Bible Verses About Altars: Afforded no protection to murderers

If a man schemes and comes presumptuously on his neighbor to kill him, you shall take him from my altar, that he may die.

Bathsheba said, “Alright. I will speak for you to the king.”

Bathsheba therefore went to king Solomon, to speak to him for Adonijah. The king rose up to meet her, and bowed himself to her, and sat down on his throne, and caused a throne to be set for the king’s mother; and she sat on his right hand.

Then she said, “I ask one small petition of you; don’t deny me.” The king said to her, “Ask on, my mother; for I will not deny you.”

She said, “Let Abishag the Shunammite be given to Adonijah your brother as wife.”

King Solomon answered his mother, “Why do you ask Abishag the Shunammite for Adonijah? Ask for him the kingdom also; for he is my elder brother; even for him, and for Abiathar the priest, and for Joab the son of Zeruiah.”

Then king Solomon swore by the LORD, saying, “God do so to me, and more also, if Adonijah has not spoken this word against his own life.

Now therefore as the LORD lives, who has established me, and set me on the throne of David my father, and who has made me a house, as he promised, surely Adonijah shall be put to death this day.”

King Solomon sent by Benaiah the son of Jehoiada; and he fell on him, so that he died.

To Abiathar the priest the king said, “Go to Anathoth, to your own fields; for you are worthy of death. But I will not at this time put you to death, because you bore the ark of the Lord the LORD before David my father, and because you were afflicted in all in which my father was afflicted.”

So Solomon thrust out Abiathar from being priest to the LORD, that he might fulfill the LORD’s word, which he spoke concerning the house of Eli in Shiloh.

The news came to Joab; for Joab had turned after Adonijah, though he didn’t turn after Absalom. Joab fled to the Tent of the LORD, and caught hold on the horns of the altar.

It was told king Solomon, “Joab has fled to the Tent of the LORD, and behold, he is by the altar.” Then Solomon sent Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, saying, “Go, fall on him.”

Benaiah came to the Tent of the LORD, and said to him, “Thus says the king, ‘Come out!’” He said, “No; but I will die here.” Benaiah brought the king word again, saying, “Thus said Joab, and thus he answered me.”

The king said to him, “Do as he has said, and fall on him, and bury him; that you may take away the blood, which Joab shed without cause, from me and from my father’s house.

The LORD will return his blood on his own head, because he fell on two men more righteous and better than he, and killed them with the sword, and my father David didn’t know it: Abner the son of Ner, captain of the army of Israel, and Amasa the son of Jether, captain of the army of Judah.

So shall their blood return on the head of Joab, and on the head of his seed forever. But to David, and to his seed, and to his house, and to his throne, there shall be peace forever from the LORD.”

Then Benaiah the son of Jehoiada went up, and fell on him, and killed him; and he was buried in his own house in the wilderness.