16. Then Joab blew his trumpet. He ordered his troops to stop chasing Israel's army.
17. Joab's men threw Absalom's body into a big pit in the forest. They covered his body with a large pile of rocks. While all of that was going on, all of the Israelites ran back to their homes.
18. Earlier in his life Absalom had set up a pillar in the King's Valley. He had put it up as a monument to himself. He thought, "I don't have a son to carry on the memory of my name." So he named the pillar after himself. It is still called Absalom's Monument to this very day.
19. Ahimaaz said to Joab, "Let me run and take the news to the king. Let me tell him that the Lord has saved him from the power of his enemies." Ahimaaz was the son of Zadok.
20. "I don't want you to take the news to the king today," Joab told him. "You can do it some other time. But you must not do it today, because the king's son is dead."
21. Then Joab said to a man from Cush, "Go. Tell the king what you have seen." The man bowed down in front of Joab. Then he ran off.