The events of the last four chapters of 2 Samuel were not recorded chronologically. They appear like the appendices of the book. The three-year famine described in 2 Samuel 21 took place at a point in David’s reign. This unusually long famine led him to seek the face of the Lord, meaning he went to the temple in Gibeon to inquire of the Lord using the Urim and Thummim.
It
was revealed to David that the famine was a judgment of God for the crime that
Saul and his bloody house had committed. Saul attempted to exterminate the
Gibeonites and violated the covenant which Joshua made with them earlier. The
lives of the Gibeonites were protected by that covenant. (Details of how the
covenant with the Gibeonites was made can be found in Joshua 9.) Since Saul’s
bloody house violated it and did not receive their just due, the famine was a
delayed justice for a crime Israel had committed. At that point, Saul as the
king was the representative head of the nation, and what he did had an
implication on the nation.
Wanting
to reverse the curse that came upon the land, the inheritance of the Lord,
David sought to right the situation. He asked the Gibeonites, “What should I do
for you? And how can I make atonement that you may bless the inheritance
of the Lord?” He
wanted to know what he could do to compensate for the wrongdoing that Israel as
a nation under Saul had committed against the Gibeonites. The King was told
that no amount of money could right the wrong. Besides, it was not in their
place nor position to put to death any person in Israel. In his desire to deal
with the famine that had plagued them, David persisted in asking what he could
do for them to amend the wrong. At David's insistence, the Gibeonites then
asked for the lives of seven members of Saul’s family to atone for the wrong
they had committed. They would then have the seven persons impaled
by hanging them before the Lord in
Gibeah, the hometown of Saul. David agreed to their request.
Why God did not deal with Saul, since
this was a crime that he had committed? Why did God punish Israel during
David’s reign for a crime that was committed by Saul? This is almost similar to
a question that had often been asked: why must the whole humanity be punished
for the sin of Adam? The answer rests in the fact that Adam was the federal
head of humanity. What he did, he did as the representative head of humanity. In the same way,
Saul was the head of Israel. What he did, he did as a representative of the
nation. Remember what Paul so aptly said in Romans 5:17? As the head of
mankind, Adam’s sin affected all of us. Now through Christ the new Adam, the head of the new
humanity, we who trust in Him are made righteous by His righteousness. Here's another lesson. What
happened to the nation of Israel can also be a call of God to reflect on one’s
past. There may be sins one has committed by omission, which one remains unaware
of. Left undealt with, it could end up like having a dead corpse in one’s
closet, that leave behind repugnant stench in life. Seek the Lord to
identify and deal with it speedily.
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