¹³ David said to the young man who brought him the report, “Where are you from?”

“I am the son of a foreigner, an Amalekite,^(A)” he answered.

¹⁴ David asked him, “Why weren’t you afraid to lift your hand to destroy the Lord’s anointed?^(B)”

¹⁵ Then David called one of his men and said, “Go, strike him down!”^(C) So he struck him down, and he died.^{(D) 16} For David had said to him, “Your blood be on your own head.^(E) Your own mouth testified against you when you said, ‘I killed the Lord’s anointed.’”

⁹ David answered Rekab and his brother Baanah, the sons of Rimmon the Beerothite, “As surely as the Lord lives, who has delivered^(A) me out of every trouble, ¹⁰ when someone told me, ‘Saul is dead,’ and thought he was bringing good news, I seized him and put him to death in Ziklag.^(B) That was the reward I gave him for his news! ¹¹ 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^(C) from your hand and rid the earth of you!”

¹² So David gave an order to his men, and they killed them.^(D) They cut off their hands and feet and hung the bodies by the pool in Hebron. But they took the head of Ish-Bosheth and buried it in Abner’s tomb at Hebron.

¹⁴ In the morning David wrote a letter^(A) to Joab and sent it with Uriah. ¹⁵ In it he wrote, “Put Uriah out in front where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down^(B) and die.^(C)”

¹⁶ So while Joab had the city under siege, he put Uriah at a place where he knew the strongest defenders were. ¹⁷ When the men of the city came out and fought against Joab, some of the men in David’s army fell; moreover, Uriah the Hittite died.