2 Samuel 14

Joab Arranges for Absalom’s Return

1Joab realized how much the king longed to see Absalom. 2So he sent for a woman from Tekoa who had a reputation for great wisdom. He said to her, “Pretend you are in mourning; wear mourning clothes and don’t put on lotions.* Act like a woman who has been mourning for the dead for a long time. 3Then go to the king and tell him the story I am about to tell you.” Then Joab told her what to say.

4When the woman from Tekoa approached* the king, she bowed with her face to the ground in deep respect and cried out, “O king! Help me!”

5“What’s the trouble?” the king asked.

“Alas, I am a widow!” she replied. “My husband is dead. 6My two sons had a fight out in the field. And since no one was there to stop it, one of them was killed. 7Now the rest of the family is demanding, ‘Let us have your son. We will execute him for murdering his brother. He doesn’t deserve to inherit his family’s property.’ They want to extinguish the only coal I have left, and my husband’s name and family will disappear from the face of the earth.”

8“Leave it to me,” the king told her. “Go home, and I’ll see to it that no one touches him.”

9“Oh, thank you, my lord the king,” the woman from Tekoa replied. “If you are criticized for helping me, let the blame fall on me and on my father’s house, and let the king and his throne be innocent.”

10“If anyone objects,” the king said, “bring him to me. I can assure you he will never harm you again!”

11Then she said, “Please swear to me by the Lord your God that you won’t let anyone take vengeance against my son. I want no more bloodshed.”

“As surely as the Lord lives,” he replied, “not a hair on your son’s head will be disturbed!”

12“Please allow me to ask one more thing of my lord the king,” she said.

“Go ahead and speak,” he responded.

13She replied, “Why don’t you do as much for the people of God as you have promised to do for me? You have convicted yourself in making this decision, because you have refused to bring home your own banished son. 14All of us must die eventually. Our lives are like water spilled out on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. But God does not just sweep life away; instead, he devises ways to bring us back when we have been separated from him.