Ten Days

Abigail returned to find Nabal in the house, holding a feast fit for a king. He was in high spirits and very drunk. While she had been meeting the armed men coming toward his household, he had been feasting; when she came home, she told him nothing until morning light.

The account had marked morning as the hour by which David intended to leave none of Nabal’s men alive. Now morning came to the household he had agreed to spare. Nabal was sober, and Abigail told her husband about the events she had kept from him through the night.

No answer from Nabal is recorded. His heart failed within him, and he became like a stone. The telling gives no words from Abigail after she delivered the news, only what happened to the man who heard it and the days that passed afterward.

About ten days later, the account says, the LORD struck Nabal dead. His death came after the danger from David’s men had been turned aside, after Abigail had returned, and after she had told him what had happened. The household had been spared the sword; Nabal’s own story ended here.

David heard that Nabal was dead. “Blessed be the LORD, who has upheld my cause against the reproach of Nabal and has restrained His servant from evil. For the LORD has brought the wickedness of Nabal down upon his own head.” In his response, David spoke both of Nabal’s wrongdoing and of the evil he himself had been restrained from doing.

Then David sent word to Abigail, asking for her in marriage. His servants came to her at Carmel, the place to which his first messengers had carried their request for provisions. This time the message was for Abigail, and the answer would be hers to give.

“David has sent us to take you as his wife.” The servants delivered their purpose plainly. The account records no further exchange before Abigail rose and bowed facedown, answering the men who had come from the person she had stopped in the ravine.

“Here is your maidservant, ready to serve and to wash the feet of my lord’s servants.” She answered the request for marriage with an offer of service. Her words reached even to the servants standing before her, the messengers through whom David had asked her to come.

Abigail hurried and got on a donkey. Five of her maidens attended her, and she followed David’s messengers. Once before, her haste and a donkey had carried her toward him with provisions and a plea; now she went in answer to his request, accompanied by the women who travelled with her.

She became David’s wife. The account gives no further words from her at their meeting, no description of a celebration, and no account of what she felt as she left. It records her answer, her departure, her five attendants, and the marriage that followed.

The woman who had asked David to remember his maidservant now belonged to his household as his wife. Before he became ruler over Israel, she had met him on the road and persuaded him to turn back from bloodshed. That encounter remained part of their story as the account added the other marriages beside hers.

David had also married Ahinoam of Jezreel, and she and Abigail were both his wives. Saul had given his daughter Michal, David’s wife, to Palti son of Laish, who was from Gallim.