"Otherwise it will come to pass, when my lord the king sleeps with his fathers, that I and my son Solomon will be treated as offenders.'" — The conditional *'im-lo* (otherwise) introduces the catastrophic consequence: Bathsheba and Solomon will be branded *chatayim* (offenders, criminals, transgressors) if Adonijah's claim is ratified. The phrase *yishkav 'im-avotav* (sleeps with his fathers) uses the ancient Near Eastern euphemism for death, evoking the continuity of the ancestral realm even as David's earthly reign ends. Bathsheba's rhetoric stakes the legitimacy of her son and herself on David's immediate intervention. The term *chatayim* suggests not merely political defeat but moral/legal condemnation—they will be construed as those who violated the oath, as transgressors against the kingdom. This frames the stakes in eschatological and covenantal language.

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