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over to them that they might be nailed to the cross - of course after they were dead, for
so the law directed^42 - as they termed it: "To Jehovah in Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of
Jehovah."
Terrible as their demand was, it could not be refused, and the two sons of Rizpah, a
foreign concubine of Saul, and five sons of Merab,^43 Saul's eldest daughter, were
selected as the victims. Then this most harrowing spectacle was presented.
From the commencement of the barley harvest in April until the early rains of autumn
evidenced the removal of the curse from the land, hung those lifeless, putrescent
bodies, which a fierce Syrian sun shriveled and dried; and beneath them, ceaseless,
restless, was the weird form of Saul's concubine. When she lay down at night it was on
the coarse hair-cloth of mourners, which she spread upon the rock; but day and night
was she on her wild, terrible watch to chase from the mangled bodies the birds of prey
that, with hoarse croaking, swooped around them, and the jackals whose hungry howls
woke the echoes of the night. Often has Judaea capta been portrayed as weeping over
her slain children. But as we realize the innocent Jewish victims of Gentile persecution
in the Middle Ages, and then remember the terrible cry under the Cross, this picture of
Rizpah under the seven crosses, chasing from the slaughtered the vultures and the
jackals, seems ever to come back to us as its terrible emblem and type.
"And it was told David what Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, the concubine of Saul, had
done. And David went [himself] and took the bones of Saul, and the bones of Jonathan
his son, from the men of Jabesh-gilead, who had stolen them from the street of
Bethshan, where the Philistines had hanged them, when the Philistines had slain Saul
in Gilboa. and he brought up from thence the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan
his son; and they gathered the bones of them that were crucified. And the bones of Saul
and Jonathan his son buried they in the country of Benjamin in Zelah, in the sepulcher
of Kish his father."
- The Pestilence. - In regard to this event, it is of the greatest importance to bear in
mind that it was sent in consequence of some sin of which Israel, as a people, were
guilty. True, the direct cause and immediate occasion of it were the pride and carnal
confidence of David, perhaps his purpose of converting Israel into a military
monarchy. But this state of mind of their king was, as we are expressly told (2 Samuel
24:1), itself a judgment upon Israel from the Lord, when Satan stood up to accuse
Israel, and was allowed thus to influence David (1 Chronicles 21:1). If, as we suppose,
the popular rising under Absalom and Sheba was that for which Israel was thus
punished, there is something specially corresponding to the sin alike in the desire of
David to have the people numbered, and in the punishment which followed. Nor ought
we to overlook another Old Testament principle evidenced in this history, that of the
solidarity of a people and their rulers.
(^)