2 Samuel 21

¹¹Israel has sinned; they have transgressed My covenant that I commanded them, and they have taken some of what was devoted to destruction. Indeed, they have stolen and lied, and they have put these things with their own possessions.

¹²This is why the Israelites cannot stand against their enemies. They will turn their backs and run from their enemies, because they themselves have been set apart for destruction. I will no longer be with you unless you remove from among you whatever is devoted to destruction.

¹Now there was another famine in the land, subsequent to the one that had occurred in Abraham’s time. And Isaac went to Abimelech king of the Philistines at Gerar.

¹⁰Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe.

⁴Once again, David inquired of the Lord, and the Lord answered him: “Go at once to Keilah, for I will deliver the Philistines into your hand.”

²So Elijah went to present himself to Ahab. The famine was severe in Samaria,

¹Now Elijah the Tishbite, who was among the settlers of Gilead, said to Ahab, “As surely as the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there will be neither dew nor rain in these years except at my word!”

³But the people of Gibeon, having heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and Ai,

⁴acted deceptively and set out as envoys, carrying on their donkeys worn-out sacks and old wineskins, cracked and mended.

³¹Yet Jehu was not careful to follow the instruction of the Lord, the God of Israel, with all his heart. He did not turn away from the sins that Jeroboam had caused Israel to commit.

⁸He captured Agag king of Amalek alive, but devoted all the others to destruction with the sword.

⁹Saul and his troops spared Agag, along with the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves and lambs, and the best of everything else. They were unwilling to devote them to destruction, but they devoted to destruction all that was despised and worthless.

²For I testify about them that they are zealous for God, but not on the basis of knowledge.

¹⁶saying, “Come with me and see my zeal for the Lord!” So he had him ride in his chariot.

¹⁶You must destroy all the peoples the Lord your God will deliver to you. Do not look on them with pity. Do not worship their gods, for that will be a snare to you.

²²According to the law, in fact, nearly everything must be purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.

¹⁹I am among the peaceable and faithful in Israel, but you are trying to destroy a city that is a mother in Israel. Why would you swallow up the Lord’s inheritance?”

¹⁹Now please, may my lord the king hear the words of his servant: If the Lord has stirred you up against me, then may He accept an offering. But if men have done it, may they be cursed in the presence of the Lord! For today they have driven me away from sharing in the inheritance of the Lord, saying, ‘Go, serve other gods.’

⁶With what shall I come before the Lord when I bow before the God on high? Should I come to Him with burnt offerings, with year-old calves?

⁷Would the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I present my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

⁴because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

⁵Therefore, when Christ came into the world, He said: “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You prepared for Me.

³⁰The next day Moses said to the people, “You have committed a great sin. Now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.”

¹⁸For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life you inherited from your forefathers,

¹⁹but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or spot.

⁶They trust in their wealth and boast in their great riches.

⁷No man can possibly redeem his brother or pay his ransom to God.

¹During the reign of David there was a famine for three successive years, and David sought the face of the Lord. And the Lord said, “It is because of the blood shed by Saul and his family, because he killed the Gibeonites.”

²For with the same judgment you pronounce, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

²⁶Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and will have nothing. Then the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood, and until the end there will be war; desolations have been decreed.

²⁴For Haman son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, the enemy of all the Jews, had plotted against the Jews to destroy them and had cast the Pur (that is, the lot) to crush and destroy them.

²⁵But when it came before the king, he commanded by letter that the wicked scheme which Haman had devised against the Jews should come back upon his own head, and that he and his sons should be hanged on the gallows.

²⁴Samuel said to all the people, “Do you see the one the Lord has chosen? There is no one like him among all the people.” And all the people shouted, “Long live the king!”

⁴Then the Lord said to Moses, “Take all the leaders of the people and execute them in broad daylight before the Lord, so that His fierce anger may turn away from Israel.”

⁵So Moses told the judges of Israel, “Each of you must kill all of his men who have joined in worshiping Baal of Peor.”

²⁶Saul also went to his home in Gibeah, and the men of valor whose hearts God had touched went with him.

⁴When the messengers came to Gibeah of Saul and relayed these words in the hearing of the people, they all wept aloud.

¹⁰When one of the men saw this, he told Joab, “I just saw Absalom hanging in an oak tree!”

¹¹I also decree that if any man interferes with this directive, a beam is to be torn from his house and raised up, and he is to be impaled on it. And his own house shall be made a pile of rubble for this offense.

¹⁸So the two of them made a covenant before the Lord. And David remained in Horesh, while Jonathan went home.

³Then Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself.

⁴And Jonathan son of Saul had a son who was lame in his feet. He was five years old when the report about Saul and Jonathan came from Jezreel. His nurse picked him up and fled, but as she was hurrying to escape, he fell and became lame. His name was Mephibosheth.

¹⁵and do not ever cut off your loving devotion from my household—not even when the Lord cuts off every one of David’s enemies from the face of the earth.”

