Then they buried the bones of Sha’ul and Y’honatan his son in the territory of Binyamin in Tzela, in the tomb of Kish his father; they did everything the king ordered. Only after that was G-d prevailed on to show mercy to the land.
Winning, surviving and eeking out an existence are not enough. If we want to be whole, if we want to flourish, we have to face the skeletons in our past and put them to rest. Sha’ul left David a complex history to grapple with and Israel could not find a greater peace until he did. He made things right for the Giv’onim and even made them right for their oppressors: the house of Sha’ul. We can turn away from or erase our pasts. We must accept the past to amend it and chose the future we want to walk towards with Heaven’s help.