Rizpah daughter of Aiah רצפה בת איה
she guarded her sons' bodies from the birds and beasts from harvest until the rains
There was a three-year famine in the land. The cause named was the blood of the Gibeonites shed by Saul; the Gibeonites demanded seven men of Saul's house, and David agreed. Among those executed were the two sons of Rizpah daughter of Aiah, Saul's concubine.
The bodies were left unburied on the rock. And then Rizpah took sackcloth and spread it for herself on the rock — "from the beginning of the harvest until water poured down on them from the sky." All that time, for months, she kept the birds of the sky from settling on the bodies by day and the beasts of the field from coming near by night.
No one helped her and no one stopped her. She simply did not leave.
David was told what Rizpah had done. And he "went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son" from the men of Jabesh-gilead, gathered the bones of the executed as well — and buried them all in the land of Benjamin, in the tomb of Kish, Saul's father. Only after that, the text says, "God relented toward the land."
Her whole part in the Tanakh is these few verses, and in them she does not say a word.
On the timeline
Sources
Tanakh
- Shmuel II 21:10 — the sackcloth on the rock from harvest until the rains
- Shmuel II 21:11–14 — David hears of it and buries the bones
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.