2 Samuel 21:3-14

This whole section. 2 Samuel chapter 21, verse 1 to 14. Then there was a famine in the days of David three years, year after year. And David inquired of the Lord, and the Lord answered, it is for Saul, for his bloody house, because he slew the Ghibeonites. The king called the Ghibeonites and said under them, the Ghibeonites were not of the children of Israel, but of the remnant of the Amorites, and the children of Israel had sworn under them. Saul sought to slay them in his zeal to the children of Israel and Judah. Wherefore David said under the Gibbeanites, what shall I do for you? Wherewith and wherewith shall I make the atonement that ye may bless the inheritance of the Lord. And the Gibbeanites said unto him, we have no silver, we will have no silver nor gold of Saul, nor of his house. Neither for us shall thou kill any man in Israel. And he said, what ye shall say, what ye shall say, that I will do for you. And they answered the king, the man that consumed us and the devised against us, that we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the coast of Israel. Let seven men of his sons be delivered unto us, we will hang them up under the Lord in Gibbiyah of Saul, whom the Lord did choose. the Lord said, I will give them. but the king spared Maphibisat, the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, because of the Lord’s oath that was between them, between David and Jonathan, the son of Saul. The king took the two sons, of Rizpa, the daughter of Aya, whom she bear unto Saul, Armani and Maphyseth, Mimipiseth, and the five sons of Michael, the daughter of Saul, whom she brought up for Adriel, the son of Barzili, the Mahola Thite. And he delivered them into the hands of the Gibianites, and they hang them in the hill before the Lord. They fell all. seven together and were put to death in the days of the harvest, in the first days in the beginning of the barley harvest, and Rizpah, the daughter of Ayah, took sackcloth and spread it for her upon the rock from the beginning of the harvest until water dropped upon them out of heaven. Suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beast of the field by night. And it was told David that Rizpa, the daughter of Ayah, the concubine of Saul had what she had done. And David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan and his son from the men of Jabesh Gilead, which had stolen them from the street of Bashan, where the Philistians had hanged them, when the Philistines had slain Saul in Gilboa. He brought up from thence the bones of Saul and the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son, and they gathered. of the bones of them that were hanged. And the bones of Saul and Jonathan, his son, buried they in the country of Benjamin and Zela, and the sepulchre of Kish’s father, and they performed all that the king commanded, and after that, God was entreated for the land. And God blessed to us His sacred and holy word this evening. During his college years, there was a Christian young man who worked two summers at a Pennsylvania State Park. And he worked in the park office, and his job in the evenings was to check in those who were camping in the park that night and give out camping permits to the tent and trailer types. And pets were prohibited, so the first question this young man would ask, would be, do you have any pets? Should they give the right answer, then he would write at the top of the form, and P for no pets. Some men, however, would wax rather cute in their reply and say, well, only my wife. They usually said this with a smirk expecting him to be amused by their clever retort. However, he had a sort of a non-responsexed to what they had said, and that seemed to perplex them. They didn’t realize he’s already heard it about 50 times before, and because he’s heard it so many times, it just didn’t pay any attention to what they said. It dulled the hilarity of it for him. When it comes to the sacrifices that we read about in Scripture, and particularly we see this sacrifice here in 2 Samuel, we’ve become very accustomed by this time to sacrifices in the Bible. We find them from the very book in the beginning in Genesis and all the way up here now through 2nd Samuel. God demanded sacrifices. They were constantly being offered up. And as we see in the tabernacle and also later in the temple, sacrifices are like a way of life for the Old Testament saints. Now, what is constantly repeated, sometimes dolls are senses like the park ranger, you probably might have a non-response to them. But 2nd Samuel has a way here of chapter 21 of forcing, do you look at the matter in new light? Take a look at this issue of sacrifice. There’s sort of a shock value, I think, regarding this chapter and the sacrifice that we find in it. It captures your attention. certainly in a very powerful way. Now let me begin tonight by saying this. You should realize that God requires atonement for sin. David asked that Gibeonites, what shall I do? What should we do as a nation to provide the atonement here for the wrong that has been done? Now, you find God is very angry with sin. Despite King Saul’s covenant breaking and