“When David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, ‘Blessed be the Lord who has avenged the insult I received at the hand of Nabal, and has kept back his servant from wrongdoing.’”
Enter Into His Rest
I’ve been thinking about David, Abigail, and Nabal, three people caught up in the same circumstances but responding very differently. David is God’s anointed future king, living in the wilderness with hundreds of followers. Nabal is a wealthy landowner whose name means fool, and Abigail is his wife, described in Scripture as both discerning and beautiful. Their paths cross during sheep-shearing season, and what begins as a request for provisions nearly ends in a massacre.
When I read these accounts, I want to understand the people involved. What did they know about one another? What were their expectations, and what were the unwritten rules governing their relationships? I don’t want to turn David into a flawless hero, Nabal into a cardboard villain, or Abigail into someone who simply arrives to deliver the moral of the story. These were human beings living in circumstances that were complicated, dangerous, and not entirely unlike situations we encounter ourselves.
Some Scriptures have accompanied me for most of my life, and I keep returning to them. Sometimes I discover something I hadn’t noticed before; other times an experience in my own life causes me to reconsider something I thought I understood. This account has led me into questions about anger, loyalty, responsibility, discernment, intercession, and what it might mean to enter God’s rest without abandoning our responsibility to act.
I’ve arranged these reflections around eight questions. They aren’t intended to lead you toward eight conclusions. They’re simply places where I’ve stopped along the way to think. You’re welcome to join me.
Some Questions Worth Considering
Choose whichever question interests you. Each one leads farther into the discussion, and you can return here whenever you like.
- What did David expect from Nabal?
- Was Nabal a fool, or was he making a calculation?
- What did Abigail understand that the others missed?
- What happens when we don’t understand the unwritten rules?
- Whose future are we preparing for?
- What governs our actions when we’re convinced we’re right?
- What can Moses and Abigail teach us about intercession?
- What does it mean to enter God’s rest?
1. What Did David Expect From Nabal?
David and his men had been living in the wilderness, where they encountered shepherds tending the flocks of a wealthy man named Nabal. According to Nabal’s own servants, David’s men treated them well. Nothing was stolen, nothing went missing, and the servants later described David’s men as a wall around them, both day and night. Whatever else we might think about David’s conduct in this chapter, the shepherds themselves appear to have appreciated the protection they received.
When sheep-shearing time arrived, David sent ten young men to request provisions. Sheep-shearing was a time of celebration and abundance, and Nabal certainly had the resources to share. But I’ve wondered whether David was simply requesting hospitality or whether he expected compensation for services already rendered. Perhaps both expectations were involved. Hospitality toward strangers was an important obligation, but there may also have been an understood arrangement between armed men operating in the wilderness and those whose property they protected.
I find it difficult to imagine that Nabal’s shepherds and David’s men were unaware of these expectations. They had apparently been living alongside one another long enough to know how things worked. When David sent his messengers, was he appealing to an obligation everyone understood, or was he attempting to establish one? And how would Nabal have understood the request? After all, when men associated with an armed force politely ask for provisions, refusing them may have consequences quite apart from the question of what is fair.
The servants understood that danger immediately. Abigail understood it too. Their responses suggest that something about Nabal’s refusal violated expectations that were obvious to those around him. I wonder how much of the story we’re missing because the original audience would have understood those social expectations without needing them explained.
2. Was Nabal a Fool, or Was He Making a Calculation?
Nabal’s response to David’s messengers is astonishing. He asks who David is and describes him as a servant who has broken away from his master. He refuses to share his bread, water, and meat, speaking as though David and his men are strangers with no legitimate claim upon him. Yet his own servants later confirm that David’s men had treated them well and protected their property. Nabal wasn’t short of provisions either. When Abigail returned from meeting David, she found her husband holding a feast described as being like the feast of a king.
So what was Nabal thinking? His name means fool, and the biblical narrator certainly doesn’t invite us to admire his judgment. But I wonder whether his foolishness involved more than simply being rude or inhospitable. David was still being pursued by Saul, and Nabal’s description of him as a runaway servant may reveal something about where Nabal believed political authority properly belonged. Was he betting on Saul? Did he imagine that David’s future was already determined by his present circumstances?
That’s speculation, of course. The text doesn’t tell us what Nabal believed about David’s eventual kingship. Nevertheless, Abigail’s response makes the possibility interesting. She speaks openly about God’s purposes for David and anticipates his future leadership over Israel. Nabal dismisses him as a fugitive, while Abigail addresses him as a man whose future has already been promised by God.
