The wealthy but foolish Nabal insults David's men after they had protected his flocks; his wife Abigail intervenes with gifts and wisdom to prevent bloodshed, and after Nabal's sudden death she becomes David's wife.
Further context
2 min readSheep-shearing was a festival as much as a job, with feasting and hospitality, and a wealthy man in the Carmel district is shearing three thousand sheep. His name is Nabal, which means fool, and he is introduced as surly and mean in his dealings, while his wife Abigail is described as intelligent and beautiful.
David's men had been camped near his shepherds in the wilderness and had left them alone, and Nabal's own men confirm afterwards that they were a wall around us, night and day, all the time we were herding our sheep near them. What David sends for is the customary share at a feast, and the request is politely worded and comes with the reminder that his men have taken nothing.
The refusal is contemptuous: who is this David? Who is this son of Jesse? Many servants are breaking away from their masters these days. Why should I take my bread and water and the meat I have slaughtered and give it to men coming from who knows where?
David's response is to strap on his sword and take four hundred men, and the oath he swears on the way is that he will not leave a single male of Nabal's household alive by morning. The anointed king of Israel is about to massacre a farmer's household over a refused dinner.
A servant goes to Abigail and lays out the situation. She loads donkeys with two hundred loaves, two skins of wine, five dressed sheep, roasted grain, a hundred cakes of raisins and two hundred cakes of pressed figs, and rides out to meet him without telling her husband.
Her speech is the longest by a woman anywhere in these books and it is a masterpiece of managing a furious man. She takes the blame herself, dismisses her husband with a pun on his name, delivers the supplies, and then makes the argument that stops him: when the LORD has fulfilled every good thing he promised and made you ruler over Israel, my lord will not have on his conscience the staggering burden of needless bloodshed or of having avenged himself. She is telling a future king what he will have to live with.
He accepts it in as many words. Praise be to the LORD, who has sent you today to meet me. May you be blessed for your good judgment and for keeping me from bloodshed this day and from avenging myself with my own hands.
She goes home to find Nabal holding a banquet like that of a king and very drunk, and tells him nothing until morning. When she does, his heart failed him and he became like a stone, and ten days later he dies.
David then sends for her and marries her, which is a considerable social step for a fugitive and gives him standing in the Calebite territory around Hebron, where he is crowned a few years later.