Then Joab got up, went to Geshur, and brought Absalom back to Jerusalem.

Whenever he cut his hair he cut it at the end of every year, because it grew thick on his head, which is why he cut it his hair weighed in at 200 shekels measured by the royal standard.

At this, Joab got up, went to Absalom's home, and demanded of him, "Why did your servants set fire to my grain field?"

Then he would get up early, stand near the passageway to the palace gate, and when anyone arrived to file a legal complaint for a hearing before the king, Absalom would call to him and ask, "You're from what city?" If he replied, "Your servant is from one of Israel's tribes,"

The king replied to him, "Go in peace!" So Absalom got up and left for Hebron.

So David told all of his staff who were with him in Jerusalem, "Let's get up and get out of here! Otherwise, none of us will escape from Absalom. Hurry, or he'll overtake us quickly, bring disaster on all of us, and execute the inhabitants of the city!"

Meanwhile, Zadok showed up also, along with all of the descendants of Levi with him, carrying the Ark of the Covenant of God. They set down the Ark of God and Abiathar approached while all the people finished abandoning the city.

The king told Zadok, "Take the Ark of God back to the city. If I'm shown favor in the LORD's sight, then he'll bring me back again and show me both it and the place where it rests.

So Zadok and Abiathar returned the Ark of God to Jerusalem and remained there.

Just as David was coming to the top of the Mount of Olives where God was being worshipped, there was Hushai the Archite to meet him, with his coat ripped and dust all over his head!

The king asked Ziba, "What are those for?" Ziba replied, "The donkeys are for the king's household to ride, the bread and summer fruit are for your young men to eat, and the wine is for whoever wants to drink if they get weary in the wilderness."

"Get out of here! Get out!" Shimei yelled as he cursed. "You murderer! You who think you're above the law!

At this point, Zeruiah's son Abishai asked the king, "Why should this dead dog be cursing your majesty the king? May I have permission to go over and cut off his head?"

Perhaps the LORD will take note of my troubles and return good to me instead of curses today!"

Even though this plan seemed like a good idea to Absalom and to all of the elders of Israel,

Now Ahithophel's advice that he provided at that time was being compared to one who inquired of God, so highly regarded was Ahithophel's counsel by both David and Absalom.

A little while later, the men crawled up out of the well and went off to talk to King David. They told David, "Get up! Cross the water quickly, because this is what Ahithophel advised about you""

So David got up and all of his entourage crossed the Jordan River. Everyone had crossed the Jordan River by dawn's first light.

Meanwhile, when Ahithophel observed that his counsel was not being acted upon, he saddled his donkey, got up, and left for his hometown. Leaving behind a set of orders for his household, he hanged himself. After his death he was buried in his father's tomb.

So David responded, "I'll do what you think best." Then he stood alongside the city gate as the army went out in battle array by hundreds and thousands.

Absalom happened to run into David's soldiers. While Absalom was trying to get away on his mule, it ran under the thick branches of a giant oak tree, and Absalom's head got caught in the tree! As his mule ran out from under him, Absalom was left hanging above the ground.

Meanwhile, David was sitting between the inner and outer gates of the city. The watchman was up on the roof of the gateway near the walls, looking around, and there was a man running by himself!

Then the watchman observed, "It looks to me that the runner out in front is running like Zadok's son Ahimaaz!" The king replied, "This is a good man bearing good news!"

"Everything's fine!" Ahimaaz announced to the king. He bowed low with his face to the ground before the king and said, "Praise be to the LORD your God! He has handed over the men who rebelled against your majesty the king."

Just then the Ethiopian arrived. He reported, "Good news, your majesty the king! The LORD has delivered you from the control of everyone who rebelled against you!"

Deeply shaken, the king went up to the chamber overlooking the city gate, weeping bitterly and crying out as he went along, "My son Absalom! My son! My son Absalom! I wish I had died instead of you, Absalom my son, my son!"

Now get up and restore the morale of your army. I swear by the LORD that if you don't get out there, you won't have a single man left in your army by nightfall! You'll be in more trouble today than all the disasters you've been through from your boyhood until now!"

So the king got up and took his seat in the gateway. When the army was informed, "The king is sitting in the gateway!" they all gathered together in his presence.

Then ask Amasa, "Aren't you my own flesh and blood? So may God deal with me, no matter how severely, if from this day forward you don't take Joab's place as commander of my army.'

by slandering your servant to your majesty. But your majesty the king is like an angel from God: so do what you think is best.

I'm now 80 years old! I can hardly tell the difference between what tastes good or bad! I can't tell what I eat or drink! I can't hear the voice of men and women when they sing! So why should your servant be an added burden to your majesty the king?

