14Joab, the son of Zeruiah, knew that the king longed to see Absalom. ²So Joab sent someone to Tekoa to have a wise woman brought back from there. Joab said to her, “Pretend you are filled with sadness. Put on black clothes. Don’t use any makeup. Act like a woman who has spent many days sobbing over someone who has died. ³Then go to the king. Give him the message I’m about to give you.” And Joab told her what to say.

⁴The woman from Tekoa went to the king. She bowed down with her face toward the ground. She did it to show him respect. She said, “King David, please help me!”

⁵The king asked her, “What’s bothering you?”

She said, “I’m a widow. My husband is dead. ⁶I had two sons. They got into a fight with each other in the field. No one was there to separate them. One of my sons struck the other one down and killed him.

⁷“Now my whole family group has risen up against me. They say, ‘Hand over the one who struck his brother down. Then we can put him to death for killing his brother. That will also get rid of the one who will receive the family property.’ They want to kill the only living son I have left, just as someone would put out a burning coal. That would leave my husband without any son on the face of the earth to carry on his name.”

⁸The king said to the woman, “Go home. I’ll give an order to make sure you are taken care of.”

⁹But the woman from Tekoa said to him, “You are my king and master. No matter what you do, I and my family will take the blame for it. You and your royal family won’t be guilty of doing anything wrong.”

¹⁰The king replied, “If people give you any trouble, bring them to me. They won’t bother you again.”

¹¹She said, “Please pray to the Lord your God. Pray that he will keep our nearest male relative from killing my other son. Then my son won’t be destroyed.”

“You can be sure that the Lord lives,” the king said. “And you can be just as sure that not one hair of your son’s head will fall to the ground.”

¹²Then the woman said, “King David, please let me say something else to you.”

“Go ahead,” he replied.

¹³The woman said, “You are the king. So why have you done something that brings so much harm on God’s people? When you do that, you hand down a sentence against yourself. You won’t let the son you drove away come back. ¹⁴All of us must die. We are like water that is spilled on the ground. It can’t be put back into the jar. But God doesn’t take life away. Instead, he finds a way to bring back anyone who was driven away from him.

¹⁵“King David, I’ve come here to say this to you now. I’ve done it because people have made me afraid. I thought, ‘I’ll go and speak to the king. Perhaps he’ll do what I’m asking. ¹⁶Perhaps he’ll agree to save me from the man who is trying to cut off me and my son from the property God gave us.’

¹⁷“So now I’m saying, ‘May what you have told me bring me peace and rest. You are like an angel of God. You know what is good and what is evil. May the Lord your God be with you.’ ”

¹⁸Then the king said to the woman, “I’m going to ask you a question. I want you to tell me the truth.”

“Please ask me anything you want to,” the woman said.

¹⁹The king asked, “Joab told you to say all of this, didn’t he?”

The woman answered, “What you have told me is exactly right. And that’s just as sure as you are alive. It’s true that Joab directed me to do this. He told me everything he wanted me to say. ²⁰He did it to change the way things now are. You are as wise as an angel of God. You know everything that happens in the land.”

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