How much more—when wicked men have killed an innocent man in his own house and on his own bed—should I not now demand his blood from your hand and rid the earth of you!”

I have been with you wherever you have gone, and I have cut off all your enemies from before you. Now I will make your name great, like the names of the greatest men on earth.

“How great you are, Sovereign Lord! There is no one like you, and there is no God but you, as we have heard with our own ears.

And who is like your people Israel—the one nation on earth that God went out to redeem as a people for himself, and to make a name for himself, and to perform great and awesome wonders by driving out nations and their gods from before your people, whom you redeemed from Egypt?

Now the whole clan has risen up against your servant; they say, ‘Hand over the one who struck his brother down, so that we may put him to death for the life of his brother whom he killed; then we will get rid of the heir as well.’ They would put out the only burning coal I have left, leaving my husband neither name nor descendant on the face of the earth.”

He would get up early and stand by the side of the road leading to the city gate. Whenever anyone came with a complaint to be placed before the king for a decision, Absalom would call out to him, “What town are you from?” He would answer, “Your servant is from one of the tribes of Israel.”

“In my distress I called to the Lord; I called out to my God. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came to his ears.

The earth trembled and quaked, the foundations of the heavens shook; they trembled because he was angry.

The valleys of the sea were exposed and the foundations of the earth laid bare at the rebuke of the Lord, at the blast of breath from his nostrils.

I beat them as fine as the dust of the earth; I pounded and trampled them like mud in the streets.

he is like the light of morning at sunrise on a cloudless morning, like the brightness after rain that brings grass from the earth.’