250px, Abner with Rizpah Rizpah (riz'-pa, "coal", "hot stone") was the daughter of Aiah, and one of

Saul Saul (; , ; , ; ) was a monarch of ancient Israel and Judah and, according to the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament, the first king of the United Monarchy, a polity of uncertain historicity. His reign, traditionally placed in the late eleventh c ...

's concubines. She was the mother of Armoni and Mephibosheth (; ). After the death of Saul, according to the Bible,

Abner In the Hebrew Bible, Abner ( ) was the cousin of King Saul and the commander-in-chief of his army. His name also appears as "Abiner son of Ner", where the longer form Abiner means "my father is Ner". Biblical narrative Abner is initially men ...

was implicitly accused of having aspirations to the throne by taking Rizpah as his wife, resulting in a quarrel between him and Saul's son and successor, Ishbosheth. () The quarrel led to Abner's defection to

David David (; , "beloved one") was a king of ancient Israel and Judah and the third king of the United Monarchy, according to the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament. The Tel Dan stele, an Aramaic-inscribed stone erected by a king of Aram-Dam ...

, () who was then king of the breakaway

Kingdom of Judah The Kingdom of Judah was an Israelites, Israelite kingdom of the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. Centered in the highlands to the west of the Dead Sea, the kingdom's capital was Jerusalem. It was ruled by the Davidic line for four centuries ...

. This incident led to the downfall of Ishbosheth and the rise of David as king of a reunited Kingdom of Israel. A famine lasting three years hit Israel during the earlier half of

's reign at

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

. God revealed that this calamity happened because of "Saul and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites." The Gibeonites were not Israelites, but the remnant of the

Amorites The Amorites () were an ancient Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic-speaking Bronze Age people from the Levant. Initially appearing in Sumerian records c. 2500 BC, they expanded and ruled most of the Levant, Mesopotamia and parts of Eg ...

, which Saul pursued from within Israel.

inquired of the Gibeonites what satisfaction they demanded, and was answered that nothing would compensate for the wrong Saul had done to them but the death of seven of Saul's sons.() David accordingly delivered up to them the two sons of Rizpah and five of the sons of

Michal Michal (; ; ) was, according to the first Book of Samuel, a princess of the United Kingdom of Israel; the younger daughter of King Saul, she was the first wife of David (), who later became king, first of Judah, then of all Israel, maki ...

(according to the

Masoretic Text The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; ) is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (''Tanakh'') in Rabbinic Judaism. The Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, with its vocaliz ...

; the

Septuagint The Septuagint ( ), sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (), and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek ...

has " Merab"), Saul's daughter. These the Gibeonites put to death, and hung up their bodies at the sanctuary at

Gibeah Gibeah (; ''Gīḇəʿā''; ''Gīḇəʿaṯ'') is the name of three places mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, in the tribes of Tribe of Benjamin, Benjamin, Tribe of Judah, Judah, and Tribe of Ephraim, Ephraim respectively. Gibeah of Benjamin, als ...

(). Rizpah thereupon took her place on the rock of Gibeah, and for five months watched the suspended bodies of her children, to prevent them from being devoured by the beasts and birds of prey, () till they were at length taken down and buried by David () in the family grave at Zelah with the bones of Saul and Jonathan. Only once both restitution had been made for Saul's betrayal of the Gibeonites and an olive branch extended to Rizpah and the house of Saul by giving Saul's sons the honour of burial with their father did God respond to the plea of the land and end the famine
2 Samuel 21:14
. British rabbi Jonathan Magonet has described Rizpah as "every mother who sees her sons killed before their time for reasons of state, be they in time of peace or in war. All that remains is for her to preserve the dignity of their memory and live on to bear witness and call to account the rulers of the world".

References

11th-century BC women 11th-century BCE Hebrew people Jewish concubines Women in the Hebrew Bible Family of Saul {{Hebrew-Bible-stub