1 Samuel 25:18-22

25:18 So Abigail quickly took two hundred loaves of bread, two containers ¹  of wine, five prepared sheep, five seahs ²  of roasted grain, a hundred bunches of raisins, and two hundred lumps of pressed figs. She loaded them on donkeys 25:19 and said to her servants, “Go on ahead of me. I will come after you.” But she did not tell her husband Nabal.

25:20 Riding on her donkey, she went down under cover of the mountain. David and his men were coming down to meet her, and she encountered them. 25:21 Now David had been thinking, ³  “In vain I guarded everything that belonged to this man in the desert. I didn’t take anything from him. But he has repaid my good with evil. 25:22 God will severely punish David, ⁴  if I leave alive until morning even one male ⁵  from all those who belong to him!”

1 Samuel 25:26-27

25:26 “Now, my lord, as surely as the Lord lives and as surely as you live, it is the Lord who has kept you from shedding blood and taking matters into your own hands. Now may your enemies and those who seek to harm my lord be like Nabal. 25:27 Now let this present ⁶  that your servant has brought to my lord be given to the servants who follow ⁷  my lord.

¹ tn Heb “skins.”

² sn The seah was a dry measure equal to one-third of an ephah, or not quite eleven quarts.

³ tn Heb “said.”

⁴ tc Heb “Thus God will do to the enemies of David and thus he will add.” Most of the Old Greek ms tradition has simply “David,” with no reference to his enemies. In OT imprecations such as the one found in v. 22 it is common for the speaker to direct malediction toward himself as an indication of the seriousness with which he regards the matter at hand. In other words, the speaker invites on himself dire consequences if he fails to fulfill the matter expressed in the oath. However, in the situation alluded to in v. 22 the threat actually does not come to fruition due to the effectiveness of Abigail’s appeal to David in behalf of her husband Nabal. Instead, David is placated through Abigail’s intervention. It therefore seems likely that the reference to “the enemies of David” in the MT of v. 22 is the result of a scribal attempt to deliver David from the implied consequences of this oath. The present translation follows the LXX rather than the MT here.

⁵ tn Heb “one who urinates against a wall” (also in v. 34); KJV “any that pisseth against the wall.”

⁶ tn Heb “blessing.”

⁷ tn Heb “are walking at the feet of.”