the slaughter of the Gibianites by him, we don’t read about any complaint of the Gibbeanites to David. Harry, they never requested a redressing of the wrong done to them. But what we do find in this chapter is God being angry with the nation because of what Saul has done, and there was a famine in the land for three years. because of it. Probably, as we see, because of a drought until the water began to fall as we just read later here in these verses. So what we find is that God is judging the sin against the Gimianites. God sends the famine. It wasn’t a light matter with God. God’s wrath is stirred up, and we see that the Israelites are suffering because of it. three years is a long time for a famine to be in the land. When David inquires of the Lord why such a severe blow has fallen upon the nation, he gets an answer. And that answer has to do with Saul. And so we find him asking, what can I do to make the atonement? The scripture says in Psalm 7 that God is angry with the wicked every day. If he turn not, he will wet his sword, he has bent his bow, and made it ready. Contrary to much religious, modern religious thinking, God gets very angry when people sin. He’s not indifferent to it. He’s not tolerant of it. Nor does God’s anger diminish with the passing of time for the scripture says he’s angry with the wicked every day. That indicates a continuous anger that burns against the sinner. And God is motivated by his anger to bring judgment. We see in this passage in Psalm 7 that I just read to you, two matters that he mentions here. He’s wetting the sword. And that indicates he’s sharp. And that You’re getting it ready for action. Getting it the blade as sharp as possible to be effective when the judgment falls. He’s bending the bow. God has got the arrow on the bow string and has it pulled back ready to let the arrow fly. Both of these indicate to us that if the sinner doesn’t turn from his sinful ways, God’s judgment is going to be meted up. sin is a serious matter with God and he rains down judgment because of it and we should never think otherwise. So you find God angry with sin and therefore you find atonement is necessary to turn away the wrath of God. The word atonement here in this verse 3 is the word K-par. Today we find it in the phrase the Day of Atonement. It’s called Yom Kippur. But it’s the same word here. Remember on the Day of Atonement, according to the law, they had the two goats. One was the scapegoat that had the sin prayed over and they’d take it out in the wilderness. And the other goat had to be killed. The blood had to be taken into the Holy of Holies by the High Priest. With no one else in that tabernacle, and he was to place the blood on the mercy seat, the top, the cover of the Ark of the Covenant. And inside the Ark, of course, would be the law. And so we have the idea of a broken law. The blood on the top of the cover, the mercy seat, indicates a covering for the broken law. And so Kappar, he, means to cover, to propitiate, to make atonement for sin. Sins need to be covered so that God no longer sees them and must judge them. So God needs to be propitiated. His wrath needs to be turned away. That it is God who is to be placated should be obvious from the text. If you look through this text, you’ll notice that the bodies of Saul’s relatives here, sons, are hung up under the Lord in verse 6, indicating to appease the wrath of God. You’ll notice that after that, God was entreated for the land in verse 14, and the famine was lifted by God. So while Saul sinned against the Ghionites, ultimately it is God’s wrath, which needs to be turned away. Our sin stirs up the wrath of God, such that he withholds good things from us. in this case it was food. There was a famine in the land. man always seems to treat sin lightly. God never treats sin lightly. is always sending some repercussions that might waken our conscience to the problem in hands. should realize that God requires atonement for sin. Now, you should realize atonement is always gruesome. Versus four to nine here. You find a gruesome death is necessary. In verses four to six, we have the Gibianites response. They don’t ask for monetary damages. According to the law of God, if you took someone’s life, if you murdered someone, Money, you couldn’t buy your way out by money, but they don’t ask for any financial help here. The death penalty here was the proper punishment for murder, according to Scripture, numbers 35. But since they didn’t have the right to put anybody to death, they had to appeal, of course, to David, as the head of the nation here, the one who was the top judge who could meet out the death. death penalty and so they go to the chief magistrate of the land for permission and they request seven male descendants of Saul that they might be put to death hanged before the Lord to satisfy his justice. The king consents in verse six, he selects the candidates in verse eight and he hands them over in verse nine. The victims were the two sons of Saul’s concubine, Rizpah, and the five sons, it seems, of Saul’s older daughter, Mirab. Now, there is some question about verse 8 here, and so let me take a moment, and let’s