This episode is part 31 in a study of the kings of Israel and Judah. Some old scores are settled by the Gibeonites who were wrongly attacked by Saul. King David goes to battle one last time.
click here to download (mp3)
by Chris Christensen
This episode is part 31 in a study of the kings of Israel and Judah. Some old scores are settled by the Gibeonites who were wrongly attacked by Saul. King David goes to battle one last time.
click here to download (mp3)
Thank you so much. I really enjoy your Bible study podcasts. God bless you.
Thanks Marie!
Thanks for the podcasts, they’re great!
A question on this chapter; I’m trying to understand God’s role in the story of the Gibionites. Specifically, I’m trying to figure out why He would hold the nation hostage by famine until the descendants of Saul were killed.
I can kind of wrap my head around punishing a nation until they remove an egregious sinner from among them (like he did with Achan in Joshua 7). It’s a little like a coach making the whole team run laps until the kid with drugs confesses and gets the boot – it sends the message that the team is responsible for each other and that the behavior will not be tolerated at all.
What I’m having trouble with isn’t that God would work on a nation-wide level for one man’s sin, but that he would do so to punish the descendants of that one man (especially given Ezekiel 18, where it’s pretty explicit that children won’t be punished for their fathers’ sins).
Any insight on this?
Wow Travis, that’s a really good question. I don’t know for sure but here is my thoughts.
First let me challenge the assumption that this was just the sin of Saul. It is probably not the case that Saul went around the country personally killing the Gibeonites. That would be murder. This was genocide. Saul and some other people who reported to Saul… possibly his sons directly… decided to systematically wipe out these people who God had told them to spare. So the analogy here is that WWII is over and Hitler has a son or sons. Why would anyone, particularly God, want to kill the sons even though Hitler is dead. I think there are 2 possibilities. One is that they were also personally responsible. Maybe. A more likely reason is that there would always be people who wanted to return to the line of Hitler, or in our case Saul to lead them. I wonder if that is what makes this different from the commands from Joshua 7. Also let’s not forget Exodus 34:6-7, Deuteronomy 5:8-10.
Hmm, it’s a difficult one. All three of those scenarios seem a little strange:
1) A very round-about way of punishing 7 of Saul’s sons for their personal sins
2) A pre-emptive strike to keep people from the temptation to make one of Saul’s sons king
3) Punishment of Saul for his sin to the 2nd (if not 3rd and 4th) generation.
I feel like maybe my American individualistic world view is making me miss the real point. Maybe it was just that the nation Israel had broken its oath (at Saul’s leadership), and God doesn’t want to leave that unaddressed. By saying it’s “because of Saul”, maybe he’s not saying everyone else was innocent (as you said, the rest of them may have just been following orders, but they still participated), but just that this sin needs to be addressed. He leaves it to the Gibeonites and David to decide on how to address it, and apparently killing Saul’s sons is good enough.
Thanks again, this has helped me think it through!