Abigail, the intelligent and beautiful wife of the wealthy but boorish Nabal, eventually marries David, the future king of Israel, after Nabal’s death. While running a “protection racket” in the area of Carmel, David asks for provisions for himself and his men but Nabal refuses, so the young warrior prepares for slaughter. Abigail quickly intervenes, sending a feast ahead and greeting David on the way. In an eloquent speech, she persuades him to shed no blood and prophesies that he will be king.
Upon hearing what she has done, Nabal dies. David then sends for Abigail to become his wife as she intimated. She bears David a son, who never becomes a contender for the throne, and though a prophet and wise woman, she plays no further role in court history
Abigail’s Intervention Prevents a Bloodbath
The chapter is set during the sheep-shearing festival, a time renowned for feasting and revelry. David requests food for himself and his band of six hundred men who, while in flight from the mad King Saul, have been operating a kind of “protection racket” against marauders for the shepherds and flocks in the area. When Nabal refuses, insulting David and his band as riffraff , the young warrior and four hundred of his men gird themselves for bloodshed. Enraged, David swears on oath: “May God do thus and more to David, if by morning, I leave a single pisser against the wall!” (1 Samuel 25:22). In this crude expression, we are privy to the first glimpse of evil in David’s character.
Overhearing the dialogue, one of the servants runs to Abigail, begging her to intervene. She quickly assembles an elaborate feast, which is loaded up on donkeys and sent in advance. She then intercepts David to persuade him against fulfilling his violent oath (which the reader only hears retroactively, after she is seen approaching, 1 Samuel 25:20). Before we are struck by the full force of the oath, we anticipate its undoing.
Help us keep Jewish knowledge accessible to millions of people around the world.
Your donation to My Jewish Learning fuels endless journeys of Jewish discovery. With your help, My Jewish Learning can continue to provide nonstop opportunities for learning, connection and growth.
Abigail’s Eloquent Speech
Abigail alights from her donkey and prostrates herself before David. In her long, eloquent speech (1 Samuel 24–31)—repeatedly addressing David as “lord” and herself as “maidservant”—she appeals to him to shed no blood. She promises that, if he restrains himself from bloodguilt, then God will dispatch David’s enemies (1 Samuel 25:29), alluding to the death of Nabal, and perhaps to Saul’s as well.
As in the encounters with King Saul that frame this story (2 Samuel 24 and 2 Samuel 26), David’s restraint from slaying his rival demonstrates his worthiness of kingship. Yet it also anticipates his darker side, when David does not restrain himself from adultery and murder in the story of Bathsheba and Uriah (2 Samuel 11–12). His folly there does become the “cause of grief and pangs of conscience for having shed blood without cause” (2 Samuel 31).
Based on her prescience, the Talmud identifies Abigail as one of the seven female prophets in the Hebrew Bible (Megillah 15a). More likely, she is keenly perceptive about the shifting tides of history.
Nabal’s Death and Abigail’s Marriage to David
When Abigail returns home, she finds her husband drunk from feasting “like a king” and waits until the morning to tell him what she has done (1 Samuel 25:36). His heart then strangely turns to stone and he dies ten days later, struck by “the Lord” (God) (1 Samuel 25:38). David, hearing that she has been widowed, sends for her. She obsequiously prostrates herself, calling David “lord” and herself “maidservant prepared to wash [his] servants’ feet”; though, ironically, she follows the messenger with five maids on donkeys in tow (1 Samuel 25:41-42). She then becomes his wife.
Because of the hint to David (1 Samuel 25:34), the mysterious cause of Nabal’s death, and no record of mourning her boorish husband, some scholars and modern creative renditions have read Abigail as conniving. Yet, there is no hint of illicit behavior on her part. Rather, the story stands in stark contrast to the Bathsheba episode, when the king takes a woman married to another man (Uriah) while he is serving the king, fighting “the Lord’s battles.” And David has him killed on the front in order to cover for the adultery. In the Abigail story, on the other hand, the woman is married to an evil husband and prevents him from murdering Nabal (and all the males of the household), as David acknowledges (1 Samuel 25:33–34).
As Adele Berlin points out: “The Abigail story contains no illicit sex, though the opportunity was present; the Bathsheba story revolves around an illicit relationship. In the Abigail story, David, the potential king, is seen as increasingly strong and virtuous, whereas in the Bathsheba story, the reigning monarch shows his flaws ever more overtly and begins to lose control of his family.”
Epilogue
Abigail becomes David’s third wife, after Ahinoam of Jezreel and Michal, daughter of Saul. Unlike Michal, whom David leaves behind when fleeing from King Saul (1 Samuel 19:11–17), Abigail and Ahinoam accompany him to Gath (1 Samuel 27:3). When David is away, the Amalekites attack Ziklag and carry off the wives, David’s people, and his possessions, but David is able to rescue them.
Abigail is present with David in Hebron when he is publically inaugurated king, and she bears him a son called Chileab, meaning “according to the father” (2 Samuel 3:3; Daniel in 1 Chronicles 3:1)—perhaps to assert David’s paternity as unambiguous. The meaning of her own name then takes on new resonance, meaning “my father’s joy” or “my father rejoices,” from the Hebrew root g-y-l “to rejoice.” Yet the son, Chileab, never becomes a contender for the throne and, beyond this episode, Abigail plays no role in the court history.
Reprinted from the Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women with permission of the author and the Jewish Women’s Archive.
