“What is this you have done?” his servants asked. “While the child was alive, you fasted and wept, but when he died, you got up and ate.”

And as he finished speaking, the sons of the king came in, wailing loudly. Then the king and all his servants also wept very bitterly.

The king was shaken and went up to the gate chamber and wept. And as he walked, he cried out, “O my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

The next morning, when I got up to nurse my son, I discovered he was dead. But when I examined him, I realized that he was not the son I had borne.”

The people could not distinguish the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping, because the people were making so much noise. And the sound was heard from afar.

so the king said to me, “Why is your face sad, though you are not ill? This could only be sadness of the heart.” I was overwhelmed with fear

Then all the people began to eat and drink, to send out portions, and to rejoice greatly, because they understood the words that had been made known to them.

For how could I bear to see the disaster that would befall my people? How could I bear to see the destruction of my kindred?”

as the days on which the Jews gained rest from their enemies and the month in which their sorrow turned to joy and their mourning into a holiday. He wrote that these were to be days of feasting and joy, of sending gifts to one another and to the poor.

Now when Job’s three friends—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite—heard about all this adversity that had come upon him, each of them came from his home, and they met together to go and sympathize with Job and comfort him.

He feels only the pain of his own body and mourns only for himself.”

My friends are my scoffers as my eyes pour out tears to God.