³¹ Moreover you shall take no ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty of death, but he shall surely be put to death.

²⁸ Then news came to Joab, for Joab ^(A)had defected to Adonijah, though he had not defected to Absalom. So Joab fled to the tabernacle of the Lord, and ^(B)took hold of the horns of the altar. ²⁹ And King Solomon was told, “Joab has fled to the tabernacle of the Lord; there he is, by the altar.” Then Solomon sent Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, saying, “Go, ^(C)strike him down.” ³⁰ So Benaiah went to the tabernacle of the Lord, and said to him, “Thus says the king, ^(D)‘Come out!’ ”

And he said, “No, but I will die here.” And Benaiah brought back word to the king, saying, “Thus said Joab, and thus he answered me.”

³¹ Then the king said to him, ^(E)“Do as he has said, and strike him down and bury him, ^(F)that you may take away from me and from the house of my father the innocent blood which Joab shed. ³² So the Lord ^(G)will return his ^[a]blood on his head, because he struck down two men more righteous ^(H)and better than he, and killed them with the sword—^(I)Abner the son of Ner, the commander of the army of Israel, and ^(J)Amasa the son of Jether, the commander of the army of Judah—though my father David did not know it. ³³ Their blood shall therefore return upon the head of Joab and ^(K)upon the head of his descendants forever. ^(L)But upon David and his descendants, upon his house and his throne, there shall be peace forever from the Lord.”

³⁴ So Benaiah the son of Jehoiada went up and struck and killed him; and he was buried in his own house in the wilderness.

^13 (A)So David said to Nathan, ^(B)“I have sinned against the Lord.”

And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has ^(C)put away your sin; you shall not die.

¹¹ “But ^(A)if anyone hates his neighbor, lies in wait for him, rises against him and strikes him mortally, so that he dies, and he flees to one of these cities, ¹² then the elders of his city shall send and bring him from there, and deliver him over to the hand of the avenger of blood, that he may die. ^13 (B)Your eye shall not pity him, ^(C)but you shall ^[a]put away the guilt of innocent blood from Israel, that it may go well with you.

¹⁴ “But if a man acts with ^(A)premeditation against his neighbor, to kill him by treachery, ^(B)you shall take him from My altar, that he may die.

⁵ Surely for your lifeblood I will demand a reckoning; ^(A)from the hand of every beast I will require it, and ^(B)from the hand of man. From the hand of every ^(C)man’s brother I will require the life of man.