On the Road - 1st Samuel 25

Because David feels highly disrespected, he takes 2/3 of his men, 400 men, and heads towards Nabal’s house to kill every male. David is talking to himself the whole way, essentially justifying what he’s about to do. TB comments on it, and when I heard it I was stopped because it spoke to me clearly because I do this and it’s very self-destructive to me. TB says, “David essentially muttering to himself as he is traveling, complaining about how he and his men guarded this man’s property, and did such a good job, and still this man repays their efforts with an insult! And truly that is the mental picture we need to get; a very upset David who feels that he has been cheated; a man who is roiling this over in his mind, replaying his anger again and again. A modern psychologist might say he is playing those negative tapes in his head and he won’t turn them off. And truly, just as for us in our time, this was David sort of enjoying being mad and not particularly anxious to let it go and move on. Folks, this is sin that is being displayed, it was so then, and it remains so today.”

This spoke to me so strongly because it’s an issue that I’ve been working on here recently and again, it is so self-destructive. When I heard it called sin, I was shook because that’s exactly what it is, and I felt so called out by God. He’s working himself up, justifying his anger and what he’s going to do about it, and I’ve been in this exact circumstances before so many times, I mean not to murder but in being angry and just replaying it over and over and getting so upset about it. I’m trying to develop a more bird’s eye view of situations, and try to figure out what Jesus would do and what He wants me to do specifically. Because ultimately, David didn’t need Nabal’s provisions, he should have been able to pray and find out how God wanted them to obtain food. Didn’t God feed Israel manna from heaven for 40 years? God knew they had to eat, surely He would have provided for them. Isn’t that the promise that we have? I know that David didn’t have the New Testament when he was going through all this, but we do, and in Matthew 6:25 Jesus tells us “do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink.” He promises that He will provide, which is hard to swallow because in this life people do starve to death, people do end up homeless, they do get sick and die or suffer, so that’s kind of hard to reconcile, but the promise is that whatever outcome we encounter is God’s will. This again is difficult, because how can starving to death be God’s will? It’s hard to fathom a scenario when that explanation makes sense, but again, that’s why we have to believe it even when it doesn’t make sense. It’s hard. But David didn’t go about seeking God’s will in any of this, he didn’t ask God how he should go about feeding his men, he didn’t ask God for a miracle, and he didn’t try to do anything productive to obtain that food like work, hunt or grow. David went straight into thuggery, trying to extort a, granted unpleasant man which everyone knew what not in accordance with God’s laws. David was operating under the world’s laws, and disregarding God’s laws.

While all this is going on, the servants that heard Nabal’s disrespect towards David’s servants went to Abigail and told her what happened and begged her to do something. Even though David’s mind was set on mass murder, and according to God that would have been wrong, this was a socially acceptable response by David and we know this because everyone, except Nabal, expected this response. Nabal’s servants tell Abigail that David and his men were very good to them while they were tending the sheep in the fields and that Nabal had disrespected David by not giving him the provisions that he asked for. Abigail and these servants all agreed that Nabal was a mean, terrible man who doesn’t listen to anyone. It’s interesting that the servants went to Abigail with this. They must have had a long history of dealing with a completely unreasonable Nabal and then her acting rationally, they must have done this dance before. I also want to point out how tragic the marital relationship between Nabal and Abigail must have been if even the servants could tell Abigail that they all know that he’s mean. I feel bad for her because surely she had little choice in marrying him, and was stuck with this crappy husband. He was rich which is better than being mean and poor, but I wonder if she had another man that she wanted to marry but couldn’t because she was forced to marry Nabal. She’s taken care of financially but I wonder if that trade off was worth it to her. TB says that it’s important to note that Abigail would have been a very well presented, put together woman because Nabal was so rich that she would have been nicely dressed, soft hands, very well put together, all the trappings of a fine lady. TB describes her saying, “this woman was an aristocrat; she was the attractive and intelligent wife of a wealthy and powerful man.”

