2 Samuel 11

¹In the spring, at the time when kings march out to war, Joab led out the army and ravaged the land of the Ammonites. He came to Rabbah and besieged it, but David remained in Jerusalem. And Joab attacked Rabbah and demolished it.

²⁶In the spring, Ben-hadad mobilized the Arameans and went up to Aphek to fight against Israel.

²²Afterward, the prophet approached the king of Israel and said, “Go and strengthen your position, and take note what you must do, for in the spring the king of Aram will come up against you.”

¹⁰In the spring, King Nebuchadnezzar summoned Jehoiachin and brought him to Babylon, along with the articles of value from the house of the Lord. And he made Jehoiachin’s relative Zedekiah king over Judah and Jerusalem.

⁸a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

¹¹(For only Og king of Bashan had remained of the remnant of the Rephaim. His bed of iron, nine cubits long and four cubits wide, is still in Rabbah of the Ammonites.)

²⁸But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

³⁷Turn my eyes away from worthless things; revive me with Your word.

¹⁶For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not from the Father but from the world.

⁹The next day at about the sixth hour, as the men were approaching the city on their journey, Peter went up on the roof to pray.

¹“I have made a covenant with my eyes. How then could I gaze with desire at a virgin?

²⁵Do not lust in your heart for her beauty or let her captivate you with her eyes.

³⁹and Uriah the Hittite. There were thirty-seven in all.

⁵and these sons were born to him in Jerusalem: Shimea, Shobab, Nathan, and Solomon. These four were born to him by Bathsheba daughter of Ammiel.

⁸They are well-fed, lusty stallions, each neighing after his neighbor’s wife.

¹⁴But each one is tempted when by his own evil desires he is lured away and enticed.

¹⁵Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

⁴¹Uriah the Hittite, Zabad son of Ahlai,

⁶For they prepare their heart like an oven while they lie in wait; all night their anger smolders; in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire.

⁷All of them are hot as an oven, and they devour their rulers. All their kings fall; not one of them calls upon Me.

¹⁹You must not approach a woman to have sexual relations with her during her menstrual period.

¹⁴But each one is tempted when by his own evil desires he is lured away and enticed.

¹⁵Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

¹For the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. When Nathan the prophet came to him after his adultery with Bathsheba. Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your loving devotion; according to Your great compassion, blot out my transgressions.

²Wash me clean of my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.

²⁰This is the way of an adulteress: She eats and wipes her mouth and says, ‘I have done nothing wrong.’

²“Say to the Israelites, ‘A woman who becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son will be unclean for seven days, as she is during the days of her menstruation.

³And on the eighth day the flesh of the boy’s foreskin is to be circumcised.

¹⁸When you see a thief, you befriend him, and throw in your lot with adulterers.

²²If a man is found lying with another man’s wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die. You must purge the evil from Israel.

³⁴For jealousy enrages a husband, and he will show no mercy in the day of vengeance.

¹³He who conceals his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them will find mercy.

⁷⁰But he denied it before them all: “I do not know what you are talking about.”

¹³Therefore the Lord said: “These people draw near to Me with their mouths and honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. Their worship of Me is but rules taught by men.

¹²Though evil is sweet in his mouth and he conceals it under his tongue,

¹³though he cannot bear to let it go and keeps it in his mouth,

¹⁸“What pledge should I give you?” he asked. She answered, “Your seal and your cord, and the staff in your hand.” So he gave them to her and slept with her, and she became pregnant by him.

¹⁹Then Tamar got up and departed. And she removed her veil and put on her widow’s garments again.

³⁰“I have sinned,” Saul replied. “Please honor me now before the elders of my people and before Israel. Come back with me, so that I may worship the Lord your God.”

²²Then David left his supplies in the care of the quartermaster and ran to the battle line. When he arrived, he asked his brothers how they were doing.

¹⁴Then Israel told him, “Go now and see how your brothers and the flocks are faring, and bring word back to me.” So he sent him off from the Valley of Hebron. And when Joseph arrived in Shechem,

⁶“Is he well?” Jacob inquired. “Yes,” they answered, “and here comes his daughter Rachel with his sheep.”

⁴Let a little water be brought, that you may wash your feet and rest yourselves under the tree.

¹⁵Woe to those who dig deep to hide their plans from the Lord. In darkness they do their works and say, “Who sees us, and who will know?”

⁴⁴And turning toward the woman, He said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? When I entered your house, you did not give Me water for My feet, but she wet My feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.

²There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, and nothing hidden that will not be made known.

²¹His speech is smooth as butter, but war is in his heart. His words are softer than oil, yet they are swords unsheathed.

