1 Samuel 25:8-18

8 Ask your young men, and let them tell you. Be kind to my young men, since we have come on a special occasion. Please give us and your son David anything you can [spare].'"

9 When David's young men came to Nabal, they repeated all of this to him for David, and then they waited.

10 "Who is David?" Nabal answered David's servants. "Who is Jesse's son? So many servants nowadays are leaving their masters.

11 Should I take my bread, my water, and my meat that I butchered for my shearers and give them to men coming from who knows where?"

12 David's young men returned and told him all this.

13 "Each of you put on your swords!" David told his men. And everyone, including David, put on his sword. About four hundred men went with David, while two hundred men stayed with the supplies.

14 One of the young men told Abigail, Nabal's wife, "David sent messengers from the desert to greet our master, who yelled at them.

15 Those men were very good to us. They didn't mistreat us, and we found that nothing was missing wherever we went with them when we were in the fields.

16 They were a wall protecting us day and night as long as we were watching the sheep near them.

17 Now, consider what you should do because our master and his whole household are doomed. And he's such a worthless man that it's useless to talk to him."

18 So Abigail quickly took 200 loaves of bread, 2 full wineskins, 5 butchered sheep, a bushel of roasted grain, 100 bunches of raisins, and 200 fig cakes and loaded them on donkeys.

1 Samuel 25:8-18 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO FIRST SAMUEL 25

This chapter gives an account of the death of Samuel, and of the ill treatment David met with from Nabal; it begins with the death of Samuel, which was greatly lamented in Israel, 1Sa 25:1; it draws the character of Nabal, and his wife, 1Sa 25:2,3; records a message of David to him, by his young men, desiring he would send him some of his provisions made for his sheep shearers, 1Sa 25:4-9; and Nabal's ill-natured answer to him reported by the young men, which provoked David to arm against him, 1Sa 25:10-13,21,22; and this being told Abigail, the wife of Nabal, and a good character given of David and his men, and of the advantage Nabal's shepherds had received from them, and the danger his family was in through his ingratitude, 1Sa 25:14-17; she prepared a present to pacify David, went with it herself, and addressed him in a very handsome, affectionate, and prudent manner, 1Sa 25:18-31; and met with a kind reception, 1Sa 25:32-35; and the chapter is closed with an account of the death of Nabal, and of the marriage of Abigail to David, 1Sa 25:32-44.