King James Version2 Samuel17

2 Samuel

1 More­over Ahithophel said unto Ab­sa­lom, Let me now choose out twelve thou­sand men, and I will arise and pur­sue af­ter David this night: 2 And I will come upon him while he is weary and weak hand­ed, and will make him afraid: and all the peo­ple that are with him shall flee; and I will smite the king on­ly: 3 And I will bring back all the peo­ple unto thee: the man whom thou seek­est is as if all re­turned: so all the peo­ple shall be in peace. 4 And the say­ing pleased Ab­sa­lom well, and all the el­ders of Is­rael. 5 Then said Ab­sa­lom, Call now Hushai the Ar­chite al­so, and let us hear like­wise what he saith. 6 And when Hushai was come to Ab­sa­lom, Ab­sa­lom spake unto him, say­ing, Ahithophel hath spo­ken af­ter this man­ner: shall we do after his say­ing? if not; speak thou. 7 And Hushai said unto Ab­sa­lom, The coun­sel that Ahithophel hath giv­en is not good at this time. 8 For, said Hushai, thou know­est thy fa­ther and his men, that they be mighty men, and they be chafed in their minds, as a bear robbed of her whelps in the field: and thy fa­ther is a man of war, and will not lodge with the peo­ple. 9 Be­hold, he is hid now in some pit, or in some other place: and it will come to pass, when some of them be over­thrown at the first, that whoso­ev­er heareth it will say, There is a slaugh­ter among the peo­ple that fol­low Ab­sa­lom. 10 And he also that is valiant, whose heart is as the heart of a li­on, shall ut­ter­ly melt: for all Is­rael knoweth that thy fa­ther is a mighty man, and they which be with him are valiant men. 11 There­fore I coun­sel that all Is­rael be gen­er­al­ly gath­ered unto thee, from Dan even to Beer­she­ba, as the sand that is by the sea for mul­ti­tude; and that thou go to bat­tle in thine own per­son. 12 So shall we come upon him in some place where he shall be found, and we will light upon him as the dew fal­l­eth on the ground: and of him and of all the men that are with him there shall not be left so much as one. 13 More­over, if he be got­ten into a city, then shall all Is­rael bring ropes to that city, and we will draw it into the riv­er, un­til there be not one small stone found there. 14 And Ab­sa­lom and all the men of Is­rael said, The coun­sel of Hushai the Ar­chite is bet­ter than the coun­sel of Ahithophel. For the LORD had ap­point­ed to de­feat the good coun­sel of Ahithophel, to the in­tent that the LORD might bring evil upon Ab­sa­lom. 15 Then said Hushai unto Zadok and to Abi­athar the priests, Thus and thus did Ahithophel coun­sel Ab­sa­lom and the el­ders of Is­rael; and thus and thus have I coun­selled. 16 Now there­fore send quick­ly, and tell David, say­ing, Lodge not this night in the plains of the wilder­ness, but speed­i­ly pass over; lest the king be swal­lowed up, and all the peo­ple that are with him. 17 Now Jonathan and Ahi­maaz stayed by En­ro­gel; for they might not be seen to come into the city: and a wench went and told them; and they went and told king David. 18 Nev­er­the­less a lad saw them, and told Ab­sa­lom: but they went both of them away quick­ly, and came to a man's house in Bahurim, which had a well in his court; whith­er they went down. 19 And the wom­an took and spread a cov­er­ing over the well's mouth, and spread ground corn there­on; and the thing was not known. 20 And when Absalom's ser­vants came to the wom­an to the house, they said, Where is Ahi­maaz and Jonathan? And the wom­an said unto them, They be gone over the brook of wa­ter. And when they had sought and could not find them, they re­turned to Jerusalem. 21 And it came to pass, af­ter they were de­part­ed, that they came up out of the well, and went and told king David, and said unto David, Arise, and pass quick­ly over the wa­ter: for thus hath Ahithophel coun­selled against you. 22 Then David arose, and all the peo­ple that were with him, and they passed over Jor­dan: by the morn­ing light there lacked not one of them that was not gone over Jor­dan. 23 And when Ahithophel saw that his coun­sel was not fol­lowed, he sad­dled his ass, and arose, and gat him home to his house, to his city, and put his house­hold in or­der, and hanged him­self, and died, and was buried in the sepul­chre of his fa­ther. 24 Then David came to Ma­hanaim. And Ab­sa­lom passed over Jor­dan, he and all the men of Is­rael with him. 25 And Ab­sa­lom made Amasa cap­tain of the host in­stead of Joab: which Amasa was a man's son, whose name was Ithra an Is­raelite, that went in to Abi­gail the daugh­ter of Na­hash, sis­ter to Zeruiah Joab's moth­er. 26 So Is­rael and Ab­sa­lom pitched in the land of Gilead. 27 And it came to pass, when David was come to Ma­hanaim, that Shobi the son of Na­hash of Rab­bah of the chil­dren of Am­mon, and Machir the son of Am­miel of Lode­bar, and Barzil­lai the Gilea­dite of Ro­ge­lim, 28 Brought beds, and ba­sons, and earth­en ves­sels, and wheat, and bar­ley, and flour, and parched corn, and beans, and lentiles, and parched pulse, 29 And hon­ey, and but­ter, and sheep, and cheese of kine, for David, and for the peo­ple that were with him, to eat: for they said, The peo­ple is hun­gry, and weary, and thirsty, in the wilder­ness.