So don’t let him go unpunished, for you are a wise man. You know how to deal with him to bring his gray head down to Sheol with blood.”

So now I have just one request of you; don’t turn me down.”

She said to him, “Go on.”

Then she said, “I have just one small request of you. Don’t turn me down.”

“Go ahead and ask, mother,” the king replied, “for I won’t turn you down.”

Then the king summoned Shimei and said to him, “Build a house for yourself in Jerusalem and live there, but don’t leave there and go anywhere else.

The woman whose son was alive spoke to the king because she felt great compassion for her son. “My lord, give her the living baby,” she said, “but please don’t have him killed!”

But the other one said, “He will not be mine or yours. Cut him in two!”

The king responded, “Give the living baby to the first woman, and don’t kill him. She is his mother.”

But she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I don’t have anything baked—only a handful of flour in the jar and a bit of oil in the jug. Just now, I am gathering a couple of sticks in order to go prepare it for myself and my son so we can eat it and die.”

Then Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid; go and do as you have said. But first make me a small loaf from it and bring it out to me. Afterward, you may make some for yourself and your son,

But when I leave you, the Spirit of the Lord may carry you off to some place I don’t know. Then when I go report to Ahab and he doesn’t find you, he will kill me. But I, your servant, have feared the Lord from my youth.

Then Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, “Since you are so numerous, choose for yourselves one bull and prepare it first. Then call on the name of your god but don’t light the fire.”

So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “May the gods punish me and do so severely if I don’t make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow!”

All the elders and all the people said to him, “Don’t listen or agree.”

The king of Israel had said to his servants, “Don’t you know that Ramoth-gilead is ours, but we have failed to take it from the hand of the king of Aram?”