6
Your handmaid had two sons, and they two strove together in the field, and there was none to part them, but the one struck the other, and killed him.
7
Behold, the whole family is risen against your handmaid, and they say, Deliver him who struck his brother, that we may kill him for the life of his brother whom he killed, and so destroy the heir also. Thus will they quench my coal which is left, and will leave to my husband neither name nor remainder on the surface of the eretz.
8
The king said to the woman, Go to your house, and I will give charge concerning you.
9
The woman of Tekoa said to the king, My lord, O king, the iniquity be on me, and on my father's house; and the king and his throne be guiltless.
10
The king said, Whoever says anything to you, bring him to me, and he shall not touch you any more.
11
Then said she, Please let the king remember the LORD your God, that the avenger of blood destroy not any more, lest they destroy my son. He said, As the LORD lives, there shall not one hair of your son fall to the eretz.
12
Then the woman said, Please let your handmaid speak a word to my lord the king. He said, Say on.
13
The woman said, Why then have you devised such a thing against the people of God? for in speaking this word the king is as one who is guilty, in that the king does not bring home again his banished one.
14
For we must needs die, and are as water split on the ground, which can't be gathered up again; neither does God take away life, but devises means, that he who is banished not be an outcast from him.
15
Now therefore seeing that I have come to speak this word to my lord the king, it is because the people have made me afraid: and your handmaid said, I will now speak to the king; it may be that the king will perform the request of his servant.
16
For the king will hear, to deliver his servant out of the hand of the man who would destroy me and my son together out of the inheritance of God.