She answered, “I’m a widow; my husband is dead. ⁶I had two sons who quarreled in the field, and there was no one to separate them. One killed the other. ⁷Then the entire family turned against me. They said, ‘Give us the man who killed his brother so that we can kill him because he took his brother’s life. We’re going to destroy the one who ⸤now⸥ would be the heir.’ In this way they wish to extinguish the ⸤one⸥ burning coal that is left for me. They will not let my husband’s name or descendants remain on the face of the earth.”

⁸“Go home,” the king told the woman. “I will order someone to take care of this matter.”

⁹The woman from Tekoa said to the king, “Let me be held responsible for the sin, Your Majesty. Let my father’s family be held responsible. Your Majesty and your throne are innocent.”

¹⁰The king said, “If anyone says anything against you, bring him to me. He’ll never harm you again.”

¹¹She said, “Your Majesty, please pray to the Lord your God in order to keep an avenger from doing more harm by destroying my son.”

“I solemnly swear, as the Lord lives,” he said, “not a hair on your son’s head will fall to the ground.”

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Footnotes

b 14:4 Many Hebrew manuscripts, Greek, Syriac, Targum, Latin; some Hebrew manuscripts “said.”