Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Samuel · About this commentary
Nabal the Fool
1 Samuel 25:1-22
1 Samuel died; and all Israel gathered themselves together and mourned for him, and buried him at his house at Ramah. Then David arose and went down to the wilderness of Paran. · WEB
Samuel dies, a rich man insults the men who guarded his flocks, and David — who spared a king in a cave — straps on his sword over a slight.
Samuel died; and all Israel gathered themselves together and mourned for him 1 Samuel 25:1.
One verse for the man who anointed two kings. The nation buries the last judge, and the book moves straight to a sheep-shearing — which is its own comment on where Israel now is: no prophet, a king hunting his successor, and the story's moral weight resting on a household in the hills of Judah.
The man was very great... the name of the man was Nabal; and the name of his wife Abigail. This woman was intelligent and had a beautiful face; but the man was surly and evil in his doings 1 Samuel 25:2–3.
The introductions are a verdict before a word is spoken. And his name means fool — not a comic simpleton but Scripture's technical term for the man who lives as though God were irrelevant Psalms 14:1, the category Abigail will apply to him openly: as his name is, so is he 1 Samuel 25:25.
"Now I have heard that you have shearers. Your shepherds have now been with us, and we didn't harm them" 1 Samuel 25:7.
David's request is courteous and, by the customs of the country, entirely reasonable: his men had protected Nabal's shepherds in open country — they were a wall to us both by night and by day 1 Samuel 25:16 — and shearing time was a feast, when generosity was expected. Modern readers sometimes hear a protection racket; the servants' own testimony rules it out.
"Who is David? Who is the son of Jesse? There are many servants who break away from their masters these days" 1 Samuel 25:10.
Nabal's reply is contempt with a political edge — the phrase Saul spits 1 Samuel 20:27, and the insinuation that David is a runaway slave — followed by a sentence with three my in it: my bread, my water, and my meat 1 Samuel 25:11. That is the fool's grammar. Everything is his, nothing is owed, and God does not enter the calculation.
David said to his men, "Every man put on his sword!" 1 Samuel 25:13.
And here is the chapter's shock. The man who would not lift a hand against the king who hunted him for years is riding out to slaughter an entire household over an insult at dinner — four hundred swords, and an oath to leave nothing male alive by morning 1 Samuel 25:22. The restraint in the cave was real; it was not a settled character trait that covered every provocation. Wounded pride from an equal reached a place that mortal danger from a king had not touched. Anyone who has been steady under a great trial and lost it over a small slight will recognize the mechanism exactly.
settled What this mark means