Book of Common Prayer

⁹ Avshalom happened to meet some of David’s servants. Avshalom was riding his mule, and as the mule walked under the thick branches of a big terebinth tree, his head got caught in the terebinth, so that he was left hanging between earth and sky, as the mule went on from under him. ¹⁰ Someone saw it and told Yo’av, “I saw Avshalom hanging in a terebinth.” ¹¹ Yo’av asked the man who told him, “Here now, you saw it; so why didn’t you strike him to the ground then and there? I would have had to give you ten pieces of silver and a belt besides.” ¹² The man replied to Yo’av, “Even if I were to get a thousand pieces of silver, I still wouldn’t raise my hand against the son of the king! After all, while we were listening, the king ordered you, Avishai and Ittai, ‘Be careful that no one touches young Avshalom.’ ¹³ Or, if I had pretended that I didn’t know, the king would have known otherwise anyway; and you wouldn’t have interceded for me either.” ¹⁴ Yo’av said, “I can’t waste time arguing with you!” He took three darts in his hand and rammed them through Avshalom’s heart while he was still alive, hanging from the terebinth. ¹⁵ Then Yo’av’s ten young armor-bearers surrounded Avshalom, struck him and killed him.

¹⁶ Yo’av sounded the shofar, and the people returned from pursuing Isra’el, because Yo’av held back the troops. ¹⁷ They took Avshalom and threw him into a big pit in the forest and piled a big heap of stones over him. All Isra’el fled, each one to his tent. ¹⁸ In his own lifetime Avshalom had taken and raised for himself the pillar which stands in the King’s Valley; because he said, “I don’t have a son to preserve the memory of my name.” So he named the pillar after himself, and it’s called Avshalom’s Monument to this day.

¹² The next day, some of the Judeans formed a conspiracy. They took an oath, saying they would neither eat nor drink until they had killed Sha’ul; ¹³ more than forty were involved in this plot. ¹⁴ They went to the head cohanim and the elders and said, “We have bound ourselves by an oath to taste no food until we have killed Sha’ul. ¹⁵ What you are to do is make it appear to the commander that you and the Sanhedrin want to get more accurate information about Sha’ul’s case, so that he will bring him down to you; while we, for our part, are prepared to kill him before he ever gets here.”

¹⁶ But the son of Sha’ul’s sister got wind of the planned ambush, and he went into the barracks and told Sha’ul. ¹⁷ Sha’ul called one of the officers and said, “Take this man up to the commander; he has something to tell him.” ¹⁸ So he took him and brought him to the commander and said, “The prisoner Sha’ul called me and asked me to bring this young man to you, because he has something to tell you.” ¹⁹ The commander took him by the hand, led him aside privately and asked, “What is it you have to tell me?” ²⁰ He said, “The Judeans have agreed to ask you tomorrow to bring Sha’ul down to the Sanhedrin on the pretext that they want to investigate his case more thoroughly. ²¹ But don’t let yourself be talked into it, because more than forty men are lying in wait for him. They have taken an oath neither to eat nor to drink until they kill him; and they are ready now, only waiting for you to give your consent to their request.”

²² The commander let the young man go, cautioning him, “Don’t tell anyone that you have reported this to me.” ²³ Then he summoned two of the captains and said, “Get two hundred infantry soldiers ready to leave for Caesarea at nine o’clock tonight, and seventy mounted cavalry and two hundred spearmen; ²⁴ also provide replacements for Sha’ul’s horse when it gets tired; and bring him through safely to Felix the governor.”

²⁷ They went back into Yerushalayim; and as he was walking in the Temple courts, there came to him the head cohanim, the Torah-teachers and the elders; ²⁸ and they said to him, “What s’mikhah do you have that authorizes you to do these things? Who gave you this s’mikhah authorizing you to do them?” ²⁹ Yeshua said to them, “I will ask you just one question: answer me, and I will tell you by what s’mikhah I do these things. ³⁰ The immersion of Yochanan — was it from Heaven or from a human source? Answer me.” ³¹ They discussed it among themselves: “If we say, ‘From Heaven,’ he will say, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’ ³² But if we say, ‘From a human source, . . . ’” — they were afraid of the people, for they all regarded Yochanan as a genuine prophet. ³³ So they answered Yeshua, “We don’t know.” “Then,” he replied, “I won’t tell you by what s’mikhah I do these things.”

12 Yeshua began speaking to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a pit for the wine press and built a tower; then he rented it to tenant-farmers and left. ² When harvest-time came, he sent a servant to the tenants to collect his share of the crop from the vineyard. ³ But they took him, beat him up and sent him away empty-handed. ⁴ So he sent another servant; this one they punched in the head and insulted. ⁵ He sent another one, and him they killed; and so with many others — some they beat up, others they killed. ⁶ He had still one person left, a son whom he loved; in the end, he sent him to them, saying, ‘My son they will respect.’ ⁷ But the tenants said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours!’ ⁸ So they seized him, killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. ⁹ What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come, destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others! ¹⁰ Haven’t you read the passage in the Tanakh that says,

¹² They set about to arrest him, for they recognized that he had told the parable with reference to themselves. But they were afraid of the crowd, so they left him and went away.