9. So David’s young men came and they spoke all these words to Nabal in the name of David. Then they waited.
10. But Nabal answered David’s servants and said, “Who is David? And who is the son of Jesse? Today, there are many servants breaking away from the presence of their masters.
11. Should I take my bread and my water and my meat which I have slaughtered for my shearers and give it to men whom I do not know where they are from?
12. So David’s young men turned on their way and returned and came and told him according to all these words.
13. Then David said to his men, “Each man strap on his sword!” So each one strapped on his sword, and David also strapped on his sword. About four hundred men went up after David, while two hundred remained with the baggage.
14. But a young man of the servants told Abigail, Nabal’s wife, saying, “Look, David sent messengers from the desert to greet our master, but he addressed them angrily,
15. even though the men were very good to us; we were not mistreated and did not miss anything all the days we went about with them while we were in the field.
16. They were a wall to us both night and day, all the days we were with them keeping the sheep.
17. And so then, know and consider what you should do, for evil has been decided against our master and against all his household, and he is such a wicked man, nobody can reason with him!”
18. Then Abigail quickly took two hundred loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five prepared sheep, five seahs of roasted grain, a hundred raisin cakes, and two hundred fig cakes, and she put them on the donkeys.
19. Then she said to her servants, “Go ahead before me; look, I am coming after you,” but she did not tell her husband Nabal.
20. And then, as she was riding on the donkey and was going down the ravine of the mountain, David and his men were coming down to meet her, and she met them.
21. Now David had said, “Surely in vain I guarded all that this fellow had in the desert. And nothing was missed of all that was his, but he returned evil against me in place of good!
22. May God severely punish the enemies of David and again do thus if I leave behind anything that is his until the morning, not even one male!”
23. When Abigail saw David, she hurried and got down from the donkey and fell on her face before David’s anger, and she bowed down to the ground.