1 Samuel 25

Samuel died, and all Israel gathered to mourn for him. They buried him at his home in Ramah. Then David set out and went down to the wilderness of Paran. There was a man in Maon whose property was in Carmel. He was very wealthy, with three thousand sheep and a thousand goats. He was shearing his sheep in Carmel. The man’s name was Nabal, and his wife’s name was Abigail. The woman was discerning and beautiful, but the man was harsh and evil in his dealings. He was a Calebite. While David was in the wilderness, he heard that Nabal was shearing his sheep. So David sent ten young men and told them, “Go up to Carmel, visit Nabal and greet him in my name. Say to him, ‘Long life to you! Peace to you, peace to your household and peace to all you have. I have heard that you have shearers. Your shepherds have been with us, and we did not mistreat them. Nothing of theirs went missing all the time they were in Carmel. Ask your young men, and they will tell you. Let these young men find favor in your eyes, for we have come on a festive day. Please give whatever you have at hand to your servants and to your son David.’” David’s young men came and spoke all these words to Nabal in David’s name. Then they waited. Nabal answered David’s servants, “Who is David? Who is the son of Jesse? These days there are many slaves breaking away from their masters. Shall I take my bread, my water and the meat I have slaughtered for my shearers and give them to men when I do not know where they come from?” David’s young men turned around, went back and reported all these words to him. David said to his men, “Each of you, strap on your sword!” Each man strapped on his sword, and David strapped on his as well. About four hundred men went up after David, while two hundred stayed with the baggage. One of the young men told Abigail, Nabal’s wife, “David sent messengers from the wilderness to greet our master, but he hurled insults at them. Yet the men were very good to us. We were not mistreated, and nothing went missing all the time we went about with them in the fields. They were a wall around us both night and day, the whole time we were with them tending the sheep. Now consider what you should do, for disaster is determined against our master and his entire household. He is such a worthless man that no one can speak to him.” Abigail hurried and took two hundred loaves of bread, two wineskins of wine, five prepared sheep, about a bushel of roasted grain, a hundred clusters of raisins and two hundred fig cakes. She loaded them on donkeys and said to her young men, “Go on ahead of me. I will follow you.” But she did not tell her husband Nabal. As she rode her donkey down a hidden part of the mountain, David and his men were coming down toward her, and she met them. David had said, “Surely it was in vain that I guarded everything this man had in the wilderness, so that nothing of his went missing. He has repaid me with evil for good. May God do so to David’s enemies, and more besides, if by morning I leave alive a single one of his who urinates against a wall.” When Abigail saw David, she hurried and got down from her donkey. She fell on her face before David and bowed to the ground. She fell at his feet and said, “On me, my lord, on me be the guilt. Please let your servant speak to you, and listen to the words of your servant. Please, my lord, pay no attention to this worthless man Nabal. He is just like his name: his name is Nabal, and folly is with him. But I, your servant, did not see the young men my lord sent. Now, my lord, as the LORD lives and as you live, the LORD has kept you from bloodguilt and from taking vengeance with your own hand. May your enemies and those who seek harm for my lord be like Nabal. Let this gift your servant has brought to my lord be given to the young men who follow my lord. Please forgive your servant’s offense. The LORD will surely establish a lasting house for my lord, because my lord fights the LORD’s battles. May no evil be found in you all your days. Though someone rises to pursue you and seek your life, my lord’s life will be bound in the bundle of the living with the LORD your God. But the lives of your enemies he will sling away from the pocket of a sling. When the LORD has done for my lord all the good he has spoken concerning you and has appointed you ruler over Israel, this will not bring my lord anguish or a troubled heart over having shed blood without cause or taken vengeance for himself. When the LORD does good to my lord, remember your servant.” David said to Abigail, “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, who sent you to meet me today! Blessed be your discernment, and blessed be you, who have kept me today from bloodguilt and from taking vengeance with my own hand. Indeed, as the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, who has kept me from harming you, if you had not hurried to meet me, by morning light not a single one who urinates against a wall would have been left to Nabal.” David accepted from her hand what she had brought him and said to her, “Go up to your home in peace. See, I have listened to you and granted your request.” When Abigail came to Nabal, he was holding a feast in his house like a king’s feast. Nabal was merry and very drunk, so she told him nothing at all until morning light. In the morning, when Nabal had sobered up, his wife told him these things. His heart died within him, and he became like a stone. About ten days later, the LORD struck Nabal, and he died. When David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, “Blessed be the LORD, who has pleaded my cause against Nabal’s insult and kept his servant from evil! The LORD has brought Nabal’s evil back on his own head.” Then David sent word to Abigail to take her as his wife. When David’s servants came to Abigail at Carmel, they said to her, “David has sent us to you to take you to him as his wife.” She got up, bowed with her face to the ground and said, “Here is your servant, ready to serve and wash the feet of my lord’s servants.” Abigail hurriedly got up and rode on a donkey, with five of her young women following her. She went after David’s messengers and became his wife. David had also taken Ahinoam of Jezreel, and both of them became his wives. But Saul had given his daughter Michal, David’s wife, to Palti son of Laish, who was from Gallim.

Rights and attribution