2 Samuel 19-24

Living Bible

19 Word soon reached Joab that the king was weeping and mourning for Absalom. ² As the people heard of the king’s deep grief for his son, the joy of that day’s wonderful victory was turned into deep sadness. ³ The entire army crept back into the city as though they were ashamed and had been beaten in battle.

⁴ The king covered his face with his hands and kept on weeping, “O my son Absalom! O Absalom my son, my son!”

⁵ Then Joab went to the king’s room and said to him, “We saved your life today and the lives of your sons, your daughters, your wives, and concubines; and yet you act like this, making us feel ashamed, as though we had done something wrong. ⁶ You seem to love those who hate you, and hate those who love you. Apparently we don’t mean anything to you; if Absalom had lived and all of us had died, you would be happy. ⁷ Now go out there and congratulate the troops, for I swear by Jehovah that if you don’t, not a single one of them will remain here during the night; then you will be worse off than you have ever been in your entire life.”

^8-10 So the king went out and sat at the city gates, and as the news spread throughout the city that he was there, everyone went to him.

Meanwhile, there was much discussion and argument going on all across the nation: “Why aren’t we talking about bringing the king back?” was the great topic everywhere. “For he saved us from our enemies, the Philistines; and Absalom, whom we made our king instead, chased him out of the country, but now Absalom is dead. Let’s ask David to return and be our king again.”

^11-12 Then David sent Zadok and Abiathar the priests to say to the elders of Judah, “Why are you the last ones to reinstate the king? For all Israel is ready, and only you are holding out. Yet you are my own brothers, my own tribe, my own flesh and blood!”

¹³ And he told them to tell Amasa, “Since you are my nephew, may God strike me dead if I do not appoint you as commander-in-chief of my army in place of Joab.” ¹⁴ Then Amasa convinced all the leaders of Judah, and they responded as one man. They sent word to the king, “Return to us and bring back all those who are with you.”

¹⁵ So the king started back to Jerusalem. And when he arrived at the Jordan River, it seemed as if everyone in Judah had come to Gilgal to meet him and escort him across the river! ¹⁶ Then Shimei (the son of Gera the Benjaminite), the man from Bahurim, hurried across with the men of Judah to welcome King David. ¹⁷ A thousand men from the tribe of Benjamin were with him, including Ziba, the servant of Saul, and Ziba’s fifteen sons and twenty servants; they rushed down to the Jordan to arrive ahead of the king. ¹⁸ They all worked hard ferrying the king’s household and troops across, and helped them in every way they could.

As the king was crossing, Shimei fell down before him, ¹⁹ and pleaded, “My lord the king, please forgive me and forget the terrible thing I did when you left Jerusalem; ²⁰ for I know very well how much I sinned. That is why I have come here today, the very first person in all the tribe of Joseph to greet you.”

²¹ Abishai asked, “Shall not Shimei die, for he cursed the Lord’s chosen king!”

²² “Don’t talk to me like that!” David exclaimed. “This is not a day for execution but for celebration! I am once more king of Israel!”

²³ Then, turning to Shimei, he vowed, “Your life is spared.”

^24-25 Now Mephibosheth, Saul’s grandson, arrived from Jerusalem to meet the king. He had not washed his feet or clothes nor trimmed his beard since the day the king left Jerusalem.

“Why didn’t you come with me, Mephibosheth?” the king asked him.

²⁶ And he replied, “My lord, O king, my servant Ziba deceived me. I told him, ‘Saddle my donkey so that I can go with the king.’ For as you know I am lame. ²⁷ But Ziba has slandered me by saying that I refused to come.^[a] But I know that you are as an angel of God, so do what you think best. ²⁸ I and all my relatives could expect only death from you, but instead you have honored me among all those who eat at your own table! So how can I complain?”

²⁹ “All right,” David replied. “My decision is that you and Ziba will divide the land equally between you.”

³⁰ “Give him all of it,” Mephibosheth said. “I am content just to have you back again!”

^31-32 Barzillai, who had fed the king and his army during their exile in Mahanaim, arrived from Rogelim to conduct the king across the river. He was very old now, about eighty, and very wealthy.

³³ “Come across with me and live in Jerusalem,” the king said to Barzillai. “I will take care of you there.”

³⁴ “No,” he replied, “I am far too old for that. ³⁵ I am eighty years old today, and life has lost its excitement.^[b] Food and wine are no longer tasty, and entertainment is not much fun; I would only be a burden to my lord the king. ³⁶ Just to go across the river with you is all the honor I need! ³⁷ Then let me return again to die in my own city, where my father and mother are buried. But here is Chimham.^[c] Let him go with you and receive whatever good things you want to give him.”

