1 Samuel died. All Israel assembled and lamented him, and they buried him at his house in Ramah. David set out and went down to the wilderness of Paran.
2 There was a man in Maon whose property was at Carmel, a very wealthy man, owning three thousand sheep and a thousand goats. He was at Carmel shearing his sheep.
3 The man was named Nabal, and his wife Abigail. She was a woman of good sense and lovely to look at, but the man was hard and his deeds were evil; he was a Calebite.
4 David heard in the wilderness that Nabal was shearing his sheep.
5 So David sent ten young men and told them, "Go up to Carmel. When you come to Nabal, greet him for me in my name.
6 Say to him: 'Long life to you! Peace to you, peace to your household, and peace to all that is yours!
7 I hear you have shearers. Your shepherds were with us, and we did them no harm; nothing of theirs went missing the whole time they were in Carmel.
8 Ask your young men and they will tell you. So let my young men find favor with you, since we have come on a good day. Please give your servants and your son David whatever you can spare.'"
9 David's young men arrived and gave Nabal this whole message in David's name, and they waited.
10 Nabal answered David's servants, "Who is David? Who is Jesse's son? Plenty of servants nowadays are breaking away from their masters.
11 Am I to take my bread and my water and the meat I butchered for my shearers and give it to men from who knows where?"
12 David's young men turned back on their way. They went back and came and reported all this to him.
13 David told his men, "Every man put on his sword!" Every man put on his sword, and David also put on his sword. About four hundred men went up behind David, and two hundred stayed with the supplies.
14 One of the young men told Abigail, Nabal's wife, "David sent messengers from the wilderness to give our master his greetings, and he screamed at them.
15 Yet the men treated us very well. We were not harmed, and we did not lose a thing the whole time we went around with them when we were out in the field.
16 Night and day they were a wall around us the whole time we were with them looking after the sheep.
17 So now think it over and see what you can do, because harm has been decided upon for our master and his whole household. He is such a son of Belial that no one can talk to him."
18 Abigail lost no time. She took two hundred loaves, two skins of wine, five sheep ready dressed, five seahs of roasted grain, a hundred raisin cakes and two hundred fig cakes, and loaded them on donkeys.
19 She told her young men, "Go on ahead of me; I will come right behind you." She did not tell her husband Nabal.
20 As she rode the donkey down under cover of the hill, there were David and his men coming down toward her, and she ran into them.
21 David had just been saying, "All for nothing I watched over everything this fellow had in the wilderness, so that none of his belongings went missing! He has paid me back evil for good.
22 May God do so to David's enemies, and more besides, if by morning I leave one male alive of all who are his."
23 When Abigail saw David, she quickly got down off the donkey, fell on her face before David, and bowed to the ground.
24 She fell at his feet and said, "Let the guilt be on me, on me, my lord! Please let your servant speak to you; hear what your servant has to say.
25 My lord should pay no attention to this worthless man, Nabal. He is just like his name: Nabal is his name, and folly goes with him. I, your servant, did not see the young men my lord sent.
26 So now, my lord, as the LORD lives and as you live, since the LORD has kept you from bloodshed and from taking matters into your own hand, let your enemies and those out to harm my lord be like Nabal.
27 Now let this present your servant has brought to my lord be given to the young men who follow my lord.
28 Forgive your servant's offense, please. The LORD will surely make for my lord an enduring house, because my lord is fighting the LORD's battles, and no evil will be found in you as long as you live.
29 If anyone rises up to chase you and seek your life, my lord's life will be bound up in the bundle of the living in the care of the LORD your God, but your enemies' lives he will fling away as from the pocket of a sling.
30 When the LORD has done for my lord all the good he has promised you and has made you leader over Israel,
31 my lord will not have this as a stumbling block or a weight on his conscience, that he shed blood for no reason or took vengeance himself. And when the LORD has done well by my lord, remember your servant."
32 David said to Abigail, "Blessed is the LORD, the God of Israel, who sent you today to meet me!
33 Blessed is your good judgment, and blessed are you, for keeping me today from bloodshed and from taking matters into my own hand!
34 For as surely as the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, who kept me from harming you, if you had not come quickly to meet me, not one male would have been left to Nabal by daybreak."
35 David accepted from her what she had brought him, and he told her, "Go home in peace. You see, I have listened to you and granted your request."
36 Abigail came to Nabal, and there he was in his house holding a feast like a king's feast. Nabal's heart was merry, and he was very drunk, so she told him nothing at all, little or much, until daybreak.
37 In the morning, when Nabal had slept off the wine, his wife told him all this, and his heart died within him and he turned to stone.
38 About ten days later the LORD struck Nabal, and he died.
39 When David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, "Blessed is the LORD, who took up my case over the insult I suffered from Nabal and held his servant back from doing wrong! The LORD has brought Nabal's wrongdoing back on his own head." Then David sent word to Abigail, proposing to take her as his wife.
40 David's servants came to Abigail at Carmel and told her, "David has sent us to you to take you as his wife."
41 She rose, bowed with her face to the ground, and said, "Here is your servant, a slave to wash the feet of my lord's servants."
42 Abigail quickly got up and rode off on the donkey, with five of her young women following her. She went with David's messengers and became his wife.
43 David had also married Ahinoam of Jezreel, and both of them became his wives.
44 Saul had given his daughter Michal, David's wife, to Palti son of Laish, from Gallim.