Avigail: Ethos, Pathos, Logos

(1) Samuel died, and all Israel gathered and made lament for him; and they buried him in Ramah, his home. David went down to the wilderness of Paran. (2) There was a man in Maon whose possessions were in Carmel. The man was very wealthy; he owned three thousand sheep and a thousand goats. At the time, he was shearing his sheep in Carmel. (3) The man’s name was Nabal, and his wife’s name was Abigail. The woman was intelligent and beautiful, but the man, a Calebite, was a hard man and an evildoer. (4) David was in the wilderness when he heard that Nabal was shearing his sheep. (5) David dispatched ten young men, and David instructed the young men, “Go up to Carmel. When you come to Nabal, greet him in my name. (6) Say as follows: ‘To life! Greetings to you and to your household and to all that is yours! (7) I hear that you are now doing your shearing. As you know, your shepherds have been with us; we did not harm them, and nothing of theirs was missing all the time they were in Carmel. (8) Ask your young men and they will tell you. So receive these young men graciously, for we have come on a festive occasion. Please give your servants and your son David whatever you can.’” (9) David’s young men went and delivered this message to Nabal in the name of David. When they stopped speaking, (10) Nabal answered David’s servants, “Who is David? Who is the son of Jesse? There are many slaves nowadays who run away from their masters. (11) Should I then take my bread and my water, and the meat that I slaughtered for my own shearers, and give them to men who come from I don’t know where?” (12) Thereupon David’s young men retraced their steps; and when they got back, they told him all this. (13) And David said to his men, “Gird on your swords.” Each girded on his sword; David too girded on his sword. About four hundred men went up after David, while two hundred remained with the baggage. (14) One of [Nabal’s] young men told Abigail, Nabal’s wife, that David had sent messengers from the wilderness to greet their master, and that he had spurned them. (15) “But the men had been very friendly to us; we were not harmed, nor did we miss anything all the time that we went about with them while we were in the open. (16) They were a wall about us both by night and by day all the time that we were with them tending the flocks. (17) So consider carefully what you should do, for harm threatens our master and all his household; he is such a nasty fellow that no one can speak to him.” (18) Abigail quickly got together two hundred loaves of bread, two jars of wine, five dressed sheep, five seahs of parched corn, one hundred cakes of raisin, and two hundred cakes of pressed figs. She loaded them on asses, (19) and she told her young men, “Go on ahead of me, and I’ll follow you”; but she did not tell her husband Nabal. (20) She was riding on the ass and going down a trail on the hill, when David and his men appeared, coming down toward her; and she met them.— (21) Now David had been saying, “It was all for nothing that I protected that fellow’s possessions in the wilderness, and that nothing he owned is missing. He has paid me back evil for good. (22) May God do thus and more to the enemies of David if, by the light of morning, I leave a single male of his.”— (23) When Abigail saw David, she quickly dismounted from the ass and threw herself face down before David, bowing to the ground. (24) Prostrate at his feet, she pleaded, “Let the blame be mine, my lord, but let your handmaid speak to you; hear your maid’s plea. (25) Please, my lord, pay no attention to that wretched fellow Nabal. For he is just what his name says: His name means ‘boor’ and he is a boor. “Your handmaid did not see the young men whom my lord sent. (26) I swear, my lord, as the LORD lives and as you live—the LORD who has kept you from seeking redress by blood with your own hands—let your enemies and all who would harm my lord fare like Nabal! (27) Here is the present which your maidservant has brought to my lord; let it be given to the young men who are the followers of my lord. (28) Please pardon your maid’s boldness. For the LORD will grant my lord an enduring house, because my lord is fighting the battles of the LORD, and no wrong is ever to be found in you. (29) And if anyone sets out to pursue you and seek your life, the life of my lord will be bound up in the bundle of life in the care of the LORD; but He will fling away the lives of your enemies as from the hollow of a sling. (30) And when the LORD has accomplished for my lord all the good He has promised you, and has appointed you ruler of Israel, (31) do not let this be a cause of stumbling and of faltering courage to my lord that you have shed blood needlessly and that my lord sought redress with his own hands. And when the LORD has prospered my lord, remember your maid.” (32) David said to Abigail, “Praised be the LORD, the God of Israel, who sent you this day to meet me! (33) And blessed be your prudence, and blessed be you yourself for restraining me from seeking redress in blood by my own hands. (34) For as sure as the LORD, the God of Israel, lives—who has kept me from harming you—had you not come quickly to meet me, not a single male of Nabal’s line would have been left by daybreak.” (35) David then accepted from her what she had brought him, and he said to her, “Go up to your home safely. See, I have heeded your plea and respected your wish.” (36) When Abigail came home to Nabal, he was having a feast in his house, a feast fit for a king; Nabal was in a merry mood and very drunk, so she did not tell him anything at all until daybreak. (37) The next morning, when Nabal had slept off the wine, his wife told him everything that had happened; and his courage died within him, and he became like a stone. (38) About ten days later the LORD struck Nabal and he died. (39) When David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, “Praised be the LORD who championed my cause against the insults of Nabal and held back His servant from wrongdoing; the LORD has brought Nabal’s wrongdoing down on his own head.” David sent messengers to propose marriage to Abigail, to take her as his wife. (40) When David’s servants came to Abigail at Carmel and told her that David had sent them to her to make her his wife, (41) she immediately bowed low with her face to the ground and said, “Your handmaid is ready to be your maidservant, to wash the feet of my lord’s servants.” (42) Then Abigail rose quickly and mounted an ass, and with five of her maids in attendance she followed David’s messengers; and she became his wife. (43) Now David had taken Ahinoam of Jezreel; so both of them became his wives. (44) Saul had given his daughter Michal, David’s wife, to Palti son of Laish from Gallim.

