1 Samuel 25: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Samuel dies and is buried at Ramah, and David moves down to the wilderness. David asks a rich sheep owner named Nabal for food, since David's men had protected Nabal's shepherds, but Nabal insults him and refuses; David arms four hundred men to kill every male in Nabal's household. Nabal's wife Abigail rides out with a large gift and persuades David to turn back from bloodshed and revenge, and about ten days later the LORD strikes Nabal and he dies. David then marries Abigail, and the chapter notes his marriage to Ahinoam and Saul's giving of David's wife Michal to another man.

Claim by Claim

1. 25:1
   • Samuel died.
   • All Israel gathered together.
   • They lamented Samuel.
   • They buried Samuel at his house in Ramah.
   • David arose and went down to the wilderness of Paran.
2. 25:2
   • There was a man in Maon.
   • His property and business were in Carmel.
   • The man was very great.
   • He had three thousand sheep.
   • He had a thousand goats.
   • He was shearing his sheep in Carmel.
3. 25:3
   • The man's name was Nabal.
   • His wife's name was Abigail.
   • The woman was of good understanding.
   • The woman was beautiful in appearance.
   • The man was harsh.
   • The man was evil in his dealings.
   • The man was a Calebite, of the house of Caleb.
4. 25:4
   • David heard in the wilderness that Nabal was shearing his sheep.
5. 25:5
   • David sent out ten young men.
   • David told the young men to go up to Carmel.
   • David told them to go to Nabal.
   • David told them to greet Nabal in his name.
6. 25:6
   • David told them to say a greeting to him, wishing him life and prosperity; the wording is obscure and can mean either 'long life to you' or 'thus to him who lives in prosperity'.
   • They were to say, Peace be to you.
   • They were to say, Peace be to your house.
   • They were to say, Peace be to all that you have.
7. 25:7
   • David said he had heard that Nabal had shearers.
   • David said Nabal's shepherds had been with his men.
   • David said his men did not harm or shame the shepherds.
   • David said nothing of theirs was missing the whole time they were in Carmel.
8. 25:8
   • David told Nabal to ask his young men, and they would tell him.
   • David asked that his young men find favor in Nabal's eyes.
   • David said they had come on a good day.
   • David asked Nabal to give whatever his hand found to his servants and to his son David.
9. 25:9
   • David's young men came to Nabal.
   • They spoke to Nabal all these words in David's name.
   • Then they ceased and waited.
10. 25:10
    • Nabal answered David's servants.
    • Nabal asked, Who is David?
    • Nabal asked, Who is the son of Jesse?
    • Nabal said many servants nowadays break away from their masters.
11. 25:11
    • Nabal asked whether he should take his bread, his water, and the meat he had slaughtered for his shearers.
    • Nabal asked whether he should give it to men whose origin he did not know.
12. 25:12
    • David's young men turned back on their way.
    • They returned and came to David.
    • They told David all these words.
13. 25:13
    • David told his men to gird on every man his sword.
    • Each man girded on his sword.
    • David also girded on his sword.
    • About four hundred men went up after David.
    • Two hundred stayed with the baggage.
14. 25:14
    • One of the young men told Abigail, Nabal's wife.
    • He said David had sent messengers from the wilderness to greet their master.
    • He said Nabal screamed at and abused them.
15. 25:15
    • The young man said the men were very good to them.
    • He said they were not harmed or shamed.
    • He said nothing of theirs went missing the whole time they went about with them.
    • He said this was while they were in the fields.
16. 25:16
    • The young man said the men were a wall to them by night and by day.
    • He said this was the whole time they were with them keeping the sheep.
17. 25:17
    • The young man told Abigail to know and consider what she would do.
    • He said evil was determined against their master.
    • He said evil was determined against all his household.
    • He said Nabal was a worthless man, so that no one could speak to him.
18. 25:18
    • Abigail hurried.
    • Abigail took two hundred loaves of bread.
    • She took two skins of wine.
    • She took five prepared sheep.
    • She took five measures of parched grain.
    • She took a hundred clusters of raisins.
    • She took two hundred cakes of figs.
    • She laid them on donkeys.
19. 25:19
    • Abigail told her young men to go on before her.
    • She said she would come after them.
    • She did not tell her husband Nabal.
20. 25:20
    • Abigail rode on the donkey.
    • She came down under the cover of the hill.
    • David and his men were coming down toward her.
    • She met them.
21. 25:21
    • David had said that in vain he had guarded all that this man had in the wilderness.
    • David said nothing of all that belonged to him was missing.
