Read 2 Samuel 21:1-14 to start.

Before I begin this morning, I’m going to start with a warning. This is not a pleasant or happy passage of scripture, and this is not a pleasant or happy sermon. It details with a lot of disturbing and violent things, so if you are squeamish, I apologize in advance. It also raises some real and important questions that I think we all need to address, now perhaps more than ever.

I will start with the questions, there are three of them.

1. How do we behave when the balance of power tips in our favour?
2. How do we react when things go wrong?
3. How do we respond when we are treated unfairly?

We’ll get to those in a few minutes, but first, here’s something that you probably don’t know about me. You might know that I was born in a country that no longer exists, namely, the former Yugoslavia. But you probably don’t know that technically speaking, I’m Serbian Orthodox. They baptized me into that particular church when I was a baby, because my mom had been raised Catholic, and really, really wanted to make sure I got baptized right away. Serbian Orthodox was the most readily available option in Belgrade in 1975.

I bring this up because my sermon starts on a Serbian Orthodox feast day, the feast of Petrovdan which commemorates the martyrdom of Peter and Paul. It starts on July 12, 1992, to be specific, in some villages in Bosnia, less than 200 km from where I was born. On that day, several villages in the border region close to Serbia were attacked by Bosniak muslim forces, and 91 ethnic Serbs were killed outright, or abducted and killed later. This was early in what became known as the Bosnian war. It was not the first atrocity of that war, and it was far from the last. But it was part of a cycle of revenge, a cycle that culminated in the Srebrenica massacre three years later, almost to the day. That massacre resulted in the deaths of 8000 Bosnian men and boys, and some of the perpetrators blamed it specifically as vengeance for the Petrovdan killings.

I bring this up because this morning we’re dealing with one of the most challenging and unpleasant accounts from the life of David. I know, I know, that hardly narrows it down. David dealt with a lot of trouble, a lot of obstacles, a lot of suffering, some of it by his own making, but much of it was thrust upon him from outside forces. This was one of those, this was an echo from the days of his predecessor, King Saul. It was also an echo from the early days of the conquest of Canaan, from the time of Joshua. And it is about killings and a cycle of revenge.

At some point during the reign of King Saul, he had decided to kill the Gibeonites. We’re not entirely sure when or why he did this, but it was definitely a wrong thing to do, for a number of reasons. In the book of Joshua we read about the Gibeonites at chapter 9. This was a city populated by Hivities, one of the Canaanite groups who lived in the land, and they decided that instead of fighting the people of Israel, they would instead deceive them, so they by trickery made a covenant with Joshua, pretending to be from far away. Joshua agreed not to attack them, and in fact to protect them. Only afterwards was it discovered that they were indeed quite local.

The Gibeonites had lived among the people of Israel for centuries at this point, all through the days of the judges. They were not Israelites, but they lived among them seemingly without incident. And then Saul decided that he wanted to get rid of them.

The city of Gibeon is located on a hill about ten kilometres north-west of Jerusalem, in the land occupied by the tribe of Benjamin. It’s not far from the city of Gibeah, hometown of King Saul, which was maybe seven kilometres north of Jerusalem. In fact, from the high place at Gibeon, which is the where the original tabernacle was located during David’s reign, you can see Gibeah. We’re talking a comparable distance from the intersection at Sobeys out to the roundabout at Victoria Cross. The Gibeonites were Saul’s neighbours. He likely knew some of them, maybe many of them. And yet, we are told that in his zeal for the people of Israel, he tried to destroy them.

We are not sure why exactly he did this. It may have been an attempt on Saul’s part to overcompensate for his failure to deal with the Amalekites. It might have been connected to Saul’s purge of witches and mediums, or his ordered destruction of the priests of Nob. Or it might have been a completely unrelated killing that Saul ordered in his increasing paranoia and violence. We don’t know why he did it, but we know that it was unjust, a violation of covenant, and that God judged Israel for it.

This is where our story actually begins. The judgement for the oppression of the Gibeonites came during David’s reign in the form of a famine that lasted three years. David went to the Lord to inquire about the famine, and found out that the blame lay with Saul over the matter of the Gibeonites. David decided to resolve this by consulting the Gibeonites themselves, who asked for seven of Saul’s descendents so that they could have their own bloody revenge. David agreed, and two of Saul’s sons and five of his grandsons were taken and given to the Gibeonites to execute

I said this was not going to be a fun and happy sermon, and so far it hasn’t been. We see blood, genocide, and revenge, and we haven’t even gotten to the fact that the bodies were left out in the elements for six months, while the mother of two of them worked day and night to keep the birds and the beasts away.