§ The Gemara asks with regard to the prophetesses recorded in the baraita: Who were the seven prophetesses? The Gemara answers: Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Abigail, Huldah, and Esther... Abigail was a prophetess, as it is written: “And it was so, as she rode on the donkey, and came down by the covert of the mountain” (I Samuel 25:20). The Gemara asks: Why does it say: “By the covert [beseter] of the mountain”? It should have said: From the mountain. The Gemara answers that in fact this must be understood as an allusion to something else. Rabba bar Shmuel said: Abigail, in her attempt to prevent David from killing her husband Nabal, came to David and questioned him on account of menstrual blood that comes from the hidden parts [setarim] of a body. How so? She took a blood-stained cloth and showed it to him, asking him to rule on her status, whether or not she was ritually impure as a menstruating woman. He said to her: Is blood shown at night? One does not examine blood-stained cloths at night, as it is difficult to distinguish between the different shades by candlelight. She said to him: If so, you should also remember another halakha: Are cases of capital law tried at night? Since one does not try capital cases at night, you cannot condemn Nabal to death at night. David said to her:

(1) תנו לה מפרי ידיה ויהללוה בשערים מעשיה, “Acknowledge her for the fruit of her hands, and let her accomplishments praise her in her gates” (Proverbs 31,31)... Solomon, when discussing marriage, said that a woman does not deserve to be praised on account of her physical beauty, graceful mannerism. Solomon said (Proverbs 31,30) “grace is deceptive, beauty is vain, a G’d-fearing woman is the woman who is truly praiseworthy.” This is also why he concludes by saying: “acknowledge her for the fruit of her hands and let her accomplishments praise her in the gates.” It is appropriate that she be praised for what she does, not for the attributes she was endowed with at birth [something for which one should praise the Lord, not her. Ed.] We find that Abigail was the prototype for such a woman whose good virtues employed at the right time and in the right place, saved her husband and her entire household from being killed by David and his men. David himself acknowledged this when he said to her (Samuel I 25,33): ”blessed be your prudence, and blessed be you yourself for restraining me from seeking redress in blood by my own hands.“

"He may not amass too many wives" (Deuteronomy 17:17), only eighteen. Rabbi Yehudah says, he may amass more, so long as they do not lead his heart astray. Rabbi Shimon says, even one who leads his heart astray he may not marry. If so, why does it say, (Deuteronomy 17:17) "He may not amass too many wives"? [This condition applies even if she is] like Abigail.

Nabal, your husband, is a rebel against the throne, as David had already been anointed as king by the prophet Samuel, and Nabal refused his orders. And therefore there is no need to try him, as a rebel is not accorded the ordinary prescriptions governing judicial proceedings. Abigail said to him: You lack the authority to act in this manner, as Saul is still alive. He is the king in actual practice, and your seal [tivakha] has not yet spread across the world, i.e., your kingship is not yet known to all. Therefore, you are not authorized to try someone for rebelling against the monarchy. David accepted her words and said to her: “And blessed be your discretion and blessed be you who have kept me this day from coming to bloodguiltiness [damim]” (I Samuel 25:33). The Gemara asks: The plural term damim, literally, bloods, indicates two. Why did David not use the singular term dam? Rather, this teaches that Abigail revealed her thigh, and he lusted after her, and he went three parasangs by the fire of his desire for her, and said to her: Listen to me, i.e., listen to me and allow me to be intimate with you. Abigail then said to him: “Let this not be a stumbling block for you” (I Samuel 25:31). By inference, from the word “this,” it can be understood that there is someone else who will in fact be a stumbling block for him, and what is this referring to? The incident involving Bathsheba. And in the end this is what was, as indeed he stumbled with Bathsheba. This demonstrates that Abigail was a prophetess, as she knew that this would occur. This also explains why David blessed Abigail for keeping him from being responsible for two incidents involving blood that day: Abigail’s menstrual blood and the shedding of Nabal’s blood. Apropos Abigail, the Gemara explains additional details in the story. Abigail said to David: “Yet the soul of my lord shall be bound in the bond of life with the Lord your God” (I Samuel 25:29), and when she parted from him she said to him: “And when the Lord shall have dealt well with my lord, and you shall remember your handmaid” (I Samuel 25:31). Rav Naḥman said that this explains the folk saying that people say: While a woman is engaged in conversation she also holds the spindle, i.e., while a woman is engaged in one activity she is already taking steps with regard to another. Abigail came to David in order to save her husband Nabal, but at the same time she indicates that if her husband dies, David should remember her and marry her. And indeed, after Nabal’s death David took Abigail for his wife. Some say that Rav Naḥman referred to a different saying: The goose stoops its head as it goes along, but its eyes look on from afar to find what it is looking for. So too, Abigail acted in similar fashion.

...To complete the discussion about the prophetesses, the Gemara cites a baraita in which the Sages taught: There were four women of extraordinary beauty in the world: Sarah, and Abigail, Rahab, and Esther... The Sages taught in a baraita: Rahab aroused impure thoughts by her name, i.e., the mere mention of her name would inspire lust for her; Yael, by her voice; Abigail, by remembering her; Michal, the daughter of Saul, by her appearance.