There were three sons of Zeruiah there, Joab and Abishai and Asahel: and Asahel was as quick-footed as a roe of the fields.

Asahel went running after Abner, not turning to the right or to the left.

Then Abner, looking back, said, Is it you, Asahel? And he said, It is I.

And Abner said, Then go to the right or to the left and put your hands on one of the fighting-men and take his arms. But Asahel would not be turned away from going after Abner.

Then again Abner said to Asahel, Go to one side, do not keep on coming after me: why will you make me put an end to you? for then I will be shamed before your brother Joab.

But still he did not go to one side: so Abner gave him a back blow in the stomach with his spear, so that the spear came out at his back; and he went down on the earth, wounded to death: and all those who came to the place where Asahel went down dead, came to a stop.

And Joab came back from fighting Abner: and when he had got all his men together, it was seen that nineteen of David's men, in addition to Asahel, were not with them.

And they took Asahel's body and put it in the last resting-place of his father in Beth-lehem. And Joab and his men, travelling all night, came to Hebron at dawn.

And when Abner was back in Hebron, Joab took him on one side by the doorway of the town to have a word with him quietly, and there he gave him a wound in the stomach, causing his death in payment for the death of his brother Asahel.

So Joab and Abishai his brother put Abner to death, because he had put to death their brother Asahel in the fight at Gibeon.

Asahel, the brother of Joab, was one of the thirty; and Elhanan, the son of Dodai, of Beth-lehem,