CHAPTER 25

(1060 B.C.)

THE DEATH OF SAMUEL

¹And Samuel died; and all the Israelites were gathered together, and lamented him, and buried him in his house at Ramah. And David arose, and went down to the wilderness of Paran. (It is supposed that Samuel died when he was about 98 years of age. He probably died about 2 years before Saul was killed. Whether David went to the funeral of Samuel is not known, but to him it was clear that with Samuels death came the removal of the last restraining power in Sauls life; so David went down into the wilderness of Paran, which was south of Judea.)

NABAL

²And there was a man in Maon, whose possessions were in Carmel; and the man was very great, and he had three thousand sheep, and a thousand goats: and he was shearing his sheep in Carmel.

³Now the name of the man was Nabal; and the name of his wife Abigail: and she was a woman of good understanding, and of a beautiful countenance: but the man was churlish and evil in his doings; and he was of the house of Caleb. (The name Nabal means fool, and, to be sure, the man lived up to his namesake. He was of the house of Caleb, but not of the spirit and faith of Caleb.)

⁴And David heard in the wilderness that Nabal did shear his sheep.

⁵And David sent out ten young men, and David said unto the young men, Get you up to Carmel, and go to Nabal, and greet him in my name:

⁶And thus shall you say to him who lives in prosperity, Peace be both to you, and peace be to your house, and peace be unto all that you have.

⁷And now I have heard that you have shearers: now your shepherds which were with us, we hurt them not, neither was there ought missing unto them, all the while they were in Carmel.

⁸Ask your young men, and they will show you. Wherefore let the young men find favour in your eyes: for we come in a good day: give, I pray you, whatsoever comes to your hand unto your servants, and to your son David.

⁹And when Davids young men came, they spoke to Nabal according to all those words in the name of David, and ceased. (David had a right to ask this favor, considering that he and his men had, in a sense, been a protector to the great flocks of Nabal, keeping bandits away, etc.)

NABAL REFUSES TO HELP

¹⁰And Nabal answered Davids servants, and said, Who is David? and who is the son of Jesse? there be many servants now a days who break away every man from his master. (The man insults David, insinuating that David is a mere slave who has run away from his master, who is Saul.)

¹¹Shall I then take my bread, and my water, and my flesh that I have killed for my shearers, and give it unto men, whom I know not whence they be?

¹²So Davids young men turned their way, and went again, and came and told him all those sayings (in other words, he gave them nothing!).

¹³And David said unto his men, Gird you on every man his sword. And they girded on every man his sword; and David also girded on his sword: and there went up after David about four hundred men; and two hundred abode by the stuff (stayed in the camp; no man is perfect, even though he be a Type of Christ; and David, like the Apostle Paul [Acts 23:3], stung with the injustice of Nabals language, started out to punish him; but the Lord delivered him from the snare; Abigail, as we shall see, was the instrument of that deliverance).

ABIGAIL

¹⁴But one of the young men told Abigail, Nabals wife, saying, Behold, David sent messengers out of the wilderness to salute our master; and he railed on them.

¹⁵But the men were very good unto us, and we were not hurt, neither missed we anything, as long as we were conversant with them, when we were in the fields:

¹⁶They were a wall unto us both by night and day, all the while we were with them keeping the sheep. (Davids men, encamped close by Nabals possessions, were a blessing instead of a hindrance. As Nabal did not know, understand, or even care for these things, likewise, the world in general does not realize or recognize the salt of the Earth that is in its midst.)

¹⁷Now therefore know and consider what you will do; for evil is determined against our master, and against all his household: for he is such a son of Belial, that a man cannot speak to him (Belial means worthless; so coarse and violent was Nabal that it was hopeless to expostulate with him).

¹⁸Then Abigail made haste, and took two hundred loaves (very large loaves of bread), and two bottles of wine (two large wineskins, with each holding many gallons), and five sheep ready dressed, and five measures of parched corn (either barley or wheat, for there was no such thing as corn, as we know such, in the Middle East of that day; corn was first introduced by Indians to the early settlers of the North American continent), and an hundred clusters of raisins, and two hundred cakes of figs, and laid them on asses.

¹⁹And she said unto her servants, Go on before me; behold, I come after you. But she told not her husband Nabal.

²⁰And it was so, as she rode on the ass, that she came down by the covert of the hill, and, behold, David and his men came down against her; and she met them. (Not only is Abigail beautiful in person, but she is even more beautiful in character. Her faith and her intelligence are admirable. She judges both Nabal and Saul as God judged them. She recognizes in David his title as king, despite his personal imperfection. She also recognizes his valor in fighting Gods battles and, where others only see a rebel, she sees a redeemer. All of this is not merely just the intelligence of the head; it is accompanied by the affection of the heart as well!)

²¹Now David had said, Surely in vain have I kept all that this fellow has in the wilderness, so that nothing was missed of all that pertained unto him: and he has requited me evil for good.

