2 Samuel 21.10 Rizpah daughter of Aiah took sackcloth and
spread it out for herself on a rock. From the beginning of the harvest till the
rain poured down from the heavens on the bodies, she did not let the birds
touch them by day or the wild animals by night.
King David was not an earlier
model of Jesus. David wasn’t a prototype, and Jesus the production piece. David
had his issues and David did some pretty wild stuff (and I don’t mean wild in
the sense of last Friday night’s party). David did what he thought it took to
please God. And some of it borders on gruesome.
In 2 Samuel 21, is an account
of an unavenged crime against a people who weren’t even the people of God; but
a king of God breached a promise to them, and King David was called in to do
the cleanup. King Saul (the Radioactive) had tried to wipe out the Gibeonites,
even though Joshua had promised not to by making a covenant of peace with them (Joshua
9). There is a saying: one shouldn’t take
down fences before he finds out why they were put up… God held Israel
responsible for Saul’s atrocities. And David, with God’s directive,
avenged the Gibeonites: a tooth for a tooth.
Personally, I am glad things have changed; I’m glad we do
things somewhat differently these days. But I do believe wrongs ought to be
righted. And we ought to go out of our way to do it the whole way.
What caught my eye today, was the actions of Rizpah, the
daughter of Aiah, who stood watch for several months over the bodies of those who’d been killed,
avenging Saul’s wickedness . She stood in the gap when no
one else would or did. Rizpah did her best to honor the lives of the deceased
who died because of another’s choices. Rizpah’s actions moved King David to honor
the dead and give them a proper burial; and when he did so, the famine ceased,
and the Lord’s blessing returned.
How they did things in the Old Testament was their way in their day. It doesn’t mean they were savages as we might conclude;
it means they seemed to take life more seriously than we do today. Is there a
Rizpah who will sit at the tomb of some slain until the rest of us notice that
there might be two sides to the story? Are there any Rizpah’s today?
My rant against
David is not that he didn’t do the right thing before God, but that he only
went half way: he should have buried
the dead. And Rizpah is testimony to that. Nowadays we seem to let the guilty
go free and kill those who have nothing to do with the crime. And nobody sits
by the grave to honor the stricken.
Lord, Rizpah shows me that if I’m to do something for You, I’m to do it right way, and the whole way. I don’t understand the ways of the Old Testament, but I do understand honor and doing the right thing for the right reason, the right way. Help me to do that. To the faithful You show Yourself faithful. To the pure You show Yourself pure. And You always do the honorable thing. May I learn from You – Amen
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