The Letter of Artaxerxes to Ezra

¹¹ This is a copy of the letter that King Artaxerxes gave Ezra the priest, the scribe, expert in the words of the commandments of the Lord, and of His statutes to Israel:

^27 (K)Blessed^[h] be the Lord God of our fathers, ^(L)who has put such a thing as this in the king’s heart, to beautify the house of the Lord which is in Jerusalem, ²⁸ and ^(M)has extended mercy to me before the king and his counselors, and before all the king’s mighty princes.

So I was encouraged, as ^(N)the hand of the Lord my God was upon me; and I gathered leading men of Israel to go up with me.

David Avenges the Gibeonites

21 Now there was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year; and David ^(A)inquired of the Lord. And the Lord answered, “It is because of Saul and his ^[a]bloodthirsty house, because he killed the Gibeonites.” ² So the king called the Gibeonites and spoke to them. Now the Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel, but ^(B)of the remnant of the Amorites; the children of Israel had sworn protection to them, but Saul had sought to kill them ^(C)in his zeal for the children of Israel and Judah.

³ Therefore David said to the Gibeonites, “What shall I do for you? And with what shall I make atonement, that you may bless ^(D)the inheritance of the Lord?”

⁴ And the Gibeonites said to him, “We will have no silver or gold from Saul or from his house, nor shall you kill any man in Israel for us.”

So he said, “Whatever you say, I will do for you.”

⁵ Then they answered the king, “As for the man who consumed us and plotted against us, that we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the territories of Israel, ⁶ let seven men of his descendants be delivered ^(E)to us, and we will hang them before the Lord ^(F)in Gibeah of Saul, ^(G)whom the Lord chose.”

And the king said, “I will give them.”

⁷ But the king spared ^(H)Mephibosheth the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, because of ^(I)the Lord’s oath that was between them, between David and Jonathan the son of Saul. ⁸ So the king took Armoni and Mephibosheth, the two sons of ^(J)Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, whom she bore to Saul, and the five sons of ^[b]Michal the daughter of Saul, whom she ^[c]brought up for Adriel the son of Barzillai the Meholathite; ⁹ and he delivered them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them on the hill ^(K)before the Lord. So they fell, all seven together, and were put to death in the days of harvest, in the first days, in the beginning of barley harvest.

¹² So then ^(A)each of us shall give account of himself to God. ¹³ Therefore let us not judge one another ^[a]anymore, but rather resolve this, ^(B)not to put a stumbling block or a cause to fall in our brother’s way.