6. by loving those who hated you and hating those who love you. You have shown today that commanders and servants are nothing to you. I know that if Absalom were alive instead today and all of us were dead, then this would be right in your eyes.
7. Now go out and speak reassuringly to your servants, for I swear by the Lord that if you do not go out, no man will stay with you this night, and this will be worse for you than any calamity that has come against you from your youth until now.”
8. So the king arose and took his seat in the gate, and the people were all told, “The king is sitting in the gate.” So all the people came before the king, but the children of Israel had fled, each to his tent.
9. Now all of the people began to quarrel throughout all of the tribes of Israel, saying, “The king delivered us from the hand of our enemies, and he saved us from the hand of the Philistines, but now he has fled from the land on account of Absalom.
10. But Absalom, whom we anointed over us, has died in battle. Now why are you idle to bring back the king?”
11. Then David sent word to Zadok and Abiathar the priests, saying, “Speak to the elders of Israel, saying, ‘Why are you last to bring the king back to his house when the word of all Israel has come to the king, to his house?
12. You are my brother. You are my bone and my flesh. Why are you last to bring back the king?’
13. Say to Amasa, ‘Are you not my bone and my flesh? May God do to me, and more so, if you are not commander of the army before me from now on in the place of Joab.’ ”
14. He swayed the heart of every man of Judah as though they were one man, and they sent a message to the king: “Return, you and all of your servants.”
15. So the king returned and came as far as the Jordan, and Judah came to Gilgal to meet the king and bring the king across the Jordan.
16. Shimei the son of Gera, the Benjamite who was from Bahurim, hastened to go down with the men of Judah to meet King David.
17. With him were a thousand men from Benjamin. And Ziba, the servant of the house of Saul, with his fifteen sons and twenty servants, rushed down to the Jordan before the king.
18. They crossed the ford to bring the household of the king across and to do what was pleasing in his eyes.Shimei the son of Gera fell before the king as he was crossing the Jordan,
19. and he said to the king, “Do not regard me as guilty, my lord, or remember how your servant went astray the day when my lord the king went out from Jerusalem. May the king not take it to heart.