Rizpah

Rizpah, daughter of Aiah, is one of Saul's concubines. She enters the narrative twice: first as the occasion of a quarrel between Ishbosheth and Abner that fractures the house of Saul, and second as the mother whose grief-watch over her hanged sons moves David to gather the bones of Saul and Jonathan for proper burial.

Saul's Concubine and the Breach with Abner

After Saul's death she remains in his household, and her presence becomes the flashpoint between Saul's surviving son and Saul's general: "Now Saul had a concubine, whose name was Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah: and Ishbosheth son of Saul said to Abner, Why have you entered my father's concubine?" (2 Sam 3:7). The charge enrages Abner, who answers that he has been the one keeping the house of Saul intact and not delivering it into David's hand, only to be reproached "this day with a fault concerning this woman" (2 Sam 3:8). Rizpah herself does not speak; she stands behind the dispute, and that dispute precipitates Abner's break with Ishbosheth and his turn toward David.

The Vigil over Her Sons

Years later, in the famine in David's reign, the king delivers up seven descendants of Saul to the Gibeonites — among them Rizpah's two sons by Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth, and five sons of Michal the daughter of Saul, whom she bore to Adriel: "But the king took the two sons of Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, whom she bore to Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth; and the five sons of Michal the daughter of Saul, whom she bore to Adriel the son of Barzillai the Meholathite" (2 Sam 21:8). The Gibeonites hang them on the mountain before Yahweh, and "they fell [all] seven together" at the beginning of barley harvest (2 Sam 21:9).

What follows is one of the most striking acts of sustained mourning in the Hebrew narrative: "And Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth, and spread it for herself on the rock, from the beginning of harvest until water was poured on them from heaven; and she allowed neither the birds of the heavens to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night" (2 Sam 21:10). She keeps the bodies from desecration through the long dry months until the rains return.

When word reaches the king — "And it was told David what Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, the concubine of Saul, had done" (2 Sam 21:11) — her vigil becomes the catalyst for the gathering of Saul's and Jonathan's bones and their burial in the family tomb. Rizpah, who never speaks in either episode, twice changes the action of the narrative through her body: once as the disputed concubine whose quarrel splits Saul's house, and once as the mother whose silent watch on the rock shames the king into honoring his predecessor's dead.