11. And she said, “Please let the sovereign remember יהוה your Elohim, and the redeemer of blood not destroy any more, lest they destroy my son.” And he said, “As יהוה lives, not one hair of your son shall fall to the ground.”
12. And the woman said, “Please, let your female servant speak a word to my master the sovereign.” And he said, “Speak.”
13. And the woman said, “And why have you reasoned like this against the people of Elohim? For in speaking this word the sovereign is as one who is guilty, in that the sovereign does not bring his outcast one home again.
14. “For we shall certainly die and become like water spilled on the ground, which is not gathered up again. Yet Elohim does not take away a life, but shall devise ways, so that His outcast ones are not cast out from Him.
15. “And now I have come to speak this word to my master the sovereign because the people have made me afraid. And your female servant said, ‘Please let me speak to the sovereign, it could be that the sovereign does what his female servant asks,
16. for the sovereign has listened to deliver his female servant from the hand of the man seeking to destroy me and my son together from the inheritance of Elohim.’
17. “Then your female servant said, ‘Please let the word of my master the sovereign be comforting, for my master the sovereign is as the messenger of Elohim, in discerning the good and the evil. And יהוה your Elohim is with you.’ ”
18. And the sovereign answered and said to the woman, “Please do not hide from me the matter that I am asking you.” And the woman said, “Please, let my master the sovereign speak.”
19. And the sovereign said, “Is the hand of Yo’aḇ with you in all this?” And the woman answered and said, “As your being lives, my master the sovereign, no one turns to the right or to the left from all that my master the sovereign has spoken. For your servant Yo’aḇ commanded me, and he put all these words in the mouth of your female servant.
20. “Your servant Yo’aḇ has done this to change the appearance of the matter. But my master is wise, according to the wisdom of a messenger of Elohim, to know all that is in the earth.”
21. And the sovereign said to Yo’aḇ, “See now, you shall do this matter. And go, bring back the young man Aḇshalom.”
22. And Yo’aḇ fell to the ground on his face and did obeisance, and blessed the sovereign. And Yo’aḇ said, “Today your servant knows that I have found favour in your eyes, my master, O sovereign, in that the sovereign has done the word of his servant.”
23. And Yo’aḇ rose up and went to Geshur, and brought Aḇshalom to Yerushalayim.
24. And the sovereign said, “Let him return to his own house, but do not let him see my face.” And Aḇshalom went to his own house, and did not see the sovereign’s face.