⁴ The day after Gedaliah was killed, before anyone knew of it, ⁵ eighty men with shaved beards, torn clothes, and gashed bodies arrived from Shechem, Shiloh, and Samaria. They were bringing grain offerings and incense to present at the Lord’s temple. ⁶ Ishmael, Nethaniah’s son, left Mizpah to meet them, weeping as he went. When he reached them, he said, “Come to Gedaliah, Ahikam’s son!” ⁷ When they arrived in the middle of the town, Ishmael, Nethaniah’s son, and the men with him slaughtered them and threw their bodies^[a] into a cistern.

⁸ But there were ten men among them who begged Ishmael, “Don’t kill us; we have wheat, barley, oil, and honey hidden in a field.” So he stopped and didn’t kill them along with the rest.

(⁹ Now the cistern that Ishmael used to discard the bodies of the men he had killed because of their association with Gedaliah^[b] was the one that King Asa had made to defend against Israel’s King Baasha. Ishmael, Nethaniah’s son, filled it with the dead.)