I mentioned three questions earlier, and now you might have a few of your own. You might be thinking why is this in Bible? Why would we have to know about this particular series of atrocities? And what has possessed Marko to preach about it this morning? Those are fair questions, all of them. This is all unpleasant stuff, but life in this fallen world is filled with unpleasant stuff, because people sin and the consequences of that are often far reaching.

The consequences of Saul’s attempted genocide of the Gibeonites came down upon David’s kingdom, much like the consequences of decades of sponsoring terrorism came down on Iran last weekend, or ongoing ethnic feuds in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. A lot of innocent people who had nothing to do with any of the decision making suffered and died in all of those cases.

Let’s loop back to the first of those questions I had raised to start. How do we behave when the balance of power tips in our favour? We know how Saul used the power he had. This was someone from a relatively humble family from one of the smaller tribes of Israel, he had no real power before he was anointed by the prophet Samuel to be the king, but when he had power, he frequently used it to hurt others, and often people who were not his enemies.

His treatment of the Gibeonites was a transgression against God’s laws, we read in the book of Leviticus chapter 19 and Deuteronomy chapter 10 that the Israelites were to love and care for the strangers among them, for they had been in that same position in Egypt, where of course they had been grossly mistreated. When the balance of power tipped in Saul’s favour, he abused it.

In contrast, we see that David in many cases used his power to protect others. Now, he certainly was far from perfect in this, but even in the mess of this chapter, he managed to protect Mephibosheth, the only surviving son of his dear friend Jonathan. Earlier in his life we could look at examples of how David, when he was in the position to murder Saul, who had been hunting him, who had thrown a javelin at him, and would certainly have jumped at the chance to kill him, but David spared him. He spared Saul twice, when Saul was completely in his power, because it was the right thing to do.

The Gibeonites, they did not have much power, but when David came to them and asked them how to make things right, they seized upon that. The Gibeonites had been grievously mistreated, and they wanted revenge. They wanted nothing less than blood.

There’s a well known expression, power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is not always the case, but often we do see that those in power do tend to abuse it. I personally believe that power to a great extent reveals what is already in the heart. I think that revelation provoked by power is as much or more to blame than the power itself, but the result is often the same.

Scripture is filled with examples of people who got even a small amount of power and proceeded to wreak havoc with it. Think of the parable of the ungrateful debtor, when he was forgiven a massive debt, equivalent of billions of dollars, then refused to forgive someone who owed him a few thousand dollars. Think of Haman, who in the book of Esther we read how he had a grudge against one man turned into an attempted genocide, because he had been afforded the power to do that. Or think of pretty much the entire book of Judges. Power often brings corruption, abuse, and harm.

How does this apply to us today? You and I are not likely to find ourselves with power on the scale that David and Saul wielded. We may not lead nations or cities, but we may lead our families, our coworkers, our siblings, our friends. How do we use the power that we have in those spheres? How do we react when granted power? When we find ourselves in a position of power, do we use it for our own benefit, or do we help those less fortunate? Do we push others down, in order to bring ourselves up by comparison, or do we seek the benefit of all? Do we follow and do we trust God, from whom all power ultimately flows, or do we try to go it all on our own, trusting to our own wisdom and understanding?

When we do things in our own strength, well, how does that typically go? In my experience, it may go okay for a little while, but probably not in the longer term. When we use the power we have by our own direction, sooner or later, and usually sooner in my experience, things will go sideways.  That brings me to the second of three questions that I raised earlier: How do we react when things go wrong?

The chapter opens with something that had gone seriously wrong, there was a famine in Israel, a famine that lasted for three years. David did not cause the famine, he had nothing to do with killing the Gibeonites. But the problem landed on his desk, much as problems that we did not cause and which we could not have prevented end up demanding our attention.

David left this longer than he should have. There were three years of famine before he went to God and asked what was going on. That’s three pointless planting seasons, three failed harvests, three years of mounting hunger for his people. No doubt David himself didn’t have to worry about going hungry, he was the king. But many of his people surely did. We don’t know the exact severity of the famine, we don’t know if it had gotten to the point that people were starving to death. It’s certainly possible that it was that serious. Three years of famine in an agricultural society is going to be a very bad time, and it does appear that David waited until things were bad before he did anything about it. He could have gone to the Lord after one year of famine, or even after the second year, but he did not. He waited until the problem was unavoidable.

