People of the Bible

Abigail

About 1000 BC · Carmel, in Judah

She rode out with bread and wine to meet David and his 400 swords. Her words kept him from bloodshed, and he blessed her for it.

Picture: David and Abigail, Antonio Molinari, Venice, late 1600s. Public domain.

Her path, in order

1. Wife of NabalMarried to a rich, harsh farmer at Carmel
2. PeacemakerShe kept David from bloodshed
3. Wife of DavidMarried while he was an outlaw
4. CaptiveCarried off from Ziklag, and rescued
5. MotherOf Chileab, born at Hebron

in numbers

• Armed men David led against Nabal400
  • She met them in a ravine
  • and talked David down
  1 Samuel 25:13, 20
• Loaves she loaded on donkeys200
  • With 200 cakes of figs,
  • 5 sheep and 2 skins of wine
  1 Samuel 25:18

did you know?

• An “abigail” was once English for a lady's maid. Merriam-Webster traces the word to a maid in a play of 1616. The 1911 Britannica traces it to the Bible's Abigail, who called herself David's “handmaid”.

  Merriam-Webster, “abigail”; Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911), “Abigail”

• The rabbis counted her one of the four most beautiful women who ever lived, with Sarah, Rahab and Esther.

  Jewish Encyclopedia (1906), “Abigail”, on the Talmud, Megillah 15a

• In the 1560s Maarten van Heemskerck designed prints of the eight Beatitudes. For “Blessed are the peacemakers” he chose Abigail at David's feet.

  Rijksmuseum, David and Abigail, engraved by Harmen Jansz Muller after Maarten van Heemskerck, 1564 to 1568

In the Bible

One chapter, 1 Samuel 25. After it she is named only in lists: as David's wife in 1 Samuel 27 and 30 and 2 Samuel 2, and as a mother in 2 Samuel 3 and 1 Chronicles 3.

Home

Carmel, a town in the hill country of Judah, near Maon. It is not the Mount Carmel of Elijah.

Her name

Hebrew Abigayil, probably “my father is joy”.

Husbands

Nabal, a rich sheep farmer, harsh to everyone. Then David, still an outlaw hiding from King Saul when he married her.

Son

Chileab, David's second son, born at Hebron. Chronicles calls him Daniel.

Also called

Abigail of Carmel, and the widow of Nabal. A prophetess, in the Talmud.

Died

The Bible does not say when or where. It leaves her at Hebron, the mother of David's second son.

In art

Painters show her before David, with her loaves and wine loaded on donkeys, as at the top of this page. Most have her kneeling.

David, the historian Josephus, three Church Fathers and the Jewish Encyclopedia, in their own words.

1. Carmel, in Judah

   Sheep-shearing time

   “Who is David?”

   Nabal of Maon was very rich, with three thousand sheep and a thousand goats. His wife was Abigail. “She was an intelligent and beautiful woman, but her husband, a Calebite, was harsh and evil in his dealings.” David, hiding from King Saul in the wilderness, sent ten young men to Nabal at shearing time. David's men had guarded Nabal's shepherds, and he asked for whatever Nabal could spare. Nabal answered, “Who is David? Who is this son of Jesse?” So David told his men, “Strap on your swords!” About four hundred went with him.

   1 Samuel 25:2-13

2. Nabal's house

   The day of Nabal's insult

   “Consider carefully what you must do”

   One of Nabal's young men went to Abigail, not to his master. David's men had been very good to them, he told her. “They were a wall around us, both day and night.” But Nabal had screamed at David's messengers. “Now consider carefully what you must do,” the young man said, “because disaster looms over our master and all his household. For he is such a scoundrel that nobody can speak to him!”

   1 Samuel 25:14-17

3. The road to David

   At once

   She hurried

   “Then Abigail hurried.” She took two hundred loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five butchered sheep, five measures of roasted grain, a hundred clusters of raisins and two hundred cakes of figs, and loaded them on donkeys. She sent her young men on first: “Go ahead of me. I will be right behind you.” “But she did not tell her husband Nabal.” Meanwhile David was swearing that by morning not one male of Nabal's house would be left alive.

