1 Samuel 25:2-13
Who is David
David asks for whatever comes to hand on a feast day. Nabal answers by asking who this son of Jesse is and calling him a runaway servant, and David tells four hundred men to strap on their swords.
People of the Bible
Abigail
Loaded two hundred loaves onto donkeys and rode out to stop four hundred armed men, and talked David out of a murder.
Abigail is married to a rich and unpleasant man named Nabal, whose name means fool and who behaves like one. David has protected his shepherds in the wilderness and sends men to ask politely for provisions at a feast. Nabal insults him, and David straps on his sword and takes four hundred men to kill every male in the household by morning. A servant goes to Abigail rather than to her husband, because that is who the household goes to. She loads food onto donkeys, rides down a ravine, and meets an army coming the other way.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Abigail
- 01
- 02
1 Samuel 25:14-19
She did not tell her husband
A servant goes straight to her with the whole picture. She loads bread, wine, sheep, grain, raisins and figs, sends it ahead, and follows, and the text notes what she did not do.
- 03
1 Samuel 25:23-31
Upon me let this iniquity be
She gets off the donkey and falls on her face. She takes the blame, calls her husband what he is, and then tells David what the killing will cost him when he is king.
- 04
1 Samuel 25:32-42
Blessed be your advice
David blesses the LORD, blesses her discretion and blesses her, and says she has kept him from bloodshed. Ten days later Nabal is dead, and David sends for her.
Why it matters
Her speech is the longest by a woman in the historical books and it does three things at once: it takes the blame herself, it offers the provisions without pretending they settle anything, and it tells David what he will feel later if he does this, that it will be a grief to him and an offence of heart. He blesses her advice out loud and turns around. She is the only person in the book who stops David from doing something he would have regretted.
1 song
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.