So the woman replied, "Watch this! His head will be thrown to you over the city wall." Then the woman wisely went back to her people. They cut off the head of Bichri's son Sheba and threw it out to Joab, so Joab sounded his battle trumpet and they withdrew from the city. Everybody went back home and Joab returned to the king at Jerusalem.

and they buried Saul's bones and his son Jonathan's bones in the territory of Benjamin in Zela, in the tomb of Saul's father Kish. After they had done everything that the king commanded, God responded to prayers for the land.

He is my God, my strong stone in him I will find my refuge my shield, the strength of my salvation, my high tower, my way of escape, and the one who is saving me. You will save me from violence.

I cried out to the LORD in the middle of my troubles; I cried out to my God. He listened to my voice from his sanctuary, and my call for help was heard.

because I have kept the LORD's way I haven't willfully abandoned my God

By you I devastate armies, by my God I scale walls.

This God! His way is perfect! What the LORD declares proves true. He shields everyone who flees for protection to him!

For who is God apart from the LORD? And who is a Rock, apart from our God?

This God is my strong place of valor! He has made my life blameless.

I devoured them, striking them down until they could not get up again. They fell beneath my feet.

The LORD lives! Blessed be my Rock, and may my God be exalted, the Rock who is my salvation!

The God who keeps on avenging me, subjugating people beneath me,

This was David's last composition: The oracle of David, son of Jesse, an oracle by the valiant one who was exalted anointed by the God of Jacob, the contented psalm writer of Israel.

The God of Israel has spoken; the Rock of Israel has talked to me. "When one is governing men justly, he fears God while governing.

Is not my dynasty like this with God? Has he not made an eternal covenant with me, preparing every detail of it? And he has made it secure, including my complete salvation, has he not? He has been of continual help, has he not, even with respect to all of my desires?

David expressed his longing, "Oh, how I wish someone would get me a drink of water from the Bethlehem well that's by the city gate!"

So the Three elite warriors broke through the Philistine ranks, drew some water from the Bethlehem well that was next to the city gate, and brought it back to David. But he refused to drink it. Instead, he poured it out in the LORD's presence,

Later, God's anger blazed forth against Israel, so he incited David to move against them by telling him, "Go take a census of Israel and Judah."

But Joab replied, "May the LORD your God increase the population of the people a hundredfold while your majesty the king is still alive to see it happen! But why does your majesty the king want to do this?"

They crossed the Jordan River, encamped at Aroer south of the town that is located in the river valley, proceeding through Gad and then on toward Jazer.

Before David arose the next morning, this message from the LORD came to Gad, David's seer:

So Gad went to David and asked him, "Shall seven years of famine come to your land, or three months of reversals while you flee from your enemies as they pursue you, or three days of pestilence in your land? Decide right now what I am to answer to the one who sent me."

So David replied to Gad, "This is a very difficult choice for me to make! Let me now please fall into the hand of the LORD, since his mercy is very great, but may I never fall into human hands!"

That very day, Gad approached David and told him, "Go up and build an altar to the LORD on the threshing floor that belongs to Araunah the Jebusite."

So David went up, just as Gad had ordered, consistent with the LORD's command.

Your majesty, Araunah gives all of this to the king." Araunah also told the king, "May the LORD your God be pleased with you!"

"No!" the king replied to Araunah. "I will buy them from you at full price. I won't offer to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing." So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for 50 silver shekels,

"Your majesty," she replied, "you promised your servant in the name of the LORD your God, "Your son Solomon will certainly become king after me and will sit on my throne.'

I certainly did tell you in the name of the LORD God of Israel, "Your son Solomon will be king after me and will sit on my throne in my place.' I'm certainly going to make this happen today!"

"Get me Zadok the priest," King David said, "along with Nathan the prophet, and Jehoiada's son Benaiah." So they were ushered into the king's presence

"Amen!" replied Jehoiada's son Benaiah to the king. "May the LORD God of your majesty make this happen!

While he was still asking that question, Jonathan, the son of Abiathar the priest arrived, so Adonijah told him, "Come on in, since you're a worthy man and are bringing us good news!"

In addition to all of this, the king's servants have come along to congratulate our lord King David. They've been telling David "May your God make Solomon's reputation even more famous than yours, and may he make his throne greater than yours!' The king has himself bowed in worship on his own bed

and said "Blessed be the LORD God of Israel, who has provided someone to sit on my throne today. I've seen it with my own eyes!'"

by keeping the charge that the LORD your God entrusted to you. Live life his way, keep his statutes, his commands, his ordinances, and his testimonies, just as they're written down in the Law of Moses, so that you may succeed in everything you do and wherever you go,

Then King Solomon took this oath in the name of the LORD: "May God do so to me, and more besides, if Adonijah hasn't endangered his life by bringing up this subject.