Do we do the same thing ourselves? I know that I sometimes do, even though I know it’s a bad idea. I came close to one of those situations recently. Last week I had to replace my hot water heater. Well, I didn’t do it myself of course, that’s certainly outside my handyman skill set. It had been leaking, and replacing the overflow valve did not solve it. The first service call did not solve it. The leaking continued, and seemed to be increasing, and I got concerned. Did I want to deal with this? No, of course not. I didn’t want to spend several thousand dollars to replace something that I didn’t break, something that I had not even bought in the first place. But it needed to be resolved, or it was going to completely fail and flood my entire basement. I probably left it longer than I should have, but we got it taken care of.

David waited too long, that was his first mistake. It’s ironic that he did so, we can see in multiple Psalms how David recognized that he should turn to God with his troubles, and that he got answers and help when he did so. But in this case, he forgot his own lesson, because when he got his answer from God as to the source of the problem, he went, not to the Lord for a solution, but to the Gibeonites themselves. This was his second mistake.

Was he hoping to pay them off for Saul’s past transgressions? The term we might use now is to make reparations. He found out quickly that was not going to work.

I can’t imagine this is what David had wanted when he went to ask them how to atone for Saul’s sins. David had himself been deeply wronged by his predecessor, had been hunted for his life by Saul. And then after Saul’s death David had fought a civil war against Saul’s remaining legitimate son Ishbosheth for the kingdom. Even considering all that, David did not bear the house of Saul any particular ill-will. David, for all his failings, was a man willing to repent of past misdeeds and a man and willing to forgive. The Gibeonites were not.

In retrospect, it was unwise to hope that the Gibeonites would be willing to forgive. It was probably unwise to trust them at all. These were the people who had used false pretences to deceive Joshua into a covenant of protection. I don’t generally want to blame the victims, and certainly Saul was wrong to kill them, but what we know from their history indicates that these were people who would try to drive a hard bargain.

I don’t know David’s mind or his immediate reaction, but I can imagine the horror upon finding out that the Gibeonites wanted the descendents of Saul so they could put them to death. And not just something quick and simple, either. In a bit of gory detail, while in the KJV it’s translated as hanged, it’s more likely that they were impaled on stakes and put on display. The Gibeonites wanted everyone who passed by to see the dead sons and grandsons of the king who had oppressed them. They wanted the blood of the house of Saul

Remember what I said earlier about cycles of revenge? This is a textbook lesson in how to perpetuate that. David was not interested in vengeance, but now the cycle of revenge would continue. David had seen much revenge around him, his son Absalom’s rebellion had started with revenge. His general Joab had killed at least three people in cold blood that he had decided had wronged him. David himself had planned to kill Nabal, a wealthy landowner who had insulted him while he was on the run, but he had been diverted from that by Nabal’s wife Abigail, which David appreciated, because he knew it would have been wrong.

David knew about revenge, he had seen revenge, and I believe he knew that it was a dead end street.

The way to end a cycle of revenge is to forgive. Now, you might be willing to forgive, but you can’t force someone else to do that, especially if they are not willing. And the Gibeonites were not. David was trapped into doing something I’m sure he did not want to do. He had no choice but to take the two sons of Saul’s concubine Rizpah, who were presumably Saul’s last remaining male offspring, and five grandsons, who also were the grandsons of Barzillai, one of David’s close allies who had sheltered David during Absalom’s rebellion. These young men had probably had nothing to do with Saul’s mistreatment of the Gibeonites, and I’m sure that David did not want to do this. But even so, they were made to suffer for it.

What do we do when things go wrong? Do we try and figure it out for ourselves, or do we turn to the Lord early and often? I think we all know the answer to this one, because our natural human pride wants to figure it out, wants to solve the problem on our own, without help from anyone. It’s humbling to say “I need help” whether the problem is small or great. We don’t often want help, even when that help is readily available, and I’m speaking here as someone who both offers help where it is not wanted and refuses help where it is likely needed.

Yes, we can learn and grow from solving problems on our own. I want my children to figure things out so they will know better for the future, but I also want them to ask for help, or advice, or at least to be pointed in the right direction. How much more does our creator want that for us? He wants us to learn, but so often we miss the very first lesson, that we should bring far more of our problems to Him than we actually do. Whether the problem is massive or miniscule, He is there to listen and to guide.

