When the time comes for you to die, ¹  I will raise up your descendant, one of your own sons, to succeed you, ²  and I will establish his kingdom.

The elders of his house stood over him and tried to lift him from the ground, but he was unwilling, and refused to eat food with them.

Just as he finished speaking, the king’s sons arrived, wailing and weeping. ¹  The king and all his servants wept loudly ²  as well.

So David said to Ittai, “Come along then.” ¹  So Ittai the Gittite went along, ²  accompanied by all his men and all the dependents ³  who were with him.

Then Abishai son of Zeruiah said to the king, “Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king? Let me go over and cut off his head!”

So they pitched a tent for Absalom on the roof, ¹  and Absalom had sex with ²  his father’s concubines in the sight of all Israel.

Then Ahimaaz the son of Zadok said, “Let me run and give the king the good news that the Lord has vindicated him before his enemies.” ¹ 

Another battle was fought between the Philistines and Israel. So David went down with his soldiers ¹  and fought the Philistines. David became exhausted.

¹ David sang ²  to the Lord the words of this song when ³  the Lord rescued him from the power ⁴  of all his enemies, including Saul. ⁵ 

He received honor from ¹  the thirty warriors, though he was not one of the three elite warriors. David put him in charge of his bodyguard.

Now Saul’s son Jonathan had a son who was crippled in both feet. He was five years old when the news about Saul and Jonathan arrived from Jezreel. His nurse picked him up and fled, but in her haste to get away, he fell and was injured. ¹  Mephibosheth was his name.

So I stood over him and put him to death, since I knew that he couldn’t live in such a condition. ¹  Then I took the crown which was on his head and the ²  bracelet which was on his arm. I have brought them here to my lord.” ³ 

Mephibosheth was living in Jerusalem, ¹  for he was a regular guest at the king’s table. But both his feet were crippled.

They ¹  entered the house under the pretense of getting wheat and mortally wounded him ²  in the stomach. Then Recab and his brother Baanah escaped.

David replied to Recab and his brother Baanah, the sons of Rimmon the Beerothite, “As surely as the Lord lives, who has delivered my life from all adversity,

So now, O Lord God, make this promise you have made about your servant and his family a permanent reality. ¹  Do as you promised, ² 

Then Nathan went to his home. The Lord struck the child that Uriah’s wife had borne to David, and the child became very ill. ¹ 

David ¹  brought the bones of Saul and of Jonathan his son from there; they also gathered up the bones of those who had been executed.

When David went home to pronounce a blessing on his own house, ¹  Michal, Saul’s daughter, came out to meet him. ²  She said, “How the king of Israel has distinguished ³  himself this day! He has exposed himself today before his servants’ slave girls the way a vulgar fool ⁴  might do!”

So David got up from the ground, bathed, put on oil, and changed his clothes. He went to the house of the Lord and worshiped. Then, when he entered his palace, he requested that food be brought to him, and he ate.