180 BOYS OF THE BIBLE.

degradation. ‘The death of the cross was the death of cruelty
and the death of shame.

That crucifixion was a death of lingering agony and
torture, and that it was the form of death reserved for
criminals and outcasts, just suited the vengeful mood of these
implacable Gibeonites. ‘The bitterness of the cup they were
pressing to the lips of their hapless victims, was the very
sweetness of honey to their taste. They revelled in the
thought of the agonies the sons of Saul would suffer, and
found especial joy in the fact that they were about to drag
these princes of a fallen house to the cross of shame, to the
degradation generally reserved for criminals and murderers
and thieves.

The place selected for the execution gives us another
hint of the cruel purposes of the Gibeonites. No detail was
to be omitted that would add to the pangs and sorrows of
the doomed princes; so Gibeah of Saul was chosen. The
city Saul intended to make the permanent seat of national
worship; the city from whence the Gibeonites had been
driven in Saul’s mad rage, was the place of all places most
suitable for the final extinction of the last remnant of Saul’s
warlike house. It was like bringing boys home to be
hanged; it was like rearing the scaffold under the shadow
of the house—like turning the roof-tree into the gallows.
One other thing only was needed to make the shame of
this slaughter complete; that too was added. The crucified
forms of these guiltless youths were to hang unburied, to be
the scorn of every passer-by, till at last the vultures and
the jackals should pick all the flesh from their bones and
they should be left dangling skeletons on the hill of Gibeah.
This was the crowning shame.

It was thus that, a little more than a hundred years