I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.
Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Samuel 25-27.
In the account of David, Nabal, and Abigail, between Abigail and Nabal, it was Abigail who recognized the reality of David’s rising power. This account takes a little work on our part to understand what was going on here. David and his men were in the wilderness of southern Judah. While in that area they did a good bit of bandit suppression. I am reading between the lines a bit to reach this conclusion, but I base doing so on what Nabal’s men said to Abigail and the account from earlier of David protecting the town of Keilah. When sheep shearing time came around David sent messengers to Nabal requesting a voluntary contribution to support his efforts. Nabal did not just refuse to make a contribution of support to David and his men, he insulted David by saying he was no better than a bandit. We will never really know what Nabal was thinking when he issued this insult. However, it reads as if he thought that David’s only merit was as a subordinate of King Saul and now that he was on the outs with King Saul was no longer someone to be reckoned with. Perhaps Nabal also thought that the power he commanded because of his wealth protected him from David.
At least one of Nabal’s servants recognized the danger inherent in Nabal’s rudeness and went to Abigail. Abigail recognized that not only had David done Nabal, and thus her, a service by protecting their men while they tended to sheep, but he was a man to be reckoned with in his own right. Abigail recognized that the reason David was out of favor with King Saul was because he had his own power base. When Nabal died a short time later, David sought an alliance of marriage with Abigail, which Abigail quickly accepted. David recognized that he needed greater wealth to support himself and his men if he was not going to become a bandit. Abigail recognized that David was a rising power in the land and chose to ally herself with him. The passage mentions that David married a second woman during this time period (bringing him to a total of three wives, although King Saul in the meantime had given David’s first wife to someone else as their wife). It seems likely that this other woman whom David married also brought wealth and/or connections to David (likely both).
Meanwhile some of the other locals became unhappy with David’s rising power(perhaps because the presence of David and his men kept them from raiding their wealthy neighbors) and let King Saul know where David was. Once again, David demonstrates that he could kill King Saul if he desired to do so. However, David recognizes that sooner or later King Saul will succeed in trapping him. So, he puts himself under the protection of the Philistine king of Gath. While there, David raided the non-Israelite towns in the area but reported to the King of Gath that he had raided towns of Israel. I had always thought that the towns David raided were part of neither the Israelite alliance nor the Philistine alliance, but reading the passage today makes me think that these towns may have been nominally allied with the Philistines. The reason I came to that last conclusion is that David told the King of Gath that he had raided Judean towns or towns of those allied with Israel and that he killed everyone in the towns he did raid so that no one would report where he had raided to the King of Gath.