Rizpah

Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, was a concubine of Saul, the first king of Israel, and the mother of two of his sons, Armoni and Mephibosheth (2 Samuel 3:7; 21:8). Her name is the Hebrew word for a glowing stone or live coal, the same word used of the coal in Isaiah 6:6. She appears in only two passages, both in 2 Samuel, yet each records a moment on which the fate of Saul's house turned: a quarrel over her that broke Abner's loyalty to that house, and a vigil over her executed sons that ended with the reburial of Saul and Jonathan.

Biblical Account

After Saul died on Mount Gilboa, Abner the son of Ner, commander of Saul's army, made Saul's son Ish-bosheth king at Mahanaim, while the house of Judah followed David at Hebron (2 Samuel 2:8-11). During the war between the two houses, Ish-bosheth asked Abner, "Why have you gone in to my father's concubine?" (2 Samuel 3:7). The text records the accusation, not whether it was true. In the ancient Near East a claim on a dead king's concubine could be read as a claim on his throne, a reading the narrative itself later attaches to Absalom, who went in to David's concubines "in the sight of all Israel" on Ahithophel's advice (2 Samuel 16:21-22). Abner answered with fury, swore to transfer the kingdom to David "from Dan to Beersheba," and Ish-bosheth "could not answer Abner another word, because he feared him" (2 Samuel 3:8-11). Rizpah says nothing in this scene. The house chronology places Ish-bosheth's two-year reign at about 1010 to 1008 BC, so the quarrel falls in David's early years at Hebron.

Her second appearance comes during a famine of three years in David's reign. The Lord told David that there was bloodguilt on Saul and his house because Saul had put the Gibeonites to death, a remnant of the Amorites whom Israel had sworn to spare in Joshua's day (2 Samuel 21:1-2; Joshua 9:15-21). The Gibeonites refused silver or gold and asked instead for seven of Saul's sons to hang "before the Lord at Gibeah of Saul" (2 Samuel 21:4-6). David spared Mephibosheth the son of Jonathan because of his oath to Jonathan, and handed over Rizpah's two sons, Armoni and Mephibosheth, together with the five sons of Saul's daughter Merab by Adriel the Meholathite (2 Samuel 21:7-8). The Gibeonites hanged all seven on the mountain "in the first days of harvest, at the beginning of barley harvest" (2 Samuel 21:9), in the spring.

Rizpah then took sackcloth and spread it for herself on the rock, "from the beginning of harvest until rain fell upon them from the heavens," and she did not allow the birds by day or the wild beasts by night to touch the bodies (2 Samuel 21:10). The text does not say how long this lasted; if the rain was the ordinary autumn rain, her watch would have run about six months, and older commentators (Barnes, the Cambridge Bible) reckon it so. The law required a hanged body to be buried the same day (Deuteronomy 21:22-23); the exposure at Gibeah left that unmet until the rain came, which the older commentators take as the sign that the drought had broken.

When David was told what Rizpah had done, he retrieved the bones of Saul and Jonathan from the men of Jabesh-Gilead, who had stolen them from the public square of Beth-shan, where the Philistines had hung them after fastening Saul's body to the city wall (2 Samuel 21:12; 1 Samuel 31:10-13). The bones of the seven were gathered, and all were buried in Zela in the land of Benjamin, in the tomb of Saul's father Kish (2 Samuel 21:14). Zela is listed among the towns of Benjamin (Joshua 18:28), but its site is not identified. "After that God responded to the plea for the land" (2 Samuel 21:14).

Textual Note

Most Hebrew manuscripts of 2 Samuel 21:8 read Michal rather than Merab as the mother of Adriel's five sons. Since 1 Samuel 18:19 records that Merab, not Michal, was given to Adriel the Meholathite, English versions including the ESV read Merab, and commentators such as Keil and Delitzsch treat the name Michal here as a copyist's error.

Significance

Rizpah, a concubine of the dead king, kept the bodies of her sons from the birds and beasts until the rain came, and it was the report of her watch that moved the king to give Saul's line a burial in its family tomb (2 Samuel 21:11-14). The famine ended only after that burial (2 Samuel 21:14).