11
Then she said, "Please, may the king keep the Lord your God in mind, so that the avenger of blood may kill no more, and my son not be destroyed." He said, "As the Lord lives, not one hair of your son shall fall to the ground."
12
Then the woman said, "Please let your servant speak a word to my lord the king." He said, "Speak."
13
The woman said, "Why then have you planned such a thing against the people of God? For in giving this decision the king convicts himself, inasmuch as the king does not bring his banished one home again.
14
We must all die; we are like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be gathered up. But God will not take away a life; he will devise plans so as not to keep an outcast banished forever from his presence.
15
Now I have come to say this to my lord the king because the people have made me afraid; your servant thought, "I will speak to the king; it may be that the king will perform the request of his servant.
16
For the king will hear, and deliver his servant from the hand of the man who would cut both me and my son off from the heritage of God.'
17
Your servant thought, "The word of my lord the king will set me at rest'; for my lord the king is like the angel of God, discerning good and evil. The Lord your God be with you!"
18
Then the king answered the woman, "Do not withhold from me anything I ask you." The woman said, "Let my lord the king speak."
19
The king said, "Is the hand of Joab with you in all this?" The woman answered and said, "As surely as you live, my lord the king, one cannot turn right or left from anything that my lord the king has said. For it was your servant Joab who commanded me; it was he who put all these words into the mouth of your servant.
20
In order to change the course of affairs your servant Joab did this. But my lord has wisdom like the wisdom of the angel of God to know all things that are on the earth."
21
Then the king said to Joab, "Very well, I grant this; go, bring back the young man Absalom."