The king also told Abiathar the priest, "Go home to Anathoth. You deserve to die, but I won't kill you today, because you carried the ark of the Lord GOD before my father David and because you shared all the troubles that my father went through."

Somebody told Shimei, "Look! Your servants went to Gath!" So Shimei got up, saddled a donkey, and traveled to Gath to find his servants. He found them and brought them back from Gath.

"You have demonstrated abundant gracious love to your servant David, my father, as he lived in your presence truthfully, righteously, and uprightly in his heart. In addition, you have kept on showing this abundant gracious love by giving him a son to sit on his throne today. Now, LORD my God, you have set me as king to replace my father David, but I'm still young. I don't have any leadership skills.

So give your servant an understanding mind to govern your people, so I can discern between good and evil. Otherwise, how will I be able to govern this great people of yours?"

so God told him:

She got up in the middle of the night, took my son from me while your servant was asleep, and laid him to her breast after laying her dead son next to me.

The next morning, I got up to nurse my son, and he was dead. But when I examined him carefully in the light of day, he turned out not to be my son whom I had borne!"

"Somebody get me a sword." So they brought a sword to the king.

The woman whose child was still alive cried out to the king, because her heart yearned for her son. "Oh no, your majesty!" she said. "Give her the living child. Please don't kill him." But the other woman said, "Cut him in half! That way, he'll belong to neither one of us."

When this decision that the king had handed down was announced, everybody in Israel was amazed at the king, because they all saw that God's wisdom was in him, enabling him to administer justice.

God gave Solomon wisdom and great discernment. His insights were as numerous as sand on the seashore.

"You know that my father David was unable to build a temple dedicated to the LORD his God because he was busy fighting wars all around him until the LORD defeated his enemies.

So now I'm planning to build a temple dedicated to the LORD my God, just as the LORD told my father when he said, "Your son, whom I will set on your throne to replace you, will build the Temple dedicated to me.'

Now therefore please order that cedars of Lebanon be cut for me. My servants will work with your servants, and I will pay your servants whatever wages you set, because you know there is no one among us who knows how to cut timber like the Sidonians do."

The king specified that large, expensive stones be quarried so the foundation of the Temple could be laid with cut stones.

All of these were made with expensive stones, pre-cut according to specifications, hand-sawed inside and out from the foundation to the coping, including from inside to the great court.

Above these were expensive stones cut according to specifications, and cedar.

So the great court was surrounded by three rows of cut stone, along with a row of cedar beams, just like the inner court of the LORD's Temple and the porch surrounding the Temple.

Then Solomon prayed: "Blessed is the LORD God of Israel, who made a commitment to my father David and then personally fulfilled what he had promised when he said:

"My father David wanted to build a temple for the name of the LORD God of Israel.

"The LORD has brought to fulfillment what he promised, and now here I stand, having succeeded my father David to sit on the throne of Israel, as the LORD promised. I have built the Temple for the name of the LORD God of Israel.

"LORD God of Israel, there is no one like you, God in heaven above or on the earth below, who watches over his covenant, showing gracious love to your servants who live their lives in your presence with all their hearts. It is you, LORD God, who have kept your promise to my father, your servant David, that you made to him. Indeed, you made a commitment to my father David and then personally fulfilled what you had promised today.

"Now therefore, LORD God of Israel, keep your promise that you made to my father, your servant David, when you said, "You will not lack a man to sit on the throne of Israel, if only your descendants will watch their lives, to live in my presence just as you have lived in my presence.'

"Now therefore, God of Israel, may your promise that you made to your servant David my father be fulfilled"

and yet, will God truly reside on earth? Look! Neither the sky nor the highest heaven can contain you! How much less this Temple that I have built!

Pay attention to the prayer of your servant and to his request, LORD my God, and listen to the cry and prayer that your servant is praying in your presence today.

because you have separated them to yourself as your heritage from all the people of the earth, as you spoke through your servant Moses when you brought our ancestors out of Egypt, Lord GOD.

When Solomon had completed saying this entire prayer to the LORD, he got up from kneeling with his hands spread out toward heaven in the presence of the LORD's altar,

May the LORD our God be with us, just as he was with our ancestors. May he never leave us or abandon us,

And may what I've had to say to the LORD remain with the LORD our God both day and night, so that he may defend the cause of his servant and the cause of his people Israel, as the need of the day may require it,

so that, in turn, all the people of the earth may know that the LORD is God there is no one else.

Now let your heart be completely devoted to the LORD our God, to live according to his statutes and to keep his commands, as we are doing today."

So Solomon observed the Festival of Tents at that time, as did all of Israel with him. A large assembly came up from as far away as Lebo-hamath and the Wadi of Egypt to appear in the presence of the LORD our God, not just for seven days, but for seven days after that, a total of fourteen days.