Where shall we find another whom we can compare with Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, in the love that she bore to her dead children, and the dead children of her lord? Of all the mothers that were ever in Israel, she has obtained first place in the book of life for constant and enduring love.
We read that “there was a famine in the days of David three years, year after year” (2 Sam. 21:1). In that land the rain fell chiefly at two seasons, the former rain after the Feast of Tabernacles, about the eighth month, to prepare for the sowing of the seed; and the latter rain in the first month, just before the beginning of barley harvest. For three years this rain seems to have been wholly or partially withheld, and David inquired of the Lord.
The Lord said, “The famine is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites.” Here we observe that the sentence against an evil work is not always executed speedily. At some period of Saul’s reign, when we do not know, he had been guilty of this crime; and now when Saul had been long dead and David’s reign of forty years was drawing to a close, the iniquity of Saul was remembered, and judgment came. According to the law given by Moses, “Blood defileth the land,” and so one of the “four sore judgments” was sent upon the inhabitants.
On learning the reason of the famine, David called the Gibeonites against whom the injury had been done, and asked, “What shall I do for you? and wherewith shall I make the atonement, that ye may bless the inheritance of the Lord?” The Gibeonites answered, “We will have no silver nor gold of Saul, nor of his house; neither for us shalt thou kill any man in Israel. And he said, What ye shall say, that will I do for you. And they answered the king, The man that consumed us, and that devised against us that we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the coasts of Israel, let seven men of his sons be delivered unto us, and we will hang them up unto the Lord in Gibeah of Saul, whom the Lord did choose. And the king said, I will give them” (2 Sam. 21:3-6).
Upon the manner of this atonement, the nature of the satisfaction demanded, the sacred historian makes no comment. He tells us the fact, and adds nothing to it. According to the law of Moses it was the right of the injured party in some cases to fix the penalty that should be paid. And this the Gibeonites were permitted to do. They seem to have considered stern justice and retribution, rather than any recompense to themselves. Silver and gold they refused, but seven lives of the children from Saul’s family they demanded.
The king complied with their request. He spared Mephibosheth the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, because of the Lord’s oath that was between him and Jonathan. “But the king took the two sons of Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, whom she bare unto Saul, Armoni, and (another) Mephibosheth; and the five sons of Michal the daughter of Saul, whom she brought up for Adriel the son of Barzillai the Meholathite: and he delivered them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them in the hill before the Lord: and they fell all seven together, and were put to death in the days of harvest, in the first days, in the beginning of barley harvest” (2 Sam. 21:8-9).
The revenge demanded by these Gibeonites was barbarous; and not even right according to the law of Moses. They hanged these seven men before the Lord as an atonement and satisfaction for the sin of Saul which defiled the land and brought blood guiltiness upon it. The law said truly that “blood defileth the land, and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it.” But the same law also said that “If a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree: his body shall not remain all night upon the tree; but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day; (for he that is hanged is accursed of God:) that thy land be not defiled, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance” (Deut. 21:22-23).
We see here how the natural man does not understand the things of God. These poor Gibeonites who were a remnant of the Hivites, one of the seven nations doomed to be destroyed, knew no more of justice than would enable them to mend one evil with another. They wanted to purify the land from the defilement of bloodshed, but they stained it a second time by leaving the bones of their victims to whiten where they hung. And how long did this defilement last? “From the beginning of barley harvest until water dropped upon them out of heaven.”
This we may suppose to have been somewhere near the usual season, for we read that “God was entreated for the land,” that is, He sent the rain in answer to prayer, and He would scarcely have sent it at an unseasonable time. We may reasonably conclude therefore that those seven bodies remained where the Gibeonites hanged them until the proper season for rain came, i.e., from the first month until seed-time was drawing near.
During all this time we behold this matchless wonder of Rizpah’s love. “The men fell all seven together, and were put to death in the beginning of barley harvest…And Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest upon them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night.” Surely if this had been a heathen tale, its memory would have been immortal. Picture to yourself the seven men hanged on the shameful tree; the bare hill with the drought of three years upon it, no shelter from the heat striking downwards from the sun, and upwards from the burning rock, day by day during the last and driest days of that long drought.
But on that burning rock, carpeted only with a rough covering of sackcloth, with no shelter but the gallows, Rizpah the daughter of Aiah sat beneath the dead, and for months together she watched those decaying bodies, those whitening bones.
No rest by day, no sleep by night! Not a vulture could stoop from the cloudless sky, not a beast approach under cover of the darkness; for Rizpah the daughter of Aiah was fiercer than the beasts or the birds of prey in her defense of the dead.
