How the Bible does a fairy tale...
When I read stories like the one in 1 Samuel 25, I find that I wonder more about what isn't said, than what is said. Have you read it...yes, you know the drill. Really it is short -- go now, read it. I'll wait.
So! You have read it, and so I am not ruining any endings...Abagail marries David ~ very 'happily ever after'. Wouldn't you just love someone like...oh maybe Peter Jackson to do a movie of the back story?
So, Abigail. She is someone you want to meet, right? This is -- to me -- very much her story. Yeah, yeah ~ David is in the story, and Nabal. But they are polar foils to this woman who stands very much at the center of this story. Scripture says she was an intelligent and beautiful woman, (1 Sam 25:3)
If there were a movie, I would cast...oh...someone fierce like
a young Katherine
Hepburn
She had to have heard of David. I suspect she had seen him before. I would start the movie at sheep-shearing time over in Carmel.
The day is hot. Abigail has gone with her servant girls to gather wool ~ and to get away from Nabal. She is young; married to Nabal because the marriage brought her father a nice fat dowry from this horrible but rich man. Perhaps she and the servant girls gossip "David and his men -- yes, David, the young warrior who killed Goliath -- they watch in these hills. Have you seen him? {lots of giggling, and whispers}... maybe they sing that "David has killed his ten-thousands" ditty as they gather and wash the newly shorn wool. As the sun sets, I see David and some of his men riding in to join the evening campfire. The smell of roasting lamb and ~ perhaps the servant girls ~ drawing them. Perhaps there is a scene where some distracted shepherd lets a ram escape and David, former shepherd, rides in just in time to help recapture it. Abigail stands just off to the side, watching. David brushing the dust from his pants, laughing with the shepherds, looks around and is arrested by the sight of her. A grandfatherly man with a long shepherds' crook notices the two of them and walks up, and draping his arm around David's shoulder, speaks a quiet warning, "She is Abigail, our master, Nabal's wife. She is here to supervise the gathering of the wool. Come...there is a fine stew and fresh bread for you and your men."
Far-fetched? I don't think so. First of all, when the servant goes to Abigail to tell her that David's men have been rebuffed by Nabal, and she rides off with the supplies, Abigail seems to know exactly where to go.
Abigail lost no time. She took two hundred loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five dressed sheep, five seahs of roasted grain, a hundred cakes of raisins and two hundred cakes of pressed figs, and loaded them on donkeys. Then she told her servants, "Go on ahead; I'll follow you." But she did not tell her husband Nabal.
As she came riding her donkey into a mountain ravine, there were David and his men descending toward her, and she met them. 1 Sam 25:18-21
I also suspect that having sent the supplies on ahead, Abigail bathed, put on perfume and something pretty. Now don't get me wrong...it was Abigail's potent wisdom that saved the day. 1) She starts by sending the supplies on ahead. And 2) she calls David to the prophetic destiny he is fighting for:
"Now since the LORD has kept you, my master, from bloodshed and from avenging yourself with your own hands, as surely as the LORD lives and as you live, may your enemies and all who intend to harm my master be like Nabal. And let this gift, which your servant has brought to my master, be given to the men who follow you. Please forgive your servant's offense, for the LORD will certainly make a lasting dynasty for my master, because he fights the LORD's battles. Let no wrongdoing be found in you as long as you live. Even though someone is pursuing you to take your life, the life of my master will be bound securely in the bundle of the living by the LORD your God. But the lives of your enemies he will hurl away as from the pocket of a sling. When the LORD has done for my master every good thing he promised concerning him and has appointed him leader over Israel, my master will not have on his conscience the staggering burden of needless bloodshed or of having avenged himself. 1 Sam 25:26-31
NIV
She reminds him that he is God's King, that one day he will sit on the throne. He must live his life and make his decisions with that in mind. Wow! There is a great Yiddish word: chutzpah that means "shameless audacity". Abigail definitely had chutzpah!
It occurs to me that it might have crossed both of their minds that with Nabal out of the way...well, she would have been "spoils of war" as it were. But again, David and Abigail stand in the courage of their convictions. While the rash act of wiping Nabal off the face of the earth would have been possible and would even have seemed justifiable, they had to make their decisions based not in rage, or expedience, but in righteousness.
I would love to see the scene played out where Abigail confronts Nabal
"Woman! I called for you last night. Why did you not serve me at our feast. Where did you sneak off to this time? And, get me some wine...my head is exploding."
"You are lucky you have a head on your shoulders this morning. Where was I, Nabal? I was off saving your worthless hide! You insulted David -- David who killed Goliath, David who killed 1000 Philistines to earn King Saul's daughter. 'Who is this David? Who is this son of Jesse?' That David was on his way here to show you who he is...get your own wine. I have work to do."
Abigail must have said something like that...it says his heart failed him and he became like a stone. and 10 days later he died...clearly of terminal stupidity.
