Gibeon had made peace with Israel (2Samuel 21)

2Samuel chapter 21 is where we finally get to the famine which was somehow caused by Saul's actions. As I discussed to some extent in chapter twelve, I don't really have a good explanation for why people are being punished for Saul's sin long after he's dead, nor why the proper response was to kill some of his descendants. I'll freely admit this seems unjust and cruel, but maybe I'll check out some commentaries and leave more thoughts in the comments. (Oh, and the SAB is right that there is no record of Saul killing Gibeonites; I guess they don't list it as a "contradiction" because there's no verse that says this to contrast with. I suppose that's more of an "omission".) I also just noticed that it's a bit odd that the Gibeonites say, "...neither for us shalt thou kill any man in Israel..." and then request killing some men in Israel.

I answered whether all of Saul's family died with him in chapter two. I answered how many sons Michal had in chapter six, but the supposed contradiction raises another question: who was the father of these five sons, since David was Michal's husband? Did David sacrifice his own sons, or did Michal somehow have five sons in the brief time she was married to Phalti? Either answer is strange... I answered who killed Saul in 1Samuel chapter 31, with further commentary in 2Samuel chapter 1. The answer was, "It's complicated..."

Does God approve of human sacrifice? The simple answer is no, but there definitely is a lot to be clarified. Yes, God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, but he never intended him to go through with it. Yes, it talks in Exodus and Leviticus about devoting firstborn sons to God, but that was never understood to mean child sacrifice, and in fact, the verse in Leviticus is in the same chapter as an explanation of how you redeem a human being that you have vowed to the Lord. I admittedly don't know what is going on in Numbers 31, but it actually doesn't specify that the women were killed, only that they were "the LORD's tribute", which could mean just about anything. (Perhaps they were destined to marry Levites?) I addressed Jephthah's supposed sacrifice of his daughter when I covered Judges eleven, where I pointed out that there's no indication God approved, and it's possible that the "sacrifice" was that she would be an eternal virgin. The killing that Josiah did was about punishing idolatry rather than giving a human sacrifice to God. Yes, Jesus was in a very real sense a human sacrifice, but in a special way that is an exception to the general rule.

The chapter ends with some giant killing, and the SAB asks, Who killed Goliath? and Whom did Elhanan kill? Now, both contradictions are fixed by the words in italics, which makes a good time to stop and talk about italics in the KJV. The KJV throughout its text has words in italics, and I think it's a great thing that other versions should have (and a few do); they indicate words that the translators put in for clarity that aren't technically in the original manuscripts. The words "the brother of" aren't in the Hebrew, and aren't even in the Greek of the Septuagint. They are nonetheless added to most translations because of the text at 1Chronicles 20:5 to avoid these two contradictions. It's reasonable to assume a scribal error here because of this. I find it interesting that the KJV is full of italics, but as far as I know the SAB only points them out here because setting them aside allows for two contradictions to be added to the text. Anyway, there's some interesting stuff here about giants; when it says someone is a "son of the giant", they probably mean Goliath. The man with the extra fingers and toes is odd, but this is not an unheard of mutation.