²⁰ So if someone hates another person and waits in ambush, then pushes him or throws something at him and he dies, it is murder.

¹⁴ However, if someone deliberately kills another person, then the slayer must be dragged even from my altar and be put to death.

¹¹ “But suppose someone is hostile toward a neighbor and deliberately ambushes and murders him and then flees to one of the cities of refuge.

¹⁰ Amasa didn’t notice the dagger in his left hand, and Joab stabbed him in the stomach with it so that his insides gushed out onto the ground. Joab did not need to strike again, and Amasa soon died. Joab and his brother Abishai left him lying there and continued after Sheba.

²⁷ When Abner arrived back at Hebron, Joab took him aside at the gateway as if to speak with him privately. But then he stabbed Abner in the stomach and killed him in revenge for killing his brother Asahel.

⁸ One day Cain suggested to his brother, “Let’s go out into the fields.”^[a] And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother, Abel, and killed him.

²¹ But don’t do it! There are more than forty men hiding along the way ready to ambush him. They have vowed not to eat or drink anything until they have killed him. They are ready now, just waiting for your consent.”

³ where he stayed for three months. He was preparing to sail back to Syria when he discovered a plot by some Jews against his life, so he decided to return through Macedonia.

²⁹ Jumping up, they mobbed him and forced him to the edge of the hill on which the town was built. They intended to push him over the cliff,

²⁴ She went out and asked her mother, “What should I ask for?”

Her mother told her, “Ask for the head of John the Baptist!”

²⁵ So the girl hurried back to the king and told him, “I want the head of John the Baptist, right now, on a tray!”

²⁶ Then the king deeply regretted what he had said; but because of the vows he had made in front of his guests, he couldn’t refuse her.