17. He said, “Please ask King Solomon, who will not refuse you, to give me Abishag the Shunamite to be my wife.”
18. Bathsheba replied, “Very well, I will speak to the king for you.”
19. Then Bathsheba went to King Solomon to speak to him for Adonijah, and the king stood up to meet her and paid her homage. Then he sat down upon his throne, and a throne was provided for the king’s mother, who sat at his right.
20. She said, “There is one small favor I would ask of you. Do not refuse me.” The king said to her, “Ask it, my mother, for I will not refuse you.”
21. So she said, “Let Abishag the Shunamite be given to your brother Adonijah to be his wife.”
22. King Solomon answered his mother, “And why do you ask that Abishag the Shunamite be given to Adonijah? Ask the kingship for him as well, for he is my older brother! Ask for him, for Abiathar the priest, for Joab, son of Zeruiah!”
23. And King Solomon swore by the Lord: “May God do thus to me and more, if Adonijah has not spoken this word at the cost of his life.
24. And now, as the Lord lives, who has established me and set me on the throne of David my father and made for me a house as he promised, this day shall Adonijah be put to death.”
25. Then King Solomon sent Benaiah, son of Jehoiada, who struck him dead.
26. The king said to Abiathar the priest: “Go to your estate in Anathoth. Though you deserve to die, I will not put you to death at this time, because you carried the ark of the Lord God before David my father and shared in all the hardships my father endured.”
27. So Solomon dismissed Abiathar from the office of priest of the Lord, thus fulfilling the word the Lord had spoken in Shiloh against the house of Eli.
28. When the news came to Joab, since he had sided with Adonijah, though not with Absalom, he fled to the tent of the Lord and clung to the horns of the altar.
29. King Solomon was told, “Joab has fled to the tent of the Lord and is by the altar.” He sent Benaiah, son of Jehoiada, with the order, “Go, strike him down.”
30. Benaiah went to the tent of the Lord and said to him, “The king says, ‘Come out.’” But he answered, “No! I will die here.” Benaiah reported to the king, “This is what Joab said to me in reply.”
31. The king answered him: “Do as he has said. Strike him down and bury him, and remove from me and from my father’s house the blood which Joab shed without provocation.
32. The Lord will bring blood upon his own head, because he struck down two men better and more just than himself, and slew them with the sword without my father David’s knowledge: Abner, son of Ner, commander of Israel’s army, and Amasa, son of Jether, commander of Judah’s army.
33. Their blood will be upon the head of Joab and his descendants. But upon David and his descendants, upon his house and his throne, there shall be peace forever from the Lord.”
34. Benaiah, son of Jehoiada, went back, struck him down and killed him; he was buried in his house in the wilderness.