25 1 AND Samuel died ; and all Israel gathered themselves together, and lamented him, and buried him in his house at Ramah. And David arose, and went down to the wilderness of Paran. 2 And there was a man in Maon, whose possessions were in Carmel ; and the man was very great, and he had three thousand sheep, and a thousand goats : and he was shearing his sheep 3 in Carmel. Now the name of the man was Nabal ; and the name of his wife Abigail : and the woman was of good understanding, and of a beautiful countenance : but the man was churlish 4 and evil in his doings ; and he was of the house of Caleb. And David heard in the wilderness 5 that Nabal did shear his sheep. And David sent ten young men, and David said unto the 6 young men, Get you up to Carmel, and go to Nabal, and greet him in my name : and thus shall ye say to him that liveth in prosperity, Peace be both unto thee, and peace be to thine house, 7 and peace be unto all that thou hast. And now I have heard that thou hast shearers : thy shepherds have now been with us, and we did them no hurt, neither was there aught missing 8 unto them, all the while they were in Carmel. Ask thy young men, and they will tell thee : wherefore let the young men find favor in thine eyes ; for we come in a good day : give, I pray 9 thee, whatsoever cometh to thine hand, unto thy servants, and to thy son David. And when David’s young men came, they spake to Nabal according to all those words in the name of David, and ceased. Verses 10-31. Upon Nabal’s insolent reply, David starts to destroy him, but is met by Abigail, Nabal’s wife, with generous gifts and well reasoned deprecatory words. 32 And David said to Abigail, Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, which sent thee this day 33 to meet me : and blessed be thy wisdom, and blessed be thou, which hast kept me this day 34 from bloodguiltiness, and from avenging myself with mine own hand. For in very deed, as the LORD, the God of Israel, liveth, which hath withholden me from hurting thee, except thou hadst hastened and come to meet me, surely there had not been left unto Nabal by the morning 35 light so much as one man child. So David received of her hand that which she had brought him : and he said unto her, Go up in peace to thine house ; see, I have hearkened to thy voice, 36 and have accepted thy person. And Abigail came to Nabal ; and, behold, he held a feast in his house, like the feast of a king ; and Nabal’s heart was merry within him, for he was very 37 drunken : wherefore she told him nothing, less or more, until the morning light. And it came to pass in the morning, when the wine was gone out of Nabal, that his wife told him these 38 things, and his heart died within him, and he became as a stone. And it came to pass about 39 ten days after, that the LORD smote Nabal, that he died. And when David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, Blessed be the LORD, that hath pleaded the cause of my reproach from the hand of Nabal, and hath kept back his servant from evil : and the evil-doing of Nabal hath the LORD returned upon his own head. And David sent and spake concerning Abigail, to take her 40 to him to wife. And when the servants of David were come to Abigail to Carmel, they spake 41 unto her, saying, David hath sent us unto thee, to take thee to him to wife. And she arose, and bowed herself with her face to the earth, and said, Behold, thine handmaid is a servant to 42 wash the feet of the servants of my lord. And Abigail hastened, and arose, and rode upon an ass, with five damsels of hers that followed her ; and she went after the messengers of David,

43 and became his wife. David also took Ahinoam of Jezreel; and they became both of them 44 his wives. Now Saul had given Michal his daughter, David’s wife, to Palti the son of Laish, which was of Gallim.

