All Seven Of Them Fell Together

2 Samuel 21:2-9 – The king summoned the Gibeonites and spoke to them. (Now the Gibeonites were not a part of Israel but were survivors of the Amorites; the Israelites had sworn to spare them, but Saul in his zeal for Israel and Judah had tried to annihilate them.) David asked the Gibeonites, “What shall I do for you? How shall I make atonement so that you will bless the Lord’s inheritance?” The Gibeonites answered him, “We have no right to demand silver or gold from Saul or his family, nor do we have the right to put anyone in Israel to death.” “What do you want me to do for you?” David asked. They answered the king, “As for the man who destroyed us and plotted against us so that we have been decimated and have no place anywhere in Israel, let seven of his male descendants be given to us to be killed and their bodies exposed before the Lord at Gibeah of Saul—the Lord’s chosen one.” So the king said, “I will give them to you.” The king spared Mephibosheth son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, because of the oath before the Lord between David and Jonathan son of Saul. But the king took Armoni and Mephibosheth, the two sons of Aiah’s daughter Rizpah, whom she had borne to Saul, together with the five sons of Saul’s daughter Merab, whom she had borne to Adriel son of Barzillai the Meholathite. He handed them over to the Gibeonites, who killed them and exposed their bodies on a hill before the Lord. All seven of them fell together; they were put to death during the first days of the harvest, just as the barley harvest was beginning.

Amos 2:10 – I brought you up out of Egypt and led you forty years in the wilderness to give you the land of the Amorites.

Numbers 35:33 – “‘Do not pollute the land where you are. Bloodshed pollutes the land, and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood has been shed, except by the blood of the one who shed it.

1 Samuel 15:23-24 – For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king.” Then Saul said to Samuel, “I have sinned. I violated the Lord’s command and your instructions. I was afraid of the men and so I gave in to them.

Application:

• ·         God’s great blessings to Israel in the past added to her guilt, and in Amos they are recalled as part of the Lord’s indictment against His people.
• ·         The crime of murder is not only an offense against the sanctity of life but also a pollutant to the Lord’s sacred land.
• ·         A king who set his own will above the command of the Lord ceased to be an instrument of the Lord’s rule over His people, violating the very nature of his theocratic office.
• ·         Saul’s confession retains an element of self-justification and a shift of blame. Previously he had attempted to justify his soldiers’ actions.

All Scripture verses taken from NIV