Abgail Series

11Why should I take my bread and water, and the meat I have slaughtered for my shearers, and give it to men coming from who knows where?”

12David’s men turned around and went back. When they arrived, they reported every word.

13David said to his men, “Put on your swords!” So they put on their swords, and David put on his. About four hundred men went up with David, while two hundred stayed with the supplies.

14One of the servants told Nabal’s wife Abigail: “David sent messengers from the desert to give our master his greetings, but he hurled insults at them.

15Yet these men were very good to us. They did not mistreat us, and the whole time we were out in the fields near them nothing was missing.

16Night and day they were a wall around us all the time we were herding our sheep near them.

17Now think it over and see what you can do, because disaster is hanging over our master and his whole household. He is such a wicked man that no one can talk to him.”

18Abigail lost no time. She took two hundred loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five dressed sheep, five seahs of roasted grain, a hundred cakes of raisins and two hundred cakes of pressed figs, and loaded them on donkeys.

19Then she told her servants, “Go on ahead; I’ll follow you.” But she did not tell her husband Nabal.

20As she came riding her donkey into a mountain ravine, there were David and his men descending toward her, and she met them.

21David had just said, “It’s been useless—all my watching over this fellow’s property in the desert so that nothing of his was missing. He has paid me back evil for good.

22May God deal with David, be it ever so severely, if by morning I leave alive one male of all who belong to him!”

23When Abigail saw David, she quickly got off her donkey and bowed down before David with her face to the ground.

24She fell at his feet and said: “My lord, let the blame be on me alone. Please let your servant speak to you; hear what your servant has to say.

25May my lord pay no attention to that wicked man Nabal. He is just like his name—his name is Fool, and folly goes with him. But as for me, your servant, I did not see the men my master sent.

26“Now since the LORD has kept you, my master, from bloodshed and from avenging yourself with your own hands, as surely as the LORD lives and as you live, may your enemies and all who intend to harm my master be like Nabal.

27And let this gift, which your servant has brought to my master, be given to the men who follow you.

28Please forgive your servant’s offense, for the LORD will certainly make a lasting dynasty for my master, because he fights the LORD’S battles. Let no wrongdoing be found in you as long as you live.

29Even though someone is pursuing you to take your life, the life of my master will be bound securely in the bundle of the living by the LORD your God. But the lives of your enemies he will hurl away as from the pocket of a sling.

30When the LORD has done for my master every good thing he promised concerning him and has appointed him leader over Israel,