²²So and more also do God unto the enemies of David, if I leave of all who pertain to him by the morning light any who urinates against the wall (David fully intended to kill Nabal, and any who resisted with him).

ABIGAIL MEETS DAVID

²³And when Abigail saw David, she hasted, and lighted off the ass, and fell before David on her face, and bowed herself to the ground,

²⁴And fell at his feet, and said, Upon me, my lord, upon me let this iniquity be: and let your handmaid, I pray you, speak in your audience, and hear the words of your handmaid.

²⁵Let not my lord, I pray you, regard this man of Belial, even Nabal: for as his name is, so is he; Nabal is his name, and folly is with him: but I your handmaid saw not the young men of my lord, whom you did send (from the Text, it seems that Nabals great wealth had been brought about by the wisdom of his wife).

²⁶Now therefore, my lord, as the LORD lives, and as your soul lives, seeing the LORD has withheld you from coming to shed blood, and from avenging yourself with your own hand, now let your enemies, and they who seek evil to my lord, be as Nabal (the lady begins her appeal by affirming that it was Jehovah Who thus made her come to prevent bloodshed).

²⁷And now this blessing which your handmaid has brought unto my lord, let it even be given unto the young men who follow my lord (the blessing pertained to the foodstuff).

²⁸I pray you, forgive the trespass of your handmaid: for the LORD will certainly make my lord a sure house; because my lord fights the battles of the LORD, and evil has not been found in you all your days. (From these statements, we learn that Abigail knew all about David and, most definitely, her husband, Nabal, did as well. So his response to the appeal for help was not on the basis of ignorance, but rather from the basis of stupidity.)

²⁹Yet a man is risen to pursue you, and to seek your soul (she speaks of Saul): but the soul of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of life with the LORD your God (meaning that God is determining Davids destiny); and the souls of your enemies, them shall He sling out, as out of the middle of a sling (and thats exactly what ultimately happened!).

³⁰And it shall come to pass, when the LORD shall have done to my lord according to all the good that He has spoken concerning you, and shall have appointed you ruler over Israel (she knows, as did most of Israel, that David had been anointed by Samuel to be king);

³¹That this shall be no grief unto you, nor offence of heart unto my lord, either that you have shed blood causeless, or that my lord has avenged himself: but when the LORD shall have dealt well with my lord, then remember your handmaid (in other words, Abigail tells David not to do something that may cause him problems later on, which, of course, was excellent advice).

DAVID SPARES NABAL

³²And David said to Abigail, Blessed be the LORD God of Israel, which sent you this day to meet me (David sees the Hand of God in the remonstrance of this woman):

³³And blessed be your advice, and blessed be you, which has kept me this day from coming to shed blood, and from avenging myself with my own hand.

³⁴For in very deed, as the LORD God of Israel lives, which has kept me back from hurting you, except you had hasted and come to meet me, surely there had not been left unto Nabal by the morning light any who urinates against the wall (all the men who were with Nabal would have been killed).

³⁵So David received of her hand that which she had brought him, and said unto her, Go up in peace to your house; see, I have hearkened to your voice, and have accepted your person.

NABALS DEATH

³⁶And Abigail came to Nabal; and, behold, he held a feast in his house, like the feast of a king (he had food for all of this, but none for David); and Nabals heart was merry within him, for he was very drunk: wherefore she told him nothing, less or more, until the morning light.

³⁷But it came to pass in the morning, when the wine was gone out of Nabal, and his wife had told him these things, that his heart died within him, and he became as a stone.

³⁸And it came to pass about ten days after, that the LORD smote Nabal, that he died. (By his actions toward David, this mans life was cut short by a number of years; however, it was the Lord Who did this, and not David. How so often we hurt ourselves by not leaving things in the Hand of the Lord.)

DAVID MARRIES ABIGAIL

³⁹And when David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, Blessed be the LORD, Who has pleaded the cause of my reproach from the hand of Nabal, and has kept His servant from evil (the Lord used Abigail to do this): for the LORD has returned the wickedness of Nabal upon his own head. And David sent and communed with Abigail, to take her to him to wife.

⁴⁰And when the servants of David were come to Abigail to Carmel, they spoke unto her, saying, David sent us unto you, to take you to him to wife.

⁴¹And she arose, and bowed herself on her face to the earth, and said, Behold, let your handmaid be a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my lord.

⁴²And Abigail hasted, and arose, and rode upon an ass, with five damsels of hers who went after her; and she went after the messengers of David, and became his wife.

⁴³David also took Ahinoam of Jezreel; and they were also both of them his wives.

⁴⁴But Saul had given Michal his daughter, Davids wife, to Phalti the son of Laish, which was of Gallim. (Williams says, Had David kept closely to the teaching of the Bible, he would have had but one wife; for so it was ordained from the beginning [Mat. 19:8]. By this action, David set a poor example for his son Solomon, who took many wives, some of them of heathen nations, which turned his heart away from God.)