But even if Nabal knew nothing about God’s promises to David, his behaviour remains difficult to explain. He was surrounded by people who recognized the danger, yet he behaved as though there could be no consequences. Perhaps foolishness sometimes consists not in ignorance of the rules, but in refusing to acknowledge realities that don’t suit us. And perhaps that is worth considering in our own lives, particularly when our present security makes us dismissive of people whose circumstances appear less fortunate than ours.
3. What Did Abigail Understand That the Others Missed?
When Abigail hears what has happened, she doesn’t spend much time debating whether her husband was justified. She gathers provisions, loads them onto donkeys, and goes to meet David without telling Nabal. She understands the immediate danger, but her conversation with David suggests that she also understands something about his future. She speaks of the enduring house God will establish for him and of the day when he will become ruler over Israel.
What interests me is the way she appeals to David’s conscience. She doesn’t simply plead for mercy, although the lives of her household are clearly at stake. She asks him to consider the burden he might carry into his future if he sheds blood without cause. In effect, she invites him to look back upon his present decision from the perspective of the man God has promised he will become. I wonder how many of our own decisions might change if we could see them from that perspective.
Abigail is certainly no passive observer. She takes considerable initiative, assumes personal risk, and speaks with remarkable courage to an angry man accompanied by armed followers. Yet her intervention doesn’t appear to be an attempt to seize control of David’s future. Instead, she reminds him of something he already knows about God’s purposes and invites him to act consistently with them.
How did she become so discerning? We aren’t told. But her conduct makes me think of Hebrews 5:14, where maturity is associated with powers of discernment trained through practice to distinguish good from evil. Abigail seems able to recognize competing obligations without confusing them. She is concerned for her household without defending Nabal’s foolishness, and she recognizes David’s calling without endorsing his intended violence. Perhaps wisdom involves learning to hold those distinctions together.
4. What Happens When We Don’t Understand the Unwritten Rules?
Much of human behaviour is governed by expectations that are never formally stated. We learn them through experience, sometimes by making mistakes and sometimes by watching what happens to other people. Hospitality, reciprocity, loyalty, respect, and the exercise of power all operate within social arrangements that may be perfectly obvious to those who belong to a particular community and almost invisible to outsiders. I’ve been thinking about how often misunderstanding those arrangements can place someone in danger.
My brother Andrew once described an experience he had in Turkey. While visiting a bar, a woman began sending him drinks. After he left, he found himself being pursued through the streets by threatening men and eventually hid beneath a bench in a railway station. I’ve wondered whether he had unknowingly entered a situation involving prostitution, payment, or some other expectation he didn’t understand. I don’t know the full circumstances, and I wouldn’t want to invent an explanation. But the incident reminds me that what appears innocent to one person may carry a very different meaning to someone else.
Another account that comes to mind is Judges 19. A Levite and his concubine arrive in Gibeah and prepare to spend the night in the town square. An elderly man encounters them and insists they come into his home, apparently understanding that remaining outside would be dangerous. Yet the story becomes deeply disturbing when the same man participates in a proposed sacrifice of vulnerable women to the violent crowd. He understands the danger, but that doesn’t mean his own response is morally sound.
And then there’s Shukhov, in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Shukhov understands the complicated informal economy of the prison camp. He knows how to obtain food, exchange favours, and navigate relationships in order to survive another day. Alyosha, the Baptist, lives within the same system but seems to be governed by something different. He serves others without continually calculating what he might receive in return. I’ve spent a great deal of time with these characters, and their different ways of living continue to interest me.
All three examples bring me back to David and Nabal. Understanding the rules by which people operate may be essential to survival, but does that mean we should allow those rules to govern our own conduct? Can we recognize the realities of a particular social economy without surrendering our conscience to it? Abigail appears to understand the world in which she lives remarkably well, yet she acts according to commitments that reach beyond its immediate demands.
5. Whose Future Are We Preparing For?
Jesus tells a curious story in Luke 16 about a dishonest manager who discovers that his position is about to end. Recognizing that his present circumstances cannot continue, the manager uses the opportunities still available to prepare for what comes next. Jesus draws attention to his shrewdness, although that doesn’t mean he is endorsing the man’s dishonesty. The manager understands that his future circumstances will be different from his present ones, and he acts accordingly.