Hearing Nabal’s reaction and knowing what David’s reaction was going to be, Abigail sent the servants back toward David with 200 loaves of bread, two bottles of wins, 5 sheep, 5 measured of parched corn, a hundred clusters of raisins, and 200 cakes of figs. She doesn’t tell Nabal anything about what she’s doing and then heads out to meet David herself. On the way, Abigail meets David’s entourage and there’s several aspects of this meeting that are important. The first one Abigail comes out of the confines of her house riding a donkey, on a dirt road, alone and then when she sees David, she gets off the donkey and falls on her face in front of him, face down in the dirt. This was so surprising to David that an aristocratic woman would do something like this that he stopped and listened to everything that she had to say. The second important concept here is that Abigail is speaking to David and that was completely unusual and unacceptable by ancient middle eastern standards. TB says, “we have a woman speaking to a man who is not her husband; a man who is well known and to a degree feared. She has dared to approach the man (even to seek him out) when usually a man must approach the woman if there is to be conversation (especially one of this length and subject). She is boldly intervening in her husband’s affairs and it could easily have been David’s decision to treat her badly for daring to stand between two men in conflict… a woman is not to intervene in an otherwise fair fight between her husband and another man. This could have taken a number of different courses for Abigail, most of them bad, and thus her pleading with David to be forgiving towards her intervention in this matter.”

The third important concept here is that she didn’t tell her husband what she was doing, all of her actions were of her own initiative and idea. Nabal was completely unrepentant of his actions here and ignorant of what she was doing to save her family. Surely she had sons who would have been killed if David had gone through with his intentions, so she absolutely took matters into her own hands in order to save her family. In addition, if David had killed every male, it probably would have exterminated the entirety of Nabal’s clan, a large one in Judah. The fourth concept here is that when Abigail set out to meet David on the road, the presents of food went out first. We don’t hear about the presents reaching David’s group but we do hear that Abigail reached David directly. I just imagined that there was one road in and of where David was and Nabal’s hosue, but apparently that wasn’t the case. There were numerous roads and trails that both parties could have reached each other, but the fact that Abigail met David right on the road where he was was seen by the people as providential. TB says, “it just so happened that the very route Abigail had take to try and intercept David led her right to him…. So the idea is that nothing happens by chance. It was Yehoveh’s providence that set her path, and the exact timing, in motion for this unlikely but urgent meeting to take place.” The fifth important concept is the prophetic nature of this encounter between David and Abigail. When discussing the fact that Abigail walked right up to David on the exact trail that he was traveling on, TB says, “Hebrew sages took the improbably timing of Abigail’s encounter with David, along with some pronouncements she would make in a speech to him, to indicate that she was substantially more than merely a woman full of wisdom; rather, she was a prophetess of the God of Israel. In fact the Hebrew sages of old determined that the Bible lists 7 prophetesses, with Abigail among them. They were Sarah (Abraham’s wife) as the first; then Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Hulda, and the stunning Esther.”

Ever since hearing that statement, I’ve been thinking about what the role and characteristics are of being a prophetess. Honestly, I don’t even really know what being a prophet is. Like is it just speaking on behalf of God? If that’s the case then what is the defining feature of audience for that to be the definition? Like do you have to speak on behalf of God to more than 5 people at a time? Is it only for people under your stewardship, because you can’t receive revelation for people who are not under your stewardship? Is it just for yourself? For instance, if you receive personal revelation from the Spirit just for you yourself, is that prophetic? Does it have to be only about the future or could it be about the past too? In church the a couple of weeks ago, the Sunday school teacher was talking about how difficult Isaiah is to understand because it’s all about prophecy and he asked, “well are you reading it with a spirit of prophecy?” That made me start thinking that prophecy might be more than just a few guys at the top of the church leadership structure and maybe it’s for all of us in certain capacities. But if that’s the case then in what way, by what definition? Then when I heard TB say this, it brought me back to that same discussion. Was Abigail just prophetic in that specific conversation, or was it in other aspects of her life? These are all questions that I wonder about and have been for a little while.