Kentucky -- Fiction; Older women -- Fiction; Widows -- Fiction
"You ricollect me tellin' you about that picture I saw at Henrietta's,
'The Angelus?' Well, there was another picture I'll never forgit as
long as I live. It was a picture of Rizpah. I reckon you know who
Rizpah was; you ought to know, any how."
Aunt Jane looked inquiringly at me and paused for a reply. Rizpah?
Rizpah? Yes, somewhere I had heard that stately name, but where? Was
it in Greece or Rome or France or Italy? Juliet I knew, and Octavia
and Iphigenia and Aspasia--
Had Rizpah any kinship to these? Aunt Jane's eyes were searching my
face.
"Honey," she said gravely, "you might jest as well own up that you
don't know who Rizpah was. That comes o' parents not makin' their
children read the Scriptures. When I was a child we had to read our
Bibles every Sunday evenin' till pretty near sundown. I can't say we
enjoyed it much, but when we grew up we didn't have to blush for shame
when anybody asked us a Bible question. Now, you take my Bible yonder
on the table, and find the second book of Samuel. I can't be expected
to ricollect exactly the chapter or the verse, but you look around in
that book till you see Rizpah's name and then read what it says."
I made a hasty search for the passage and presently found it:
"But the King took the two sons of Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, whom
she bare unto Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth; and the five sons of
Michal the daughter of Saul, whom she brought up for Adriel the son of
Barzillai the Meholathite; and he delivered them into the hands of the
Gibeonites, and they hanged them in the hill before the Lord: and they
fell all seven together, and were put to death in the days of harvest,
in the first days, in the beginning of barley harvest.
"And Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, took sackcloth, and spread it for
her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until the water
dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the
air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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