³⁸ “Good,” the king agreed. “Chimham shall go with me, and I will do for him whatever I would have done for you.”

³⁹ So all the people crossed the Jordan with the king; and after David had kissed and blessed Barzillai, he returned home. ⁴⁰ The king then went on to Gilgal, taking Chimham with him. And most of Judah and half of Israel were there to greet him. ⁴¹ But the men of Israel complained to the king because only men from Judah had ferried him and his household across the Jordan.

⁴² “Why not?” the men of Judah replied. “The king is one of our own tribe. Why should this make you angry? We have charged him nothing—he hasn’t fed us or given us gifts!”

⁴³ “But there are ten tribes in Israel,” the others replied, “so we have ten times as much right in the king as you do; why didn’t you invite the rest of us? And, remember, we were the first to speak of bringing him back to be our king again.”

The argument continued back and forth, and the men of Judah were very rough in their replies.

20 Then a hothead whose name was Sheba (son of Bichri, a Benjaminite) blew a trumpet and yelled, “We want nothing to do with David. Come on, you men of Israel, let’s get out of here. He’s not our king!”

² So all except Judah and Benjamin turned around and deserted David and followed Sheba! But the men of Judah stayed with their king, accompanying him from the Jordan to Jerusalem. ³ When he arrived at his palace in Jerusalem, the king instructed that his ten wives he had left to keep house should be placed in seclusion. Their needs were to be cared for, he said, but he would no longer sleep with them as his wives. So they remained in virtual widowhood until their deaths.

⁴ Then the king instructed Amasa to mobilize the army of Judah within three days and to report back at that time. ⁵ So Amasa went out to notify the troops, but it took him longer than the three days he had been given.

⁶ Then David said to Abishai, “That fellow Sheba is going to hurt us more than Absalom did. Quick, take my bodyguard and chase after him before he gets into a fortified city where we can’t reach him.”

⁷ So Abishai and Joab set out after Sheba with an elite guard from Joab’s army and the king’s own bodyguard. ^8-10 As they arrived at the great stone in Gibeon, they came face-to-face with Amasa. Joab was wearing his uniform with a dagger strapped to his side. As he stepped forward to greet Amasa, he stealthily slipped the dagger from its sheath. “I’m glad to see you, my brother,” Joab said, and took him by the beard with his right hand as though to kiss him. Amasa didn’t notice the dagger in his left hand, and Joab stabbed him in the stomach with it, so that his bowels gushed out onto the ground. He did not need to strike again, and he died there. Joab and his brother, Abishai, left him lying there and continued after Sheba.

¹¹ One of Joab’s young officers shouted to Amasa’s troops, “If you are for David, come and follow Joab.”

¹² But Amasa lay in his blood in the middle of the road, and when Joab’s young officers saw that a crowd was gathering around to stare at him, they dragged him off the road into a field and threw a garment over him. ¹³ With the body out of the way, everyone went on with Joab to capture Sheba.

¹⁴ Meanwhile Sheba had traveled across Israel to mobilize his own clan of Bichri at the city of Abel in Beth-maacah. ¹⁵ When Joab’s forces arrived, they besieged Abel and built a mound to the top of the city wall and began battering it down.

¹⁶ But a wise woman in the city called out to Joab, “Listen to me, Joab. Come over here so I can talk to you.”

¹⁷ As he approached, the woman asked, “Are you Joab?”

And he replied, “I am.”

¹⁸ So she told him, “There used to be a saying, ‘If you want to settle an argument, ask advice at Abel.’ For we always give wise counsel. ¹⁹ You are destroying an ancient, peace-loving city, loyal to Israel. Should you destroy what is the Lord’s?”

²⁰ And Joab replied, “That isn’t it at all. ²¹ All I want is a man named Sheba from the hill country of Ephraim, who has revolted against King David. If you will deliver him to me, we will leave the city in peace.”

“All right,” the woman replied, “we will throw his head over the wall to you.”

²² Then the woman went to the people with her wise advice, and they cut off Sheba’s head and threw it out to Joab. And he blew the trumpet and called his troops back from the attack, and they returned to the king at Jerusalem.

