At this, David summoned the Gibeonites and spoke to them. (Now the Gibeonites were not Israelites, but a remnant of the Amorites. The Israelites had taken an oath concerning them, but in his zeal for Israel and Judah, Saul had sought to kill them.)
Here I. Were are told of the injury which Saul had, long before this, done to the Gibeonites, which we had no account of in the history of his reign, nor should we have heard of it here but that it came now to be reckoned for.
Commenting on 2 Samuel 21:1-9
And the king called the Gibeonites,.... Sent messengers unto them, and summoned them to come to him: and said unto them; what is expressed in Sa2 21:3; for what follows is in a parenthesis: (now the Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel; originally, though they were proselyted to the Jewish religion, and were employed in the menial services of the sanctuary: but of...
in his zeal to the children of Israel and Judah--Under pretense of a rigorous and faithful execution of the divine law regarding the extermination of the Canaanites, he set himself to expel or destroy those whom Joshua had been deceived into sparing. His real object seems to have been, that the possessions of the Gibeonites, being forfeited to the crown, might be divided among his own people (compare Sa1 22:7).