Two weeks ago, I preached about Shiphrah and Puah, the two midwives who resisted Pharaoh’s oppression and saved the lives of countless Hebrew babies. And I promised you that, today, I’d share with you the story of another woman from the Bible, who resisted oppression, and took a stand for justice.
Her name, as we heard, was Rizpah.
Rizpah was a woman disgraced, humiliated, left with nothing. She was, in every way, a victim of patriarchal oppression.
Her two sons (her only children) had been executed—murdered—not because they were guilty of any crime, but simply because they were caught in the political games of kings and rulers.
As if that wasn’t enough, the bodies of her two sons were left on a rocky hillside, exposed to the elements. They were denied a proper burial, and the authorities wouldn’t allow anyone to move them.
These two sons were Rizpah’s whole life. She loved them dearly, and depended on them for her survival. In a patriarchal world, a woman depended on the men in her family to provide for them. Now that they were taken from her, Rizpah was left with nothing.
So Rizpah spread some sackcloth on the ground beside the bodies of her two sons. And she sat on that cloth.
She stayed there, day and night. Week after week. Month after month. Grieving. Weeping. Keeping vigil. Fending off vultures during the day, and chasing away the hyenas at night.
And she refused to be consoled.
Even though she kept the animals at bay, the bodies began to decompose. Yet still she stayed by their side, and refused to leave.
It was a disturbing sight. People tried to get her to leave. “You’ll feel better at home,” they said. “You need some rest. You need to eat. I’ll fix you something. Just come.”
But it wasn’t so much for her sake that they said these things. It was because her presence there made them uncomfortable.
Their conversations with each other were a little different than the conversations they had with her. They said things like, “Have you seen the woman who won’t leave her dead sons?”
“What, is she still there?”
“Yes, we’ve been trying to get her to leave for months now, but she refuses. She just stays there, in full public view. I wish she’d just go away. I feel bad for her, but there’s no need for her to make such a spectacle. It’s disturbing…”
Yet nothing could convince Rizpah to leave.
Now, let me tell you a little more about why her sons were executed…
Rizpah had been a concubine of King Saul, back in the days when King Saul was still alive. Her two sons, she had with Saul.
Because she was a concubine, she was a person of low status, with no agency. Women, in general, had very little agency in those times, but a concubine had even less.
At times, she was a pawn in the political power games of the men surrounding her. Throughout her life, both before and after Saul’s death, she was a victim, caught in a web of male domination, power, and sex.
Years later, when David was king over both Israel and Judah, the land was facing a serious, prolonged drought. David asked God why, and then he realized it was all Saul’s fault for breaking a treaty with the Gibeonites. Instead of honoring the treaty, Saul tried to exterminate them.
And now, the land was being punished with a famine.
David went to the Gibeonites and asked how he could make things right, so that the famine would end. The Gibeonites said they wanted seven sons from the house of Saul. That would make things right.
David gave them seven: the two sons of Rizpah, and five others who were actually grandsons of Saul.
The Gibeonites then lynched all seven of them; some translations say they were impaled, others say they were hung; and their bodies were purposely left to rot, exposed and humiliated.
Imagine how devastating this was for Rizpah. On top of everything, she suffered the loss of her two sons. She suffered having to watch their bodies left to rot, without a decent and proper burial. She was left with no one to care for her or provide for her.
All her life, she’d been subject to the injustice of a patriarchal world, where women like her are used as tools and not even regarded as human.
How does one respond to this humiliation? How does one carry on? How does one even show oneself in public, when all has been taken from you, when you’ve been subject to abuse, and when you are the subject of the community’s scorn and contempt?
Do you wear a mask, fake a smile, and pretend that all is well, like so many women who have suffered the indignities of living in a male-dominated world? Do you run away and hide, try to escape? Do you spend your days in bed, lamenting in isolation the woe that has befallen you?
The world had treated her cruelly. The world had no sympathy for her. What could she do?
What Rizpah did was nothing less than remarkable. She didn’t hide. She didn’t fake a smile. She didn’t run away.
Instead, she put her grief on display. She brought attention to the deaths of her sons, and the humiliation they endured. She also brought attention to the injustice she herself had suffered.
Her extended vigil beside the bodies of her two sons was her way of saying to the world, “LOOK! Look at my grief! Look at what this world has done to my sons! Look at the injustice that has occurred!”
The world did not want to look, but she forced it to. The world did not want to be confronted by its own lack of justice, but she held it up to the world’s face.
Rizpah was an activist, and her public vigil beside the bodies of her two sons was an act of disobedience and protest, peaceful yet powerful, seeking to bring shame to those responsible for this injustice.
Rizpah’s public grief and activism reminds me of the grief and activism of Mamie Till. As some of you know, Mamie Till’s son Emmett Till was murdered by two white men on August 28, 1955, when he was fourteen years old. The two men kidnapped him in the middle of the night, tied him up, and beat him so severely that he was knocked unconscious. Then they shot Emmett, and threw his body into a river.
Three days later, Emmett Till’s swollen and disfigured body was found. His head was very badly mutilated, he had been shot above the right ear, an eye was dislodged from the socket, and there was evidence that he had been beaten on the back and the hips. His clothes were gone, and his face was unrecognizable.
The men who did this were eventually brought to trial, but an all-white jury, after almost no deliberation, pronounced them not guilty.
For her son's funeral, Mamie Till shocked the world by insisting that the casket containing Emmett’s mutilated, disfigured body be left open, because, in her words, "I wanted the world to see what they did to my baby."
Tens of thousands of people viewed Emmett's body, and photographs circulated throughout the country. Through the constant attention it received, the Till case became emblematic of the disparity of justice for blacks in the South.
Like Rizpah, Mamie Till refused to hide her grief. She used her grief to expose the injustice of the world, the injustice committed against her, her son, and countless others.
And even though it’s now been 68 years since Emmett Till’s death, Mamie Till’s bold action is still having an influence on society. Just a little over a month ago, on what would have been Emmett Till’s 82nd birthday, President Biden signed a proclamation establishing the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument.
Rizpah’s public display of grief, and the way she drew attention to injustice, had a similar effect. Eventually, her action caught the attention of King David himself. David ordered that the bones of all those who had been unjustly killed, including the two sons of Rizpah, be given a proper burial.
The King could not undo all the injustice that Rizpah and others like her had endured in the past, but he could move the nation in the direction of justice, and that’s what he did.
And once the bones of all those who had been left to rot were finally given a decent and proper burial, only then did the famine end; once the injustice was acknowledged, and steps were taken to make things right, only then did the rains begin to fall, and the crops start to grow.
But it wouldn’t have happened without Rizpah’s bold and brave action.