²¹would not God have discovered, since He knows the secrets of the heart?

³⁰There is no wisdom, no understanding, no counsel that can prevail against the Lord.

¹²He thwarts the schemes of the crafty, so that their hands find no success.

¹³He catches the wise in their craftiness, and sweeps away the plans of the cunning.

²he said to Nathan the prophet, “Here I am, living in a house of cedar, while the ark of God remains in a tent.”

⁶And David said to Abishai, “Now Sheba the son of Bichri will do us more harm than Absalom. Take your lord’s servants and pursue him, or he will find fortified cities and elude us.”

⁶For I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought the Israelites up out of Egypt until this day, but I have moved about with a tent as My dwelling.

²⁶“Please, my lord,” said Hannah, “as surely as you live, my lord, I am the woman who stood here beside you praying to the Lord.

¹²if we endure, we will also reign with Him; if we deny Him, He will also deny us;

¹²On that day the Lord God of Hosts called for weeping and wailing, for shaven heads and the wearing of sackcloth.

¹³But look, there is joy and gladness, butchering of cattle and slaughtering of sheep, eating of meat and drinking of wine: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!”

²²Although you wash with lye and use an abundance of soap, the stain of your guilt is still before Me,” declares the Lord God.

²³“How can you say, ‘I am not defiled; I have not run after the Baals’? Look at your behavior in the valley; acknowledge what you have done. You are a swift young she-camel galloping here and there,

³⁷Moreover, you will leave that place with your hands on your head, for the Lord has rejected those you trust; you will not prosper by their help.”

¹⁵Woe to him who gives drink to his neighbors, pouring it from the wineskin until they are drunk, in order to gaze at their nakedness!

³²Come, let us get our father drunk with wine so we can sleep with him and preserve his line.”

³³So that night they got their father drunk with wine, and the firstborn went in and slept with her father; he was not aware when she lay down or when she got up.

²¹“What did this people do to you,” Moses asked Aaron, “that you have led them into so great a sin?”

¹Wine is a mocker, strong drink is a brawler, and whoever is led astray by them is not wise.

⁸Then Jezebel wrote letters in Ahab’s name, sealed them with his seal, and sent them to the elders and nobles who lived with Naboth in his city.

⁹In the letters she wrote: “Proclaim a fast and give Naboth a seat of honor among the people.

⁹The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?

³Both hands are skilled at evil; the prince and the judge demand a bribe. When the powerful utters his evil desire, they all conspire together.

⁴The best of them is like a brier; the most upright is sharper than a hedge of thorns. The day for your watchmen has come, the day of your visitation. Now is the time of their confusion.

²Your tongue devises destruction like a sharpened razor, O worker of deceit.

¹³Keep Your servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me. Then I will be blameless and cleansed of great transgression.

¹Oh, that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears! I would weep day and night over the slain daughter of my people.

²If only I had a traveler’s lodge in the wilderness, I would abandon my people and depart from them, for they are all adulterers, a crowd of faithless people.

⁹Why then have you despised the command of the Lord by doing evil in His sight? You put Uriah the Hittite to the sword and took his wife as your own. You have slain him with the sword of the Ammonites.

⁴Against You, You only, have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight, so that You may be proved right when You speak and blameless when You judge.

¹⁷And when the men of the city came out and fought against Joab, some of David’s servants fell, and Uriah the Hittite also died.

¹⁴Deliver me from bloodguilt, O God, the God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing of Your righteousness.

²¹“I will give her to David,” Saul thought, “so that she may be a snare to him, and the hand of the Philistines may be against him.” So Saul said to David, “For a second time now you can be my son-in-law.”

¹³Sing to the Lord! Praise the Lord! For He rescues the life of the needy from the hands of evildoers.

⁵Moreover, you know what Joab son of Zeruiah did to me—what he did to Abner son of Ner and Amasa son of Jether, the two commanders of the armies of Israel. He killed them in peacetime to avenge the blood of war. He stained with the blood of war the belt around his waist and the sandals on his feet.

⁹“Are you well, my brother?” Joab asked Amasa. And with his right hand Joab grabbed Amasa by the beard to kiss him.

¹⁰Amasa was not on guard against the dagger in Joab’s hand, and Joab stabbed him in the stomach and spilled out his intestines on the ground. And Joab did not need to strike him again, for Amasa was dead. Then Joab and his brother Abishai pursued Sheba son of Bichri.

⁶Then Jehu wrote them a second letter and said: “If you are on my side, and if you will obey me, then bring the heads of your master’s sons to me at Jezreel by this time tomorrow.” Now the sons of the king, seventy in all, were being brought up by the leading men of the city.