    • David said the man had repaid him evil for good.
22. 25:22
    • David swore that God should do so to the enemies of David, and more also.
    • David swore he would not leave alive by morning light any male of all that belonged to Nabal.
23. 25:23
    • Abigail saw David.
    • She hurried and got down from the donkey.
    • She fell before David on her face.
    • She bowed to the ground.
24. 25:24
    • Abigail fell at David's feet.
    • She said the iniquity should be on her alone.
    • She asked to be allowed to speak in his hearing.
    • She asked him to hear the words of his handmaid.
25. 25:25
    • Abigail asked that her lord pay no attention to this worthless man Nabal.
    • She said the man was exactly what his name said he was.
    • She said his name was Nabal, meaning fool.
    • She said folly was with him.
    • She said she had not seen the young men her lord had sent.
26. 25:26
    • Abigail swore by the life of the LORD and by the life of David's soul.
    • She said the LORD had withheld David from coming into bloodshed.
    • She said the LORD had withheld David from saving himself with his own hand.
    • She said, Let your enemies be as Nabal.
    • She said, Let those who seek evil against my lord be as Nabal.
27. 25:27
    • Abigail said she had brought this gift to her lord.
    • She asked that it be given to the young men who follow her lord.
28. 25:28
    • Abigail asked David to forgive the trespass of his handmaid.
    • She said the LORD would certainly make her lord a sure house.
    • She said her lord fights the battles of the LORD.
    • She said that evil has not been found in David all his days; the wording can also be a wish that no evil be found in him.
29. 25:29
    • Abigail said a man had risen to pursue David and to seek his life.
    • She said the soul of her lord would be bound in the bundle of life with the LORD his God.
    • She said the LORD would sling out the souls of David's enemies as from the hollow of a sling.
30. 25:30
    • Abigail spoke of a time when the LORD would have done to her lord all the good he had spoken concerning him.
    • She spoke of the LORD appointing David ruler over Israel.
31. 25:31
    • Abigail said that then this would be no grief or stumbling of heart to her lord.
    • She named the cause as having shed blood without cause.
    • She named the cause as her lord having avenged himself.
    • She said that when the LORD dealt well with her lord, he should remember his handmaid.
32. 25:32
    • David said to Abigail, Blessed be the LORD God of Israel.
    • David said the LORD had sent her that day to meet him.
33. 25:33
    • David said, Blessed be your discernment.
    • David said, Blessed be you.
    • David said she had kept him that day from coming into bloodshed.
    • David said she had kept him from avenging himself with his own hand.
34. 25:34
    • David swore by the life of the LORD God of Israel.
    • David said the LORD had kept him back from harming her.
    • David said that if she had not hurried and come to meet him, no male belonging to Nabal would have been left alive by morning light.
35. 25:35
    • David received from her hand what she had brought him.
    • David told her to go up in peace to her house.
    • David said he had listened to her voice.
    • David said he had accepted her person.
36. 25:36
    • Abigail came to Nabal.
    • Nabal was holding a feast in his house like the feast of a king.
    • Nabal's heart was merry within him.
    • Nabal was very drunk.
    • She told him nothing, small or great, until morning light.
37. 25:37
    • In the morning the wine had gone out of Nabal.
    • His wife told him these things.
    • His heart died within him.
    • He became as a stone.
38. 25:38
    • About ten days passed.
    • The LORD struck Nabal.
    • Nabal died.
39. 25:39
    • David heard that Nabal was dead.
    • David said, Blessed be the LORD.
    • David said the LORD had pleaded the cause of his reproach from the hand of Nabal.
    • David said the LORD had kept his servant from evil.
    • David said the LORD had returned the wickedness of Nabal on his own head.
    • David sent and spoke with Abigail, to take her to him as wife.
40. 25:40
    • David's servants came to Abigail at Carmel.
    • They said David had sent them to her.
    • They said David sent them to take her to him as wife.
41. 25:41
    • Abigail arose.
    • She bowed with her face to the earth.
    • She said her handmaid would be a servant to wash the feet of the servants of her lord.
42. 25:42
    • Abigail hurried and arose.
    • She rode on a donkey.
    • Five of her maidens went after her.
    • She went after the messengers of David.
    • She became David's wife.
43. 25:43
    • David also took Ahinoam of Jezreel.
    • Both of them became David's wives.
44. 25:44
    • Saul had given his daughter Michal, David's wife, to Phalti son of Laish.
    • Phalti was from Gallim.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

