By
Patsy Norwood © 2025 All Rights Reserved! Any and all commercial use of this study is
prohibited!
I Samuel 25: 1 – 42; 27:3; 30: 1-18; II Samuel 2: 2-3; 3:3; 17:25; I Chronicles 2:16-17; 3:1
In our last
lesson, we left David, and his mighty men armed and galloping toward Nabal’s
estate with the intention and purpose of destroying him … in fact they planned
to kill him and all the males of his household!
David has revenge on his mind! Revenge is never a good thing, is it? It not only hurts the intended person, but it
also hurts the intended person’s family, and might I add, it also emotionally
hurts the person who is meting out the revenge even though they may not realize
it at the time!
Let’s see what
happens next by picking up with verse 14 …
Verse 14: Now one of the young men told Abigail, Nabal’s wife,
saying, “Look, David sent messengers from the wilderness to greet our master;
and he reviled them.
Look at what one of the young men
did, one of the young men that had witnessed the exchange between Nabal and
David’s men, he went to Abigail and told her what had happened. Why did the young man go to Abigail and not
Nabal? Let’s just pause here and look at what this
implies about Nabal …
He was unapproachable …
He was ill-natured …
Others walked on eggshells around
him …
His employees were afraid to talk
with him …
He made others feel uncomfortable
…
He was ungoverned …
Hmmmm, this verse also says that
Nabal ‘reviled’ David’s men, what does ‘reviled’ in this context mean? According to the Lexicon, it means …
Spoke to in anger … Nabal spoke to David’s men in anger
Scorn … Nabal scorned them
Railed on them/flew upon them …
Nabal verbally attacked them
In other words, Nabal didn’t hold
back when verbally attacking David’s men.
This young man, realizing the
seriousness of what Nabal had done (David was God’s appointed king in addition
to the protector of Nabal’s flocks.) made haste to tell Abigail. With an attitude such as Nabal’s, it seems
reasonable to assume this was not the first time Abigail had been brought into
a situation of Nabal’s doing. Neighbors
far and wide likely knew of Nabal’s disposition.
It seems that Abigail could have
been/most likely was a wife who lived in and amongst constant controversy!
verses 15 &
16: But the men were very good to us, and we were not hurt, nor
did we miss anything as long as we accompanied them, when we were in the
fields. 16 They were a wall to us both by night and day, all
the time we were with them keeping the sheep.
The young man reporting to Abigail
goes on to tell her, in essence that Nabal’s sheep were safe, David’s men were
good to them and as a result, they and their flocks had been and were
protected.
It seems that the young man is
trying to give Abigail a full picture of the situation and to make her see what
Nabal refused to acknowledge.
Verse 17: Now therefore, know and consider what you
will do, for harm is determined against our master and against all his
household. For he is such a scoundrel that one cannot
speak to him.”
It’s clear here that the young man
expected Abigail to do something. He
tells her that Nabal and his household are about to be harmed. And then he finishes up with derogatory comments
about his master.
He is a scoundrel … meaning
worthless, wicked, rascally, lawless
No one can ‘speak’ to him …
meaning he refuses to see reason
Abigail’s next actions show us
that both she and the young man understood the significance of what Nabal had
done by his actions. The young man, in
reporting to Abigail, had done what he could.
The situation was now before Abigail, what would she do?
Verse 18: Then Abigail made haste and took two
hundred loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five sheep already
dressed, five seahs of roasted grain, one hundred clusters of
raisins, and two hundred cakes of figs, and loaded them on
donkeys.
Abigail springs into action! Her family’s and the families of many others’
future were at stake. She must focus on
what she could do, not what she couldn’t!
Look at all the food she gathers …
200 loaves of bread
2 skins of wine
5 sheep already dressed
5 seahs of roasted grain (seah: a measure of flour or grain approximately 1 ½
pecks)
100 clusters of raisins
200 cakes of figs
Remember there is a feast going on,
so all this food was likely already prepared.
Verse 19: And she said to her servants, “Go on
before me; see, I am coming after you.” But she did not tell her husband Nabal.
Abigail did not tell her husband …
Was he too drunk to understand
what he had done … maybe
Would he have cared even if he had
been sober … it doesn’t seem as if he would
At any rate, we can safely assume
that if Abigail had told Nabal her plan, whether he was drunk or sober, he
would assuredly have forbidden her from carrying it out. He likely would have ridiculed her and thought
her actions were silly and needless. So,
Abigail kept her mouth shut and tried to save her family without the help of
her husband.
She sent her servants with all the
food she had gathered before her, and she followed after. Do you think she carefully planned her
strategy … food for the hungry tummies then the reasoning?
Can Abigail undo
what her husband has done? We’ll find
out next week in our next lesson. I’ll
meet you back here next week.
patsy @ From
This Heart of Mine
~ a place for women to
gather and study God's Word ~
Sources used for this
study:
Various
translations of the Holy Bible
Various
commentaries
Several
trusted and biblically sound online sources
Dictionary
of New Testament Background, Editors: Craig A Evans & Stanley E. Porter
Archaeological
Study Bible
All
the Women of the Bible by Edith Deen
Daughters
of Eve by Lottie Beth Hobbs
Halley’s
Bible Handbook by H. H. Halley
Enjoyed your lesson on my favorite woman in the Bible. What a woman!!!!
ReplyDeleteThank you! She definitely was a wise, prudent and strong woman!
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