6. Then you will say to my brother, “Peace to you and your house! Peace to all that is yours!
7. Now I hear that they are shearing sheep for you. When your shepherds were with us, we neither insulted them nor harmed them the whole time they were in Carmel.
8. Ask your own servants; they can tell you! May my servants find favor in your sight, for we have come at the time of a holiday. Please provide us – your servants and your son David – with whatever you can spare.”
9. So David’s servants went and spoke all these words to Nabal in David’s name. Then they paused.
10. But Nabal responded to David’s servants, “Who is David, and who is this son of Jesse? This is a time when many servants are breaking away from their masters!
11. Should I take my bread and my water and my meat that I have slaughtered for my shearers and give them to these men? I don’t even know where they came from!”
12. So David’s servants went on their way. When they had returned, they came and told David all these things.
13. Then David instructed his men, “Each of you strap on your sword!” So each one strapped on his sword, and David also strapped on his sword. About four hundred men followed David up, while two hundred stayed behind with the equipment.
14. But one of the servants told Nabal’s wife Abigail, “David sent messengers from the desert to greet our lord, but he screamed at them.
15. These men were very good to us. They did not insult us, nor did we sustain any loss during the entire time we were together in the field.
16. Both night and day they were a protective wall for us the entire time we were with them, while we were tending our flocks.
17. Now be aware of this, and see what you can do. For disaster has been planned for our lord and his entire household. He is such a wicked person that no one tells him anything!”
18. So Abigail quickly took two hundred loaves of bread, two containers of wine, five prepared sheep, five seahs of roasted grain, a hundred bunches of raisins, and two hundred lumps of pressed figs. She loaded them on donkeys
19. and said to her servants, “Go on ahead of me. I will come after you.” But she did not tell her husband Nabal.