Rizpah

I wanted to try my hand at storytelling in this week’s blog post. It was to have been based on a tale we studied in BSF (Bible Study Fellowship) this past week. ‘Show, don’t tell,’ is good advice for story tellers. ‘Sights, sounds, textures, tastes, smells – focus on these,’ they say. 

But I can’t do it. 

It’s too gory. It would be too traumatic to fully enter into the story in my imagination. I was intending to put myself in the position of the main character in tale of 2 Samuel 21:7-14. Her name is Rizpah. 

Let me try, even though I won’t do it justice. I’ll weave between telling the story without calling on too many of the senses as well as a bit of commentary. There are no pictures this week … the topic is too heavy.

The story – part 1

Rizpah is an older woman. She is single, like me, but unlike me, she hasn’t always been so. Though neither has she exactly been married. She was once a royal concubine in the palace of King Saul. 

Back then, Rizpah had lain on a soft mattress, a newborn son in her arms, a toddler wriggling beside her. Her ears were attuned to every little sound her children made. Now an old woman, she lies on a rough piece of sackcloth spread on a rock. Her ears are ever alert for the sound of birds or wild animals.

Her sons’ bodies hang above her.

A little background 

I told you it was a gory tale.

Rizpah’s sons, along with five grandsons of King Saul, had been hung at the order of King David. This was to vindicate the deaths of many Gibeonites, a local people group, at the hand of King Saul some forty years earlier. In fact, some of the Gibeonites had served in God’s temple as wood cutters and water carriers. 

King Saul had ordered them slain because they were non-Israelites. Yet their people should have been guaranteed safety according to an old covenant made between Israel and the Gibeonites (see Joshua 9.) This clearly put Saul in the wrong. 

As a result, many years later, the land was stricken with famine. King David enquired of the Lord and was told that the cause of the drought was this broken covenant. He asked the remaining Gibeonites what it would take to atone for the evil done to them. The answer? The death of seven of Saul’s descendants.

Saul wasn’t the one who suffered for his actions. It was everyone affected by the famine, and particularly the seven who were killed as well as Rizpah whose heart was broken. It wasn’t the first time nor would it be the last that the sin of one person meant the suffering of innocents scattered in time and place.

There is no happy ending to this story, though there is a resolution of sorts. 

The story – part 2

A royal convoy approaches Rizpah. Workers respectfully take down the bodies of Rizpah’s sons and the other five bodies as well. They are laid in a covered cart. The decaying bodies are protected now from the rain which has finally come, as well as predators.

Rizpah is finally able to wash. Up until now, a quick squat to do the necessary was all she could manage because of the need to keep the bodies of her precious sons from being desecrated by animals. Her smelly rags are taken away. A royal servant provides Rizpah with clean clothes.

Rizpah accompanies the bodies in the cart. They are taken to the land of Benjamin. Evidently, the decapitated remains of the boys’ father as well as an uncle who died long before have been exhumed and brought here too. A funeral is held at the tomb of the boys’ grandfather. With great fanfare, her sons are laid to rest. 

If only

Now you see why I found it so hard to imagine myself in Rizpah’s sandals, let alone write up the story using all the senses. It is easier just to read the story as ancient history, a tale set in an era of violence, taking up only a few verses in the Bible. To think of this woman as one of us, a woman who lost her livelihood, and then, many years later, her only sons, is just unbearable. 

If only the former king had feared God and done what was right in God’s eyes regarding that earlier covenant…… 

It wasn’t Rizpah’s sin that led to her suffering. It wasn’t even her sons’ sin. They were probably not even born at the time of Saul’s foolish act, or if they were, they would have been very young. I  base this comment on the fact that they were killed near the end of David’s 40-year-reign, and Saul had the Gibeonites killed some time before that began. Rizpah, their mother, was strong enough to sleep rough and protect their bodies, so she was probably a young woman at the time of the slaughter of Gibeonites. 

Prophecy 

Substitionary death was a familiar concept to the people of that day.  Animals were regularly sacrificed as atonement offerings in worship. The lives of Rizpah’s sons (and five other men) were offered as an atonement sacrifice of sorts too, though it was an offering to the offended party and not to God. 

In a sense, the death of these seven men points to Jesus’ atoning death. By their death, the curse against the people was broken, the famine ended. Rizpah’s gut-wrenching grief also points to the pain Jesus’ mother would endure centuries later. Jesus’ atoning death cost those around him dearly too. 

Grief-stricken mothers are a motif throughout Scripture. In Jesus’ day, for example, we are told that a prophecy of Jeremiah was fulfilled through the slaughter of innocent baby boys by order of King Herod. The prophecy itself referred to the grief of another bereft mother many generations prior to Rizpah’s lifetime. Matthew’s gospel puts it like this:

“Then was fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying:
“A voice was heard in Ramah,
Lamentation, weeping, and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children,
Refusing to be comforted,
Because they are no more.”
(Matthew 2:17-18 NKJV)

I doubt that poor Rizpah had any inkling that her pathos was a prophecy of sorts. It would have been fat comfort for her even if she did. 

The conclusion

Sin stinks. God’s mercy is immeasurable, yes, but sin is still like a pervading cancer in society. Sin impacts innocent people as well as, and sometimes even more than, the perpetrators. 

As we focus on the incredible grace shown to us through Jesus, let us never ever ever minimise the horrendous heart-wrenching horror of sin.