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.