"Let seven men of his sons be delivered unto us, and we will hang them
up unto the Lord in Gibeon of Saul. And the king said, I will give
them."

Dreadful days of blood! Fearful fiat! which though needful and just, yet
invaded the sanctuary of home so gloomily. Sad world! in which the
innocent so often bear the sins of the guilty,--when will thy groans,
ever ascending into the ears of Almighty love, be heard and bring
release?

The sentence was executed. Two sons of Saul by Rizpah, his inferior
wife, and five of Merab his eldest daughter, whom Michal had, for some
reason, educated, were delivered up and hung by the Gibeonites.

Who can imagine, much less portray, the mother's anguish when her noble
sons were torn from her for such a doom! We do not know whether Merab
was living to see that day of horror, but Rizpah felt the full force of
the blow which blasted all her hopes. Her husband, the father of her
sons, had been suddenly slain in battle; her days of happiness and
security had departed with his life, and now, all that remained of
comfort, her precious children, must be put to a cruel death to satisfy
the vengeance due to crimes not hers nor theirs. Wretched mother! a
bitter lot indeed was thine! But the Lord had spoken, and there was no
reprieve. To the very town where they had all dwelt under their father's
roof, were these hapless ones dragged and their bodies ignominiously
exposed upon the wall until they should waste away--a custom utterly
abhorrent to all humanity, and especially to the Hebrews, whose
strongest desire might be expressed in the words of the aged Barzillai,
"Let me die in mine own city, and be buried by the grave of my father
and mother."

Behold now that lone and heart-broken mother, on the spot where day and
night, week after week, and month after month, she may be found. Neither
heat nor cold--distressing days nor fearful nights--the entreaties of
friends, nor the weariness of watching, nor the horrifying exhibition of
decaying humanity, could drive her from her post. Upon the sackcloth
which she had spread for herself upon the rock she remained "from the
beginning of the harvest until the rain dropped upon them out of
heaven," and suffered neither the birds of the air by day, nor the
beasts of the field by night to molest those precious remains. O
mother's heart! of what heroism art thou capable! Before a scene like
this the bravest exploits of earth's proudest heroes fade into dim