⁸Therefore show kindness to your servant, for you have brought me into a covenant with you before the Lord. If there is iniquity in me, then kill me yourself; why should you bring me to your father?”

¹⁰You and your sons and servants are to work the ground for him and bring in the harvest, so that your master’s grandson may have food to eat. But Mephibosheth, your master’s grandson, is always to eat at my table.” Now Ziba had fifteen sons and twenty servants.

¹⁹So when it was time to give Saul’s daughter Merab to David, she was given in marriage to Adriel of Meholah.

⁷Now Saul had a concubine named Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah. So Ish-bosheth questioned Abner, “Why did you sleep with my father’s concubine?”

²²So Naomi returned from the land of Moab with her daughter-in-law Ruth the Moabitess. And they arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.

¹If one is found slain, lying in a field in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess, and it is not known who killed him,

²your elders and judges must come out and measure the distance from the victim to the neighboring cities.

³¹You are not to accept a ransom for the life of a murderer who deserves to die; he must surely be put to death.

³²Nor should you accept a ransom for the person who flees to a city of refuge and allow him to return and live on his own land before the death of the high priest.

⁶let seven of his male descendants be delivered to us so that we may hang them before the Lord at Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of the Lord.” “I will give them to you,” said the king.

³Surely this happened to Judah at the Lord’s command, to remove them from His presence because of the sins of Manasseh and all that he had done,

⁴and also for the innocent blood he had shed. For he had filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and the Lord was unwilling to forgive.

³³But Samuel declared: “As your sword has made women childless, so your mother will be childless among women.” And Samuel hacked Agag to pieces before the Lord at Gilgal.

²³you must not leave the body on the tree overnight, but you must be sure to bury him that day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse. You must not defile the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.

⁷Now Saul had a concubine named Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah. So Ish-bosheth questioned Abner, “Why did you sleep with my father’s concubine?”

⁴¹And Elijah said to Ahab, “Go up, eat and drink, for there is the sound of a heavy rain.”

⁴²So Ahab went up to eat and drink. But Elijah climbed to the summit of Carmel, bent down on the ground, and put his face between his knees.

²³Be glad, O children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God, for He has given you the autumn rains for your vindication. He sends you showers, both autumn and spring rains, as before.

²⁷When Ahab heard these words, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth, and fasted. He lay down in sackcloth and walked around meekly.

¹Ask the Lord for rain in springtime; the Lord makes the storm clouds, and He will give everyone showers of rain and crops in the field.

⁴Then the men of Judah came to Hebron, and there they anointed David king over the house of Judah. And they told David, “It was the men of Jabesh-gilead who buried Saul.”

¹¹Boaz replied, “I have been made fully aware of all you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband, how you left your father and mother and the land of your birth, and how you came to a people you did not know before.

¹²May the Lord repay your work, and may you receive a rich reward from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have taken refuge.”

¹⁰They put his armor in the temple of the Ashtoreths and hung his body on the wall of Beth-shan.

¹¹When the people of Jabesh-gilead heard what the Philistines had done to Saul,

¹¹Within Issachar and Asher, Manasseh was assigned Beth-shean, Ibleam, Dor (that is, Naphath), Endor, Taanach, and Megiddo, each with their surrounding settlements.

¹Now the Philistines fought against Israel, and the men of Israel fled before them, and many fell slain on Mount Gilboa.

²¹O mountains of Gilboa, may you have no dew or rain, no fields yielding offerings of grain. For there the shield of the mighty was defiled, the shield of Saul, no longer anointed with oil.

⁴The Philistines gathered together and camped at Shunem, while Saul gathered all Israel and camped at Gilboa.

⁶“I happened to be on Mount Gilboa,” he replied, “and there was Saul, leaning on his spear, with the chariots and the cavalry closing in on him.

²⁸Zelah, Haeleph, Jebus (that is, Jerusalem), Gibeah, and Kiriath-jearim—fourteen cities, along with their villages. This was the inheritance of the clans of the tribe of Benjamin.

²⁵And there he built an altar to the Lord and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. Then the Lord answered the prayers on behalf of the land, and the plague upon Israel was halted.

²⁶And they heaped over Achan a large pile of rocks that remains to this day. So the Lord turned from His burning anger. Therefore that place is called the Valley of Achor to this day.

⁸Then the Lord summoned me and said, “Behold, those going to the land of the north have given rest to My Spirit in the land of the north.”

³²When they buried Abner in Hebron, the king wept aloud at Abner’s tomb, and all the people wept.

¹⁵Then they picked up Jonah and cast him into the sea, and the raging sea grew calm.

¹⁰Now behold, as the Lord promised, He has kept me alive these forty-five years since He spoke this word to Moses, while Israel wandered in the wilderness. So here I am today, eighty-five years old,

¹¹still as strong today as I was the day Moses sent me out. As my strength was then, so it is now for war, for going out, and for coming in.

⁹Do not discard me in my old age; do not forsake me when my strength fails.

