1. There was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year; and David sought the face of the Lord. The Lord said, “It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he put the Gibeonites to death.”
2. The king called the Gibeonites, and said to them (now the Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel, but of the remnant of the Amorites, and the children of Israel had sworn to them; and Saul sought to kill them in his zeal for the children of Israel and Judah);
3. and David said to the Gibeonites, “What should I do for you? And with what should I make atonement, that you may bless the Lord’s inheritance?”
4. The Gibeonites said to him, “It is no matter of silver or gold between us and Saul, or his house; neither is it for us to put any man to death in Israel.”He said, “Whatever you say, that I will do for you.”
5. They said to the king, “The man who consumed us, and who devised against us, that we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the borders of Israel,
6. let seven men of his sons be delivered to us, and we will hang them up to the Lord in Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of the Lord.”The king said, “I will give them.”
7. But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan the son of Saul, because of the Lord’s oath that was between them, between David and Jonathan the son of Saul.