25 : 1. Death of Samuel. The death was like the life; it was the gathering up of the feet into the bed, the calmest lying down to die; the whole inspired record of it is the three solemn words, “And Samuel died.” So giveth He His beloved rest. He is buried in his own house at Ramah: there he was born; thither probably he withdrew at the desecration of Shiloh; thence he judged Israel; there he laid down and died. Around him were the lamentations of his people. It is written with expressness of emphasis, “All the Israelites were gathered together, and lamented him and buried him.” All had known him—the tall figure, mantle-clad, the long white locks, the reverend countenance—they should see them no more; no more hear that voice of wise counsel and of brave rebuke. Another mighty one had passed away; one who, like Moses and Joshua, had inaugurated a new dispensation; he too was gone—the great prophet, the gifted seer, the upright judge, the inspired hero, he had passed away: the very heart of the nation sighed out its loving, weeping requiem. But who among them all mourned as that son of Jesse, on whose head he had at God’s command poured the anointing oil, as he arose and went down to the wilderness of Paran? Doubtless in those waste places he heard again in living memory the echoes of the prevailing cry of him who was so great among those that call upon the name of the Lord. Doubtless his own discipline was perfected in this new sorrow; but he learned in losing Samuel to lean more simply and alone on Samuel’s God. Wilberforce.

If David’s visible deeds were greater and more dazzling than Samuel’s, there can be no doubt that David’s blaze of glory would have been impossible without Samuel’s less conspicuous but far more influential career, and that all the greatness of which the following century boasts goes back to him as its real author. Ewald.—Coming at the close of a long line of warrior judges, with no great military exploits, no deeds of valor to recommend him, he had, single-handed, done what none of his predecessors had effected;—he had brought those tribes of Israel, whom divisions from within and invasions from without had reduced well-nigh to a state of anarchy, beneath the restraints of law, mildly and equitably yet firmly and resolutely administered. He had united the nation and breathed throughout it something of a public, patriotic spirit. Samuel is one of the very few we read of as taking any prominent and important part in public affairs, on whose conduct throughout there rests not a single stain. He was a pure, disinterested, self-sacrificing patriot. He served or he governed, he took rule or he laid it down, as the interests of his country required. But his patriotism was based upon his piety. His love to Israel, strong as it was, flowed from and was subject to his love to Israel’s God. Through the whole of his long and varied life, whether assisting as a child in the services of the sanctuary, or associated as a young man with Eli, and thrown into contact with his unworthy sons, or acting for thirty years and more, after Eli’s death, as the last of the judges, guiding the country through a period of confusion and humiliation to a haven of order and of rest, or during the remainder of his days executing the office of the first of the prophets—everywhere and at all times the one guiding, controlling motive of Samuel’s life was to do the will, to establish the dominion, to promote the glory of the Lord God of his fathers, the one Jehovah, God of heaven and earth. Hanna.

Moses had given the people their law, but Samuel in the schools of the prophets provided for them that education without which a written law was powerless, and called forth also and regulated that living energy in the prophetic order which, claiming an all but equal authority, modified and developed it, and continually increased its breadth and force, until the last prophet, Jesus of Nazareth, with supreme and Divine power re-enacted it as the religion of the whole world. And as neither his educational institutions nor the prophetic order, whose ordinary duties were closely connected with these schools, could have flourished without internal quietness and security, Samuel also established the Jewish monarchy, which was ideally also necessary, because the Messiah must not only be priest and prophet, but before all things a king. R. P. S.

The last representative of the old Judges, the first of the regular succession of Prophets, the inaugurator of the new monarchy, he occupied the most trying of all positions, to stand between the Old and the New, and to mediate successfully between them. He lived from one age into another, and threw his full sympathy—most difficult of achievements—into the wants of both periods. His sublime figure stands out in the pages of Holy Writ as a signal example of Faith, of Patience, of Integrity, of Self-sacrifice, through a long and trying career, fulfilling the promise of those early days in Shiloh when “he grew on, and was in favor with the Lord and with man.” A. F. K.—The close, and indeed the whole course of Samuel’s public life, were in beautiful harmony with its commencement. He fulfilled all a fond and pious mother’s hopes. He disappointed none. God was the centre around which he, as well as heaven, turned. In all his difficulties he repaired to God for counsel. The laws which governed his acts as a statesman and his decisions as a judge were those of God’s Word; and, unlike this world’s statesmen, never turned aside by considerations of expediency, of this or that present advantage, he steered his course by those principles of eternal truth and justice which give consistency to conduct. Guthrie.

Nabal and Abigail.

