Your heart will meditate on terror: "Where [is] the scribe? Where [is] he who weighs? Where [is] he who counts the towers?"

Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

For it is written: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, And bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent."

Then [someone] told David, saying, "Ahithophel [is] among the conspirators with Absalom." And David said, "O LORD, I pray, turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness!"

Now the advice of Ahithophel, which he gave in those days, [was] as if one had inquired at the oracle of God. So [was] all the advice of Ahithophel both with David and with Absalom.

So Absalom and all the men of Israel said, "The advice of Hushai the Archite [is] better than the advice of Ahithophel." For the LORD had purposed to defeat the good advice of Ahithophel, to the intent that the LORD might bring disaster on Absalom.

Now when Ahithophel saw that his advice was not followed, he saddled a donkey, and arose and went home to his house, to his city. Then he put his household in order, and hanged himself, and died; and he was buried in his father's tomb.

He leads counselors away plundered, And makes fools of the judges.

He deprives the trusted ones of speech, And takes away the discernment of the elders.

He takes away the understanding of the chiefs of the people of the earth, And makes them wander in a pathless wilderness.

Who frustrates the signs of the babblers, And drives diviners mad; Who turns wise men backward, And makes their knowledge foolishness;

Professing to be wise, they became fools,