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

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