When someone approached to bow before him, Absalom ¹  would extend his hand and embrace him and kiss him.

The king covered his face and cried out loudly, ¹  “My son, Absalom! Absalom, my son, my son!”

They cry out, ¹  but there is no one to help them; ²  they cry out to the Lord, ³  but he does not answer them.

So David issued orders to the soldiers and they put them to death. Then they cut off their hands and feet and hung them ¹  near the pool in Hebron. But they took the head of Ish-bosheth ²  and buried it in the tomb of Abner ³  in Hebron. ⁴ 

David was angry because the Lord attacked ¹  Uzzah; so he called that place Perez Uzzah, ²  which remains its name to this very day.

When Mephibosheth son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, came to David, he bowed low with his face toward the ground. ¹  David said, “Mephibosheth?” He replied, “Yes, at your service.” ² 

But she said to him, “No I won’t, for sending me away now would be worse than what you did to me earlier!” ¹  But he refused to listen to her.

So the Tekoan woman went ¹  to the king. She bowed down with her face to the ground in deference to him and said, “Please help me, ²  O king!”

Yes! ¹  The king may ²  listen and deliver his female servant ³  from the hand of the man who seeks to remove ⁴  both me and my son from the inheritance God has given us!’ ⁵ 

When David reached the summit, where he used to worship God, Hushai the Arkite met him with his clothes torn and dirt on his head.

So the watchman called out and informed the king. The king said, “If he is by himself, he brings good news.” ¹  The runner ²  came ever closer.

You rescue me from a hostile army; ¹  you preserve me as a leader of nations; people over whom I had no authority are now my subjects. ² 

On the third day a man arrived from the camp of Saul with his clothes torn and dirt on his head. ¹  When he approached David, the man ²  threw himself to the ground. ³ 

They lamented and wept and fasted until evening because Saul, his son Jonathan, the Lord’s people, and the house of Israel had fallen by the sword.

When Abner returned to Hebron, Joab took him aside at the gate as if to speak privately with him. Joab then stabbed him ¹  in the abdomen and killed him, avenging the shed blood of his brother Asahel. ² 

Wherever I moved among all the Israelites, I did not say ¹  to any of the leaders ²  whom I appointed to care for ³  my people Israel, “Why have you not built me a house made from cedar?”’

When all the kings who were subject to Hadadezer ¹  saw they were defeated by Israel, they made peace with Israel and became subjects of Israel. ²  The Arameans were no longer willing to help the Ammonites.

He replied, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept because I thought, ¹  ‘Perhaps ²  the Lord will show pity and the child will live.

In the meantime Absalom fled. When the servant who was the watchman looked up, he saw many people coming from the west ¹  on a road beside the hill.

But the king said, “Let him go over ¹  to his own house. He may not see my face.” So Absalom went over ²  to his own house; he did not see the king’s face.