1 Samuel 25:1-44

And 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. ² And 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. ³ Now 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. ⁴ And David heard in the wilderness that Nabal did shear his sheep. ⁵ And 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: ⁶ And thus shall ye say to him that liveth in prosperity, Peace be both to thee, and peace be to thine house, and peace be unto all that thou hast. ⁷ And now I have heard that thou hast shearers: now thy shepherds which were with us, we hurt them not, neither was there ought missing unto them, all the while they were in Carmel. ⁸ Ask thy young men, and they will shew thee. Wherefore let the young men find favour in thine eyes: for we come in a good day: give, I pray thee, whatsoever cometh to thine hand unto thy servants, and to thy son David. ⁹ And when David’s young men came, they spake to Nabal according to all those words in the name of David, and ceased. ¹⁰ And Nabal answered David’s servants, and said, Who is David? and who is the son of Jesse? there be many servants now a days that break away every man from his master. ¹¹ Shall 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? ¹² So David’s young men turned their way, and went again, and came and told him all those sayings. ¹³ And David said unto his men, Gird ye 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. ¹⁴ But one of the young men told Abigail, Nabal’s wife, saying, Behold, David sent messengers out of the wilderness to salute our master; and he railed on them. ¹⁵ But the men were very good unto us, and we were not hurt, neither missed we any thing, as long as we were conversant with them, when we were in the fields: ¹⁶ They were a wall unto us both by night and day, all the while we were with them keeping the sheep. ¹⁷ Now therefore know and consider what thou wilt 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. ¹⁸ Then Abigail made haste, and took two hundred loaves, and two bottles of wine, and five sheep ready dressed, and five measures of parched corn, and an hundred clusters of raisins, and two hundred cakes of figs, and laid them on asses. ¹⁹ And she said unto her servants, Go on before me; behold, I come after you. But she told not her husband Nabal. ²⁰ And it was so, as she rode on the ass, that she came down by the covert on the hill, and, behold, David and his men came down against her; and she met them. ²¹ Now David had said, Surely in vain have I kept all that this fellow hath in the wilderness, so that nothing was missed of all that pertained unto him: and he hath requited me evil for good. ²² So and more also do God unto the enemies of David, if I leave of all that pertain to him by the morning light any that pisseth against the wall. ²³ And when Abigail saw David, she hasted, and lighted off the ass, and fell before David on her face, and bowed herself to the ground, ²⁴ And fell at his feet, and said, Upon me, my lord, upon me let this iniquity be: and let thine handmaid, I pray thee, speak in thine audience, and hear the words of thine handmaid. ²⁵ Let not my lord, I pray thee, 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 thine handmaid saw not the young men of my lord, whom thou didst send. ²⁶ Now therefore, my lord, as the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, seeing the Lord hath withholden thee from coming to shed blood, and from avenging thyself with thine own hand, now let thine enemies, and they that seek evil to my lord, be as Nabal. ²⁷ And now this blessing which thine handmaid hath brought unto my lord, let it even be given unto the young men that follow my lord. ²⁸ I pray thee, forgive the trespass of thine handmaid: for the Lord will certainly make my lord a sure house; because my lord fighteth the battles of the Lord, and evil hath not been found in thee all thy days. ²⁹ Yet a man is risen to pursue thee, and to seek thy soul: but the soul of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of life with the Lord thy God; and the souls of thine enemies, them shall he sling out, as out of the middle of a sling. ³⁰ And it shall come to pass, when the Lord shall have done to my lord according to all the good that he hath spoken concerning thee, and shall have appointed thee ruler over Israel; ³¹ That this shall be no grief unto thee, nor offence of heart unto my lord, either that thou hast shed blood causeless, or that my lord hath avenged himself: but when the Lord shall have dealt well with my lord, then remember thine handmaid. ³² And David said to Abigail, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, which sent thee this day to meet me: ³³ And blessed be thy advice, and blessed be thou, which hast kept me this day from coming to shed blood, and from avenging myself with mine own hand. ³⁴ For in very deed, as the Lord God of Israel liveth, which hath kept me back from hurting thee, except thou hadst hasted and come to meet me, surely there had not been left unto Nabal by the morning light any that pisseth against the wall. ³⁵ So David received of her hand that which she had brought him, and said unto her, Go up in peace to thine house; see, I have hearkened to thy voice, and have accepted thy person. ³⁶ And Abigail came to Nabal; and, behold, he held a feast in his house, like the feast of a king; and Nabal’s heart was merry within him, for he was very drunken: wherefore she told him nothing, less or more, until the morning light. ³⁷ But 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. ³⁸ And it came to pass about ten days after, that the Lord smote Nabal, that he died. ³⁹ And when David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, Blessed be the Lord, that hath pleaded the cause of my reproach from the hand of Nabal, and hath kept his servant from evil: for the Lord hath returned the wickedness of Nabal upon his own head. And David sent and communed with Abigail, to take her to him to wife. ⁴⁰ And when the servants of David were come to Abigail to Carmel, they spake unto her, saying, David sent us unto thee, to take thee to him to wife. ⁴¹ And she arose, and bowed herself on her face to the earth, and said, Behold, let thine handmaid be a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my lord. ⁴² And Abigail hasted, and arose and rode upon an ass, with five damsels of hers that went after her; and she went after the messengers of David, and became his wife. ⁴³ David also took Ahinoam of Jezreel; and they were also both of them his wives. ⁴⁴ But Saul had given Michal his daughter, David’s wife, to Phalti the son of Laish, which was of Gallim.

