conflicts, and enabled him to gain a complete triumph over those who had rebelled against him. We have reason to believe, that the deepest emotions of gratitude were mingled in his breast with those of a sincere penitence, and that while advancing in years, this illustrious monarch was also ripening for heaven.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

A grievous famine. Seven sons of Saul are put to death. David subdues his enemies.

David had soon another trial to endure, in which the whole nation suffered with him. There was a famine that continued for three successive years. Its severity and length seemed to indicate the divine displeasure against those upon whom it was sent, and David was led to inquire of the Lord the reason of it.

"It is for Saul and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites," was the reply.

This people were a remnant of the Amorites, a name sometimes used to denote the Canaanites in general. They had persuaded Joshua and the Israelites, it will be recollected, to enter into a league with them, confirmed by an oath, that

their lives and property should be secure. They were condemned, however, to be hewers of wood and drawers of water for all the congregation, and for the altar of the Lord, in the service of the tabernacle. It is supposed that they had renounced idolatry; and they were living among the Israelites, a quiet, inoffensive people, faith fully discharging the servile duties which had been imposed upon them.

Saul, it seems, on some occasion, of which there is no particular account, put many of them to death, his own family, probably several of his sons, assisting him in this work of cruelty and blood. He did this to ingratiate himself with the people, and under the pretext of great zeal for their interests. It was a gross violation of the public faith, and a murder of the most aggravated kind; and being sanctioned, or at any rate not disapproved by the nation at large, it subjected them to the judgments of God, which, for some wise reason, were not inflicted till this time.

David was aware of all this, and was led to conclude from the answer which he received from the Lord with regard to the cause of the famine, as well as from the demands of justice itself, that retribution should be made to the Gibeonites, and that the perpetrators of the bloody deed who were still living ought to suffer for their crime.

He thought it best, however, and it is not im

probable that he received divine direction to that effect to inquire of the Gibeonites what they thought should be done, so that the guilt of the offenders might be expiated. "What shall I do for you?" said he, "and wherewith shall I make the atonement, that ye may bless the inheritance of the Lord ?" For he would not undervalue the good will and prayers even of this poor and degraded people.

Their answer was, "We will have no silver nor gold of Saul, nor of his house; neither for us shalt thou kill any man in Israel." Private revenge was not what they sought, but some measures in the way of public justice, which should let the Israelites see that a repetition of such violent wrongs could not take place with impunity.

On David's still referring the whole matter to the Gibeonites, and assuring them that he would do whatever they might require, they replied; "The man that consumed us, and that devised against us that we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the coasts of Israel, let seven men of his sons be delivered unto us, and we will hang them up unto the Lord," (to satisfy the claims of his justice,) "in Gibeah of Saul, whom the Lord did choose,"-that is, to be king. They selected this, undoubtedly as the place of execution, because it was where Saul resided, and the punishment to be inflicted would thus be rendered the more severe and striking.

David complied with their demand. He delivered up to them seven of the sons of Saul, who had been concerned, as we have every reason to believe, in the murder of the Gibeonites, and the putting of whom to death would not affect at all the continuance of Saul's name among his descendants. He thus preserved inviolate his promise to Saul that he would not cut off his seed after him, nor destroy his name out of his father's house. On this account, he was particularly careful to spare Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, from whom, in the male line, sprung numerous descendants. Indeed, of the seven that he delivered up, two were not the legal descendants of Saul, being the sons of his concubine Rizpah, and the other five were the sons of Saul's daughter by Adriel, and they, had they lived, could only have kept up the name of their father, and not that of Saul.

These men were hung at Gibeah, in the beginning of the barley harvest, corresponding to the latter part of our March or the first part of April, and their bodies continued to be suspended in the air till the long wished for rain began to descend.

In the meanwhile, Rizpah, the mother of two of them, was so much overcome with grief at their fate, and so devoted in her attachment to them, that she had a tent of sackcloth pitched near the place of execution, and there, (probably

with the aid of her servants,) kept a constant watch over the dead bodies, to protect them against the birds of the air by day, and the beasts of the field by night. This she did till they were taken down and interred.

David, hearing of this, could not but sympathise with the tender feelings of such a mother, and as the cause of the famine was now removed by the return of the rain, he went to Jabeshgilead, and had the bones of Saul and Jonathan removed from that place, and deposited, together with those of the seven who were executed by the Gibeonites, in the sepulchre of Kish, Saul's father.

He showed, in this way, that while bringing the guilty to punishment, as the official minister of divine justice, he had no personal feelings of resentment, and was ready to render the last sad offices of respect to the descendants of one from whom he had formerly received the most violent persecution and injury.

After the interment which has just been mentioned, "God," we are told, was entreated for the land," and the famine ceased.

But now David had another evil to meet. The Philistines waged war against him, probably deeming it a favorable time to do this, when the whole nation of the Israelites had been agitated and weakened by two rebellions, and exhausted by a long and severe famine. He obtained, however,