¹³ Then David said to his men, “Each of you strap on his sword.” So each man strapped on his sword. And David also strapped on his sword, and about ^(A)four hundred men went up behind David, while two hundred ^(B)stayed with the baggage.

¹⁴ Now one of the young men told Abigail, Nabal’s wife, saying, “Behold, David sent messengers from the wilderness to ^[a](C)greet our master, and he spoke to them in anger. ¹⁵ Yet the men were very good to us, and we were not ^(D)harmed, nor did anything go missing ^[b]as long as we went with them, while we were in the fields. ^16 (E)They were a wall to us both by night and by day, all the time we were with them tending the sheep. ¹⁷ Now then, be aware and ^[c]consider what you should do, because harm is plotted against our master and against all his household; and he is such a ^[d]worthless man that no one can speak to him.”

Abigail Intercedes

¹⁸ Then Abigail hurried and ^(F)took two hundred loaves of bread and two jugs of wine, and five sheep already prepared and five measures of roasted grain, and a hundred cakes of raisins and two hundred cakes of figs, and she loaded them on donkeys. ¹⁹ Then she said to her young men, “^(G)Go on ahead of me; behold, I am coming after you.” But she did not tell her husband Nabal. ²⁰ And it happened as she was riding on her donkey and coming down by the hidden part of the mountain, that behold, David and his men were coming down toward her; so she met them. ²¹ Now David had said, “It is certainly for nothing that I have guarded everything that this man has in the wilderness, so that nothing has gone missing of all that belonged to him! For he has ^(H)returned me evil for good. ^22 (I)May God do so to the enemies of David, and more so, ^(J)if by morning I leave alive as much as one ^[e]male of any who belong to him.”