A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Abigail
ABIGAIL,
Wife of Nabal, a rich but churlish man, of little understanding, of the tribe of Judah; he lived probably near Maon, one of the most southern cities of Judah. When David, who had taken refuge from the pursuit of Saul in the wilderness of Paran, sent ten young men to request assistance from Nabal, who was then employed in shearing his numerous flocks, Nabal surlily refused to give of his substance to strangers, although David had protected his shepherds from injury during his residence among them. Then David, in his indignation, ordered four hundred of his men to arm themselves, and went to put Nabal and his family to the sword. But Abigail, whose wisdom equalled her beauty, hearing of what had passed, and foreseeing the result of her husband's refusal, hastened to prepare provisions, without Nabal's knowledge, with which she met and appeased David. When Abigail returned from her interview with David, she found her husband at a feast, and intoxicated; so that she said nothing of the affair to him till the next day. Then, when he heard of the danger he had escaped, his heart was so struck with fear that he died in ten days. When David was informed of Nabal's death, he sent messengers to Abigail, to request that she would become his wife; to which she consented, and accompanied the servants of David on their return.
The old commentators are unanimous in their commendations of the character and conduct of Abigail. Father Berruyer, the Jesuit, in his "History of the People of God," has been an excellent painter on this subject. "Nabal's riches," says he, "consisted in vines and corn, but especially in pasture grounds, in which a thousand goats and three thousand sheep grazed. However, these large possessions were nothing in comparison of the treasure he possessed in the chaste Abigail, his wife, the most accomplished woman of her tribe. Nabal, unhappily for Abigail, was not worthy of her, and never couple were worse matched. The wife was beautiful, careful, prudent, a good housewife, vastly good-natured, and indefatigably vigilant; but as for the husband, he was dissolute, capricious, headstrong, contemptuous; always exasperated at good advice, and never failing to make a bad use of it; in a word, a man whose riotous intemperance the virtuous Abigail was perpetually obliged to bear with, to atone for his extravagant sallies, or dissemble his follies; besides, he was an infidel, and as depraved an Israelite's his wife was regular and fervent."
Whether all these fancies of the learned Jesuit be true or not, the history, as the holy book records it, is highly in favour of the intellectual powers as well as personal attractions of Abigail. Her speech to David is replete with beauties, and is a model of the oratory of thought applied to the passions, to the prejudices, and the previous associations of David. Read it in Samuel, I. Book, chap. XXV, verses from 24 to 31, and then judge of the effect it must have had on her auditor, when his heart burst forth, as it were, in this reply:—
"And David said to Abigail, Blessed he the Lord God of Israel, which hath sent thee this day to meet me.
"And blessed be thy advice, and blessed be thou, which hast kept me this day from coming to shed blood, and from avenging myself with mine own hand."
These events occurred B. C. 1057.