look at this verse carefully. It says here that the king took the two sons of Rizpa, the daughter of Rizpa, Ayah, whom she bear unto Saul, army and Mapheth, and the five sons of Michael, the daughter of Saul. She brought up for Adriel, the son of Barzili, the Maholathai. There are people will say, well, this is a mistake in the Bible, because it shouldn’t say Michael here. It should actually say Mirab, because we know that Michael didn’t have any children. and so it creates a problem. The solution, and I think the best solution to the difficulty of the text, is to read it carefully because you’ll notice that it says that she, Michael, brought up for Adriel, these children. Perhaps Mirab died, and her sister Michael, then, who had no children her own, raised his children for him. being, you know, connected with the king and having all the privileges of the king and so forth, she could have raised children for her brother-in-law. And it makes perfect sense then without, you know, say, well, we have to change this or that or the other. Because the majority of texts do have Michael in this passage of scripture. By the way, Matthew Henry suggested this answer, you know, in the 1600s, whatever it was, way back when. So there’s no reason to look at the, you know, say, well, look at the text and say, well, I don’t know about the scripture. I think the scripture is certainly very correct for us, and we should just take it as it stated, and this is certainly a solution that makes sense. And I think we should be willing to accept that as it is. We certainly would say that there is no contradiction in scripture. Scripture said she didn’t have any children, and she didn’t have any children. But she could have brought them up for someone else, and that’s basically what the text tells us. We see the execution of the seven men in verses seven to nine. By the side of Locke-Oach on the road between Fort William and Iverness in Scotland, there is a well. It’s called the well of the seven heads. It seems that seven people were executed and their heads. were cut off and they were washed at that well before they were presented to the young sons of McDonald of Capac because these men had murdered the family member there. And so they were washed before they presented. But we have the idea here of a very public event, an important event. And so there was a, these. These bereaved clan chief would receive these heads as a response to the evil that had been done to the family. When justice is done, it needs to be seen to be done. And we see that in this case as always have a public hanging of these men and leaving their bodies on the polls so that people may understand here that God is not mocked. There is a judgment that occurred. So the execution of the men from Saul’s house needed to be public before the Lord. And so they’re hung up for public display. The place they’re hung up is Saul’s own city as an indication that it relates to. his bloody house. It’s Gibby of Saul, and so that’s why they’re hung up there. The manner of hanging demonstrates they were cursed in the eyes of the Lord, as the law of God tells us about those who were hung in Deuteronomy 21. The time is the days of harvest. It was a sign they were executed to appease God’s wrath which withheld the harvest for three years. years unless they have the famine. So you find a very gruesome death is necessary. Now you find people sometimes raising an objection to these gruesome deaths because of the law. The law states that the father shall not be put to death for the children and the children shall not be put to death because of their father’s sin. But everyone would be put to death for their own sin. Deuteronomy 2416. It should be obvious, however, to us that God certainly approved what was done because he responded to it positively and lifted the judgment on the land. He turned away his wrath. He accepted these gruesome deaths as an atonement for Saul’s covenant breaking. Why? Deuteronomy 24 relates to individual criminal cases. But our situation here is much. much broader because now we’re dealing with a national transgression. Saul didn’t trample on the Gideonites’ covenant as a single individual, but he did it as the head of the nation. And because of that, the whole nation was responsible. Hence, his sin involved Israel in the guilt. It became, it violated a national treaty. In this case, national transgression means that no one is exempt from the sin. Thus the famine was in all the land. Every citizen of Israel is implicated. Besides, it seems that Saul’s posterity may indeed have trod in his steps because it’s called a bloody house. It wasn’t just Saul himself, perhaps, but also some family members that were involved in the slaughter of the Gibionites. So you find people sometimes raise objections, but if we should realize there can be a distinction between individual situation and a national situation. You find people repulsed by atonement requiring gruesome deaths. There was a father that was telling his young daughter about the Passover story in the Book of Exodus. As he’s relating the story, she’s relating the story, she’s sitting there and, wide-eyed