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1 SamuelChapter 25

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Samuel died, and all Israel gathered to mourn for him, and they buried him at his home in Ramah. Then David went down to the wilderness of Paran.
There was a man in Maon whose holdings were in Carmel. He was a very wealthy man, with three thousand sheep and a thousand goats, and he was shearing his sheep in Carmel.
The man's name was Nabal, and his wife's name was Abigail. She was intelligent and beautiful, but her husband was harsh and mean in all 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 said to them, "Go up to Carmel, and when you come to Nabal, greet him in my name.
Say to him: 'Long life to you! Peace to you, peace to your household, and peace to all that is yours!
I have heard that you are shearing. Now, your shepherds have been with us, and we did them no harm; nothing of theirs went missing the whole time they were in Carmel.
Ask your own servants and they will tell you. So look kindly on my young men, since we have come at a festive time. Please give whatever you can spare to your servants and to your son David.'"
David's young men came and delivered all this to Nabal in David's name, and then they waited.
But Nabal answered David's servants, "Who is David? Who is this son of Jesse? These days there are plenty of servants running away from their masters.
Am I to take my bread and my water and the meat I have slaughtered for my shearers, and give it to men who come from who knows where?"
So David's young men turned back the way they had come, and when they arrived they reported to him everything Nabal had said.
David said to his men, "Strap on your swords!" So each man strapped on his sword, and David strapped on his as well. About four hundred men went up with David, while two hundred stayed behind with the baggage.
Meanwhile, one of the servants told Abigail, Nabal's wife, "David sent messengers from the wilderness to greet our master, and he insulted them.
But those men were very good to us. They did us no harm, and we lost nothing the whole time we moved about with them out in the fields.
They were a wall around us night and day, the whole time we were with them herding the sheep.
Now think carefully about what you should do, because disaster is closing in on our master and his whole household. He is such a scoundrel that no one can reason with him."
Abigail acted quickly. She took two hundred loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five dressed sheep, five measures of roasted grain, a hundred clusters of raisins, and two hundred cakes of pressed figs, and loaded them on donkeys.
Then she said to her servants, "Go on ahead of me; I am coming behind you." But she said nothing to her husband Nabal.
As she rode her donkey down under the cover of the hill, David and his men were coming down toward her, and she met them.
Now David had been saying, "It was all for nothing that I protected everything this fellow owns in the wilderness, so that nothing of his went missing. He has repaid me evil for good.
May God deal harshly with David's enemies, and worse still, if by morning I leave even one male alive of all who belong to him!
When Abigail saw David, she quickly got down from her donkey, fell before him with her face to the ground, and bowed low.
She fell at his feet and said, "On me alone, my lord, let the blame fall. Please let your servant speak to you; hear the words of your servant.
Let my lord pay no attention to that worthless man Nabal. He is just what his name says: Nabal, "Fool"—and folly goes with him. But I, your servant, did not see the young men my lord sent.
And now, my lord, as surely as the LORD lives and as you live, the LORD has kept you from shedding blood and from taking vengeance with your own hand. May your enemies and all who seek to harm my lord end up like Nabal.
Let this gift, which 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 battles of the LORD, and no wrong will be found in you as long as you live.
Though someone rises up to pursue you and seek your life, the life of my lord will be bound securely in the bundle of the living with the LORD your God. But the lives of your enemies he will hurl away as from the pocket of a sling.
And when the LORD has done for my lord all the good he has promised, and has appointed you ruler over Israel,
then my lord will have no cause for grief or remorse over having shed blood without cause and having taken vengeance himself. And when the LORD has dealt well with 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 good judgment, and blessed be you, for keeping me this day from shedding blood and from avenging myself with my own hand.
As surely as the LORD, the God of Israel, lives—he has kept me from harming you—if you had not hurried to meet me, not one male of Nabal's household would have been left alive by daybreak." [Footnote: Hebrew idiom, literally "one who urinates against a wall," a blunt expression for a male.]
Then David accepted from her hand what she had brought him and said, "Go home in peace. I have listened to you and granted your request."
When Abigail came to Nabal, he was holding a banquet in his house like a king's feast. He was in high spirits and very drunk, so she told him nothing at all until daybreak.
In the morning, when the wine had left him, his wife told him everything, and his heart failed within him; he became like 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 taken up my cause against the insult I suffered from Nabal, and who has kept his servant from doing wrong. The LORD has brought Nabal's evil down on his own head." Then David sent word to Abigail, asking her to become his wife.
David's servants went to Abigail at Carmel and said to her, "David has sent us to you to take you to him as his wife."
She rose, bowed with her face to the ground, and said, "Here is your servant, ready to be a slave and to wash the feet of my lord's servants."
Abigail quickly got up and mounted her donkey, and with her five maids attending her she followed David's messengers and became his wife.
David had also married Ahinoam of Jezreel, so both of them were his wives.
But Saul had given his daughter Michal, David's wife, to Palti son of Laish, who was from Gallim.
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