15. Then he said, “You know that the kingdom was mine and that all Israel looked to me to be the king. However, the kingship has turned about and become my brother’s—for it was his from Adonai.
16. So now one petition I ask of you; do not deny me.” “Speak!” she said to him.
17. Then he said, “Please, speak to King Solomon—for he won’t turn you down—to give me Abishag the Shunammite as wife.”
18. “Very well,” said Bath-sheba, “I will speak to the king for you.”
19. So Bath-sheba went to King Solomon to speak to him about Adonijah. The king rose up to greet her and bowed down to her. Then he sat down on his throne and had a throne set up for the king’s mother, and she sat at his right hand.
20. Then she said: “I ask one small petition of you; do not deny.” “Ask, my mother,” the king said to her, “for I will not turn you down.”
21. So she said, “Let Abishag the Shunammite be given to Adonijah your brother as wife.”
22. King Solomon answered and said to his mother: “So why are you asking Abishag the Shunammite for Adonijah? Ask for him the kingdom as well—for he is my older brother—for him and for Abiathar the kohen, and for Joab son of Zeruiah!”
23. Then King Solomon swore by Adonai saying: “May God do so to me and even more, if Adonijah does not pay with his own life for this request!
24. Now therefore, as Adonai lives who has established me and set me on the throne of my father David, and who has made me a house as He promised, surely Adonijah shall be put to death this day.”
25. Then King Solomon sent Benaiah son of Jehoiada. He struck him down and he died.
26. Also to Abiathar the kohen the king said, “Go to Anathoth, to your own fields, for you deserve death, but I will not put you to death at this time, because you carried the ark of Adonai Elohim before my father David, and because you were afflicted in everything with which my father was afflicted.”
27. So Solomon dismissed Abiathar from being kohen to Adonai—so fulfilling the word of Adonai that He spoke at Shiloh about the house of Eli.
28. When the news came to Joab, he fled to the Tent of Adonai and grasped the horns of the altar—for Joab had defected to Adonijah, though he had not defected to Absalom.