2 Samuel · 33 verses
2 Samuel 14
Every verse links to the people and places named in it, and to the passages readers connect it with.
The chapter
What happens here
Atlas's own reading, written from this chapter and nothing else, and published only once a person has approved it. Each scene names the verses it covers; the names inside it link to the people and places they name.
Joab scripts a widow’s plea, the king spots the hand behind it, and grants the request anyway; later, a barley field catches fire because a summons was ignored.
A widow, a script, and a king who sees through itvv. 1–20
Joab, perceiving that David’s heart longs for Absalom, sends to Tekoa for a wise woman and furnishes her with mourning clothes, a tragic tale, and the words to say. Her story of two sons, one dead and one threatened, draws from David a promise that not a hair of the survivor’s head shall fall. Then she turns the story neatly upon the king: why save her banished son while leaving his own banished son away? David asks whether Joab is behind the whole performance. The woman answers at once that Joab gave her exact instructions—a remarkably candid confession from a carefully staged appeal—and David grants the request regardless.
Homecoming, with the king’s face still withheldvv. 21–24
Joab goes to Geshur and brings Absalom to Jerusalem, but David permits only a partial return: Absalom may go home, yet may not see the king’s face. Thus the young man is brought back without quite being brought back, which is the sort of royal arrangement that leaves a door open and a person standing outside it.
Hair, barley, and the face at lastvv. 25–33
Absalom is praised throughout Israel for beauty without flaw, while his annually shorn hair is weighed at two hundred shekels—a splendidly exact burden for a haircut. He spends two years in Jerusalem without seeing David, and Joab refuses two summonses. Absalom then has Joab’s barley field set on fire, which succeeds where the polite invitations failed: Joab comes demanding an explanation. Absalom asks to see the king’s face, and David finally summons him. Absalom bows facedown, and the king kisses him.
The text
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Berean Standard Bible, public domain. Names the Hebrew and Greek put in the verse link to the person, place or people they name; the address beside each verse is a link to that verse, which is what a reader copies and shares.
2 Sam 14:1Now Joab son of Zeruiah perceived that the king’s heart longed for Absalom.
2 Sam 14:2So Joab sent to Tekoa to bring a wise woman from there. He told her, “Please pretend to be a mourner; put on clothes for mourning and do not anoint yourself with oil. Act like a woman who has mourned for the dead a long time.
2 Sam 14:3Then go to the king and speak these words to him.” And Joab put the words in her mouth.
2 Sam 14:4When the woman from Tekoa went to the king, she fell facedown in homage and said, “Help me, O king!”
2 Sam 14:5“What troubles you?” the king asked her. “Indeed,” she said, “I am a widow, for my husband is dead.
2 Sam 14:6And your maidservant had two sons who were fighting in the field with no one to separate them, and one struck the other and killed him.
2 Sam 14:7Now the whole clan has risen up against your maidservant and said, ‘Hand over the one who struck down his brother, that we may put him to death for the life of the brother whom he killed. Then we will cut off the heir as well!’ So they would extinguish my one remaining ember by not preserving my husband’s name or posterity on the earth.”
2 Sam 14:8“Go home,” the king said to the woman, “and I will give orders on your behalf.”
2 Sam 14:9But the woman of Tekoa said to the king, “My lord the king, may any blame be on me and on my father’s house, and may the king and his throne be guiltless.”
2 Sam 14:10“If anyone speaks to you,” said the king, “bring him to me, and he will not trouble you again!”
2 Sam 14:11“Please,” she replied, “may the king invoke the LORD your God to prevent the avenger of blood from increasing the devastation, so that my son may not be destroyed!” “As surely as the LORD lives,” he vowed, “not a hair of your son’s head will fall to the ground.”
2 Sam 14:12Then the woman said, “Please, may your servant speak a word to my lord the king?” “Speak,” he replied.
2 Sam 14:13The 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?
2 Sam 14:14For we will surely die and be like water poured out on the ground, which cannot be recovered. Yet God does not take away a life, but He devises ways that the banished one may not be cast out from Him.
2 Sam 14:15Now therefore, I have come to present this matter to my lord the king because the people have made me afraid. Your servant thought, ‘I will speak to the king. Perhaps he will grant the request of his maidservant.
2 Sam 14:16For the king will hear and deliver his maidservant from the hand of the man who would cut off both me and my son from God’s inheritance.’
2 Sam 14:17And now your servant says, ‘May the word of my lord the king bring me rest, for my lord the king is able to discern good and evil, just like the angel of God. May the LORD your God be with you.’”
2 Sam 14:18Then the king said to the woman, “I am going to ask you something; do not conceal it from me!” “Let my lord the king speak,” she replied.
2 Sam 14:19So 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.
2 Sam 14:20Joab your servant has done this to bring about this change of affairs, but my lord has wisdom like the wisdom of the angel of God, to know everything that happens in the land.”