And...
when David's men show up on, like, the 11th day, Abigail quickly got on a donkey and, attended by her five maids, went with David's messengers and became his wife. 1 Sam 25:41-43
and
they lived happily ever after...
So! You have read it, and so I am not ruining any endings...Abagail marries David ~ very 'happily ever after'. Wouldn't you just love someone like...oh maybe Peter Jackson to do a movie of the back story?
So, Abigail. She is someone you want to meet, right? This is -- to me -- very much her story. Yeah, yeah ~ David is in the story, and Nabal. But they are polar foils to this woman who stands very much at the center of this story. Scripture says she was an intelligent and beautiful woman, (1 Sam 25:3)
If there were a movie, I would cast...oh...someone fierce like
a young Katherine Hepburn
She had to have heard of David. I suspect she had seen him before. I would start the movie at sheep-shearing time over in Carmel.
The day is hot. Abigail has gone with her servant girls to gather wool ~ and to get away from Nabal. She is young; married to Nabal because the marriage brought her father a nice fat dowry from this horrible but rich man. Perhaps she and the servant girls gossip "David and his men -- yes, David, the young warrior who killed Goliath -- they watch in these hills. Have you seen him? {lots of giggling, and whispers}... maybe they sing that "David has killed his ten-thousands" ditty as they gather and wash the newly shorn wool. As the sun sets, I see David and some of his men riding in to join the evening campfire. The smell of roasting lamb and ~ perhaps the servant girls ~ drawing them. Perhaps there is a scene where some distracted shepherd lets a ram escape and David, former shepherd, rides in just in time to help recapture it. Abigail stands just off to the side, watching. David brushing the dust from his pants, laughing with the shepherds, looks around and is arrested by the sight of her. A grandfatherly man with a long shepherds' crook notices the two of them and walks up, and draping his arm around David's shoulder, speaks a quiet warning, "She is Abigail, our master, Nabal's wife. She is here to supervise the gathering of the wool. Come...there is a fine stew and fresh bread for you and your men."
Far-fetched? I don't think so. First of all, when the servant goes to Abigail to tell her that David's men have been rebuffed by Nabal, and she rides off with the supplies, Abigail seems to know exactly where to go.
Abigail lost no time. She took two hundred loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five dressed sheep, five seahs of roasted grain, a hundred cakes of raisins and two hundred cakes of pressed figs, and loaded them on donkeys. Then she told her servants, "Go on ahead; I'll follow you." But she did not tell her husband Nabal.
As she came riding her donkey into a mountain ravine, there were David and his men descending toward her, and she met them. 1 Sam 25:18-21
I also suspect that having sent the supplies on ahead, Abigail bathed, put on perfume and something pretty. Now don't get me wrong...it was Abigail's potent wisdom that saved the day. 1) She starts by sending the supplies on ahead. And 2) she calls David to the prophetic destiny he is fighting for:
"Now since the LORD has kept you, my master, from bloodshed and from avenging yourself with your own hands, as surely as the LORD lives and as you live, may your enemies and all who intend to harm my master be like Nabal. And let this gift, which your servant has brought to my master, be given to the men who follow you. Please forgive your servant's offense, for the LORD will certainly make a lasting dynasty for my master, because he fights the LORD's battles. Let no wrongdoing be found in you as long as you live. Even though someone is pursuing you to take your life, the life of my master will be bound securely in the bundle of the living by the LORD your God. But the lives of your enemies he will hurl away as from the pocket of a sling. When the LORD has done for my master every good thing he promised concerning him and has appointed him leader over Israel, my master will not have on his conscience the staggering burden of needless bloodshed or of having avenged himself. 1 Sam 25:26-31
NIV
She reminds him that he is God's King, that one day he will sit on the throne. He must live his life and make his decisions with that in mind. Wow! There is a great Yiddish word: chutzpah that means "shameless audacity". Abigail definitely had chutzpah!
It occurs to me that it might have crossed both of their minds that with Nabal out of the way...well, she would have been "spoils of war" as it were. But again, David and Abigail stand in the courage of their convictions. While the rash act of wiping Nabal off the face of the earth would have been possible and would even have seemed justifiable, they had to make their decisions based not in rage, or expedience, but in righteousness.
I would love to see the scene played out where Abigail confronts Nabal
"Woman! I called for you last night. Why did you not serve me at our feast. Where did you sneak off to this time? And, get me some wine...my head is exploding."
"You are lucky you have a head on your shoulders this morning. Where was I, Nabal? I was off saving your worthless hide! You insulted David -- David who killed Goliath, David who killed 1000 Philistines to earn King Saul's daughter. 'Who is this David? Who is this son of Jesse?' That David was on his way here to show you who he is...get your own wine. I have work to do."
Abigail must have said something like that...it says his heart failed him and he became like a stone. and 10 days later he died...clearly of terminal stupidity.
And...
when David's men show up on, like, the 11th day, Abigail quickly got on a donkey and, attended by her five maids, went with David's messengers and became his wife. 1 Sam 25:41-43
and
they lived happily ever after...
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