Nabal’s home was in the city of Maon, and his possessions (or, his business) about a mile to the north at Carmel. Carmel was a city in the mountainous country of Judah, about seven miles S.S.E. of Hebron. The site is marked by the ruins of a large town bearing the name Kurmul. In its neighborhood much of David’s outlaw life was spent. A. F. K.—There are three places whose identification is undoubted, within five miles of each other, in a line from south to north, a little east of Juttah, Maon, Carmel, and Ziph, now Main, Kurmul, and Zif, all three immortalized by their connection with the romance of David’s early history. Tell Main or Maon, the possession of Caleb and the birthplace of Nabal, stands on a hill surrounded by waste pasture lands, where David and his men were bathing when the treacherous Ziphites brought Saul down upon them. Here ranged the three thousand sheep and the one thousand goats of Nabal. The hill is more elevated than the rest, but the ruins less distinct, though perforated by caves as numerous. Down the hill and up the next rise, we soon reach the extensive ruins of Kurmul, the Carmel where Nabal sheared his flocks, the native place of Abigail. Three or four miles north we examined the ruins of Ziph, as deserted as its neighbors, with very little left above ground, and not a vestige of the woods where David lurked: all is bare and desolate. Tristram.

3. Nabal was, according to his name, foolish; yet rich and mighty. Earthly possessions are not always accompanied with wit and grace. Even the line of faithful Caleb will afford an ill-conditioned Nabal. Virtue is not like unto lands, inheritable. Abigail (which signified her father’s joy) had sorrow enough to be matched with so unworthy a husband. If her father had meant she should have had joy in herself or in her life, he had not disposed her to a husband, though rich, yet wicked. It is like he married her to the wealth, not to the man. Many a child is cast away upon riches. Wealth in our matches should be as some grains or scruples in the balance, superadded to the gold of virtuous qualities, to weigh down the scales: when it is made the substance of the weight, and good qualities the appendance, there is but one earth poised with another; wheresoever it is done, it is a wonder if either the children prove not the parents’ sorrow, or the parents theirs. Bp. II.

5-8. No envying of his prosperity—no grudging to him his abundance; but only the Christian wish that he might have God’s blessing with it, and that it might all turn to good. It was the time of sheep-shearing, when the flocks were probably counted and the increase over last year ascertained; and by a fine old custom it was commonly the season of liberality and kindness. David gently reminded Nabal that he had come at this good time; then he hinted at the services which he and his followers had done him; but to show that he did not wish to press hard on him, he merely asked him to give what might come to his hand; though, as the anointed king of Israel, he might have assumed a more commanding title, he asked him to give it to “thy son, David.” So modest an application deserved different treatment. W. G. B.

Thanks to the watchful care of David and his men, Nabal had not suffered the slightest loss (verses 15, 16); and the rich increase of his flocks crowned another year’s prosperity. It was quite in the spirit of an Eastern chieftain in such circumstances, that David sent what would be a specially respectful embassy of ten of his men, with a cordial message of congratulation, in the expectation that at such a time some acknowledgment would be made to those who not only deserved, but must have sorely needed the assistance of a rich Judean proprietor. But Nabal received David’s message with language the most insulting to an Oriental. A. E.—In point of fact, David had a right to a share of Nabal’s profits. The harvest was in part David’s harvest, for without David it never could have been reaped. The sheep were in part David’s sheep, for without David not a sheep would have been spared by the marauders of the hills. Not a sheaf of corn was carried to Nabal’s barn: nor a night passed in repose by Nabal’s shepherds, but what told of the share of David in the saving of that sheaf, and the procurement of that repose (not the less real because it was past and unseen). The right which the soldier has by law to his pay was the right which David had by unwritten law; a right resting on the fact that his services were indispensable for the harvest. Robertson.