²³ Joab was commander-in-chief of the army, and Benaiah was in charge of the king’s bodyguard.^{[d] 24} Adoram was in charge of the forced labor battalions, and Jehoshaphat was the historian who kept the records. ²⁵ Sheva was the secretary, and Zadok and Abiathar were the chief priests. ²⁶ Ira the Jairite was David’s personal chaplain.

21 There was a famine during David’s reign that lasted year after year for three years, and David spent much time in prayer about it. Then the Lord said, “The famine is because of the guilt of Saul and his family, for they murdered the Gibeonites.”

² So King David summoned the Gibeonites. They were not part of Israel but were what was left of the nation of the Amorites. Israel had sworn not to kill them; but Saul, in his nationalistic zeal, had tried to wipe them out.

³ David asked them, “What can I do for you to rid ourselves of this guilt and to induce you to ask God to bless us?”

⁴ “Well, money won’t do it,” the Gibeonites replied, “and we don’t want to see Israelites executed in revenge.”

“What can I do, then?” David asked. “Just tell me and I will do it for you.”

^5-6 “Well, then,” they replied, “give us seven of Saul’s sons—the sons of the man who did his best to destroy us. We will hang them before the Lord in Gibeon, the city of King Saul.”

“All right,” the king said, “I will do it.”

⁷ He spared Jonathan’s son Mephibosheth, who was Saul’s grandson, because of the oath between himself and Jonathan. ⁸ But he gave them Saul’s two sons Armoni and Mephibosheth, whose mother was Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah. He also gave them the five adopted sons of Michal that she brought up for Saul’s daughter Merab, the wife of Adriel. ⁹ The men of Gibeon impaled them in the mountain before the Lord. So all seven of them died together at the beginning of the barley harvest.

¹⁰ Then Rizpah, the mother of two of the men,^[e] spread sackcloth upon a rock and stayed there through the entire harvest season to prevent the vultures from tearing at their bodies during the day and the wild animals from eating them at night. ¹¹ When David learned what she had done, ^12-14 he arranged for the men’s bones to be buried in the grave of Saul’s father, Kish. At the same time he sent a request to the men of Jabesh-gilead, asking them to bring him the bones of Saul and Jonathan. They had stolen their bodies from the public square at Beth-shan where the Philistines had impaled them after they had died in battle on Mount Gilboa. So their bones were brought to him. Then at last God answered prayer and ended the famine.

¹⁵ Once when the Philistines were at war with Israel, and David and his men were in the thick of the battle, David became weak and exhausted. ¹⁶ Ishbi-benob, a giant whose speartip weighed more than twelve pounds and who was sporting a new suit of armor, closed in on David and was about to kill him. ¹⁷ But Abishai, the son of Zeruiah, came to his rescue and killed the Philistine. After that David’s men declared, “You are not going out to battle again! Why should we risk snuffing out the light of Israel?”

¹⁸ Later, during a war with the Philistines at Gob, Sibbecai the Hushathite killed Saph, another giant. ¹⁹ At still another time and at the same place, Elhanan killed the brother of Goliath the Gittite,^[f] whose spear handle was as huge as a weaver’s beam! ^20-21 And once when the Philistines and the Israelis were fighting at Gath, a giant with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot defied Israel, and David’s nephew Jonathan—the son of David’s brother Shimei—killed him. ²² These four were from the tribe of giants in Gath and were killed by David’s troops.

22 David sang this song to the Lord after he had rescued him from Saul and from all his other enemies:

23 These are the last words of David:

⁸ These are the names of the Top Three—the most heroic men in David’s army: the first was Josheb-basshebeth from Tahchemon, known also as Adino, the Eznite. He once killed eight hundred men in one battle.

⁹ Next in rank was Eleazar, the son of Dodo and grandson of Ahohi. He was one of the three men who, with David, held back the Philistines that time when the rest of the Israeli army fled. ¹⁰ He killed the Philistines until his hand was too tired to hold his sword; and the Lord gave him a great victory. (The rest of the army did not return until it was time to collect the loot!)

^11-12 After him was Shammah, the son of Agee from Harar. Once during a Philistine attack, when all his men deserted him and fled, he stood alone at the center of a field of lentils and beat back the Philistines; and God gave him a great victory.

¹³ One time when David was living in the cave of Adullam and the invading Philistines were at the valley of Rephaim, three of the Thirty—the top-ranking officers of the Israeli army—went down at harvest time to visit him. ¹⁴ David was in the stronghold at the time, for Philistine marauders had occupied the nearby city of Bethlehem.

¹⁵ David remarked, “How thirsty I am for some of that good water in the city well!” (The well was near the city gate.)

