⁸ The Lord has repaid you for all the blood you shed in the household of Saul, in whose place you have reigned.^(A) The Lord has given the kingdom into the hands of your son Absalom. You have come to ruin because you are a murderer!”^(B)

¹⁶ For David had said to him, “Your blood be on your own head.^(A) Your own mouth testified against you when you said, ‘I killed the Lord’s anointed.’”

³² The Lord will repay^(A) him for the blood he shed,^(B) because without my father David knowing it he attacked two men and killed them with the sword. Both of them—Abner son of Ner, commander of Israel’s army, and Amasa^(C) son of Jether, commander of Judah’s army—were better^(D) men and more upright than he. ³³ May the guilt of their blood rest on the head of Joab and his descendants forever. But on David and his descendants, his house and his throne, may there be the Lord’s peace forever.”

²⁸ Later, when David heard about this, he said, “I and my kingdom are forever innocent^(A) before the Lord concerning the blood of Abner son of Ner. ²⁹ May his blood^(B) fall on the head of Joab and on his whole family!^(C) May Joab’s family never be without someone who has a running sore^(D) or leprosy^[a] or who leans on a crutch or who falls by the sword or who lacks food.”

⁵⁶ Thus God repaid the wickedness that Abimelek had done to his father by murdering his seventy brothers. ⁵⁷ God also made the people of Shechem pay for all their wickedness.^(A) The curse of Jotham^(B) son of Jerub-Baal came on them.

²⁴ God did this in order that the crime against Jerub-Baal’s seventy sons,^(A) the shedding^(B) of their blood, might be avenged^(C) on their brother Abimelek and on the citizens of Shechem, who had helped him^(D) murder his brothers.

⁴ When the islanders saw the snake hanging from his hand,^(A) they said to each other, “This man must be a murderer; for though he escaped from the sea, the goddess Justice has not allowed him to live.”^{(B) 5} But Paul shook the snake off into the fire and suffered no ill effects.^(C)