Matthew Henry on 2 Samuel 21:10-14
Here we have, I. Saul's sons not only hanged, but hanged in chains, their dead bodies left hanging, and exposed, till the judgment ceased, which their death was to turn away, by the sending of rain upon the land. They died as sacrifices, and thus they were, in a manner, offered up, not consumed all at once by fire, but gradually by the air. They died as anathemas, and by this ignominious usage they were represented as execrable, because iniquity was laid upon them. When our blessed Saviour was made sin for us he was made a curse for us. But how shall we reconcile this with the law which expressly required that those who were hanged should be buried on the same day? Deu 21:23. One of the Jewi…
Read the whole note in the consoleJamieson-Fausset-Brown on 2 Samuel 21:12
DAVID BURIES THE BONES OF SAUL AND JONATHAN IN THEIR FATHER'S SEPULCHER. (Sa2 21:12-22)
David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son, &c.--Before long, the descent of copious showers, or perhaps an order of the king, gave Rizpah the satisfaction of releasing the corpses from their ignominious exposure; and, incited by her pious example, David ordered the remains of Saul and his sons to be transferred from their obscure grave in Jabesh-gilead to an honorable interment in the family vault at Zelah or Zelzah (Sa1 10:2), now Beit-jala.
Adam Clarke on 2 Samuel 21:12
Took the bones of Saul - The reader will recollect that the men of Jabesh-gilead burned the bodies of Saul and his sons, and buried the remaining bones under a tree at Jabesh. See Sa1 31:12, Sa1 31:13. These David might have digged up again, in order to bury them in the family sepulcher.
John Gill on 2 Samuel 21:13
And he brought up from thence the bones of Saul, and the bones of Jonathan his son,.... Which had been buried there under an oak, 1 Chronicles 10:12,
and they gathered the bones of them that were hanged; the seven sons of Saul, who had been lately hanged; who either had hung so long that their flesh was consumed, and the bones dropped upon the ground, from whence they gathered them; or they took them down and burnt the flesh off of them, and took the bones to bury them, which was not usually done (u).
(u) Lipsins de Cruce, l. 2. c. 16.
