Rizpah: The mother who triumphed through tragedy

2 Samuel 3: 6-11; 21: 1-14

Both Jesus’ birth and death bring hope to mothers grieving the loss of sons brutalized through racism, violence, environment, politics, or mere insouciance.

Long before Mamie Till lost her 14-year-old boy, Emmett, who was pistol-whipped, shot in the head and dumped in Mississippi’s Tallahatchie River in 1955 or Larcenia Jones Floyd laid to rest her son George Floyd who died under the knee of a white policeman in Minneapolis in 2020, there was Rizpah, an Old Testament woman who protected the corpses of her two sons and stepdaughter’s five sons for several months.

Although Rizpah is one of the most tragic figures in the Bible, her gut-wrenching tale that begins in 2 Samuel 3 is filled with courage and triumph. This holiday season may we continue to look to God and his son Jesus for HOPE.

Rizpah, whose name means “coal, hot stone,” was the side chick or concubine of King Saul, Israel’s first king. Polygamy was a socially acceptable practice for kings at that time, although God specifically warned against it in Deuteronomy 17: 14-17. The couple had two sons, Armoni and Mephibosheth. Eventually, Saul was booted from the throne when he disobeyed God’s laws and ignored His guidance. To replace Saul, God selected David and directed Israelite leaders to commission him as king when he was about 15 years old. However, Saul vigorously fought to hold on to the title for 15 years.

Saul and his oldest son Jonathan died in battle, giving David a pathway to become king over the two tribes of Israel that made up the southern half of the kingdom, Judah. A long war erupted between those who were loyal to Saul and those loyal to David.

“But David grew stronger and stronger, and the house of Saul grew weaker and weaker,” 2 Samuel 3:1.

Meanwhile, Saul’s son Is-Bosheth (also known as Ishbaal) was supported by the 10 tribes of Israel to lead the northern half of the kingdom.

With Saul dead, the commander-in-chief of his army, his cousin Abner, began to make moves to take over. Some biblical accounts say Abner courted Rizpah with plans to marry her. But Is-Bosheth worried about the prospects of Abner becoming guardian of her children who were heirs of the dead king.

Is-Bosheth lashed out at Abner, causing the general to promptly switch his allegiance to David.

Abner pledged “to transfer the kingdom from the house of Saul and set up the throne of David over Israel and over Judah, from Dan to Beersheba,” 2 Samuel 3:10.

Though King David welcomed the support, he had his own agenda. David wanted to be reunited with his first wife, Michal, to heal the rift between supporters of David and those favoring Saul.

“So David sent messengers to Is-Bosheth, Saul’s son, saying, ‘Give me my wife Michal, whom I betrothed to myself for a hundred foreskins of the Philistines,’” 2 Samuel 3:14.

 Not long after Abner agreed to the deal, he was killed by David’s commander, Joab, who thought the general was a spy. Shortly after Abner’s death, Is-Bosheth was murdered too. David declared himself innocent in both deaths and orders Ish-Bosheth’s assassins executed.

 Years later, after King David began his rule over all of Israel, he spared Rizpah and Saul’s two sons. But then a famine arose, and David prayed to God for relief. God told David that the three-year famine was punishment for Saul’s massacre of the Gibeonites, who had been protected by a treaty since the Israelites first invaded the Promised Land.

Saul had broken God’s promise that the Israelites would spare the Gibeonites in battle. Instead, Saul ordered the Israelites to annihilate them.

Desperate to end the famine, David approached the Gibeonites and asked how to make restitution for Saul’s massacre. They demanded the lives of seven of Saul’s descendants.

“…let seven men of his descendants be delivered to us, and we will hang them before the Lord in Gibeah of Saul, whom the Lord chose,” 2 Samuel 21:10.

David complied.

“So the king took Armoni and Mephibosheth, the two sons of Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, whom she bore to Saul, and the five sons of Michal the daughter of Saul, whom she brought up for Adriel the son of Barzillai the Meholathite;and he delivered them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them on the hill before the Lord. So they fell, all seven together, and were put to death in the days of harvest, in the first days, in the beginning of barley harvest,” 2 Samuel 21: 8-9, KJV.

After the executions, Rizpah stood guard over her children as well as five grandsons by Saul’s eldest daughter, Michal. Day and night for as long as six months, she chased away scavenging birds and animals while sleeping intermittently on a rock of sackcloth. She was responding to the custom of the time that said a body exposed to the elements and eaten by wild animals after death was a sign of dishonor and possibly even a curse.

Rizpah stood guard, from the beginning of harvest until the late rains poured on them from heaven, 2 Samual 21:10.

As a woman during that patriarchal time, Rizpah fought to keep the bodies of her sons intact because she was powerless to protect them from predators in life. Her silent vigil came to the attention of King David, who felt convicted.

King David gathered the bones of Saul and Jonathan that had been stolen during the war. Together, he and Rizpah buried her sons and grandsons who were lynched by the Gibeonites with the bones of the late king and son in the country of Benjamin in Zelah, in the tomb of Kish his father.

Only then did God answer the Israelites’ prayer to end the famine.

Rizpah’s silent vigil that moved David into action also should resonate with us in the United States where black mothers have cried for justice for their brutalized sons, many of whom were shot while walking down streets, driving cars, going to work, playing outside, contending with traumatic suffering and the unfairness of life.

Mothers like: Mamie Till and Larcenia Jones Floyd; Sybrina Fulton, mother of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin who was fatally shot walking home from a trip to a Florida convenience store in 2012; Lesley McSpadden-Head, mother of 18-year-old Michael Brown who was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis in 2014; and, RowVaughn Wells, mother of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols who was fatally injured on January 7, 2023, by five black police officers in Memphis, Tennessee, and died three days later.

The list of mothers is not exhaustive. Add your own names and commit to pray for them in their vigil for justice through the holiday and throughout the new year.

Sources:

Dunn, Betty. Who was Rizpah and What Does Her Story Teach Us about the Importance of Grief? www.elizabethdunning-wix.com.

Isbouts, Jean-Pierre. “King David’s rise to power cost one woman everything,” People in the Bible, National Geographic. April 2, 2019.

“Rizpah: A Grieving Mother,” Women of the Bible for Women of Color. URBAN SPIRIT LLC 2021. www.urbanspirit.biz

Smith, Terry Ann and McCreary, Micah, Rizpah: Tragedy into Triumph. She is Called Women of the Bible Study Series. Faithward. Reformed Church Press.

“Who was Rizpah in the Bible? GotQuestions.org. January 4, 2022.

www.Bibler.org – Dictionary – Rizpah (http://www.bibler.org/glossary/rizpah.html)