Rizpah and the Rain

Suffering sometimes triggers good soul-searching. And a three-year drought set King David on a desperate search for answers.

What he uncovered was a story of treachery and genocide that hadn’t registered a flicker on the national conscience.
See 2 Samuel 21:1-14.

It involved one of Israel’s tribal neighbors, the Gibeonites, who lived east of the Jordan. By ancient treaty, (see Joshua 9) these people had enjoyed protection and immunity from attack by Israel. But David’s predecessor, Saul broke faith and attempted to annihilate them – and almost succeeded.


Years passed and no one called Israel to account, but Saul’s act of treachery cried out to God from the ground, like the blood of Abel.

Israel had an integrated view of the world, where human behavior affects the environment. It was as if nature itself has a moral conscience. A famine is like nature in mourning; famine is a kind of genocide on the land, stripping it bare, leaving it barren and hopeless. The drought called attention to the land’s cry for justice.

When David learned how the Gibeonites had been violated, he summoned the survivors and found them hungry to exact revenge. They demanded seven descendents of Saul to be executed and exposed to humiliation. David acquiesced to their brutal request.

The timing was significant - it was the beginning of harvest, a meager harvest no doubt because of the drought. But the seven victims were slaughtered publicly to atone for their father's blood-guilt - and to satisfy the hatred of an abused people and the angry gods of revenge. Among the seven unfortunates were two sons of Rizpah, Saul’s concubine.

Everyone hoped the curse had been broken, that the rains would come. But vengeance never rights ancient wrongs, and David showed abysmal leadership in this clumsy attempt at national atonement.

Rizpah, the bereaved mother, honored her sons and protected their corpses from disgrace. She mourned her loss and wailed her protest against their needless death. She enacted a prayer of lament. She spread her sackcloth of mourning and kept vigil over them day and night. For six months 'from the beginning of the harvest till the rain poured down’ her maternal faithfulness proclaimed a virtue nobler than the king’s.

When the rains finally fell, it was as if God was weeping with Rizpah. The text describes the rain like tears from heaven ‘pouring down’ on the bodies', not on the land as we would expect. God and Rizpah suffer and mourn together. This public action of lament by God affirmed Rizpah’s honor and protest to the loss of life.

In the late 1800's Alfred Tennyson wrote a social justice poem called “Rizpah” about a Victorian-era mother whose son falls afoul of the law and is executed for a petty crime. Like ancient Rizpah this nineteenth century mother defied convention to lament her pain and loss. Her devotion makes an eloquent plea for a more compassionate society that empathizes with the poor and the powerless – and Tennyson’s wife often recited Rizpah in public.

The cry for justice never ends – and sometimes it is the mothers or the land who voice it best.

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I am indebted to Martin Ellgar and his blog entergrace for some of my thoughts in this reflection.
Photo Credits: Drought1, Drought 2, Rizpah