1. Now Joab son of Zeruiah perceived that the king’s heart was on Absalom.
2. So Joab sent word to Tekoa and brought a wise woman from there. He said to her, “Please pretend to be a mourner and put on mourning clothes. Do not anoint yourself with oil but be like a woman who has been mourning many days for the dead.
3. Then go to the king and speak to him these words.” Then Joab put the words in her mouth.
4. When the woman of Tekoa spoke to the king, she fell on her face to the ground, bowed down and said, “Help, O king!”
5. “What’s the matter with you?” the king said to her. “Truly, I am a widow, my husband is dead,” she said.
6. “Your handmaid had two sons, but the two of them fought with each other in the field, where there was no one to separate them. So one struck the other and killed him.
7. Now behold, the whole clan has risen against your handmaid and said, ‘Hand over the one who struck down his brother so we may put him to death, for the life of his brother whom he slew.’ So they will also destroy the heir and extinguish my one remaining ember, leaving to my husband neither name nor remnant on the face of the earth!”
8. Then the king said to the woman, “Go to your home. I will issue an order concerning you.”
9. The woman of Tekoa said to the king, “My lord the king, let the iniquity be on me and on my father’s house but may the king and his throne be innocent.”
10. “Whoever speaks to you,” the king said, “bring him to me and he shall not touch you anymore.”
11. “Please, let the king remember Adonai your God,” she said, “so that the avenger of blood does not destroy any more, so they won’t destroy my son.” “As Adonai lives,” he said, “not one hair of your son will fall to the ground.”
12. Then the woman said, “Please, let your handmaid speak a word to my lord the king.” “Say on,” he said.
13. The woman said, “Why have you devised a situation just like this against God’s people? For by speaking this word, the king is like the guilty one—by not bringing back the one he banished.
14. For we will all surely die and be like water spilt on the ground that cannot be gathered up again. Yet God does not take away life but rather, He devises plans so that a banished person may not remain an outcast from Him.
15. Now the reason I came to speak this word to my lord the king is because the people have made me afraid. So your handmaid thought, ‘I must speak to the king—perhaps the king will fulfill the request of his maidservant.