25:1

Samuel was the prophet who had anointed Saul as Israel's first king and later anointed David; his death closes a long stretch of the story. Ramah was his home town. Burial "in his house" means on the family's own property, in a tomb belonging to the household, the normal practice, not burial under the floor of a dwelling. The wilderness of Paran is far to the south, in the Sinai region; some ancient copies read "Maon" here instead, which is the district the rest of the chapter takes place in.

25:2

This Carmel is a town in the hill country of Judah, several miles south of Hebron, not the famous Mount Carmel on the northern coast. Maon was a neighboring town. Wealth in this world was counted in livestock, so three thousand sheep and a thousand goats marks Nabal as one of the richest men in the region.

25:3

"From the family of Caleb" identifies Nabal's clan. Caleb was the man who, generations earlier, was given the territory around Hebron as his share of the land, so the name marks Nabal as belonging to one of the leading landholding families of the area.

25:4

Sheep-shearing was the year's payday for a livestock owner, and it was celebrated with a large feast and open-handed hospitality to neighbors and dependants. That is why David chooses this moment to send his request: at shearing time a rich man was expected to give generously.

25:5

To greet someone "in my name" meant the messengers were speaking as David's official representatives. How they were treated counted publicly as how David himself had been treated, which is why the insult in verse 10 is so serious.

25:6

The word behind "peace" is shalom, which means safety, health and everything going well, not just the absence of fighting. Repeating it over the man, his household and his property is a formal blessing, the polite opening of a request.

25:7

David's men had been camped in the same open country as Nabal's shepherds. An armed band in that position could either raid a flock or protect it from others who would; David is pointing out that he did the second. Payment for such protection was customary, though nothing had been formally agreed, which is what makes his request sit close to a demand.

25:8

"Your son David" is deferential speech, not a family claim. A man asking a favor of a wealthier or older man would call himself the other's "son" or "servant" as a courtesy. "A day of feasting" is the shearing celebration itself, when refusing a request for food was a public insult.

25:10

Calling David "the son of Jesse" instead of by name is a snub: it implies he is nobody, known only by an obscure father. The jab about runaway servants is aimed at David's situation: he was a fugitive from King Saul, leading a band of men who had left their own households and masters to follow him.

25:11

In that dry country, hauled and stored water was a valuable resource in its own right, so listing it alongside bread and meat is not a joke. Nabal is stacking up possessive pronouns: my bread, my water, my meat.

25:13

David at this point commands a private force of about six hundred men who had gathered around him while he was on the run from Saul. Leaving part of the force with the baggage was standard practice; those men were not being excluded from the action's rewards.

25:14

"Railed on them" means screamed abuse at them. The young man goes to Abigail rather than to Nabal, which tells you how the household was actually run.

25:17

The King James "son of Belial" is a Hebrew idiom meaning something like "a man of worthlessness", a person of no honor, with whom normal dealing is impossible. It is an insult about character, not a name or a title.

