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2 Samuel 21 of 24

2 Samuel 21

A three-year famine is traced to a broken oath from Saul's time; its resolution requires that seven of Saul's descendants die.

Summary

A famine comes upon Israel in David's days for three years. David inquires of the Lord, who says it is for Saul and his bloody house because he slew the Gibeonites. David calls the Gibeonites and asks them what shall be done for them and wherewith shall he make atonement. The Gibeonites say they will have no silver or gold of Saul or his house, nor will they ask the life of any man in Israel. David asks: what do you say I shall do for you? They say: deliver to us the man that consumed us and that devised against us, that we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the coasts of Israel. David says he will give them what they ask. They name seven men of the sons of Saul, and the king takes two sons of Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, Armoni and Mephibosheth, and five sons of Merab the daughter of Saul. He delivers them to the Gibeonites, who hang them in the hill before the Lord. All seven fall together in the days of harvest, in the first days, in the beginning of barley harvest.

Rizpah the daughter of Aiah takes sackcloth and spreads it on the rock, from the beginning of harvest until water drops upon them out of heaven, and suffers neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day nor the beasts of the field by night. David is told what Rizpah has done. He goes and takes the bones of Saul and Jonathan out of Jabesh-gilead — where the men of Jabesh-gilead had secretly taken them from Beth-shan where the Philistines had hanged them — and the bones of the seven executed are gathered up. He buries the bones of Saul and Jonathan in the country of Benjamin in Zelah, in the sepulchre of Kish his father. God is entreated for the land after that. There are more battles with the Philistines in which Abishai kills the giant Ishbi-benob who had thought to slay David; Sibbecai the Hushathite kills Saph; Elhanan kills the brother of Goliath the Gittite; Jonathan the nephew of David kills a man of great stature who had twelve fingers and twelve toes. These four fell by the hand of David and his servants.

Appears
David Joab
Themes
Covenant and Oath Atonement Loyalty and Grief
All 24 chapters — click to jump
  1. 2 Samuel 1Chapter 1 is the hinge between 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel.
  2. 2 Samuel 2Chapter 2 opens the period of civil war that will occupy much of the first half of the book.
  3. 2 Samuel 3Chapter 3 is one of the most politically complex chapters in the book.
  4. 2 Samuel 4Chapter 4 closes the civil war with a brief, ugly episode.
  5. 2 Samuel 5Chapter 5 is the pivotal chapter of the book's first half.
  6. 2 Samuel 6Chapter 6 is one of the most dramatically charged chapters in 2 Samuel, covering two episodes that frame the ark's arrival in Jerusalem.
  7. 2 Samuel 7Chapter 7 is the theological centre of the entire David narrative and one of the most consequential passages in the Hebrew Bible for later Jewish and Christian thought.
  8. 2 Samuel 8Chapter 8 reads differently from everything around it.
  9. 2 Samuel 9Chapter 9 is the chapter the Court History uses to establish one key dimension of David's character before the crisis arrives.
  10. 2 Samuel 10Chapter 10 establishes the military context of the Bathsheba episode.
  11. 2 Samuel 11Chapter 11 is the turning point of 2 Samuel and one of the most consequential chapters in biblical narrative.
  12. 2 Samuel 12Chapter 12 contains the most famous confrontation in the book.
  13. 2 Samuel 13Chapter 13 is the first fulfilment of Nathan's sentence in chapter 12.
  14. 2 Samuel 14Chapter 14 covers the three years in which David longs for Absalom but will not recall him, and Joab's intervention to change that.
  15. 2 Samuel 15Chapter 15 is the emotional nadir of the first movement of the Absalom crisis.
  16. 2 Samuel 16Chapter 16 covers three encounters as David makes his way out of Jerusalem.
  17. 2 Samuel 17Chapter 17 is the intelligence chapter of the Absalom revolt and turns on a moment of competitive counsel.
  18. 2 Samuel 18Chapter 18 is the emotional climax of 2 Samuel.
  19. 2 Samuel 19Chapter 19 covers David's return to Jerusalem and the political settlements it requires.
  20. 2 Samuel 20Chapter 20 is the coda to the Absalom crisis.
  21. 2 Samuel 21Chapter 21 opens the appendix section of 2 Samuel — chapters 21-24 are not chronological narrative but supplementary materials: two episodes of famine and plague bracketing two poems and two hero lists.
  22. 2 Samuel 22Chapter 22 is an extended psalm, found also as Psalm 18 in the Psalter, which the editors of 2 Samuel have placed near the end of the book as David's retrospective meditation on his life.
  23. 2 Samuel 23Chapter 23 contains two distinct sections.
  24. 2 Samuel 24Chapter 24 is the second appendix episode bracketing the poems of chapters 22-23, and it closes the book on an unexpected note.
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2 Samuel 20
Next · Chapter 22 →
2 Samuel 22
The book itself
Summary & story
What 2 Samuel is, why it matters.
Analysis
Themes
Power, consequence, grief, the dynastic promise, and the realism of the prose.
Who's who
David's court
The household of a king who has everything and gives most of it away.

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