attention, taking it all in. She sat there silently, as her father related, how the firstborn male children of the Israelites, were spared death. And she carefully absorbed God’s remedy, which was that the death angel would pass over them if they took a lamb, killed it, and painted its blood, if you would, on the doorposts of their home. So the Israelites firstborn were spared, and all the Egyptian firstborn were executed by the angel death. The little girl looked up with sad eyes and facial expression, and she said, I don’t like killing lambs. The father quickly realized what a traumatic event this was for her to hear this story. It was shocking to his daughter to hear them. about this. It is gruesome business, this slaughtering of lambs and painting the blood on the doors of the house and so forth. You know, we can become so used to sacrifices in Scripture that we sometimes forget how horrendous those sacrifices are. And this is why people are highly offended by a passage like our tax and say, well, God surely wouldn’t require this. People are simply gas at the sheer horror of this episode. It’s gory when we look at it. No one can evade here the raw horror of these hangings and the death here. Saul’s butchery of the Gibbonites polluted the land with blood and atonement required death. That’s what we find. Saul’s offense violated a covenant oath, therefore it was very grievous. In Joshua chapter 9, where it informs you that Israel cut, the word is Karat, cut a covenant with Gibbonit, the Gibbeanites. The King James Version has the word lig there, but it is the word covenant that is literally to be used. And remember, when they cut, when they used that kind of phraseology, cut a covenant, it involved cutting an animal in half and walking through the two pieces. And it was taking on the covenant responsibility and basically calling upon God to judge them if they don’t keep the oaths, to cut them up, if you would, like that animal if they don’t keep the oath that was given. So the Gibianites could justly demand this curse be carried out. So instead of being embarrassed by this episode, God would have you realize it is. It was necessary in this case. You should realize atonement is always gruesome. You should realize there is safety in the covenant when atonement is required. Now, verse 7 is an interesting verse. But the king spared Maphibisat, the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, because the Lord’s oath was between them, between David and Jonathan, the son of Saul. He’s got to hand over seven of the sons of Saul, or the relatives, if you would, descendants of Saul to the Gibonites. But we read here that he spares Maphethysov. He does so because of the covenant that he made with Jonathan, the father of Maphethyseth, to always be kind to his posterity. That bond of friendship. Now, here’s the contrast. Saul is the covenant breaker. David is the covenant keeper. So in the midst of this tragic fallout associated with covenant breaking, you find the blessing associated here with someone who keeps the covenant. As if to emphasize there is a king who keeps the covenant. Maphethuseth was liable to hideous suffering, but David committed himself to his safety and he was spared. I read a story about Gerd Butchwald. He was a German teacher during World War II. And toward the end of World War II, as the Russians were closing in and capturing various portions of the city of Berlin, the capital of Germany, we find that they overran Bushwald’s district. In one evening, several drunk Russian soldiers came to his house knocking on the door, asking for frow frow and with must hair and two-day stubble beard he went to the door and said that frowl is kaput and evidently they understood that he said that his wife was dead so they ransacked his apartment which had already been rifled through previously by other soldiers bushwalled stretched out on the sophia sofia while they looked around and took whatever they wanted, some odds and ends, they had in his house, and then they left. And after they left, Bushwald went over and locked the door, pushed aside the sofa, and helped Elsa his wife from a three-by-three-foot hole that he had dug in the concrete floor. She had a refuge because he had committed himself to keeping her safe. And so she was spared. This is what David did from Ephibiseth. He had committed himself to keeping him safe. And David’s covenant was a wall of security. Now, David’s commitment points certainly beyond his day to the true son of David, the Lord Jesus Christ himself, the king of true Israel. Your Lord and Savior is charged to lose none of those who have been committed to his charge. As we read in John 6th. 39. His concern is to protect those given to him in the covenant of grace from the evil one. Jesus dogmatically vows that not one of his sheep will be stolen or taken from his hand, but he will preserve them all. Because of the covenant grace, your king is completely committed to your safety to satisfy God’s justice and wrath, the wicked must suffer eternally in hell and be punished forever. But the believer is spared. We’re spared because of Christ. So you should realize