¹²They proclaimed a fast and gave Naboth a seat of honor among the people.

¹³And the two scoundrels came in and sat opposite Naboth, and these men testified against him before the people, saying, “Naboth has cursed both God and the king!” So they took him outside the city and stoned him to death.

²¹Who struck Abimelech son of Jerubbesheth? Was it not a woman who dropped an upper millstone on him from the wall, so that he died in Thebez? Why did you get so close to the wall?’ If he asks you this, then you are to say, ‘Your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead as well.’”

¹⁷Then the king ordered the guards at his side, “Turn and kill the priests of the Lord, because they too sided with David. For they knew he was fleeing, but they did not tell me.” But the king’s servants would not lift a hand to strike the priests of the Lord.

¹⁸So the king ordered Doeg, “You turn and strike down the priests!” And Doeg the Edomite turned and struck down the priests himself. On that day he killed eighty-five men who wore the linen ephod.

¹⁴Deliver me from bloodguilt, O God, the God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing of Your righteousness.

⁹Why then have you despised the command of the Lord by doing evil in His sight? You put Uriah the Hittite to the sword and took his wife as your own. You have slain him with the sword of the Ammonites.

⁵⁰Then Abimelech went to Thebez, encamped against it, and captured it.

⁵¹But there was a strong tower inside the city, and all the men, women, and leaders of the city fled there. They locked themselves in and went up to the roof of the tower.

¹Early in the morning Jerubbaal (that is, Gideon) and all the men with him camped beside the spring of Harod. And the camp of Midian was north of them in the valley near the hill of Moreh.

²⁷When Abner returned to Hebron, Joab pulled him aside into the gateway, as if to speak to him privately, and there Joab stabbed him in the stomach. So Abner died on account of the blood of Joab’s brother Asahel.

³²So on that day Gideon was called Jerubbaal, that is to say, “Let Baal contend with him,” because he had torn down Baal’s altar.

³⁴Your hands were not bound, your feet were not fettered. As a man falls before the wicked, so also you fell.” And all the people wept over him even more.

¹⁰They will all respond to you, saying, “You too have become weak, as we are; you have become like us!”

²⁶Meanwhile, Joab fought against Rabbah of the Ammonites and captured the royal fortress.

¹So I took all this to heart and concluded that the righteous and the wise, as well as their deeds, are in God’s hands. Man does not know what lies ahead, whether love or hate.

²It is the same for all: There is a common fate for the righteous and the wicked, for the good and the bad, for the clean and the unclean, for the one who sacrifices and the one who does not. As it is for the good, so it is for the sinner; as it is for the one who makes a vow, so it is for the one who refuses to take a vow.

⁹but keep watching it. If it goes up the road to its homeland, toward Beth-shemesh, it is the Lord who has brought on us this great disaster. But if it does not, then we will know that it was not His hand that punished us and that it happened by chance.”

⁸O Lord, what can I say, now that Israel has turned its back and run from its enemies?

⁹When the Canaanites and all who live in the land hear about this, they will surround us and wipe out our name from the earth. Then what will You do for Your great name?”

¹¹I saw something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; neither is the bread to the wise, nor the wealth to the intelligent, nor the favor to the skillful. For time and chance happen to all.

¹²For surely no man knows his time: Like fish caught in a cruel net or birds trapped in a snare, so men are ensnared in an evil time that suddenly falls upon them.

²So Joab sent to Tekoa to bring a wise woman from there. He told her, “Please pretend to be a mourner; put on clothes for mourning and do not anoint yourself with oil. Act like a woman who has mourned for the dead a long time.

³¹Then David ordered Joab and all the people with him, “Tear your clothes, put on sackcloth, and mourn before Abner.” And King David himself walked behind the funeral bier.

⁴¹Esau held a grudge against Jacob because of the blessing his father had given him. And Esau said in his heart, “The days of mourning for my father are at hand; then I will kill my brother Jacob.”

⁹Why then have you despised the command of the Lord by doing evil in His sight? You put Uriah the Hittite to the sword and took his wife as your own. You have slain him with the sword of the Ammonites.

⁴Against You, You only, have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight, so that You may be proved right when You speak and blameless when You judge.

⁵Surely I was brought forth in iniquity; I was sinful when my mother conceived me.

⁷This command was also evil in the sight of God; so He struck Israel.

⁴Marriage should be honored by all and the marriage bed kept undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers.

²⁹then the man who lay with her must pay the young woman’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she must become his wife because he has violated her. He must not divorce her as long as he lives.

¹⁰What he did was wicked in the sight of the Lord, so He put Onan to death as well.