Then the messenger came and told him, saying, “They have brought the heads of the king’s sons.” So he said, “Put them in two heaps at the entrance of the gate until morning.”
Now it happened that when the letter came to them, they took the king’s sons and slaughtered them, seventy persons, and put their heads in baskets, and sent them to him at Jezreel.
Now it happened in the morning that he went out and stood and said to all the people, “You are righteous; behold, I conspired against my master and killed him, but who struck down all these?
his corpse shall not hang all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on the same day (because cursed of God is he who is hanged), so that you do not make unclean your land which Yahweh your God gives you as an inheritance.