there is only safety in the covenant when atonement is required. Fourthly tonight, you should realize God would have you meditate upon the gruesomeness of the atonement. And we see here in verses 10 to 14, Rispa’s vigil. The Ghibionites have carried out the execution of these seven sons of Saul. Their bodies are hanging and exposed until God’s judgment ceases, until rain comes. And it seems for months these bodies hung until God sent rain. They died as sacrifices. and thus were in a sense offered up to God, as we mentioned before. Rispa, the concubine of Saul, comes to the place of death in sackcloth, mourning their son’s deaths and certainly the other relatives here. She camps out there. She keeps the vultures away by day and the various beasts of the field by night from picking out or consuming the body. She keeps her vigil out of a mother’s love here. And she will guard and defend the rotting flesh of her dear loved one. She couldn’t prevent the execution, but she does this. Now, this is certainly a heartbreaking picture. It’s a pretty sad circumstance. Eventually, the rain comes signaling the end of the famine. Someone reports the king what Risby. has done and he decides to give them a proper burial and he takes the the bones and so forth of Jonathan and Saul. Remember the Philistines had captured and took to their land and the Jabesh Gilead. The people there went and got the bones and brought back the bodies, burnt them and buried them under this tree. Well, they’re taken and the bones here are the bodies of these seven and they’re put together and given a proper bear. burial. So this is Zisba’s visual. Now, the long exposure of this situation certainly would indicate to us an extraordinary case. The law of Deuteronomy 21 tells us that normally they should be buried by nightfall. Whenever someone is put to death by hanging, they were supposed to be buried so that the land would not be defout. But in this case, it seems that the curse was already on the land. The land was already defiled by what Saul had done, and therefore this was a little different, an extraordinary case, and so the exposure was longer than normally would occur. I suppose the sacred writer could have related this whole episode without telling us about Rispa’s vigil, but God wanted him to tell us about this. vigil. God moved the writer, inspired him to give us this account, which indicates he wants us to think about this event that took place. Why? Why would he gain from this? I suggest that this sad account of Rispa’s vigil is to make you think more fully about. about the cost involved in the atonement. If you can picture vividly in your mind, the sights, the sounds, and even the smells, of such a situation where these bodies are hung for such a length of time, let that sink down into your faculties. There’s something incredibly sad about this. Gut-wrenching. The scripture says, who knows the power of your anger, even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath. Psalm 90 and verse 11. We don’t often think about the wrath of God as we should. We don’t always ponder God’s wrath. We don’t always realize what it takes to provide the atonement to appease the wrath of God. But I want you to go to Galgotha tonight in your mind. Because I want you to let the Lord horror of the events of Christ’s death settle upon you tonight for a moment. As horrible as this was, there’s no comparison to the blood atonement that Christ provided for the redemption of his people upon the cross, that Christ was made a curse for us and hung upon a tree. We see the sky black with God’s wrath as He said, as He’s, turns away from his son as he bears the sins of his people upon him. The blood and the gore of the crucifixion isn’t pleasant to contemplate. And yet that’s what it took to satisfy the justice and the holiness of God. We hear the wrenching cry of the Savior, my God. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me. You ponder the great misery he endured as he suffered on the cross. Don’t run off. Stay at Golgotha a moment. Why is it that we have the gospel accounts and so much time is spent in the accounts on the atonement that Christ has made? It’s certainly an important event. Crucial. Because God is giving us a detailed account of Christ’s substitutionary death on our part that we may realize the cost of our atonement, the forgiveness of our sins. Let us ponder that carefully because I think God would have us think about it. Sometimes you hear something so much that dulls your senses to you. It’s like the Park Ranger did. That can happen when you think about the scriptures and the atalman and we’re thinking about the lambs of the Old Testament and so forth. But remember Christ is the Lamb of God. He is the one all those sacrifices pictured. Our text provides some shock value on the demands of a holy God, certainly dealing with sin as a gruesome business when it comes to the atonement. But God here would not have our eyes hide from this. We need to look at it. We need to ponder it. And we need to put it in perspective with regard to our own at as Christ provides for us in the New Testament. Let us close with a word of prayer.