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brought back their sheep from the wilderness for shear- ing— with eating and drinking "like the feast of a king" (xxv, 2, 4, 36). It was on one of these hilarious occasions — the harvest-seasons of the shepherd — that Nabal came across the path of the man to whom he owes his place in history. Ten youths were seen ap- proaching the hill ; in them the shepherds recognised the slaves or attendants of the chief of the freebooters who had defended them in the wilderness. To Nabal they were unknown. They approached him with a triple salutation — enumerated the services of th^ir master, and ended by claiming, with a mixture of cour- tesy and defiance characteristic of the East, " whatso- ever coraeth into thy hand for thy servants (the Sept, omits this — and has only the next words), and for thy son David." The great sheepmaster was not disposed to recognise this unexpected parental relation. He was a man notorious for his obstinacy (such seems the mean- ing of the word translated " churlish") and for his gen- eral low conduct (xxv, 3, " evil ui his doings ;" xxv, 17, " a man of Belial"). Josephus and the Sept., taking the word Caleb not as a proper name, but as a quality (to which the context certainly lends itself), add "of a disposition like a dog " — cpiical — kvvikoq. On hear- ing the demand of the ten petitioners, he sprang up (Sept. civtTrfjSriai'), and broke out into fury, " Who is David ? and who is the son of Jesse ?" — " What runa- way slaves are these to interfere with my own domestic arrangements?" (xxv, 10, 11). The moment that the messengers had gone, the shepherds that stood by per- ceived the danger which their master and themselves would incur. To Nabal himself they dared not speak (xxv, 17). But the sacred writer, with a tinge of the sentiment which such a contrast alwaj's suggests, pro- ceeds to describe that this brutal ruffian was married to a wife as beautiful and as wise as he was the reverse (xxv, 3). See Abigail. To her, as to the good angel of the household, one of the shepherds told the state of affairs. She, with the offerings usual on such occasions (xxv, 18; comp. xxx, 11 ; 2 Sam. xvi, 1 ; 1 Chron. xii, 40), loaded the asses of Nabal's large establishment — herself mounted one of them, and, with her attendants running before her, rode down the hiU towards David's encamp- ment. David had already made the fatal vow of ex- termination, couched in the usual terms, of destroj^ing the household of Nabal, so as not even to leave a dog behind (xxv, 22). In this, unquestionably, he erred; for whatever David might, on the score of reciprocity of kindness, have naturally thought himself justified in asking, he yet had no right to exact it as a debt, and still less to resent the refusal of it as an injury. (See Hamberger, Jusjuram. Davidis, Jen. 1723.) But act- ing in the heat of passion, David did not allow liis de- termination to slumber ; he ordered four hundred of his men to gird on their armor and go with him to smite Na- bal and his house with the edge of the sword. At this moment, as it would seem, Abigail appeared, threw her- self on her face before him, and poured forth her petition in language which both in form and expression almost assumes the tone of poetry — "Let thine handmaid, I pray thee, speak in thine audience, and hear the words of thine handmaid." Her main argument rests on the description of her husband's character, which she draws with that mixture of playfulness and seriousness which above all things turns away wrath. His name here came in to his rescue. " As his name is, so is he : Na- bal [fool^ is his name, and folly is with him" (xxv, 25 ; see also ver. 26). Furthermore, by the wise coun- sel she contrived to introduce into her address respect- ing the proper way of meeting opposition and bearing hardship in the Lord's cause, and how much better it was to leave the work of retribution to him than to take it prematurely into one's own hand, she convinced David of sin in resolving to avenge himself on Nabal. Better thoughts now prevailed with him, and he said, "Blessed be tile Lord God of Israel, which sent thee this day to meet me; and blessed be thy advice, and blessed be
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thou which hast kept me this day from coming to shed blood." She returned witli the news of David's recan- tation of his vow. Nabal was then at the height of his orgies. Like the revellers of Palestine in the later times of the monarchy, he had drunk to excess, and his wife dared not communicate to him either his danger or his escape (xxv, 3G). At break of day she told him both. The stupid reveller was suddenly roused to a sense of that wliich impended over liim. " His heart died within him, and [he] became as a stone." It was as if a stroke of apoplexy or paralysis had fallen upon him. This seems, however, to have been only a tem- jKirary recoil of feeling, from which he again recovered — yet not to any jiroper sense of his past misconduct or true amendment of life. For, as one still amenable to the just displea.sure of Heaven, it is said of him that " about ten days after, the Lord smote Nabal, that he died" (xxv, 37, 38). The shock seems to have been the exciting cause of a malady that carried him off about ten days after. (See W'edel, Exercit. med. dec. is, 10 sq.) The suspicions entertained by theologi- ans of the last century that there was a conspiracy between David and Abigail to make away with Nabal for their own alliance (see Winer, s. v. Nabal), have en- tirely given place to tlie better spirit of modern criti- cism ; and it is one of the many proofs of the reverential as well as truthful appreciation of the sacred narrative now inaugurated in Germany, that Ewakl enters fuUy into the feeling of the narrator, and closes his summary of Nabal's death with the reflection that " it was not without justice regarded as a divine judgment." Ac- cording to the (not verj- probable) Sept. version of 2 Sam. iii, 33, the recollection of Nabal's death lived afterwards in David's mcmorj- to point the contrast of the death of Abner — •' Died Abner as Nabal died ?" David, not long after, evinced the favorable impression which the good-sense and comeliness of Abigail had made upon him b_v making her his wife. See Ewald, Isr. Gesch. ii, 5oG; Stackhouse, Bibl. Hist, iv, 178 sq. ; Niemeyer, Churakt. iv, 153 sej. ; G. L. Dathe, De famm vitidicta Din: ergo Xtibidem (Leips. 1723) ; Schottgen, Moral- ische Gtdanhn iiher D. laid X. (F. ad O. 1714). See David.