¹⁶ After that, Joab ordered the trumpet to be sounded, and the soldiers ceased their pursuit of Israel because he had ordered them to halt. ¹⁷ They picked up Absalom, flung his body into a large pit in the forest, and piled up a great mound of stones over him. Meanwhile all the Israelites had fled to their tents.

¹⁸ During his lifetime Absalom had taken a pillar and erected it for himself in the King’s Valley, for he said: “I have no son to perpetuate the memory of my name.” He named the pillar after himself, and to the present day it is still called Absalom’s Monument.