Then Saul asked her, “What does he look like?”

“An old man is coming up,” she replied. “He’s wearing a robe.” Then Saul knew that it was Samuel, and he bowed his face to the ground and paid homage.

The woman came over to Saul, and she saw that he was terrified and said to him, “Look, your servant has obeyed you. I took my life in my hands and did what you told me to do.

The woman had a fattened calf at her house, and she quickly slaughtered it. She also took flour, kneaded it, and baked unleavened bread.

She served it to Saul and his servants, and they ate. Afterward, they got up and left that night.

Saul’s son Jonathan had a son whose feet were crippled. He was five years old when the report about Saul and Jonathan came from Jezreel. The one who had nursed him picked him up and fled, but as she was hurrying to flee, he fell and became lame. His name was Mephibosheth.

As the ark of the Lord was entering the city of David, Saul’s daughter Michal looked down from the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, and she despised him in her heart.

When David returned home to bless his household, Saul’s daughter Michal came out to meet him. “How the king of Israel honored himself today!” she said. “He exposed himself today in the sight of the slave girls of his subjects like a vulgar person would expose himself.”

David sent messengers to get her, and when she came to him, he slept with her. Now she had just been purifying herself from her uncleanness. Afterward, she returned home.

When Uriah’s wife heard that her husband Uriah had died, she mourned for him.

When the time of mourning ended, David had her brought to his house. She became his wife and bore him a son. However, the Lord considered what David had done to be evil.

Then David comforted his wife Bathsheba; he went and slept with her. She gave birth to a son and named him Solomon. The Lord loved him,

Amnon was frustrated to the point of making himself sick over his sister Tamar because she was a virgin, but it seemed impossible to do anything to her.

Then Tamar went to his house while Amnon was lying down. She took dough, kneaded it, made cakes in his presence, and baked them.

She brought the pan and set it down in front of him, but he refused to eat. Amnon said, “Everyone leave me!” And everyone left him.

“Bring the meal to the bedroom,” Amnon told Tamar, “so I can eat from your hand.” Tamar took the cakes she had made and went to her brother Amnon’s bedroom.

When she brought them to him to eat, he grabbed her and said, “Come sleep with me, my sister!”

“Don’t, my brother!” she cried. “Don’t humiliate me, for such a thing should never be done in Israel. Don’t do this horrible thing!

But he refused to listen to her, and because he was stronger than she was, he raped her.

“No,” she cried, “sending me away is much worse than the great wrong you’ve already done to me!” But he refused to listen to her.

Tamar put ashes on her head and tore the long-sleeved garment she was wearing. She put her hand on her head and went away crying out.

When the woman from Tekoa came to the king, she fell with her face to the ground in homage and said, “Help me, my king!”

“What’s the matter?” the king asked her.

“To tell the truth, I am a widow; my husband died,” she said.

She replied, “Please, may the king invoke the Lord your God, so that the avenger of blood will not increase the loss, and they will not eliminate my son!”

“As the Lord lives,” he vowed, “not a hair of your son will fall to the ground.”

When he had come near her, the woman asked, “Are you Joab?”

“I am,” he replied.

“Listen to the words of your servant,” she said to him.

He answered, “I’m listening.”

She said, “In the past they used to say, ‘Seek counsel in Abel,’ and that’s how they settled disputes.

During David’s reign there was a famine for three successive years, so David inquired of the Lord. The Lord answered, “It is because of the blood shed by Saul and his family when he killed the Gibeonites.”

Rizpah, Aiah’s daughter, took sackcloth and spread it out for herself on the rock from the beginning of the harvest until the rain poured down from heaven on the bodies. She kept the birds of the sky from them by day and the wild animals by night.

So his servants said to him: “Let us search for a young virgin for my lord the king. She is to attend the king and be his caregiver. She is to lie by your side so that my lord the king will get warm.”

The girl was of unsurpassed beauty, and she became the king’s caregiver. She served him, but he was not intimate with her.

She replied, “My lord, you swore to your servant by the Lord your God, ‘Your son Solomon is to become king after me, and he is the one who is to sit on my throne.’

