1. David sought out the presence of the LORD. The idiom means to seek an audience (with a ruler), though what is referred to in practical terms is inquiry of an oracle. The rest of the verse gives God’s response to the question put to the oracle. At the very outset, a difference in idiom from the main narrative, where people consistently “inquire of the LORD,” is detectable. The idiom preferred by this new author emphasizes hierarchical relationship rather than the practical business of putting a question to the oracle.

2. and the Gibeonites were not of Israelite stock. The syntactic looseness of this long parenthetical sentence (compare the similar syntax in verse 5) is uncharacteristic of the David story proper.

the Israelites had vowed to them. The story of the vow to do no harm to this group of resident aliens is reported in Joshua 9:15.

but Saul sought to strike them down. There is no way of knowing whether this massacre of Gibeonites by Saul reflects historical fact, but there is not the slightest hint of it in the story of Saul recounted in 1 Samuel. As with the differences of style, one sees here the presence of a distinctly different literary source.

3. What shall I do for you and how shall I atone. The speech and acts of David in this story show nothing of the psychological complexity of the experience-torn David whose story we have been following. He speaks in flat terms, almost ritualistically, fulfilling his public and cultic functions as king. And after this brief initial exchange with the Gibeonites, the writer entirely abandons dialogue, which had been the chief instrument for expressing emotional nuance and complication of motive and theme in the David story.

4. We have no claim of silver and gold . . . we have no man in Israel to put to death. The second clause is really an opening ploy in negotiation: they say they have no claim to execute any Israelite (“claim” in the first clause is merely implied by ellipsis in the Hebrew), suggesting that they are waiting for David to agree to hand Israelites over to them in expiation of Saul’s crime.

Whatever you say, I shall do for you. David’s submissiveness to the Gibeonites reflects a notion of causation and the role of human action scarcely evident in the main narrative. A famine grips the land because its former ruler violated a national vow. Collective disaster can be averted only by the expiatory—indeed, sacrificial—offering of human lives. This archaic world of divine retribution and ritual response is very far from the historical realm of realpolitik in which the story of David has been played out.

6. impale. There is no scholarly consensus on the exact form of execution, except that it obviously involves exhibiting the corpses. Some understand it as a kind of crucifixion.

before the LORD at Gibeah of Saul, the LORD’s chosen. “Before the LORD” is an explicit indication of the sacrificial nature of the killings. Many scholars have doubted that the Saulides would be executed in Saul’s own town and emend this to read “at Gibeon, on the mount of the LORD.” If the phrase “the LORD’s chosen” is authentic, it would be spoken sarcastically by the Gibeonites.

8. Merab. This is the reading of one version of the Septuagint and of many Hebrew manuscripts. The Masoretic Text has “Michal,” who had no children and who, unlike her sister Merab, was not married to Adriel son of Barzillai.

9. the seven of them fell together. Robert Polzin neatly observes that this phrase precisely echoes “they fell together” of 2:16—the account of the beginning of the civil war at this very same place, Gibeon. He also notes how this whole episode is organized around recurring units of three and seven, the latter number shivʿah punning on the reiterated shevuʿah, vow.

the beginning of the barley harvest. This would be in April. The bereaved Rizpah then watches over the corpses throughout the hot months of the summer, until the rains return—heralding the end of the long famine—in the fall.

10. Rizpah . . . took sackcloth and stretched it out over herself. The verb here is the one generally used for pitching tents, so the translations that have Rizpah spreading the cloth over the rock are misleading. What she does is to make a little lean-to with the sackcloth to shield herself from the summer sun.

she did not allow the fowl of the heavens to settle on them. The antecedent of “them” is of course the corpses. As in the ancient Greek world, leaving a corpse unburied is a primal sacrilege, a final desecration of the sacredness of the human person. Rizpah, watching over the unburied corpses, is a kind of Hebrew Antigone. David had delivered the seven descendants of Saul to the Gibeonites with the single-minded intention of expiating the crime that had caused the famine. Evidently, he gave no thought to the possibility that the Gibeonites would desecrate the bodies of the Saulides after killing them by denying them burial.

11. And David was told what Rizpah . . . had done. Rizpah’s sustained act of maternal heroism finally achieves its end: the king is shaken out of his acquiescence in the Gibeonite inhumanity.

12. David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan. According to the account in 1 Samuel 31, they were cremated. Either this report reflects a conflicting tradition or “bones” here has to be understood as “ashes.”

14. they buried the bones of Saul and of Jonathan his son. . . . And God then granted the plea for the land. It should be noted that the end of the famine does not come with the sacrificial killing of the seven Saulides but only after all of them, together with Saul himself and Jonathan, are given fitting burial in their own place (a biblical desideratum). In this strange story, David is seen handing over the surviving offspring of Saul to be killed, but only for the urgent good of the nation, after which he pays posthumous respect to the line of Saul. It is conceivable that this story reflects an alternative narrative tradition to the more politically complex one of the David story proper through which David is exonerated from what may well have been a widespread accusation that he deliberately liquidated all of Saul’s heirs, with the exception of Mephibosheth.

15. David grew weary. This phrase probably indicates an aging David, though not yet the vulnerable sedentary monarch of the conflict with Absalom.

16. Ishbi-Benob. This name looks as bizarre in the Hebrew as in transliteration and probably betrays a corrupt text. (The textual obscurities that abound in this section in all likelihood reflect the fact that this is an old literary document imperfectly transmitted.) There have been attempts to revocalize the name as a verb, but those in turn necessitate extensive tinkering with other parts of the verse.

of the offspring of the titan. The Hebrew rafah (with a definite article here) elsewhere means “giant.” The ending is feminine and it is not clear whether the reference is to a progenitrix or a progenitor.

the weight of his weapon. The Hebrew for “weapon,” qayin, appears only here, and so the translation is merely inference from context. It might be related to a word that means “metalsmith.” The invocation of the titanic weight of the weapon (spear?) is of course reminiscent of the earlier description of Goliath.

girded with new gear. The Hebrew says simply “girded with new [feminine ending].” Some assume the reference is to sword, which is feminine in Hebrew.

17. You shall not sally forth with us again. This fragmentary episode is obviously remembered because it marks a turning point in David’s career. It is at least consonant with the image of David at Mahanaim asked by his men to stay behind as they go out to the battlefield.

19. Elhanan son of Jair. So he is identified in the parallel report in Chronicles. The Masoretic Text here reads “Elhanan son of Jaʿarey ʾOrgim,” but the last word, ʾorgim, means “weavers,” and seems clearly a scribal duplication of ʾorgim at the very end of the verse.

Elhanan. . . struck down Goliath the Gittite. This is one of the most famous contradictions in the Book of Samuel. Various attempts, both ancient and modern, have been made to harmonize the contradiction—such as the contention that “Goliath” is not a name but a Philistine title—but none of these efforts is convincing. Of the two reports, this one may well be the more plausible. In the literary shaping of the story of David, a triumph originally attributed, perhaps with good reason, to Elhanan was transferred to David and grafted onto the folktale pattern of the killing of a giant or an ogre by a resourceful young man. The writer used this material, as we have seen, to shape a vivid and arresting portrait of David’s debut.

22. These four were sprung from the titan, and they fell at the hand of David. Stylistically, the entire unit from verse 15 to the end of the chapter has the feel of a deliberately formulaic epic catalogue (rather than an actual epic narrative, which the earlier Goliath story in 1 Samuel 17 more closely approximates). Formally, the predominant number three of the famine story is succeeded by four here—just as in biblical poetic parallelism three is conventionally followed by four (for example, Amos 1:3, “For three trespasses of Damascus / and for four, I will not turn it back”).