BOYS OF THE BIBLE. 177

The story with which we are most concerned opens in the
spring of the year. There had been three years without
any rain. The fields were brown and bare; the rivers ran
dry, and the springs began to fail. In these days of drought
David, the King, called upon the Lord. As some say, “he
consulted the oracle,” though what that means we hardly know.
In whatever way David sought to know the causes of this
awful drought, this was the answer he got:

“Tt is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he slew
the Gibeonites.”

David immediately called the Gibeonites together to see
what could be done to appease the anger of these people.
He was perfectly willing to do anything in reason. If they had
demanded flocks and herds, David would have sent flocks
and herds into their valleys; if they had asked for cedars
from Lebanon, or for gold and silver from the mines, their
desires would have been cheerfully complied with. But they
would have blood! But blood would do them no good. It
would not give them back their dead ones. It would heal
no wounds, comfort no sorrows—it would only satisfy their
vengeance! That was what they desired more than anything
beside.

The Gibeonites had but one answer—an answer as
cruel and relentless as the cruel deed of Saul. They said:

“We will have no silver nor gold of Saul, nor of his
house; neither for us shalt thou kill any man in Israel.”

We do not quite understand how it was, but it seems
as if David had no alternative but to let this outraged
people have their own way. We cannot measure these war-
like times with our happy days of peace. An age under the
mastery and control of the dark spirit of war, is an age full
of cruelties, as unreasonable as they are unjust. It seems as if