At that moment, while she was still speaking with the king, Nathan the prophet arrived,

King David responded by saying, “Call in Bathsheba for me.” So she came into the king’s presence and stood before him.

“You also know what Joab son of Zeruiah did to me and what he did to the two commanders of Israel’s army, Abner son of Ner and Amasa son of Jether. He murdered them in a time of peace to avenge blood shed in war. He spilled that blood on his own waistband and on the sandals of his feet.

Now Adonijah son of Haggith came to Bathsheba, Solomon’s mother. She asked, “Do you come peacefully?”

“Peacefully,” he replied,

and then asked, “May I talk with you?”

“Go ahead,” she answered.

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

She said to him, “Go on.”

So Bathsheba went to King Solomon to speak to him about Adonijah. The king stood up to greet her, bowed to her, sat down on his throne, and had a throne placed for the king’s mother. So she sat down at his right hand.

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.”

So she said, “Let Abishag the Shunammite be given to your brother Adonijah as a wife.”

The king said to him, “Do just as he says. Strike him down and bury him in order to remove from me and from my father’s house the blood that Joab shed without just cause.

One woman said, “Please my lord, this woman and I live in the same house, and I had a baby while she was in the house.

On the third day after I gave birth, she also had a baby and we were alone. No one else was with us in the house; just the two of us were there.

During the night this woman’s son died because she lay on him.

She got up in the middle of the night and took my son from my side while your servant was asleep. She laid him at her breast, and she put her dead son in my arms.

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.”

She came to Jerusalem with a very large entourage, with camels bearing spices, gold in great abundance, and precious stones. She came to Solomon and spoke to him about everything that was on her mind.

She said to the king, “The report I heard in my own country about your words and about your wisdom is true.

Then she gave the king four and a half tons of gold, a great quantity of spices, and precious stones. Never again did such a quantity of spices arrive as those the queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon.

King Solomon gave the queen of Sheba her every desire—whatever she asked—besides what he had given her out of his royal bounty. Then she, along with her servants, returned to her own country.

Jeroboam’s wife did that: she went to Shiloh and arrived at Ahijah’s house. Ahijah could not see; his gaze was fixed due to his age.

But the Lord had said to Ahijah, “Jeroboam’s wife is coming soon to ask you about her son, for he is sick. You are to say such and such to her. When she arrives, she will be disguised.”

Then Jeroboam’s wife got up and left and went to Tirzah. As she was crossing the threshold of the house, the boy died.

He also removed his grandmother Maacah from being queen mother because she had made an obscene image of Asherah. Asa chopped down her obscene image and burned it in the Kidron Valley.

As she went to get it, he called to her and said, “Please bring me a piece of bread in your hand.”

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.”

So she proceeded to do according to the word of Elijah. Then the woman, Elijah, and her household ate for many days.

She said to Elijah, “Man of God, what do we have in common? Have you come to remind me of my guilt and to kill my son?”

So she wrote letters in Ahab’s name and sealed them with his seal. She sent the letters to the elders and nobles who lived with Naboth in his city.

In the letters, she wrote:

Proclaim a fast and seat Naboth at the head of the people.

The men of his city, the elders and nobles who lived in his city, did as Jezebel had commanded them, as was written in the letters she had sent them.

When Jezebel heard that Naboth had been stoned to death, she said to Ahab, “Get up and take possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite who refused to give it to you for silver, since Naboth isn’t alive, but dead.”

Elisha asked her, “What can I do for you? Tell me, what do you have in the house?”

She said, “Your servant has nothing in the house except a jar of oil.”

So she left.

After she had shut the door behind her and her sons, they kept bringing her containers, and she kept pouring.

When they were full, she said to her son, “Bring me another container.”

But he replied, “There aren’t any more.” Then the oil stopped.

She went and told the man of God, and he said, “Go sell the oil and pay your debt; you and your sons can live on the rest.”

Then she said to her husband, “I know that the one who often passes by here is a holy man of God,

He ordered his attendant Gehazi, “Call this Shunammite woman.” So he called her and she stood before him.

