Should I take my bread and my water and my meat that I have slaughtered for my shearers and give them to these men? I don’t even know where they came from!”

He was treated harshly and afflicted, ¹  but he did not even open his mouth. Like a lamb led to the slaughtering block, like a sheep silent before her shearers, he did not even open his mouth. ² 

Now I hear that they are shearing sheep for you. When your shepherds were with us, we neither insulted them nor harmed them the whole time they were in Carmel.

Then Absalom went to the king and said, “My shearers have begun their work. ¹  Let the king and his servants go with me.”

Two years later Absalom’s sheepshearers were in Baal Hazor, ¹  near Ephraim. Absalom invited all the king’s sons.

Now the passage of scripture the man ¹  was reading was this: “He was led like a sheep to slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he did ²  not open his mouth.