Elisha said to him, “Go and tell him, ‘You will surely recover,’ but the Lord has revealed to me that he will surely die.”

Now Elisha had a terminal illness. King Joash of Israel went down to visit him. He wept before him and said, “My father, my father! The chariot and horsemen of Israel!”

But he did not execute the sons of the assassins. He obeyed the Lord’s commandment as recorded in the law scroll of Moses, “Fathers must not be put to death for what their sons do, and sons must not be put to death for what their fathers do. A man must be put to death only for his own sin.”