Rizpah

Rizpah (meaning a bed, extension, or a coal) was a concubine of Saul, daughter of Aiah. After Saul's death, Abner's possession of her became the occasion of a political quarrel with Ish-bosheth, Saul's surviving son (2 Samuel 3:7) — in the ancient world, acquiring a former king's concubine implied a claim to royal succession. The more memorable episode involving Rizpah came years later when David surrendered seven of Saul's descendants to the Gibeonites to atone for Saul's massacre of their people (2 Samuel 21:8–9).

Rizpah then performed one of Scripture's most striking acts of maternal devotion: she spread sackcloth on a rock and kept watch over the exposed bodies of the seven men from the beginning of the barley harvest through the rains — protecting them from birds by day and wild animals by night (2 Samuel 21:10). When David heard of her vigil, he was moved to retrieve the bones of Saul and Jonathan from Jabesh-gilead and bury all of them honorably in the family tomb. Her faithfulness prompted David's act of covenant faithfulness, and the land was thereafter appeased.