Author Information
Chastened by "The Love of Friendship"
No other mother’s sorrow was so great
As Rizpah’s, former concubine of Saul,
Whose sons were swinging from a tree and dead
While shrieking vultures nears and hooting owl
For a massacre of the Gibeonites,
That now retributive for justice cried,
For losses, and massacres after fights,
A Seven men, as pawns were hanged some night
Poor Rizpah‘s mission thus became to watch
The hanging bodies of her sons upon
The gallows on a rock, so none would touch
To desecrate the bodies of her sons.
The lack of burial, a punishment
So terrible, thus Rizpah did decide
The bodies of her loved ones to defend,
From vultures, and from dogs by day and night
Thus day and night with sackcloth she chased off
The nearing dogs and many other beast
In boundless and incomparable love
That ever sunshine nor the starlets kissed.
Others forsook their loved ones let them stay
But Rizpah stood by them so lovingly
To chase the hungry birds of preyn away
With a devoted mother‘s piety.
She could not hinder seizer of her sons,
But stand in death by them as once in life
And would protect their hanging flesh and bone
And shielding them from vultures with her knife.
Thus seven sons of Saul at Gibeah
Were hanged in retributions of his sin
Thought of accursed by all - except Rizpah
Who stood by them as mother heroine
Poor Rizpah was so weak and powerless
Yet broke the cycle of great violence
And David shamed by her, did naught but bless
Poor Rizpah‘s charity and love from thence.
Oh what she did, was a heroic deed,
From the beginning of the harvest until rain
Began to fall (21:10 - not small a feat
To watch and shield hanged r sons in grief and pain..
Ah Rizxpah! - what a mother’s love can do
Behold a ;woman beat and powerless
Stopped winds of violence that blew and grew
With sackcloth and a mother’s thoughtfulness
Shielded from desecration she held dear
Chased prowling animals and birds and hound
And without food nor sleep stood and without fear
Dared them with faithful love and stood her ground.
A vigil so corageous hard and long
And unheard of a mother’s sacrifice
Deserves more than the bible’s so short a song
The bible does assign her in her praise
Yet showed a mother’s l love’s immensity.
Elizabeth Dandy
