II Samuel 1:21

Even nature is to join in the mourning. May God withdraw His blessing from the mountains upon which the heroes have fallen, that they may not be moistened by the dew and rain of heaven, but, remaining in eternal barrenness, be memorials of the horrible occurrence that has taken place upon them. בגּלבּע הרי is an address to them; and the preposition בּ with the construct state is poetical: "mountains in Gilboa" (vid., Ewald, 289, b.). In עליכם ... אל the verb יהי is wanting. The following words, תרוּמות וּשׂדי, are in apposition to the foregoing: "and let not fields of first-fruit offerings be upon you," i.e., fields producing fruit, from which offerings of first-fruits were presented. This is the simplest and most appropriate explanation of the words, which have been very differently, and in some respects very marvellously rendered. The reason for this cursing of the mountains of Gilboa was, that there the shield of the heroes, particularly of Saul, had been defiled with blood, namely the blood of those whom the shield ought to defend. גּעל does not mean to throw away (Dietrich. ), but to soil or defile (as in the Chaldee), then to abhor. "Not anointed with oil," i.e., not cleansed and polished with oil, so that the marks of Saul's blood still adhered to it. בּלי poetical for לא. The interpolation of the words "as though" (quasi non esset unctus oleo, Vulgate) cannot be sustained.

In the close of the foregoing book (with which this is connected as a continuation of the same history) we had Saul's exit; he went down slain to the pit, though we was the terror of the mighty in the land of the living. We are now to look towards the rising sun, and to enquire where David is, and what he is doing. In this chapter we have, I. Tidings brought him to Ziklag of the death of Saul and Jonathan, by an Amalekite, who undertook to give him a particular narrative of it (Sa2 1:1-10). II. David's sorrowful reception of these tidings, (Sa2 1:11, Sa2 1:12). III. Justice done upon the messenger, who boasted that he had helped Saul to dispatch himself (Sa2 1:13-16). IV. An elegy which David penned upon this occasion (Sa2 1:17-27). And in all this David's breast appears very happily free from the sparks both of revenge and ambition, and he observes a very suitable demeanour.

1:21 Saul and Jonathan died in the mountains of Gilboa (1 Sam 31:1). • let there be no dew or rain: David was invoking a curse on the place of their death. In a Canaanite text from the 1300s BC, a father invokes a very similar curse on the place of his son’s death. • The shield of Saul symbolizes his military exploits as king. It would no longer be anointed with oil for the same reason that Saul was no longer the anointed king, because of his death.