2 Sam 14:21Then the king said to Joab, “I hereby grant this request. Go, bring back the young man Absalom.”
2 Sam 14:22Joab fell facedown in homage and blessed the king. “Today,” said Joab, “your servant knows that he has found favor in your eyes, my lord the king, because the king has granted his request.”
2 Sam 14:23So Joab got up, went to Geshur, and brought Absalom to Jerusalem.
2 Sam 14:24But the king added, “He may return to his house, but he must not see my face.” So Absalom returned to his own house, but he did not see the face of the king.
2 Sam 14:25Now there was not a man in all Israel as handsome and highly praised as Absalom. From the sole of his foot to the top of his head, he did not have a single flaw.
2 Sam 14:26And when he cut the hair of his head—he shaved it every year because his hair got so heavy—he would weigh it out to be two hundred shekels, according to the royal standard.
2 Sam 14:27Three sons were born to Absalom, and a daughter named Tamar, who was a beautiful woman.
2 Sam 14:28Now Absalom lived in Jerusalem two years without seeing the face of the king.
2 Sam 14:29Then he sent for Joab to send him to the king, but Joab refused to come to him. So Absalom sent a second time, but Joab still would not come.
2 Sam 14:30Then Absalom said to his servants, “Look, Joab’s field is next to mine, and he has barley there. Go and set it on fire!” And Absalom’s servants set the field on fire.
2 Sam 14:31Then Joab came to Absalom’s house and demanded, “Why did your servants set my field on fire?”
2 Sam 14:32“Look,” said Absalom, “I sent for you and said, ‘Come here. I want to send you to the king to ask: Why have I come back from Geshur? It would be better for me if I were still there.’ So now, let me see the king’s face, and if there is iniquity in me, let him kill me.”
2 Sam 14:33So Joab went and told the king, and David summoned Absalom, who came to him and bowed facedown before him. Then the king kissed Absalom.
01 — Also here
Who else the chapter reaches
Names written in the English are linked in the text above. These are the ones that are not: an entity the Hebrew or Greek names under a spelling the translation does not use, or one reached only by an assertion about a verse of this chapter.
Named in the Hebrew or Greek somewhere in this chapter, under a form the English renders differently — the registry's Ludim against the translation's Ludites — so there is no word in the sentence to hang the link on.
Reached by an assertion Atlas extracted from a verse of this chapter rather than by a name written in it — a pronoun, a title, or a participant the sentence carries without naming. This layer is model-read and measured at 88.6–90.3% precision, and it is kept separate from the names above for that reason.
02 — Read alongside
Where this is echoed
Readers' own connections, from OpenBible's crowd-voted cross-references — agreement about relevance, and not scholarly confidence. 213 passages were voted onto 29 verses of this chapter; the 16 shown lead on votes, and each is listed at the verse it was voted onto most strongly.
- 14Job 30:23Yes, I know that You will bring me down to death, to the place appointed for all the living.
- 14Numbers 35:28because the manslayer must remain in his city of refuge until the death of the high priest. Only after the death of the high priest may he return to the land he owns.
- 14Hebrews 9:27Just as man is appointed to die once, and after that to face judgment,
- 14Job 34:15all flesh would perish together and mankind would return to the dust.
- 14Numbers 35:15These six cities will serve as a refuge for the Israelites and for the foreigner or stranger among them, so that anyone who kills a person unintentionally may flee there.
- 14Psalms 79:3They have poured out their blood like water all around Jerusalem, and there is no one to bury the dead.
- 142 Samuel 11:25Then David told the messenger, “Say this to Joab: ‘Do not let this matter upset you, for the sword devours one as well as another. Strengthen your attack against the city and demolish it.’ Encourage him with these words.”
- 14Ecclesiastes 3:19–20For the fates of both men and beasts are the same: As one dies, so dies the other—they all have the same breath. Man has no advantage over the animals, since everything is futile.
- 14Romans 2:11For God does not show favoritism.
- 14Matthew 22:16They sent their disciples to Him along with the Herodians. “Teacher,” they said, “we know that You are honest and that You teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You seek favor from no one, because You pay no attention to external appearance.
- 202 Samuel 14:17And now your servant says, ‘May the word of my lord the king bring me rest, for my lord the king is able to discern good and evil, just like the angel of God. May the LORD your God be with you.’”
- 25Isaiah 1:6From the sole of your foot to the top of your head, there is no soundness—only wounds and welts and festering sores neither cleansed nor bandaged nor soothed with oil.
- 12 Samuel 13:39And King David longed to go to Absalom, for he had been consoled over Amnon’s death.
- 22 Chronicles 11:6He built up Bethlehem, Etam, Tekoa,
- 32 Samuel 14:19So 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.
- 91 Samuel 25:24She fell at his feet and said, “My lord, may the blame be on me alone, but please let your servant speak to you; hear the words of your servant.
Onward