2 Samuel 21:2 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
2 Samuel 21:2
And the king called the Gibeonites, and said unto them; (now the Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel, but of the remnant of the Amorites; and the children of Israel had sworn unto them: and Saul sought to slay them in his zeal to the children of Israel and Judah.)
a son (as a builder of the family name) · preposition + noun, common masculine plural construct
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Joshua 9:3-21 And when the inhabitants of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done unto Jericho and to Ai,
Genesis 15:16 But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.
Deuteronomy 7:16 And thou shalt consume all the people which the LORD thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them: neither shalt thou…
1 Samuel 14:44 And Saul answered, God do so and more also: for thou shalt surely die, Jonathan.
1 Samuel 15:8-9 And he took Agag the king of the Amalekites alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword.
2 Kings 10:16 And he said, Come with me, and see my zeal for the LORD. So they made him ride in his chariot.
2 Kings 10:31 But Jehu took no heed to walk in the law of the LORD God of Israel with all his heart: for he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam, which…
Luke 9:54-55 And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them,…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on 2 Samuel 21:1-9
Here I. Were are told of the injury which Saul had, long before this, done to the Gibeonites, which we had no account of in the history of his reign, nor should we have heard of it here but that it came now to be reckoned for. The Gibeonites were of the remnant of the Amorites (Sa2 21:2), who by a stratagem had made peace with Israel, and had the public faith pledged to them by Joshua for their safety. We had the story Jos. 9, where it was agreed (v. 23) that they should have their lives secured, but be deprived of their lands and liberties, that they and theirs should be tenants in villanage to Israel. It does not appear that they had broken their part of the covenant, either by denying the…
in his zeal to the children of Israel and Judah--Under pretense of a rigorous and faithful execution of the divine law regarding the extermination of the Canaanites, he set himself to expel or destroy those whom Joshua had been deceived into sparing. His real object seems to have been, that the possessions of the Gibeonites, being forfeited to the crown, might be divided among his own people (compare Sa1 22:7). At all events, his proceeding against this people was in violation of a solemn oath, and involving national guilt. The famine was, in the wise and just retribution of Providence, made a national punishment, since the Hebrews either assisted in the massacre, or did not interpose to pre…
The remnant of the Amorites - The Gibeonites were Hivites, not Amorites, as appears from Jos 11:19 : but Amorites is a name often given to the Canaanites in general, Gen 15:16; Amo 2:9, and elsewhere.
John Gill on 2 Samuel 21:2
And the king called the Gibeonites,.... Sent messengers unto them, and summoned them to come to him:
and said unto them; what is expressed in 2 Samuel 21:3; for what follows is in a parenthesis:
(now the Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel; originally, though they were proselyted to the Jewish religion, and were employed in the menial services of the sanctuary:
but of the remnant of the Amorites; they were the remains of the old Canaanites, who sometimes in general were called Amorites, otherwise the Gibeonites were called Hivites; see Joshua 9:7,
and the children of Israel had sworn unto them; by their princes, as Joshua; yet:
and Saul, contrary to this oath, sought to slay t…
The Church Fathers
If Saul, in his zeal for Israel and Judah, attempted to kill the Gibeonites — with whom Joshua the son of Nun and all the people had made covenants — and on account of this seven of Saul's descendants, those born from his daughters, were killed, why is it that not the tribes, who were at fault, but those who had done no wrong, paid the penalty? For this is unjust. Unless, perhaps, someone should say that Saul, being king, was unable to withstand the Israelites and the tribe of Judah, and to break the fathers' covenants with the Gibeonites. But I would add to these considerations that it was God's dispensation that the whole family of Saul should be consumed — all that was ever suspected of laying claim to the royal dignity, and on account of this of rising up against David and against