Today’s episode provides a great opportunity to audit our own spiritual records for unpaid bills.
Here are some unresolved accounts in David’s life. First, we read of “a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year; and David inquired of the Lord” (2 Sam 21:1). Why did it take him three years to inquire? Why does it often take us so long to notice the spiritual famine in our lives or churches? The problem went back decades, “because of Saul and his bloodthirsty house, because he killed the Gibeonites” (v 1). Sometimes difficulties we face were caused by others, but now we need to resolve them. Saul broke the covenant Joshua made with the Gibeonites, and God took it seriously, even if Saul didn’t. When David inquired how to fix it, the Gibeonites asked for seven of Saul’s sons to be hanged on a hill by Saul’s hometown, Gibeah. David complied, although the law stated, “If a man has committed a sin deserving of death,…and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain overnight on the tree, but you shall surely bury him that day, so that you do not defile the land” (Deut 21:22-23). But these bodies hung there “from the beginning of harvest until the late rains poured on them from heaven” (2 Sam 21:10). Thus, in attempting to rid the ground of the curse of Saul, they replaced it with another one. But the Lord was far more merciful than they and, in spite of their gross error, restored the land to fruitfulness (v 14). David was then reminded of other unfinished business, bringing home “the bones of Saul, and the bones of Jonathan” from Jabesh to reinter them in the grave of Kish (v 12). How did David remember this overdue bill? By seeing the heroic loyalty of Saul’s concubine, Rizpah. To read one of the great essays in the English language, see C.H. Waller’s chapter on Rizpah in “The Path To The City Of Gold.”