You will be righteous, Lord, even if I bring a case against you. Yet I wish to contend with you: Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the treacherous live at ease?
But Judah approached him and said, ‘My lord, please let your servant speak personally to my lord. Do not be angry with your servant, for you are like Pharaoh.
Then he said, ‘Let my lord not be angry, and I will speak one more time. Suppose ten are found there? ’ He answered, ‘I will not destroy it on account of ten.’
She replied, ‘Please, may the king invoke the Lord your God, so that the avenger of blood will not increase the loss, and they will not eliminate my son! ’ ‘As the Lord lives,’ he vowed, ‘not a hair of your son will fall to the ground.’
The woman asked, ‘Why have you devised something similar against the people of God? When the king spoke as he did about this matter, he has pronounced his own guilt. The king has not brought back his own banished one.
When he had come near her, the woman asked, ‘Are you Joab? ’ ‘I am,’ he replied. ‘Listen to the words of your servant,’ she said to him. He answered, ‘I’m listening.’