We’ve all heard the expression “played the fool.” It describes someone being tricked or stumbling into doing something they wouldn’t characteristically do. When the Bible describes someone as a fool and talks about foolishness it deals with something that is more consistent. The fool in Scripture typically describes the person living in rebellion to God. Psalm 53:1 says, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” That rebellion ends up corrupting and misguiding all of the person’s ways. In 1 Samuel 25, we are introduced to a man who, by every measure, is a fool. Even his name, “Nabal,” means “fool” and he lived up to it in this account in 1 Samuel 25. In 1 Samuel 24, we saw how David responded to the opportunity given to him to enact vengeance against Saul, how he respected and spared Saul, and how he trusted in the Lord. In 1 Samuel 25, we find him in a different kind of relationship with Nabal. How would David respond to Nabal’s mistreatment and disrespect? In this passage, the Lord teaches us about how we are to approach the ungodly actions of others toward us and we will learn three important principles that we must consider when responding to such mistreatment.

First, we learn that the Lord uses the evil actions of others for good. The chapter begins by telling us that Samuel had died. While the rest of the nation mourned and carried out his funeral, David went and dwelt in “the wilderness of Paran,” in the northeastern corner of the Sinai Peninsula. It was the location of Kadesh-Barnea (Numbers 13-14) and on the edge of the promised land. The question that 1 Samuel 25:1 raised is answered in the rest of the chapter and that is “Without God’s prophet, how will God provide guidance for His anointed?” The answer comes in an unlikely way, but proves that God will continue to faithfully lead His king. Then we are introduced to an infamous figure, a man of Carmel named Nabal. Carmel is not to be confused with Mount Carmel (NW corner of Israel), but Carmel where Caleb went and conquered the large Canaanites and claimed the land that God had promised for his faith during the Israelite’s time in the wilderness. Nabal was a descendant of Caleb, but he was no Caleb. In fact, his name means “fool” and serves as an accurate depiction of his character. Wherever David and his men traveled and stayed, they seem to have tried to do good for the people they were around and interacted with. Nabal was very wealthy and was a goat and sheep farmer. David and his men provided protection for Nabal, his men, and his animals. When David sent his men to ask for sustenance for the services, Nabal responded by dismissing David as nothing to him; no thank you, no gift, no nothing. It showed a total disregard for God and His anointed and it was a personal insult to David and his men who had greatly benefited Nabal. In response, David and his men gathered up their swords and 400 of David’s 600 men went to settle the score with Nabal. In contrast to 1 Samuel 24, where David practiced great restraint and grace in sparing Saul as he trusted the Lord, this wass a situation where David was ready to take matters into his own hands and carry out vengeance. Despite this situation where David was wronged and handled it wrongly, there was good that would come from it. In verse 3, we are introduced to an important figure in this story, a woman named Abigail, the wife of Nabal. God would use her to bring good from it all. It is a reminder to us that God allows the evil actions of others to accomplish a greater purpose in our lives for His glory. God would use Abigail to restrain David and further shape him into the king He wanted him to be.

