6. Tell him, ‘Long life to you! Peace be to you! Peace be to your house! Peace be to all that you have!
7. Now I have heard that you have shearers. Your shepherds have now been with us, and we didn’t harm them. Nothing was missing from them all the time they were in Carmel.
8. Ask your young men, and they will tell you. Therefore let the young men find favor in your eyes; for we come on a good day. Please give whatever comes to your hand, to your servants, and to your son David.’”
9. When David’s young men came, they spoke to Nabal all those words in the name of David, and waited.
10. Nabal answered David’s servants, and said, “Who is David? Who is the son of Jesse? There are many servants who break away from their masters these days.
11. Shall I then take my bread, my water, and my meat that I have killed for my shearers, and give it to men who I don’t know where they come from?”
12. So David’s young men turned on their way, and went back, and came and told him all these words.
13. David said to his men, “Every man put on his sword!”Every man put on his sword. David also put on his sword. About four hundred men followed David, and two hundred stayed by the baggage.
14. But one of the young men told Abigail, Nabal’s wife, saying, “Behold, David sent messengers out of the wilderness to Greet our master; and he insulted them.
15. But the men were very good to us, and we were not harmed, and we didn’t miss anything, as long as we went with them, when we were in the fields.
16. They were a wall to us both by night and by day, all the while we were with them keeping the sheep.
17. Now therefore know and consider what you will do; for evil is determined against our master, and against all his house; for he is such a worthless fellow that one can’t speak to him.”
18. Then Abigail hurried and took two hundred loaves of bread, two containers of wine, five sheep ready dressed, five seahs of parched grain, one hundred clusters of raisins, and two hundred cakes of figs, and laid them on donkeys.
19. She said to her young men, “Go on before me. Behold, I am coming after you.” But she didn’t tell her husband, Nabal.
20. As she rode on her donkey, and came down by the covert of the mountain, that behold, David and his men came down toward her, and she met them.
21. Now David had said, “Surely in vain I have kept all that this fellow has in the wilderness, so that nothing was missed of all that pertained to him. He has returned me evil for good.