1There was a famine in the days of David three years, year after year; and David sought the face of Yahweh. Yahweh said, It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he put to death the Gibeonites.
2The king called the Gibeonites, and said to them (now the Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel, but of the remnant of the Amorites; and the children of Israel had sworn to them: and Saul sought to kill them in his zeal for the children of Israel and Judah);
3and David said to the Gibeonites, What shall I do for you? And with what shall I make atonement, that you may bless the inheritance of Yahweh?
4The Gibeonites said to him, It is no matter of silver or gold between us and Saul, or his house; neither is it for us to put any man to death in Israel. He said, What you shall say, that will I do for you.
5They said to the king, The man who consumed us, and who devised against us, [that] we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the borders of Israel,
6let seven men of his sons be delivered to us, and we will hang them up to Yahweh in Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of Yahweh. The king said, I will give them.
7But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan the son of Saul, because of Yahweh`s oath that was between them, between David and Jonathan the son of Saul.