13. The provocation was great, and David was not proof against it. Arming about four hundred of his men, he set out for Carmel, with the determination to right himself and take signal vengeance. Assuredly this was not the lesson which God had hitherto made David learn, nor that which He wished His anointed to teach to others. It was the zeal of the sons of Hoanerges, not the meekness of Him who was David’s great Antitype. And so God kept His servant from presumptuous sin. A. E.—Is this thy voice, O David? Can the man after God’s own heart speak thus unadvisedly with his lips? Has he been so long in the school of affliction, where he should have learned patience, and yet so passionate? Is this he who, but the other day, spared him who sought his life, and yet now will not spare anything that belongs to him who had only put an affront upon his messengers? He who, at other times, used to be calm and considerate, is now put into such a heat by a few hard words, that nothing will atone for them but the blood of a whole family. Lord, what is man! What are the best of men, when God leaves them to themselves to try them, that they may know what is in their hearts! H.

14-27. Wicked Nabal hath in his house a wise and good servant, a prudent and worthy wife. That wise servant is careful to advertise his mistress of the danger; his prudent mistress is careful to prevent it. The lives of all his family were now in hazard; she dares not commit this business to the fidelity of a messenger, but, forgetting her sex, puts herself into the errand. Her foot is not slow; her hand is not empty. According to the offence, she frames her satisfaction. Her husband refused to give; she brings a bountiful gift: her husband gave ill words; she sweetens them with a meek and humble depreciation; her husband could say, “Who is David?” she falls at his feet: her husband dismisses David’s men empty; she brings her servants laden with provision; as if it had been only meant to ease the repelled messengers of the carriage, not to scant them of the required benevolence. Bp. H.

28-31. Not content with entreating his forbearance, she acknowledged him as the champion who fought the battles of Jehovah, and as the future leader of Israel. Deploring the persecution he suffered from Saul, she used those powerful and oft-quoted figures: “The soul of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of life with Jehovah thy God: and the souls of thine enemies, them shall He sling out, as out of the middle of a sling.” P. S.—The figure is taken from the practice of binding up valuables in a bag or bundle. Of course the immediate reference is only to the safe preservation of David’s temporal life. To sling out is a vigorous metaphor to express total rejection. A. F. K.

She applauds David for the good service he had done against the common enemies of his country, the glory of which great achievements she hoped he would not stain by any personal revenge. My lord fighteth the battles of the Lord against the Philistines, and therefore he will leave it to God to fight his battles against those that affront him. “Evil has not been found in thee all thy days, and therefore thou wilt not begin now, nor do a thing which Saul will improve for the justifying of his malice against thee.” She foretells the glorious issue of his present troubles. “Thou shalt abide under the special protection of the Divine Providence.” The bundle of life is with the Lord our God, for in his hand our breath is, and our times. Those are safe, and may be easy, that have him for their Protector. She reserves this argument for the last, as a very powerful one with so good a man: That the less he indulged his passion, the more he consulted his peace and the repose of his own conscience; that if he should avenge himself, it would afterward be a grief and an offence of heart to him; that if he pass by the offence, it will afterward yield him unspeakable satisfaction that his wisdom and grace had got the better of his passion. H.

Abigail showed the vigor of her mind, the clearness of her judgment, and the strength of her faith in not fearing the displeasure of Nabal or the wrath of King Saul, but declaring her confident belief that the Lord would raise David to be ruler over Israel. On this ground she entreated him not to burden his conscience or sully his name with a hasty deed of blood. What a power of figurative expression those Eastern believers had; and not least those devout women whose spirits were stirred by urgent occasions to ardent utterance—Deborah in her triumph, Hannah in her song, Abigail in her appeal! D. F.

32. Blessed be the Lord.** David rightly recognizes that the intervention of Providence has saved him from a foolish and wicked revenge. There is no lack of faults in David’s life, and this outburst of passion was one of them; but with all his faults he had that spirit of genuine repentance which makes it possible for men “To rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things.” A. F. K.—Revenge is certainly the most luxurious morsel that the devil can put into a sinner’s mouth. But do we think that David could have found half the pleasure in the execution of his revenge that he expresses here upon the disappointment of it? Possibly it might have pleased him in the present heat and hurry of his rage, but must have displeased him infinitely more in the cool, sedate reflections of his mind. South.

