²⁷ Joab answered, “As surely as God lives, if you had not spoken, the men would have continued pursuing them until morning.”

²⁸ So Joab^(A) blew the trumpet,^(B) and all the troops came to a halt; they no longer pursued Israel, nor did they fight anymore.

²⁹ All that night Abner and his men marched through the Arabah.^(C) They crossed the Jordan, continued through the morning hours^[a] and came to Mahanaim.^(D)

³⁰ Then Joab stopped pursuing Abner and assembled the whole army. Besides Asahel, nineteen of David’s men were found missing. ³¹ But David’s men had killed three hundred and sixty Benjamites who were with Abner. ³² They took Asahel and buried him in his father’s tomb^(E) at Bethlehem. Then Joab and his men marched all night and arrived at Hebron by daybreak.

¹⁰ when someone told me, ‘Saul is dead,’ and thought he was bringing good news, I seized him and put him to death in Ziklag.^(A) That was the reward I gave him for his news! ¹¹ How much more—when wicked men have killed an innocent man in his own house and on his own bed—should I not now demand his blood^(B) from your hand and rid the earth of you!”

¹² So David gave an order to his men, and they killed them.^(C) They cut off their hands and feet and hung the bodies by the pool in Hebron. But they took the head of Ish-Bosheth and buried it in Abner’s tomb at Hebron.