2 Samuel 21:10-14
10 Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth and spread it out for herself on a rock. From the beginning of the harvest until the rain fell on them, ▼▼ Heb “until water was poured on them from the sky.”
she did not allow the birds of the air to feed ▼▼ Heb “rest.”
on them by day, nor the wild animals ▼▼ Heb “the beasts of the field.”
by night. 11When David was told what Rizpah daughter of Aiah, Saul’s concubine, had done, 12he ▼▼ Heb “David.” For stylistic reasons the name has been replaced by the pronoun (“he”) in the translation.
went and took the bones of Saul and of his son Jonathan ▼ from the leaders ▼▼ Heb “lords.”
of Jabesh Gilead. (They had secretly taken ▼▼ Heb “stolen.”
them from the plaza at Beth Shan. It was there that Philistines ▼▼ Against the MT, this word is better read without the definite article. The MT reading is probably here the result of wrong word division, with the letter ה (he) belonging with the preceding word שָׁם (sham) as the he directive (i.e., שָׁמָּה, samah, “to there”).
publicly exposed their corpses ▼▼ Heb “had hung them.”
after ▼▼ Heb “in the day.”
they ▼▼ Heb “Philistines.”
had killed Saul at Gilboa.) 13David ▼▼ Heb “he”; the referent (David) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
brought the bones of Saul and of Jonathan his son from there; they also gathered up the bones of those who had been executed. 14 They buried the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan in the land of Benjamin at Zela in the grave of his father Kish. After they had done everything ▼
▼ Many medieval Hebrew mss have here כְּכֹל (kekhol, “according to all”).
that the king had commanded, God responded to their prayers ▼▼ Heb “was entreated.” The verb is an example of the so-called niphal tolerativum, with the sense that God allowed himself to be supplicated through prayer (cf. GKC 137 #51.c).
for the land.
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