²¹ Ahithophel answered, “Sleep with your father’s concubines whom he left to take care of the palace. Then all Israel will hear that you have made yourself obnoxious to your father, and the hands of everyone with you will be more resolute.”

⁸ But the king took Armoni and Mephibosheth, the two sons of Aiah’s daughter Rizpah,^(A) whom she had borne to Saul, together with the five sons of Saul’s daughter Merab,^[a] whom she had borne to Adriel son of Barzillai the Meholathite.^{(B) 9} He handed them over to the Gibeonites, who killed them and exposed their bodies on a hill before the Lord. All seven of them fell together; they were put to death^(C) during the first days of the harvest, just as the barley harvest was beginning.^(D)

¹⁰ Rizpah daughter of Aiah took sackcloth and spread it out for herself on a rock. From the beginning of the harvest till the rain poured down from the heavens on the bodies, she did not let the birds touch them by day or the wild animals by night.^{(E) 11} When David was told what Aiah’s daughter Rizpah, Saul’s concubine, had done,