his children. And the "the Gibeonites exposed them to the sun before the Lord on the mountain" stands instead of saying that they did not bury the slain, but left them to lie under the sun. "And they were dissolved," it says, "and Dan the son of Joah, of the descendants of the giants, took them." It surely means to say that the giant, taking those who had been placed under the sun, carried off those who had already been dissolved by the sun's flame. The account concerning the Gibeonites remains obscure, unless perhaps we should say that, when he sat at Gibeah to make war, Saul both routed the foreigners and destroyed, along with them, the Gibeonites also. And the narrative is in the thirty-second and thirty-third section, and the thirty-seventh, of the First book of Kingdoms, where it says, "And he warred round about against all his enemies," and what follows. And what the text says is this: Saul did wrong against him, and from his house came the avenging of the wrong done against Joshua. But those who obtained their being from that one are not wronged in being taken away together with the one who was at the beginning. For from the source whence they had their being, from there also they have their non-being; but if they were worthy of any good thing for their own sake, they receive this later.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Alliance — A treaty between nations, or between individuals, for their mutual advantage. Abraham formed an alliance with some of the Canaanitish princes (Gen. 14:13), also with Abimelech (21:22-32). Joshua and…
Amorites — Highlanders, or hillmen, the name given to the descendants of one of the sons of Canaan (Gen. 14:7), called Amurra or Amurri in the Assyrian and Egyptian inscriptions. On the early Babylonian…
David — Beloved, the eighth and youngest son of Jesse, a citizen of Bethlehem. His father seems to have been a man in humble life. His mother’s name is not recorded. Some think she was the Nahash of 2 Sam.…
Gibeon — Hill-city, “one of the royal cities, greater than Ai, and all the men thereof were mighty” (Josh. 10:2). Its inhabitants were Hivites (11:19). It lay within the territory of Benjamin, and became a…
Gibeonites, The — the people of Gibeon, and perhaps also of the three cities associated with Gibeon, (Joshua 9:17)—Hivites; and who, on the discover of the stratagem by which they had obtained the protection of the…
Nethinim — The name given to the hereditary temple servants in all the post-Exilian books of Scripture. The word means given, i.e., “those set apart”, viz., to the menial work of the sanctuary for the Levites.…
Amorites · Not exterminated — Not exterminated
Amorites, The · The Gibeonites a tribe of, deceived Israel into a league — The Gibeonites a tribe of, deceived Israel into a league
Three Years' Famine. - A three years' famine in the land, the occasion of which, as Jehovah declared to the king, was Saul's crime with regard to the Gibeonites, was expiated by David's delivering up to the Gibeonites, at their own request, seven of Saul's descendants, who were then hung by them upon a mountain before Jehovah. This occurrence certainly did not take place in the closing years of David's reign; on the other hand, it is evident from the remark in Sa2 21:7, to the effect that Mephibosheth was spared, that it happened after David had received tidings of Mephibosheth, and had taken him to his own table (Sa2 9:1-13). This is mentioned here as a practical illustration, on the one ha…
Though the Amorites were a specific people group (Gen 10:16), here it is a general term for the pre-Israelite inhabitants of Canaan. • When properly directed, zeal is commendable (e.g., Num 25:11; 1 Kgs 19:10). Saul’s misdirected zeal, however, involved blatant disregard for Israel’s covenant with the Gibeonites.
Rashi on 2 Samuel 21:2
And spoke to them. Words of appeasement [asking them] to put aside their feelings [of anger] and forgive Shaul and his household.
The Givonim were not part of the Bnei Yisroel. This is to say that they displayed how cruel they are, because they are not descendants of our forefather Avrohom. They have proven themselves unworthy to join with Yisroel and hence Dovid decreed that they not be permitted to marry into the Jewish community. He [Dovid] said, This nation [of Yisroel] has three characteristics, the people are merciful, they possess shame and perform kindful deeds for others. Whoever has these three characteristics is worthy of joining it [Yisroel].7They have shown themselves to be cru…
Zeal · Sometimes wrongly directed — Sometimes wrongly directed
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