25:18

The "measures" are seahs, a dry measure of roughly seven or eight liters each, so about forty liters of roasted grain in all. Wine was carried in whole animal skins sewn shut, not in bottles. The quantities are calculated: this is enough food for six hundred men, which is exactly the size of the force coming toward her.

25:20

The cover of the hill is a ravine or gully where the slope hid each party from the other until they were suddenly face to face, which is why the meeting happens so abruptly.

25:22

"May God punish David's enemies, and worse" is a standard oath formula, in which the speaker calls down an unnamed disaster on himself if he fails to do what he swears. The Hebrew text here reads "the enemies of David" rather than "David", many take this as an ancient copyist's softening, to avoid writing a curse against David himself; the old Greek translation simply reads "David." The phrase rendered "a single male" is a blunt Hebrew idiom, literally "anyone who urinates against a wall."

25:23

Getting down off the animal and lying face to the ground was the formal gesture of submission owed to a superior, and the ordinary way to open a plea for mercy. It says nothing about worship.

25:24

"Your servant" is the polite way a person addressed someone of higher standing, roughly like saying "I" while acknowledging the other's authority. Abigail uses it repeatedly through the speech; "my lord" is its counterpart for David.

25:25

In Hebrew a "fool" of this kind is not someone of low intelligence but someone morally senseless, coarse, aggressive, contemptuous of ordinary obligations. Whether Nabal was actually named this or given the nickname later is not clear; Abigail turns the word into her argument, in effect saying he is beneath David's notice.

25:26

"As surely as the LORD lives and as surely as you live" is a fixed oath formula, the strongest way of guaranteeing that what follows is true.

25:27

"Blessing" here simply means a present. The King James often uses the word this way for a gift given to secure goodwill.

25:28

"House" here means a family line that continues, descendants holding position after the man himself is dead. Abigail is saying David's line will endure, which is why he does not need to secure himself by killing today.

25:29

"Bound in the bundle of the living" draws on the practice of tying valuables or important documents into a pouch for safekeeping. The contrast is with a sling, the shepherd's weapon that hurls a stone away and out of sight.

25:31

"Remember your servant" is a request for future favor: she is asking that when David comes to power he keep her in mind. It is the closing move of a formal petition.

25:34

This is the same rough old phrase as verse 22. "Any that pisseth against the wall" meant every male in the household.

25:35

"Accepted thy person" translates a Hebrew phrase meaning literally "lifted your face," that is, granted the request of someone who was bowing low. It is the formal language of a ruler receiving a petition.

25:36

The feast is the shearing celebration. Being "in high spirits" translates a phrase about the heart being merry, the standard expression for the good mood produced by wine.

25:37

"His heart failed within him" uses heart in its Hebrew sense: the seat of a person's courage, will and vitality, not the emotions alone. "He became like a stone" describes him going rigid and unresponsive, the description fits a stroke, though the text does not name a cause.

25:38

"Smote" means struck. The narrator credits the death directly to God rather than to illness or to any human hand, which is the point being made: David kept his sword clean and Nabal died anyway.

25:39

"Took up my case" is courtroom language: David pictures God as the judge who has given a verdict in his favor, sparing him from settling the score himself. Sending messengers to negotiate a marriage, rather than going in person, was the ordinary formal procedure.

25:41

Washing the feet of arriving guests was the job of the lowliest servant in a household. Abigail accepts the proposal by claiming even that rank, a formal expression of humility, not a condition of the marriage.

25:42

The five attendants show her wealth and give her a proper escort. A woman of standing did not travel to a new husband alone.

25:43

This Jezreel is a village in the hill country of Judah near Carmel and Maon, not the northern valley of the same name. A man of standing having more than one wife was ordinary in this period, and for a leader it also built ties with the families involved.

25:44

Michal was Saul's daughter and had been given to David as his wife earlier in the story. By handing her to another man, Saul was treating the marriage as dissolved, and cutting David's tie by marriage to the royal family, which could otherwise support a claim on the throne.