Old Soldiers Never Die…: Daily Thoughts from 2 Samuel (2 Samuel 21)

When my mother-in-law had a wreck in her nineties, she decided herself that she needed to stop driving. Giving up one’s car keys and one’s independence like that is a hard thing. It is hard to face the challenges of old age and no longer be able to contribute as one once did.

David is coming near the end of his life and losing some of the effectiveness he had as a younger man. But he is still the leader of his people. Will he let them take his “car keys”?

Now there was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year. And David sought the face of the LORD. And the LORD said, “There is bloodguilt on Saul and on his house, because he put the Gibeonites to death.” So the king called the Gibeonites and spoke to them. Now the Gibeonites were not of the people of Israel but of the remnant of the Amorites. Although the people of Israel had sworn to spare them, Saul had sought to strike them down in his zeal for the people of Israel and Judah. And David said to the Gibeonites, “What shall I do for you? And how shall I make atonement, that you may bless the heritage of the LORD?” The Gibeonites said to him, “It is not a matter of silver or gold between us and Saul or his house; neither is it for us to put any man to death in Israel.” And he said, “What do you say that I shall do for you?” They said to the king, “The man who consumed us and planned to destroy us, so that we should have no place in all the territory of Israel, let seven of his sons be given to us, so that we may hang them before the LORD at Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of the LORD.” And the king said, “I will give them.”

But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Saul’s son Jonathan, because of the oath of the LORD that was between them, between David and Jonathan the son of Saul. The king took the two sons of Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, whom she bore to Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth; and the five sons of Merab the daughter of Saul, whom she bore to Adriel the son of Barzillai the Meholathite; and he gave them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them on the mountain before the LORD, and the seven of them perished together. They were put to death in the first days of harvest, at the beginning of barley harvest.

Then Rizpah the daughter of Aiah 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 of the air to come upon them by day, or the beasts of the field by night. When David was told what Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, the concubine of Saul, had done, David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of his son Jonathan from the men of Jabesh-gilead, who had stolen them from the public square of Beth-shan, where the Philistines had hanged them, on the day the Philistines killed Saul on Gilboa. And he brought up from there the bones of Saul and the bones of his son Jonathan; and they gathered the bones of those who were hanged. And they buried the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan in the land of Benjamin in Zela, in the tomb of Kish his father. And they did all that the king commanded. And after that God responded to the plea for the land.

There was war again between the Philistines and Israel, and David went down together with his servants, and they fought against the Philistines. And David grew weary. And Ishbi-benob, one of the descendants of the giants, whose spear weighed three hundred shekels of bronze, and who was armed with a new sword, thought to kill David. But Abishai the son of Zeruiah came to his aid and attacked the Philistine and killed him. Then David’s men swore to him, “You shall no longer go out with us to battle, lest you quench the lamp of Israel.”

After this there was again war with the Philistines at Gob. Then Sibbecai the Hushathite struck down Saph, who was one of the descendants of the giants. And there was again war with the Philistines at Gob, and Elhanan the son of Jaare-oregim, the Bethlehemite, struck down Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam. And there was again war at Gath, where there was a man of great stature, who had six fingers on each hand, and six toes on each foot, twenty-four in number, and he also was descended from the giants. And when he taunted Israel, Jonathan the son of Shimei, David’s brother, struck him down. These four were descended from the giants in Gath, and they fell by the hand of David and by the hand of his servants. (2 Samuel 21, ESV)

This is a passage fraught with difficulties:

1) Why would David be willing to kill innocent men to atone for the guilt of Saul against the Gibeonites? The ESV study note gives several suggestions:

Asked how Saul’s misdeeds against them could be atoned, the Gibeonites requested that seven of his sons be given to them to be put to death. This apparently ignores the command in Deut. 24:16: “nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers.” Various explanations have been offered as to why God allowed this to happen: (1) These seven were accomplices in Saul’s acts. Yet the text in no way suggests this; furthermore, even Merab’s oldest son could scarcely have been more than 10 when Saul died, because David must have been at least in his late teens when Merab married (1 Sam. 18:19) and was no more than 30 when Saul died (2 Sam. 5:4). See also note on 4:2–3. (2) A more plausible suggestion is that God still exacted punishment from Saul’s house for some of the evil that Saul had done; this is consistent with a pattern elsewhere in which serious sins, especially of a king, result in punishment on the sinner’s descendants as well (cf. Ex. 20:5; 1 Sam. 2:33–34; 3:13–14; 1 Kings 14:10–11; 2 Kings 9:7–9). (3) A third suggestion is that the execution of seven men was excessive punishment, because although the Lord told David that Saul’s actions had caused the famine (2 Sam. 21:1), he did not tell David to put anyone to death. In that case, the solution proposed by the Gibeonites was excessively vindictive, while the text hints that a monetary payment (see v. 4) and the restoration of land (see v. 5) may have been sufficient. In any case, the narrator never tells readers that God approved of David’s action here; thus David may simply be acting according to widespread beliefs or the Gibeonite demands rather than divine command (see notes on 13:21; 16:1–4). The relief from the famine (21:14) does show that the payment was enough (and indeed more than enough), but it is also a response to David’s decency with the bones of these victims, as well as those of Saul and Jonathan.

David sought the Lord to determine the cause of the famine. Why it took 3 years to do that is not clear. But seeking the Lord is the correct procedure for any leader.

2) How could one of David’s fighting men be said to have killed Goliath when David killed him as a young man? Again, the ESV study note gives several possible solutions:

Since in 1 Samuel 17 David killed Goliath of Gath (“Gittite” means someone from Gath), this statement has caused endless controversy. (1) Some say that the deed of Elhanan was later attributed to David, or that the name “Goliath” only later became attached to David’s victim, but these interpretations would deny the truthfulness of 1 Samuel 17, and other solutions are preferable. (2) Based on the parallel passage in 1 Chron. 20:5, some think that “Lahmi the brother of” has been deleted from the text before “Goliath” in this verse, and given some of the challenges encountered in establishing the original text of 1–2 Samuel (see Introduction to 1–2 Samuel: Text), this is a distinct possibility. (3) Another suggestion is that the passages refer to two different men named Goliath. Because there are so many duplicate names in the OT, this is also a possibility. (4) A final suggestion, similar to the third solution, is that “Goliath” was a common noun for a giant, just as “Achish” (1 Sam. 21:10; 27:2) may have been a title or common noun for a Philistine ruler (just as “Pharaoh” is a title of the king of Egypt, not a name). There is therefore no conflict in saying that both David and Elhanan killed [a] “Goliath.” The name “Goliath” is traceable back to the non-Semitic Anatolian name Walwatta, and the name has been found in an early Philistine inscription.

The ESV study notes also help us understand the nature of these last four chapters in 2 Samuel:

These last four chapters form an epilogue. There are six sections arranged concentrically. The first section deals with a drought, the last with a plague. The second and fifth talk about David’s heroes, and the middle two are psalms of David. They are not placed in chronological order with the rest of the book (note the vague expression “in the days of David” in 21:1). The last section is climactic, describing the events leading to the purchase of the land on which Solomon would build the temple.

This passage shows us that there are difficult decisions all leaders must make and they do not always do a good job of that. Not the least of these decisions is which responsibilities to retire from. Seeking the Lord is the great first decision before all decisions. If we seek Him with all our hearts we will know His will.