Next, we learn that the Lord provides help for His people as they face evil. Upon hearing the news of what Nabal had done to David and what David was about to do, one of Nabal’s servants went to Abigail to inform her. Why did he go to Abigail and not Nabal? Simply because he knew Nabal was “a son of Belial” (v. 17), a description we saw earlier in 1 Samuel 2 referring to Eli’s two sons, Hophni and Phinehas. Abigail did the prudent thing and gathered some goods to take to David to go and make peace for her husband’s sake and David’s sake. When Abigail approached David, she pleaded with him, not on the basis of the innocence of her husband because she knew what he was, but on the basis of what kind of king David would be. She reminded him that if he took matters into his own hands and took vengeance on Nabal even if Nabal deserved it, that that would mean that David would claim the throne with blood on his hands. Further, the news of what David could have done would have circulated throughout Israel and made him out to be an unmerciful and unrighteous king in the eyes of the people. God sent Abigail to save David from himself. The answer as to where God would provide direction for His anointed was answered. He could provide it from anyone; in this case it was the righteous wife of a wicked man. David recognized God’s providence in using Abigail and that God had sent her to keep him from sin. This is a reminder to us that when we face temptation that there really never is an excuse for succumbing. We have been promised that God will always make a way of escape (1 Corinthians 10:13). The question is “Will we heed His counsel and take that way that He provides us?” Think about people in your life that God has sent your way to prevent you from falling into sin or continuing in it. You may have hated them at the time, but they were actually one of the greatest pieces of evidence of His love and grace in your life. Dale Ralph Davis rightly wrote, “What loving hands construct the roadblocks to our foolishness! What mercy sends frustration to our purposes! What kindness builds hindrances in our path!” God provides help for His people as we face evil and temptation.

Lastly, we learn that the Lord executes vengeance for evil. How many matters in our lives have we taken into our own hands when the Lord had a better way of handling it Himself? After stopping David, Abigail returned to her husband who had been feasting due to it being the time of year for shearing sheep. This was a time of great prosperity for a sheep farmer and Nabal celebrated. When Abigail returned, she found her husband drunken, not even aware that she had saved his life. Nabal also didn’t realize that being spared by David left him in even more severe hands with the Lord. His sin against the Lord’s anointed had not gone unnoticed and would not be unpunished. Abigail told her husband all that had happened the next morning and he seems to have passed out and went into a coma. Ten days later “The Lord smote Nabal, that he died.” David learned an important principle here that we would do well to learn. When it comes to matters of personal offense, we are best to leave the matter to God. Vengeance is His (Romans 12:17-21) and we must trust that He, as “the Judge of the all the earth” will “do right” (Genesis 18:25). James tells us that “the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God” (Romans 1:20). Upon the death of her husband, Abigail went to David and they were married. The detail is included that unrighteous Saul had given Michal, David’s first wife, to someone else and that David had also married Ahinoam from Jezreel. Regardless of the imperfect circumstances surrounding the matter (marrying multiple wives, etc.), we find that God provided David a godly wife and godly influence in Abigail. God took care of Nabal and God provided for David. He will do the same for us if we wait on Him.

The Apostle Paul wrote many years after this incident in David’s life, “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it” (1 Corinthians 10:13). It is a reminder that God does not bring nor allow anything into our lives to cause us harm. Instead, even in matters of temptation, He always provides what His people need to overcome. The question is will we trust Him when those times come? We must remember that with every mistreatment, persecution, difficulty, and temptation in life, God allows those things for a good purpose, He will provide help for us to honor Him in those situations, and He will take vengeance on all evil, now or in the future.