Thoughts on 2 Samuel 21

Today’s reading: 2 Samuel 21; Ephesians 4

There are two things that come up in 2 Samuel 21 that I want to talk about this morning: The famine being God’s judgement as a result of sin in Israel, and the way that sin is atoned for.

The famine

2 Samuel 21 opens with a mention that there was a famine during David’s reign that lasted for 3 years. Most of the rest of the events of the chapter are driven then by David praying and God revealing to him that this famine is a result of sin in Israel perpetrated by Saul’s house when he was in power. The reason this struck me at first is that it kind of feeds the false narrative you hear sometimes that natural disasters are God’s judgment on people. Isn’t that the pattern we see here?

The short answer is yes, that is exactly the pattern we see here, but the longer answer is that ancient Israel is the only place we can legitimately look for this pattern. If you remember back to earlier in our reading plan when God was bringing Israel to the land, He promised them that if they remained faithful to Him, He would bless them, they would have victory over all their enemies, they would have rains in their seasons, their crops would never fail and would instead produce abundantly, etc. So realistically, if there was even a single year of poor crops in Israel, let alone full-on famine, it would have been legitimate to ask the Lord what had led to that poor yield. However, God did not make these promises generically to all nations, or even to all individual Israelites such that they would hold true if they moved out of the land. These promises were made to the nation of Israel in the land of Canaan.

What this means is that it was more than legitimate for David to seek God and ask what sin had caused the three years of famine, expecting a direct answer. In fact, if he was paying closer attention to it, the first second there was any indication of things going south in the first year, it would have been legitimate for him to immediately ask the Lord what was going on. However, it is important to realize that this does not hold true for the rest of us. So when a natural disaster occurs and you immediately start hearing the kinds of preachers pop up that claim the death and devastation that occurred are the judgement of God against those people, you can safely ignore whatever that preacher is ranting on about, because God has not promised to protect anyone other than His people Israel, in the promised land, from disasters, diseases, famines, enemies, etc., and even then it is only while they are staying faithful to Him.

The hanging of Saul’s sons

I do also want to make a comment about David giving Saul’s sons to be hanged. It makes me uncomfortable. It seems arbitrary and like David is just selecting seven random men to die for someone else’s crime, and then God accepts that, which seems wrong on so many levels. But thinking and praying about that this morning, there are a couple things I noticed in the text that make it seem like maybe there is more going on in this.

The main indicator of this for me is that God includes Saul's family when He says, "There is bloodguilt on Saul and on his house, because he put the Gibeonites to death." Just like with David, where many of his military commanders and advisors are family members, the same would have been true of Saul. This was pretty standard practice in general in the ancient world, especially with a dynastic change. If you are a first generation king (like Saul) or the first of a new family on the throne (like David), who can you be sure you can trust other than family? So while Saul was on the throne, it could very well have been these same men that are killed in 2 Samuel 21 who either directed or participated in the attempted eradication of the Gibeonites.

It doesn't tell us for sure that this is the case, but the inclusion of Saul's house along with Saul as the guilty party indicates that this was not a whim of Saul alone that he directed his military commanders to carry out against their will. Whether it was initially his idea and the rest were on the same page with him, or whether it was their idea and they sold Saul on it, it seems clear that Saul's family was complicit with him in this, meaning this is not just seven random men being killed, but they may be the same ones who carried out the attack whom David hands over to the Gibeonites.