2 Samuel 18:9-18

The Voice

⁹ Absalom himself encountered David’s forces, and as he was riding away on his mule, the animal took him into the thick overhanging branches of a huge oak tree. There his hair was caught, and he dangled between the sky and earth as his mule fled from underneath him. ¹⁰ A soldier saw this and told Joab.

Joab took three spears, and finding Absalom still dangling by his hair inside the oak, he thrust them into his heart. ¹⁵ Ten young men, Joab’s armor bearers, surrounded Absalom then and struck him until he was dead.

¹⁶ Then Joab sounded the trumpet and pulled back the soldiers from their pursuit of the army of Israel, because Joab knew no good would come of further fighting. ¹⁷ They took Absalom’s body and threw it in a deep hole in the forest, and then they stacked stones high over it. Meanwhile the remaining Israelites loyal to Absalom fled to their homes.

¹⁸ Before his death, Absalom had erected a monument to himself in the King’s Valley, since he had no son to keep his memory alive. He named the monument after himself, and Absalom’s Monument still stands in the King’s Valley.