The wise woman of Abel left us the Hebrew idiom and notion that cities are our ‘mothers’ - but it took another woman of Israel, the mother of mourning, to remind David that it isn’t just the living who are worth protecting - but also the dead. The Metropolis and Necropolis meet in these final chapters of Samuel.
For three years there was a famine in the land, as no rain fell. The oracle of YHWH blames unfinished business - not the bad blood spilled by King David but the long-ago battle in which King Saul killed the people of Gibeon - many chapters and years ago. When King David sends for them to ask for what they’d want for reparations, as it’s clear that this is what will make amends - they demand the human sacrifices of the remaining sons of Saul. They name the number seven.
Let’s assume that this indeed is the reason for what comes next - and not David’s fear that the last living claimants to the throne of Saul, still around, must somehow be eliminated. Either way, he does not hesitate. Because of the seed-covenant he once made with his lover Jonathan, David chooses not to add his houseguest/prisoner Mephiboshet to the list of seven sons.
Instead, they arrest the five sons of Princess Merav, Saul’s last grandsons, and two more men - Saul's sons from his concubine, Rizpa.
On a bright spring day in the beginning of the barley harvest, the seven men are publicly executed in Gibea, the former homestead of Saul, by the people of Gibeon.
What happens next is even more heartbreaking:
וַתִּקַּ֣ח רִצְפָּה֩ בַת־אַיָּ֨ה אֶת־הַשַּׂ֜ק וַתַּטֵּ֨הוּ לָ֤הּ אֶל־הַצּוּר֙ מִתְּחִלַּ֣ת קָצִ֔יר עַ֛ד נִתַּךְ־מַ֥יִם עֲלֵיהֶ֖ם מִן־הַשָּׁמָ֑יִם וְלֹֽא־נָתְנָה֩ ע֨וֹף הַשָּׁמַ֜יִם לָנ֤וּחַ עֲלֵיהֶם֙ יוֹמָ֔ם וְאֶת־חַיַּ֥ת הַשָּׂדֶ֖ה לָֽיְלָה׃
“Then Rizpah daughter of Aiah took sackcloth and spread it on a rock for herself, and she stayed there from the beginning of the harvest until rain from the sky fell on the bodies; she did not let the birds of the sky settle on them by day or the wild beasts approach by night.”
Rizpa does not leave the site where her sons’ bodies decompose - for six full months.
When David finds out about her heroic vigil he is moved to reconsider not what he has done but how important it is to honor the bodies of the dead, especially those who belong to the first royal family.
He orders the bones of Saul and Jonathan dug up from their grave on the other side of the Jordan river, and brought back to Gibea, their fathers’ homestead, where they are buried along with these new seven bodies of their kin.
And then it rains.
In her book Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction To The Women Of The Torah And The Throne, Rev. Wilda Gafney pays attention to the story of Rizpa and the other women whose needs, pains, truths and voices are silenced here:
“Rizpah, who never speaks in the Scriptures.. asserts herself for the only time in the text to protect the bodies of her sons in death, as she could not in life.
Rizpah bat Aiah watches the corpses of her sons stiffen, soften, swell, and sink into the stench of decay. Apparently she is denied permission to bury her dead. Denial of proper funerary rites was a common means of cursing and punishing an enemy and their people in and beyond death in the ancient Near East.
Rizpah fights with winged, clawed, and toothed scavengers night and day. She is there from the spring harvest until the fall rains, sleeping, eating, toileting, protecting, and bearing witness.
Sermons about Rizpah are not unheard of in black churches; she has a following among womanist preachers, who remember, lament, and are strengthened by her strength.
David’s lament for Saul and Jonathan in 2 Samuel 1:24 exhorts the daughters of Israel to “weep over Saul who clothed you with crimson, in luxury, who put ornaments of gold on your apparel.” I say that the daughters of Israel should have wept for Ahinoam bat Ahimaaz, her daughters Merab and Michal banoth Ahinoam, and her sister-wife Rizpah bat Aiah. Although they may have been clothed in luxury, they were stripped of those they loved most dearly. In spite of their differing status, Rizpah and Ahinoam and her daughters suffered as much at the hands of the man who lamented their shared Saul and Jonathan as they suffered at the hands of those that killed them.”
And with these burials that close the lid on any chance of Saul’s dynasty to emerge, the Book of Samuel is starting its descent. What’s left are a few chapters with epic poetry, including fragments that scholars claim to be the oldest relics of this book
We’ll never know what happened to Rizpa or the other royal women of the House of Saul. Their narratives are buried as was now the first king and his sons. But her name, devotion, and story - lives on.
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