Could David have avoided the bloodshed with the Gibeonites had he turned to God sooner, and had he asked God how to handle this? Perhaps. We don’t know the end from the beginning as the Lord does, and so it’s impossible for us to say. Perhaps the situation was never going to be resolved without further hurt and suffering. That is often what happens when people are not willing to forgive.

Of course, God has solved, and will solve so many problems that we face in ways that we never anticipate and never imagine. It is entirely possible, and I believe likely, that He had a way that avoided any additional bloodshed. But we’ll never know, because we don’t see that David asked for it.

When things go wrong, and they will, how do we react? There are many ways that things do go wrong, of course, so let me ask the third and final question that I had posed earlier: How do we respond when we are treated unfairly?

Look at how the Gibeonites responded when Saul mistreated them – they saw their opportunity to get revenge, and they took it. And eye for a eye, a tooth for the life, a life for a life. Harsh, but ultimately fair and just in the grand scheme of things. But that is not the way God would have us behave.

When we are treated unfairly, how do we respond? Do we lash out and seek to make things even and fair, even though that may bring harm to others? Do we blunder forward and try to do the best with what we can? Or do we turn to the Lord and seek His way, His direction?

We should all know what that way looks like. In Ephesians chapter 4, we read at verse (31)  Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: (32)  And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.

If we turn to God and walk His path, that will put a big roadblock in the way of our selfish tendencies. If we follow God, it will prevent us from seeking to harm others. His way is always better than whatever we can come up with.

There is one more person in chapter that I’ve barely mentioned, and I will finish with her, because she is perhaps the only person who comes out of this whole sordid mess with no recorded error or sin or misjudgement. This is Rizpah, Saul’s concubine, and the mother of two of the hanged men. Of anyone mentioned here, she was treated the most unfairly, but look how she responded.

Rizpah had already had a rough path. As concubine to Saul, she no doubt had endured much of his paranoia and instability in his later years. We don’t know that Saul mistreated her, but he definitely mistreated lots of other people. And as his concubine, her rights and privileges were likely limited, both because she was not his wife, and because he had died and the kingdom had passed to another. After his death it appears that Saul’s general Abner may have started a relationship with her, but that was complicated by the reaction of Saul’s heir, and Abner was in any case murdered by Joab. I would say that is another story for another day, but I preached a sermon about Joab a few years ago.

Rizpah’s two sons were likely her only providers, and now they had been taken, and killed, and their bodies put on display. What was she to do?

Being angry would be normal and expected, that would be a human reaction. Likewise being depressed and given to despair, no one would have been surprised by that, or if she had disappeared from the narrative entirely and been forgotten. But she didn’t, and while she mourned, she also honoured her fallen sons and the other dead by protecting their bodies, and doing so for months.

Rizpah had been treated unfairly. Her children were taken and killed, for no fault of theirs or her own, but for the sin of their father. Their only failing was their birth. She was left destitute, the Gibeonites would not have cared what happened to her, and David did not seem terribly concerned either, at least not at first. She had no military or political power to speak of. She had every excuse in the world to just disappear and try to forget what had happened and to just be forgotten.

But she did not. She chose to honour those who had died, at great personal discomfort to herself. She would not forget, and she would not let their bodies be defiled. It may have been as long as six months that she was out there on the rock, chasing off the birds and the scavengers. She did not forget, and she did not quit. And while not a household name, she is not forgotten, her name has been recorded in scripture, and here we are talking about her three thousand years later.

Her efforts came to the attention of King David, and that provoked him to do something about it. He took down the bodies and made certain that they had a proper burial, along with the bones of Saul and Jonathan. He honoured them because Rizpah had honoured them. And the passage closes with “And after that God was intreated for the land.”

Rizpah’s intervention and her process of mourning proved to be a key part of this whole process. Would the famine have ended otherwise? Perhaps, but we are told that it only ended afterwards. When she was treated unfairly, instead of seeking revenge or surrendering to despair, she chose a better path, a hard path, but a better one.

We saw three questions in this passage, each of which has several answers. How do we answer these? How do we deal with power when we have it? How do we deal with adversity when we face it? And how do we respond to unfair treatment? We know the natural answer, the natural way, and we know the suffering that will bring. Likewise, we know that there is a different way, God’s way. His way tells us to forgive rather than to avenge. He tells us to cast our cares on Him, for He cares for us. And he tells us to take care of the foreigner, the widow, the fatherless, those who are at the bottom. These things do not come naturally to us. But if we follow Christ, if we would be more like Him, then that is how we must live, and how we must act, no matter the cost.