12. David’s men turned round and went back. When they arrived, they reported every word.
13. David said to his men, ‘Each of you strap on your sword!’ So they did, and David strapped his on as well. About four hundred men went up with David, while two hundred stayed with the supplies.
14. One of the servants told Abigail, Nabal’s wife, ‘David sent messengers from the wilderness to give our master his greetings, but he hurled insults at them.
15. Yet these men were very good to us. They did not ill-treat us, and the whole time we were out in the fields near them nothing was missing.
16. Night and day they were a wall around us the whole time we were herding our sheep near them.
17. Now think it over and see what you can do, because disaster is hanging over our master and his whole household. He is such a wicked man that no one can talk to him.’
18. Abigail acted quickly. She took two hundred loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five dressed sheep, five seahs of roasted grain, a hundred cakes of raisins and two hundred cakes of pressed figs, and loaded them on donkeys.
19. Then she told her servants, ‘Go on ahead; I’ll follow you.’ But she did not tell her husband Nabal.
20. As she came riding her donkey into a mountain ravine, there were David and his men descending towards her, and she met them.
21. David had just said, ‘It’s been useless – all my watching over this fellow’s property in the wilderness so that nothing of his was missing. He has paid me back evil for good.