זֹאת

For the sake of Your word and according to Your own heart, You have accomplished this great thing and revealed it to Your servant.

For You, O LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, have revealed this to Your servant when You said, ‘I will build a house for you.’ Therefore Your servant has found the courage to offer this prayer to You.

And now, O Lord GOD, You are God! Your words are true, and You have promised this goodness to Your servant.

So David sent and inquired about the woman, and he was told, “This is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.”

David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan: “As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this deserves to die!

This is what the LORD says: ‘I will raise up adversity against you from your own house. Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to another, and he will lie with them in broad daylight.

“No, my brother!” she cried. “Do not violate me, for such a thing should never be done in Israel. Do not do this disgraceful thing!

“No,” she replied, “sending me away is worse than this great wrong you have already done to me!” But he refused to listen to her.

Instead, he called to his attendant and said, “Throw this woman out and bolt the door behind her!”

The woman asked, “Why have you devised a thing like this against the people of God? When the king says this, does he not convict himself, since he has not brought back his own banished son?

So the king asked, “Is the hand of Joab behind all this?” The woman answered, “As surely as you live, my lord the king, no one can turn to the right or to the left from anything that my lord the king says. Yes, your servant Joab is the one who gave me orders; he told your maidservant exactly what to say.

Hushai replied, “This time the advice of Ahithophel is not sound.”

So Hushai told Zadok and Abiathar, the priests, “This is what Ahithophel has advised Absalom and the elders of Israel, and this is what I have advised.

Now therefore get up! Go out and speak comfort to your servants, for I swear by the LORD that if you do not go out, not a man will remain with you tonight. This will be worse for you than all the adversity that has befallen you from your youth until now!”

But Abishai son of Zeruiah said, “Shouldn’t Shimei be put to death for this, because he cursed the LORD’s anointed?”

Your servant will go with the king only a short distance past the Jordan; why should the king repay me with such a reward?

And David sang this song to the LORD on the day the LORD had delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul.

…saying, “Far be it from me, O LORD, to do this! Is this not the blood of the men who risked their lives?” So he refused to drink it. Such were the exploits of the three mighty men.

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

On the third day after I gave birth, this woman also had a baby. We were alone, with no one in the house but the two of us.

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

“No,” said the other woman, “the living one is my son and the dead one is your son.” But the first woman insisted, “No, the dead one is yours and the living one is mine.” So they argued before the king.

Then the king replied, “This woman says, ‘My son is alive and yours is dead,’ but that woman says, ‘No, your son is dead and mine is alive.’”

Then the woman whose son was alive spoke to the king because she yearned with compassion for her son. “Please, my lord,” she said, “give her the living baby. Do not kill him!” But the other woman said, “He will be neither mine nor yours. Cut him in two!”

In this way he made the ten stands, each with the same casting, dimensions, and shape.

Now when Solomon had finished praying this entire prayer and petition to the LORD, he got up before the altar of the LORD, where he had been kneeling with his hands spread out toward heaven.

And when this temple has become a heap of rubble, all who pass by it will be appalled and will hiss and say, ‘Why has the LORD done such a thing to this land and to this temple?’

And others will answer, ‘Because they have forsaken the LORD their God who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and have embraced other gods, worshiping and serving them—because of this, the LORD has brought all this disaster upon them.’”

Then the LORD said to Solomon, “Because you have done this and have not kept My covenant and My statutes, which I have commanded you, I will tear the kingdom away from you and give it to your servant.

Because of this, I will humble David’s descendants—but not forever.’”

For the LORD will strike Israel as a reed is shaken in the water. He will uproot Israel from this good land that He gave their fathers, and He will scatter them beyond the Euphrates, because they have made their Asherah poles, provoking the LORD to anger.

This is a simple matter in the sight of the LORD, and He will also deliver the Moabites into your hand.

And he said to Gehazi his servant, “Call the Shunammite woman.” And when he had called her, she stood before him,

…and Elisha said to Gehazi, “Now tell her, ‘Look, you have gone to all this trouble for us. What can we do for you? Can we speak on your behalf to the king or the commander of the army?’” “I have a home among my own people,” she replied.

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

And Naaman went and told his master what the girl from the land of Israel had said.

Then the king asked her, “What is the matter?” And she answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give up your son, that we may eat him, and tomorrow we will eat my son.’

While Elisha was still speaking with them, the messenger came down to him. And the king said, “This calamity is from the LORD. Why should I wait for the LORD any longer?”

And Gehazi was telling the king how Elisha had brought the dead back to life. Just then the woman whose son Elisha had revived came to appeal to the king for her house and her land. So Gehazi said, “My lord the king, this is the woman, and this is the son Elisha restored to life.”

“That is a lie!” they said. “Tell us now!” So Jehu answered, “He talked to me about this and that, saying, ‘This is what the LORD says: I anoint you king over Israel.’”

‘As surely as I saw the blood of Naboth and the blood of his sons yesterday, declares the LORD, so will I repay you on this plot of ground, declares the LORD.’ Now then, according to the word of the LORD, pick him up and throw him on the plot of ground.”

Then Jehu went in and ate and drank. “Take care of this cursed woman,” he said, “and bury her, for she was the daughter of a king.”

And Jezebel’s body will lie like dung in the field on the plot of ground at Jezreel, so that no one can say: This is Jezebel.’”

So now, was it apart from the LORD that I have come up against this place to destroy it? The LORD Himself said to me, ‘Go up against this land and destroy it.’”