   1 Samuel 25:18-22

4. A mountain ravine

   The day of Nabal's insult

   At David's feet

   Riding down into a ravine, she met David and his men coming toward her. She got off the donkey, fell facedown and bowed. Then she took the blame on herself and pleaded. The LORD had held David back from bloodshed, she said. One day He would make him ruler over Israel, and then he would have no needless killing on his conscience. Her words are below. David blessed her, and took her gift. “Go home in peace,” he said. “See, I have heeded your voice and granted your request.”

   1 Samuel 25:20-35

5. Nabal's house

   The night she came home, and the morning after

   “Like a stone”

   When she came home, Nabal was holding “a feast fit for a king,” in high spirits and very drunk. “So she told him nothing until morning light.” In the morning, sober, he heard it all from her. “His heart failed within him, and he became like a stone.” About ten days later, “the LORD struck Nabal dead.”

   1 Samuel 25:36-38

6. Carmel

   After Nabal's death

   David's wife

   When David heard that Nabal was dead, he blessed the LORD, Who had “restrained His servant from evil.” Then he sent word to Abigail at Carmel, asking her to become his wife. She bowed facedown and called herself his servant, ready to wash his servants' feet. Then she hurried onto a donkey and, with five of her maidens, followed his messengers. David had also married Ahinoam of Jezreel.

   1 Samuel 25:39-43

7. Gath and Ziklag

   David's years among the Philistines

   Taken captive

   With Saul still hunting him, David took his men and their families to Achish, the Philistine king of Gath, who gave him the town of Ziklag. Abigail and his other wife, Ahinoam, went with him. While the men were away, Amalekites raided Ziklag, burned it and carried off the women and children. David's men wept “until they had no strength left to weep,” and spoke of stoning him. “But David found strength in the LORD his God.” He pursued the raiders and recovered everything, “including his two wives.”

   1 Samuel 27:1-7; 30:1-19

8. Hebron

   David made king

   The mother of Chileab

   After Saul died, David went up to Hebron with his two wives, and the men of Judah anointed him king. There Abigail bore his second son, Chileab. Here the Bible's story of her ends.

   2 Samuel 2:1-4; 3:2-3

Abigail wrote nothing. These are her words as 1 Samuel records them. Outside the section on where the Bible figure quiz places her, every Bible line on this page is from the Berean Standard Bible.

David

The outlaw she met in a ravine. He blessed her for stopping him, married her after Nabal's death, and was made king at Hebron with her beside him.

1 Samuel 25:32-42; 2 Samuel 2:2-4

Nabal

Her first husband, a rich sheep farmer of Maon. His name means Fool, she told David, and he lived up to it. He died about ten days after she told him what she had done.

1 Samuel 25:2-3, 25, 37-38

Nabal's young man

One of Nabal's shepherds. When his master screamed at David's men, he went to Abigail instead, because “nobody can speak to him.”

1 Samuel 25:14-17

Ahinoam of Jezreel

David's other wife. She and Abigail were carried off together from Ziklag and rescued together. Her son Amnon was David's firstborn.

1 Samuel 30:5, 18; 2 Samuel 3:2

Chileab

Her son, David's second, born at Hebron. Chronicles calls him Daniel. The Bible tells nothing more of him.

2 Samuel 3:3; 1 Chronicles 3:1

Quiz Who in the Bible are you most like? Answer eighteen plain statements about you, none of them about the Bible, and see how near you land to Abigail. Start Quiz Christian Personality Test Which of eight types are you? Find your own. Start

Hannah

In 1 Samuel, the book that tells Abigail's story, she too called herself a servant and asked to be remembered: “remember me, not forgetting Your maidservant.”

1 Samuel 1:11 Esther

She too went before a man with power over life and death, to plead for lives: “And if I perish, I perish!”

Esther 4:16 Rahab

She too acted on her own to save a household. She hid two Israelite spies in Jericho, then asked them to “spare the lives of my father and mother.”

Joshua 2:1-13