9 And he gave them up to the Gibeonites, and they put them to death, hanging them on the mountain before the Lord; all seven came to their end together in the first days of the grain-cutting, at the start of the cutting of the barley.
So Naomi came back out of the country of Moab, and Ruth the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law, with her; and they came to Beth-lehem in the first days of the grain-cutting.
You may not go down on your faces before them or give them worship: for I, the Lord your God, am a God who will not give his honour to another; and I will send punishment on the children for the wrongdoing of their fathers, to the third and fourth generation of my haters;
Further, no price may be given for the life of one who has taken life and whose right reward is death: he is certainly to be put to death. And no price may be offered for one who has gone in flight to a safe town, for the purpose of letting him come back to his place before the death of the high priest. So do not make the land where you are living unholy: for blood makes the land unholy: and there is no way of making the land free from the blood which has come on it, but only by the death of him who was the cause of it. Do not make unclean the land where you are living and in which is my House: for I the Lord am present among the children of Israel.
If, in the land which the Lord your God is giving you, you come across the dead body of a man in the open country, and you have no idea who has put him to death: Then your responsible men and your judges are to come out, and give orders for the distance from the dead body to the towns round about it to be measured; And whichever town is nearest to the body, the responsible men of that town are to take from the herd a young cow which has never been used for work or put under the yoke; And they are to take the cow into a valley where there is flowing water, and which is not ploughed or planted, and there the neck of the cow is to be broken: Then the priests, the sons of Levi, are to come near; for they have been marked out by the Lord your God to be his servants and to give blessings in the name of the Lord; and by their decision every argument and every blow is to be judged: And all the responsible men of that town which is nearest to the dead man, washing their hands over the cow whose neck was broken in the valley, Will say, This death is not the work of our hands and our eyes have not seen it. Have mercy, O Lord, on your people Israel whom you have made free, and take away from your people the crime of a death without cause. Then they will no longer be responsible for the man's death. So you will take away the crime of a death without cause from among you, when you do what is right in the eyes of the Lord.
And Samuel said, As your sword has made women without children, so now your mother will be without children among women. And Agag was cut up by Samuel, bone from bone, before the Lord in Gilgal.
And David said to Michal, I was dancing before the Lord, who put me over your father and all his sons, to make me a ruler over the people of the Lord, over his people Israel: and I will go on playing before the Lord;
Let seven men of his family be given up to us and we will put an end to them by hanging them before the Lord in Gibeon, on the hill of the Lord. And the king said, I will give them.
Only by the word of the Lord did this fate come on Judah, to take them away from before his face; because of the sins of Manasseh and all the evil he did; And because of the death of those who had done no wrong, for he made Jerusalem full of the blood of the upright; and the Lord had no forgiveness for it.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on 2 Samuel 21
Commentary on 2 Samuel 21 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 21
The date of the events of this chapter is uncertain. I incline to think that they happened as they are here placed, after Absalom's and Sheba's rebellion, and towards the latter end of David's reign. That the battles with the Philistines, mentioned here, were long after the Philistines were subdued, appears by comparing 1 Chr. 18:1 with 20:4. The numbering of the people was just before the fixing of the place of the temple (as appears 1 Chr. 22:1), and that was towards the close of David's life; and, it should seem, the people were numbered just after the three years' famine for the Gibeonites, for that which is threatened as "three' years' famine (1 Chr. 21:12) is called "seven' years (2 Sa. 24:12, 13), three more, with the year current, added to those three. We have here,
2Sa 21:1-9
Here
2Sa 21:10-14
Here we have,
2Sa 21:15-22
We have here the story of some conflicts with the Philistines, which happened, as it should seem, in the latter end of David's reign. Though he had so subdued them that they could not bring any great numbers into the field, yet as long as they had any giants among them to be their champions, they would never be quiet, but took all occasions to disturb the peace of Israel, to challenge them, or make incursions upon them.