I’ve been thinking about this in terms of God’s economy. If we’re living in God’s kingdom, shouldn’t our present decisions reflect the future we believe God is bringing about? To put it rather bluntly, God’s going to win in the end. So why would we organize our lives around expectations that assume otherwise? That doesn’t answer every question raised by Jesus’ parable, but it does make me wonder how seriously we take the future we claim to believe in.
Now consider Nabal and Abigail. Nabal speaks of David as a runaway servant, a man whose present circumstances appear to offer little reason for respect. Abigail, however, recognizes God’s purposes for David and acts in light of the future she believes God has promised. If Nabal was betting on Saul’s continued power, he was making a very different calculation from Abigail. We can’t be certain that this was his reasoning, but the contrast between their responses is striking.
There’s something else here that interests me. Abigail doesn’t merely act in a way that will protect her household when David becomes king. She also prevents David from acting in a way that would be inconsistent with his own calling. She recognizes that the future God has promised him doesn’t justify whatever methods he might choose to secure it. I wonder whether this is part of what it means to live wisely within God’s kingdom: learning to act today in ways that belong to the future we believe God is bringing about.
6. What Governs Our Actions When We’re Convinced We’re Right?
When David ordered his men to strap on their swords, four hundred prepared to accompany him, while another two hundred remained with their supplies. I wonder what those men were thinking as they prepared to follow him. Did they share his indignation over Nabal’s insult, or did they simply accept that their leader had decided what needed to be done? We aren’t told whether anyone questioned David’s intentions, and I don’t think we should assume that nobody did. But the account leaves me wondering about the influence a leader exercises over those who trust him.
David was God’s anointed, yet on this occasion his anger was carrying him toward an action that Abigail would recognize as wrongful. His men were prepared to follow him into it. Nabal, meanwhile, appears to have been governed by an entirely different set of considerations, while Abigail recognized something about God’s purposes that neither man’s behaviour seemed to reflect. All of them were acting under the influence of something, whether anger, loyalty, pride, fear, faith, responsibility, or some combination of these.
This brings me to something M. Scott Peck discusses in his anthology Abounding Grace. He introduces a saying attributed to Augustine: Dilige, et quod vis fac — love, and do what you will. Peck explores the relationship between loving God, exercising diligence, and the moral freedom that might follow. I find that an intriguing idea, although it would be dangerous to interpret it as meaning that whatever I want to do must be right simply because I claim to love God. Perhaps the deeper possibility is that loving God gradually transforms what I want in the first place.
Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman in John 4 comes to mind. He asks her for a drink, crossing social boundaries that surprise both the woman and his disciples. Yet Jesus isn’t simply rebelling against convention for the sake of rebellion. He understands the expectations governing the people around him, but those expectations don’t prevent him from doing his Father’s will. Later in the chapter, he explains that his food is to do the will of the One who sent him and accomplish his work. Could this be a picture of the freedom Augustine was describing?
I wonder how much of our own conduct is governed by influences we scarcely recognize. We may sincerely believe we’re doing what is right while our indignation, loyalties, fears, or personal interests are quietly determining what we consider acceptable. Even our convictions about God can become entangled with those influences. Perhaps that’s why David’s response to Abigail is so important. He was willing to listen to someone who challenged what he had already decided to do, and he recognized God’s intervention through her. How often have I been so certain of my own judgment that I’ve failed to recognize the very correction I needed?
7. What Can Moses and Abigail Teach Us About Intercession?
I’ve been thinking about another scene involving anger and impending destruction. In Exodus 32, the Israelites are gathered at the foot of Mount Sinai while Moses is receiving God’s commandments. They make a golden calf and worship it, attributing their deliverance from Egypt to an idol. God announces judgment against them, and Moses intervenes. He appeals to God’s promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, reminds God of the people he has delivered from Egypt, and raises the question of what the Egyptians will say if those people are destroyed. The narrative tells us that God relents from the announced destruction.
Now consider Abigail. David has been offended and is preparing to destroy Nabal’s household. Abigail intercepts him and appeals to God’s promises concerning his future. She doesn’t deny that Nabal has behaved foolishly, any more than Moses denies Israel’s idolatry. Instead, she asks David to consider something greater than the immediate offence. What kind of king is he becoming, and what burden might he carry if he sheds blood without cause?