Then he said to Gehazi, “Say to her, ‘Look, you’ve gone to all this trouble for us. What can we do for you? Can we speak on your behalf to the king or to the commander of the army?’”

She answered, “I am living among my own people.”

So he asked, “Then what should be done for her?”

Gehazi answered, “Well, she has no son, and her husband is old.”

“Call her,” Elisha said. So Gehazi called her, and she stood in the doorway.

Elisha said, “At this time next year you will have a son in your arms.”

Then she said, “No, my lord. Man of God, do not deceive your servant.”

Then she went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God, shut him in, and left.

She summoned her husband and said, “Please send me one of the servants and one of the donkeys, so I can hurry to the man of God and then come back.”

But he said, “Why go to him today? It’s not a New Moon or a Sabbath.”

She replied, “Everything is all right.”

Then she saddled the donkey and said to her servant, “Hurry, don’t slow the pace for me unless I tell you.”

So she set out and went to the man of God at Mount Carmel.

When the man of God saw her at a distance, he said to his attendant Gehazi, “Look, there’s the Shunammite woman.

Run out to meet her and ask, ‘Are you all right? Is your husband all right? Is your son all right?’”

And she answered, “Everything’s all right.”

When she came up to the man of God at the mountain, she clung to his feet. Gehazi came to push her away, but the man of God said, “Leave her alone—she is in severe anguish, and the Lord has hidden it from me. He hasn’t told me.”

Then she said, “Did I ask my lord for a son? Didn’t I say, ‘Do not deceive me?’”

Elisha called Gehazi and said, “Call the Shunammite woman.” He called her and she came. Then Elisha said, “Pick up your son.”

She came, fell at his feet, and bowed to the ground; she picked up her son and left.

She said to her mistress, “If only my master would go to the prophet who is in Samaria, he would cure him of his skin disease.”

Then the king asked her, “What’s the matter?”

She said, “This woman said to me, ‘Give up your son, and we will eat him today. Then we will eat my son tomorrow.’

So we boiled my son and ate him, and I said to her the next day, ‘Give up your son, and we will eat him,’ but she has hidden her son.”

So the woman got ready and did what the man of God said. She and her household lived as foreigners in the land of the Philistines for seven years.

When the woman returned from the land of the Philistines at the end of seven years, she went to appeal to the king for her house and field.

When the king asked the woman, she told him the story. So the king appointed a court official for her, saying, “Restore all that was hers, along with all the income from the field from the day she left the country until now.”

You are to strike down the house of your master Ahab so that I may avenge the blood shed by the hand of Jezebel—the blood of My servants the prophets and of all the servants of the Lord.

When Jehu came to Jezreel, Jezebel heard about it, so she painted her eyes, adorned her head, and looked down from the window.

As Jehu entered the gate, she said, “Do you come in peace, Zimri, killer of your master?”

Then he went in, ate and drank, and said, “Take care of this cursed woman and bury her, since she’s a king’s daughter.”

When Athaliah, Ahaziah’s mother, saw that her son was dead, she proceeded to annihilate all the royal heirs.

When Athaliah heard the noise from the guard and the crowd, she went out to the people at the Lord’s temple.

As she looked, there was the king standing by the pillar according to the custom. The commanders and the trumpeters were by the king, and all the people of the land were rejoicing and blowing trumpets. Athaliah tore her clothes and screamed “Treason! Treason!”

Then Jehoiada the priest ordered the commanders of hundreds in charge of the army, “Take her out between the ranks, and put to death by the sword anyone who follows her,” for the priest had said, “She is not to be put to death in the Lord’s temple.”

So they arrested her, and she went through the horse entrance to the king’s palace, where she was put to death.

He was 16 years old when he became king and reigned 52 years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Jecoliah, who was from Jerusalem.

Manasseh also shed so much innocent blood that he filled Jerusalem with it from one end to another. This was in addition to his sin that he caused Judah to commit. Consequently, they did what was evil in the Lord’s sight.

Amon was 22 years old when he became king and reigned two years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Meshullemeth daughter of Haruz; she was from Jotbah.