‘What are you doing here, and who are you to be here, that you cut out a grave for yourself, carving out a tomb on the height, chiseling a crypt for yourself in the rock?
“My father made me take an oath saying, ‘Behold, I am about to die. In my tomb—which I dug for myself in the land of Canaan—there you must bury me.’ So now, please allow me to go up and bury my father, and then return.”
(Now Absalom, in his lifetime, had taken and set up for himself a pillar, which is in the King’s Valley, for he said, “I have no son to preserve the memory of my name.” So he called the pillar by his name and it has been called Absalom’s Monument to this day.)
He was buried in his own tomb, which he had hewn out for himself in the city of David. They laid him in his resting place, which was filled with sweet spices and various blended perfumes and they made a very large fire for him.
But you are cast out of your tomb as a discarded branch, garment of the slain, pierced with a sword, dumped into a stony pit, a corpse trodden underfoot.
“Now therefore, what do I have here?” —it is a declaration of Adonai— “My people are taken away for nothing? Its rulers wail” —it is Adonai’s declaration— “and My Name is continually blasphemed all day long.