2 Samuel 21:6-14

New American Bible (Revised Edition)

⁶ let seven men from among his descendants be given to us, that we may execute them before the Lord in Gibeon, on the Lord’s mountain.” The king replied, “I will give them up.” ⁷ The king, however, spared Meribbaal, son of Jonathan, son of Saul, because of the Lord’s oath that formed a bond between David and Saul’s son Jonathan.^{(A) 8} But the king took Armoni and Meribbaal, the two sons that Aiah’s daughter Rizpah had borne to Saul, and the five sons of Saul’s daughter Merob that she had borne to Adriel, son of Barzillai the Meholathite,^{(B) 9} and delivered them into the power of the Gibeonites, who then executed them on the mountain before the Lord. The seven fell at the one time; they were put to death during the first days of the harvest—that is, at the beginning of the barley harvest.

¹⁰ Then Rizpah, Aiah’s daughter, took sackcloth and spread it out for herself on the rock from the beginning of the harvest until rain came down on them from the heavens, fending off the birds of the heavens from settling on them by day, and the wild animals by night.^{(C) 11} When David was informed of what Rizpah, Aiah’s daughter, the concubine of Saul, had done, ¹² he went and obtained the bones of Saul and of his son Jonathan from the citizens of Jabesh-gilead, who had stolen them away secretly from the public square of Beth-shan, where the Philistines had hanged them at the time they defeated Saul on Gilboa.^{(D) 13} When he had brought up from there the bones of Saul and of his son Jonathan, the bones of those who had been executed were also gathered up. ¹⁴ Then the bones of Saul and of his son Jonathan were buried in the land of Benjamin, at Zela, in the tomb of his father Kish. After all that the king commanded had been carried out, God granted relief to the land.^(E)