There are important differences between these accounts. God’s anger toward Israel’s idolatry is not equivalent to David’s intended revenge, and Moses isn’t correcting God in the way Abigail corrects David. Nevertheless, the resemblance between the two acts of intercession interests me. Both Moses and Abigail stand between an offended party and people facing destruction. Both appeal to God’s promises, and neither treats the original wrongdoing as insignificant.
There’s another dimension to Abigail’s intervention that I find particularly compelling. She isn’t merely protecting Nabal’s household from David; she’s also protecting David from the consequences of his own intended actions. When David responds, he blesses God for sending her and blesses Abigail for her discernment in keeping him from bloodguilt. He recognizes that her intervention was a gift to him, even though she prevented him from doing what he had already decided was necessary.
Moses’ story also reminds us that intercession doesn’t mean pretending wrongdoing has no consequences. After pleading for Israel, Moses himself becomes angry when he sees the calf and the dancing, and judgment still follows. Numbers 14 presents another occasion when Moses intercedes for rebellious Israel, appealing to God’s patience and steadfast love. God grants pardon, yet the generation that refused to enter the promised land still faces consequences. These accounts don’t offer a simple formula, but they do make me wonder about the relationship between mercy, justice, and the courage required to intervene.
Can intercession sometimes be an act of love toward both the threatened and the threatening? And when someone intervenes to prevent us from doing what we believe we’re justified in doing, are we able to recognize that intervention as a gift from God? David could, at least on this occasion.
Read Exodus 32:7–14
Read Numbers 14:11–20
Read 1 Samuel 25:32–35
8. What Does It Mean to Enter God’s Rest?
I keep returning to David’s words after Nabal’s death. He praises God for dealing with the insult he received and for keeping him from wrongdoing. Earlier, David had been prepared to take matters into his own hands, but Abigail intervened and he listened. He abandoned his intended violence, and the outcome was no longer something he needed to secure himself. David explicitly attributes Abigail’s intervention to God, and later he recognizes God’s hand in what happened to Nabal.
This brings to mind Paul’s instructions in Romans 12. We’re told to bless those who persecute us, to repay no one evil for evil, and, as far as it depends upon us, to live peaceably with everyone. Paul tells us not to avenge ourselves but to leave room for God’s judgment. He then directs us toward the very people who have wronged us, instructing us to feed them when they’re hungry and give them something to drink when they’re thirsty. We are not to be overcome by evil, but to overcome evil with good.
I’ve sometimes taken matters into my own hands, particularly when I believed someone needed defending or an injustice needed correcting. There have been occasions when I was convinced that my intentions were honourable, yet looking back I’ve had to wonder whether my own anger was doing more of the directing than I realized. I can recognize something of myself in David’s indignation, and perhaps that’s one reason this account continues to interest me.
But entering God’s rest doesn’t necessarily mean doing nothing. Abigail acted decisively. Moses interceded. Jesus crossed social boundaries that others might have considered improper. And David’s obedience required him to stop doing something he had already begun. The distinction may not be between action and inaction at all, but between acting faithfully within God’s purposes and attempting to assume responsibility for outcomes that belong to God.
I’m reminded again of Hebrews 5:14 and the idea that discernment develops through practice. Perhaps part of that practice involves learning to recognize the influences governing our actions, becoming willing to hear correction, and discovering that we don’t have to personally guarantee every outcome. I don’t imagine that such discernment comes easily or that we ever reach a point where we no longer need it.
David was God’s anointed, yet he needed Abigail. He was capable of acting courageously and faithfully, but he was also capable of confusing his anger with righteous action. What interests me is that he listened when she challenged him. He didn’t have to finish what he’d started simply because he’d already committed himself to it.
And perhaps that is one of the questions this account leaves me with: can I become sufficiently attentive to God’s purposes that I’m willing to act when action is required, refrain when restraint is called for, and receive correction when someone else sees something I’ve missed?
A Conversation Worth Continuing
I’m not certain that I’ve reached the end of what this passage has to teach me. In fact, I rather hope I haven’t. There are Scriptures I’ve been returning to for most of my life, and I continue to discover things I hadn’t noticed before. Sometimes those discoveries come through studying the text, sometimes through the experiences of other people, and sometimes through circumstances in my own life that cause me to reconsider what I thought I understood.
Perhaps you’ve noticed something in this account that I’ve overlooked, or perhaps one of these questions has reminded you of something in your own experience. I’d be interested to hear about it. After all, we’re still learning.