Doubtless there were men who brought her food; doubtless many a mother in Israel came and sat beside her to comfort her, or strove to tear her away, or offered to relieve her painful watch. But Rizpah the daughter of Aiah could not leave her post. No mention is made of those that supported, or comforted, or offered to relieve her. She it was, and she only who suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night.
Before Easter (according to our own calendar) her watch began, in a land where the ripe barley may be gathered in before Easter Day. From Easter, through seven long weeks to the end of wheat harvest, and we know not how much longer, while the grapes ripened, and the olives were gathered, and at last the ingathering, the joy of the harvest of all the fruits of the earth is come; all this while Rizpah the daughter of Aiah remained with her sackcloth under the gallows on the naked rock.
At last David and all Israel were shamed out of their neglect, for their ears rang with the fame of that which Rizpah the concubine of Saul had done. Then they sought for the bones of Saul and Jonathan which had been buried under a tree in Jabesh-gilead. They put the law of God in force against the law of the barbarous Gibeonites; and at length they “gathered the bones,” when naught else was left to gather, “of them that were hanged.” They buried the royal dead in the sepulcher of their father, “and after that God was entreated for the land.” And where was Rizpah the daughter of Aiah? We have told all that has been said of her, and we know no more. But what more need we know when her name is in the book of the Lord forever? It shall be told throughout eternity what this woman has done.
Indeed, what Solomon said was true, that “love is as strong as death,” that “many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it, the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.”
But one thing more we must notice. The love of Rizpah was unrewarded; it was hopeless and despairing, yet unconquerable to the end. There was no hope that either of her own sons, or any one of the others, would return to life and bless her for all her care. When all was done that love could do, she earned them nothing but a grave. For herself she won unfading glory, but who could suppose that her own glory was ever for a moment in her mind? It was desperate, unreasoning, overpowering love, love that she gave for nothing, pure, disinterested, unrequited love. There could be no voice, no answer, nor any that regarded. Love, and love only seems to have been the motive of that which Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, the concubine of Saul, hath done.
And now where shall we find another whom we can compare with her? Not another among women, even of the women of the Bible. Of all the millions of Israelitish mothers, there was but one Rizpah. But what if we should tell of one who has taken the place of mother to millions upon millions, and not once only but always has surpassed even this mother’s love? It is no fable. It is the sober truth. To us it is spoken, if we had but the ears to hear it through this more than touching tale. “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion upon the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget (though there had been such a one as Rizpah, they may forget), yet will I not forget thee” (Isa. 49:15).
Here, I am persuaded, lies the real counterpart of this story of a mother’s love for the dead. It is love for the dead, for the accursed, for the children of him who defiled not one land only, but the whole earth, and brought the curse of God upon it by his sin. It is the love of Christ our Lord that is set forth in one of a thousand images in this story of Rizpah.
It is not His love in dying so much as His love for the dead, and O how many dead there are over whom He has watched night and day as she did, who, after all, can only exchange the curse for the grave! Hearts hard as the rock that neither dew nor rain can ever penetrate, whom our Saviour watches and will yet watch from the beginning of harvest until the feast of ingathering, and yet no living water will drop upon them, no rain or dew from heaven will fertilize their souls. The cross of Christ is before them. Easter Day passes over them. His sufferings in glory leave them where they were. The weeks roll on.
Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty, but none for them. They slave themselves for gold that perishes, or they yield their members servants to uncleanness, or else to the merest uselessness, as though they had not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost. Christ hath ascended up on high. He has led captivity captive, has “received gifts for men, yea, for the rebellious also,” but they pay no more heed to it than the bones of a dead man bleaching on the gallows do. The feast of weeks is over, but they are unchangeable, the letter and the spirit of the law of Christ are nothing to them. And now a later and a longer interval is speeding to its end.
The vine puts forth branches laden with clusters of the first ripe grapes. The good olive tree is yielding its fatness which brings honor both to God and man. The disciples of Christ are multiplying upon earth, their increase is filling the unseen paradise. The feast of ingathering approaches, “the harvest is past, the summer is ended, and [they] are not saved.”
Yet where is the love that watched them at the beginning? It is watching still. That love shall avail to remove the curse of God from the earth; it shall not avail to bring to life again all them that are dead. Even the weeping of our Lord over Jerusalem did not save her, “Because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.”
Before the great feast of ingathering, before all the bones are gathered from the prison-house where the curse has placed them, shall we not open our hearts to the love of Christ that passes knowledge; and if we here learn more of the great love wherewith He loved us, it will not have been told in vain what Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, the concubine of Saul, has done.