¹⁷When the Philistines heard that David had been anointed king over Israel, they all went in search of him; but David learned of this and went down to the stronghold.

²⁵So David did as the Lord had commanded him, and he struck down the Philistines all the way from Gibeon to Gezer.

³on the day the keepers of the house tremble and the strong men stoop, when those grinding cease because they are few and those watching through windows see dimly,

²²Once again the Philistines came up and spread out in the Valley of Rephaim.

²⁰And there was also a battle at Gath, where there was a man of great stature with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot—twenty-four in all. He too was descended from Rapha,

¹⁸Some time later at Gob, there was another battle with the Philistines. At that time Sibbecai the Hushathite killed Saph, a descendant of Rapha.

²The people are strong and tall, the descendants of the Anakim. You know about them, and you have heard it said, “Who can stand up to the sons of Anak?”

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.)

¹⁸Now the Philistines had come and spread out in the Valley of Rephaim.

¹⁰(The Emites used to live there, a people great and many, as tall as the Anakites.

³⁶I will give one tribe to his son, so that My servant David will always have a lamp before Me in Jerusalem, the city where I chose to put My Name.

³But the people pleaded, “You must not go out! For if we have to flee, they will not care about us. Even if half of us die, they will not care. But you are worth ten thousand of us. It is better now if you support us from the city.”

¹⁷There I will make a horn grow for David; I have prepared a lamp for My anointed one.

⁴Nevertheless, for the sake of David, the Lord his God gave him a lamp in Jerusalem by raising up a son to succeed him and to make Jerusalem strong.

⁷Now the whole clan has risen up against your maidservant and said, ‘Hand over the one who struck down his brother, that we may put him to death for the life of the brother whom he killed. Then we will cut off the heir as well!’ So they would extinguish my one remaining ember by not preserving my husband’s name or posterity on the earth.”

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.”

⁷So Joab’s men, along with the Cherethites, the Pelethites, and all the mighty men, marched out of Jerusalem in pursuit of Sheba son of Bichri.

²⁹Sibbecai the Hushathite, Ilai the Ahohite,

²⁰And there was also a battle at Gath, where there was a man of great stature with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot—twenty-four in all. He too was descended from Rapha,

¹¹The eighth, for the eighth month, was Sibbecai the Hushathite, a Zerahite. There were 24,000 men in his division.

¹⁶Then Ishbi-benob, a descendant of Rapha, whose bronze spear weighed three hundred shekels and who was bearing a new sword, resolved to kill David.

²²So these four descendants of Rapha in Gath fell at the hands of David and his servants.

⁴Some time later, war broke out with the Philistines at Gezer. At that time Sibbecai the Hushathite killed Sippai, a descendant of the Rephaim, and the Philistines were subdued.

⁵Once again there was a battle with the Philistines, and Elhanan son of Jair killed Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam.

⁵Once again there was a battle with the Philistines, and Elhanan son of Jair killed Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam.

⁴Then a champion named Goliath, who was from Gath, came out from the Philistine camp. He was six cubits and a span in height,

⁵and he had a bronze helmet on his head. He wore a bronze coat of mail weighing five thousand shekels,

²⁶Now these were the mighty men: Asahel the brother of Joab, Elhanan son of Dodo of Bethlehem,

¹⁸Some time later at Gob, there was another battle with the Philistines. At that time Sibbecai the Hushathite killed Saph, a descendant of Rapha.

¹⁶Then Ishbi-benob, a descendant of Rapha, whose bronze spear weighed three hundred shekels and who was bearing a new sword, resolved to kill David.

⁶And there was also a battle at Gath, where there was a man of great stature with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot—twenty-four in all. He too was descended from Rapha,

⁹Next Jesse presented Shammah, but Samuel said, “The Lord has not chosen this one either.”

³⁶Your servant has killed lions and bears; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, for he has defied the armies of the living God.”

¹⁰Then the Philistine said, “I defy the ranks of Israel this day! Give me a man to fight!”

²⁵Now the men of Israel had been saying, “Do you see how this man keeps coming out to defy Israel? To the man who kills him the king will give great riches. And he will give him his daughter in marriage and exempt his father’s house from taxation in Israel.”

²⁶David asked the men who were standing with him, “What will be done for the man who kills this Philistine and removes this disgrace from Israel? Just who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?”

³The Philistines stood on one hill and the Israelites stood on another, with the valley between them.

¹³Where are the kings of Hamath, Arpad, Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah?’”

⁸So these descendants of Rapha in Gath fell at the hands of David and his servants.

³¹What then shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?

²³This is what the Lord says: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, nor the strong man in his strength, nor the wealthy man in his riches.

¹²Now therefore give me this hill country that the Lord promised me on that day, for you yourself heard then that the Anakim were there, with great and fortified cities. Perhaps with the Lord’s help I will drive them out, as the Lord has spoken.”

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.

¹⁵Shouts of joy and salvation resound in the tents of the righteous: “The right hand of the Lord performs with valor!