33-35. If we blame David, as we must, for his heedless passion, we must not less admire the readiness with which he listens to the reasonable counsel of Abigail. With the ready instinct of a gracious heart he recognizes the hand of God in Abigail’s coming,—this mercy had a heavenly origin; and cordially praises Him for His restraining providence and restraining grace. He candidly admits that he had formed a very sinful purpose; but he frankly abandons it, accepts her offering, and sends her away in peace. It is a mark of sincere and genuine godliness to be not less thankful for being kept from sinning than for being rescued from suffering.

38. It was not long before David had convincing proof that it is best to leave vengeance in the hands of God. “It came to pass, about ten days after, that the Lord smote Nabal that he died.” W. G. B.—That God, which would not suffer David to right himself by his own sword, takes the quarrel of his servant into his own hand. David hath now his ends without sin, by the just execution of God, who would neither suffer him to sin in revenging, nor suffer his adversaries to sin unrevenged. Our loving God is more angry with the wrongs done to his servants, than themselves can be; and knows how to punish that justly which we could not undertake without wronging God more than men have wronged us. He that saith, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” repays ofttimes when we have forgiven and forgotten, and calls to reckoning after our discharges. It is dangerous offending any favorite of Him whose displeasure is everlasting. Bp. II.

42-44. Nor can we wonder, that on reviewing his own deliverance from spiritual danger, and the advice which had led to it, David should have wished to have her who had given it always by his side. In connection with this the sacred text also notes the union of David with Ahinoam of Jezreel, consequent probably on Saul’s cruel and heartless separation between David and

Michal, whom he gave to one Phalti, or Phaltiel. Thus Saul himself had wilfully and recklessly severed the last ties which had bound David to him. A. E.

The glimpse of old-world ways in the story, the rough mirth of the shearers, the snarling crustiness of Nabal, David’s fierce blaze of hot wrath, the tribute of the shepherds to the kindness and honor of the outlaws, the rustic procession, with the gracious lady last of all, the stately courtesy of the meeting, her calm, wise words—not flattery, yet full of predictions of prosperity most pleasant to hear from such lips; not rebuke, yet setting in the strongest light how unworthy of God’s anointed personal vengeance was; not servile, but yet recognizing in delicate touches his absolute power over her; not abject, and yet full of supplication,—the quick response of David’s frank nature and susceptible heart, which makes him break into benedictions on her and her wisdom, and thankfulness that he had been kept back from “hurting thee,” and the dramatic close in their happy union,—all make up one of the most charming of the many wonderful idyls of Scripture, all fragrant with the breath of love, and fresh with undying youth. The story lives—alas! how much longer do words endure than the poor earthly affections which they record! A. M.

This chapter, recording David’s collision with Nabal, and showing us how David lost his temper, and became hot and impetuous and impatient in consequence of Nabal’s treatment, comes in between the narrative of his two great victories over the spirit of revenge and impatience. It gives us a very emphatic lesson—how the servant of God may conquer in a great fight and yet be beaten in a small. The history of all spiritual warfare is full of such cases. In the presence of a great enemy, the utmost vigilance is maintained; every effort is strained, every stimulus is applied. In the presence of a small foe, the spirit of confidence, the sense of security, is liable to leave every avenue unguarded, and to pave the way for signal defeat. Thus it is that men who have in them the spirit of martyrs, and who would brave a dungeon or death itself rather than renounce a testimony or falter in a duty, often suffer defeat under the most ordinary temptations of every-day life,—they lose their temper on the most trifling provocations; almost without a figure, they are “crushed before the moth.” W. G. B.

SAUL’S FINAL PURSUIT OF DAVID. DAVID ENTERS HIS CAMP BY NIGHT AND TAKES AWAY HIS SPEAR AND CRUSE. HIS LAST COLLOQUY WITH SAUL.