send out a single fighter against him. Shimeah is another spelling of Shammah, one of David's older brothers, so this Jonathan is David's nephew.

21:22

Gath was one of the five main Philistine cities and the hometown of Goliath. These four short reports collect the champions from that one warrior family and the Israelites who killed them.