Covenant Curses

As we move into chapter 21 of 2 Samuel, we come to the final section of the book, a section sometimes known as “the appendices” because it contains miscellaneous vignettes presented without regard for chronological sequence. The first of these concerns a three-year famine sometime “in the days of David.” Famine was often a sign of God’s judgment (Lev. 26:19–20; Deut. 28:23–24), and when David seeks God to find the reason for this famine, he learns that God is indeed displeased with Israel. It all goes back to an attempt by Saul to wipe out the Gibeonites. These people were Canaanites who duped Joshua into making a covenant that guaranteed their lives (Josh. 9). In swearing to protect the Gibeonites, the Israelites asked God to bring curses upon them if they failed to keep their promises. Thus, when Saul violated the agreement, God acted justly to afflict the nation. We are not told why Saul chose to attack a people he was bound not to harm while partially sparing a people he was commanded to destroy (the Amalekites, 1 Sam. 15). Neither are we told why God delayed His judgment in this case until this point in David’s reign. But the bottom line is that Israel is under judgment for this sin. “[The Gibeonites] had many years remained silent … and now, at length, God speaks for them,” Matthew Henry writes.

So David asks the Gibeonites how he might “make atonement” for Israel’s sin against them. They refuse a reparation payment, and they do not want David to exact justice for them. Instead, they ask for blood—the proper payment for murder, Numbers 35:31–33—in the form of seven descendants of Saul whom they will hang “before the Lord” in Saul’s hometown. This action is normally banned (Deut. 24:16), but God allows it in this case that His wrath may be appeased. Significantly, David spares Mephibosheth because of his covenant promise to deal kindly with Jonathan’s family (1 Sam. 20:14–15)—unlike Saul, David keeps covenant. Instead, David selects two sons of Saul and five of his grandsons, children of Saul’s daughter Merab (not Michal; see 1 Sam. 18:19), and gives them to the Gibeonites. These are executed and their bodies hung to symbolize the curse upon them (Deut. 21:23). And it is done in the time of barley harvest, the famine apparently ending now that justice is done.