¹⁶ So the three men broke through the Philistine ranks and drew water from the well and brought it to David. But he refused to drink it! Instead, he poured it out before the Lord.

¹⁷ “No, my God,” he exclaimed, “I cannot do it! This is the blood of these men who have risked their lives.”

^18-19 Of those three men, Abishai, the brother of Joab (son of Zeruiah), was the greatest. Once he took on three hundred of the enemy single-handed and killed them all. It was by such feats that he earned a reputation equal to the Three, though he was not actually one of them. But he was the greatest of the Thirty—the top-ranking officers of the army—and was their leader.

²⁰ There was also Benaiah (son of Jehoiada), a heroic soldier from Kabzeel. Benaiah killed two giants,^[j] sons of Ariel of Moab. Another time he went down into a pit and, despite the slippery snow on the ground, took on a lion that was caught there and killed it. ²¹ Another time, armed only with a staff, he killed an Egyptian warrior who was armed with a spear; he wrenched the spear from the Egyptian’s hand and killed him with it. ²² These were some of the deeds that gave Benaiah almost as much renown as the Top Three. ²³ He was one of the greatest of the Thirty, but was not actually one of the Top Three. And David made him chief of his bodyguard.

^24-39 Asahel, the brother of Joab, was also one of the Thirty. Others were:

24 Once again the anger of the Lord flared against Israel, and he caused David to harm them by taking a national census. “Go and count the people of Israel and Judah,” the Lord told him.

² So the king said to Joab, commander-in-chief of his army, “Take a census of all the people from one end of the nation to the other, so that I will know how many of them there are.”

³ But Joab replied, “God grant that you will live to see the day when there will be a hundred times as many people in your kingdom as there are now! But you have no right to rejoice in their strength.”^[l]

⁴ But the king’s command overcame Joab’s remonstrance; so Joab and the other army officers went out to count the people of Israel. ⁵ First they crossed the Jordan and camped at Aroer, south of the city that lies in the middle of the valley of Gad, near Jazer; ⁶ then they went to Gilead in the land of Tahtim-hodshi and to Dan-jaan and around to Sidon; ⁷ and then to the stronghold of Tyre, and all the cities of the Hivites and Canaanites, and south to Judah as far as Beersheba. ⁸ Having gone through the entire land, they completed their task in nine months and twenty days. ⁹ And Joab reported the number of the people to the king—800,000 men of conscription age in Israel and 500,000 in Judah.

¹⁰ But after he had taken the census, David’s conscience began to bother him, and he said to the Lord, “What I did was very wrong. Please forgive this foolish wickedness of mine.”

¹¹ The next morning the word of the Lord came to the prophet Gad, who was David’s contact with God.

The Lord said to Gad, ¹² “Tell David that I will give him three choices.”

¹³ So Gad came to David and asked him, “Will you choose seven years of famine across the land, or to flee for three months before your enemies, or to submit to three days of plague? Think this over and let me know what answer to give to God.”

¹⁴ “This is a hard decision,” David replied, “but it is better to fall into the hand of the Lord (for his mercy is great) than into the hands of men.”

¹⁵ So the Lord sent a plague upon Israel that morning, and it lasted for three days; and seventy thousand men died throughout the nation. ¹⁶ But as the death angel was preparing to destroy Jerusalem, the Lord was sorry for what was happening and told him to stop. He was by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite at the time.

¹⁷ When David saw the angel, he said to the Lord, “Look, I am the one who has sinned! What have these sheep done? Let your anger be only against me and my family.”

¹⁸ That day Gad came to David and said to him, “Go and build an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.” ¹⁹ So David went to do what the Lord had commanded him. ²⁰ When Araunah saw the king and his men coming toward him, he came forward and fell flat on the ground with his face in the dust.

²¹ “Why have you come?” Araunah asked.

And David replied, “To buy your threshing floor, so that I can build an altar to the Lord, and he will stop the plague.”

²² “Use anything you like,” Araunah told the king. “Here are oxen for the burnt offering, and you can use the threshing instruments and ox yokes for wood to build a fire on the altar. ²³ I will give it all to you, and may the Lord God accept your sacrifice.”

²⁴ But the king said to Araunah, “No, I will not have it as a gift. I will buy it, for I don’t want to offer to the Lord my God burnt offerings that have cost me nothing.”

So David paid him^[m] for the threshing floor and the oxen. ²⁵ And David built an altar there to the Lord and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. And the Lord answered his prayer, and the plague was stopped.