Immerse: Kingdoms Full Volume - Flipbook - Page 141
1S
| 25:35–26:8
S am u el – K I N G S
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men would still be alive tomorrow morning.” Then David accepted her
present and told her, “Return home in peace. I have heard what you said.
We will not kill your husband.”
When Abigail arrived home, she found that Nabal was throwing a big
party and was celebrating like a king. He was very drunk, so she didn’t tell
him anything about her meeting with David until dawn the next day. In the
morning when Nabal was sober, his wife told him what had happened. As
a result he had a stroke, and he lay paralyzed on his bed like a stone. About
ten days later, the Lord struck him, and he died.
When David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, “Praise the Lord, who
has avenged the insult I received from Nabal and has kept me from doing
it myself. Nabal has received the punishment for his sin.” Then David sent
messengers to Abigail to ask her to become his wife.
When the messengers arrived at Carmel, they told Abigail, “David has
sent us to take you back to marry him.”
She bowed low to the ground and responded, “I, your servant, would be
happy to marry David. I would even be willing to become a slave, washing
the feet of his servants!” Quickly getting ready, she took along five of her
servant girls as attendants, mounted her donkey, and went with David’s
messengers. And so she became his wife. David also married Ahinoam
from Jezreel, making both of them his wives. Saul, meanwhile, had given
his daughter Michal, David’s wife, to a man from Gallim named Palti son
of Laish.
Now some men from Ziph came to Saul at Gibeah to tell him, “David is
hiding on the hill of Hakilah, which overlooks Jeshimon.”
So Saul took 3,000 of Israel’s elite troops and went to hunt him down in
the wilderness of Ziph. Saul camped along the road beside the hill of Ha
kilah, near Jeshimon, where David was hiding. When David learned that
Saul had come after him into the wilderness, he sent out spies to verify the
report of Saul’s arrival.
David slipped over to Saul’s camp one night to look around. Saul and
Abner son of Ner, the commander of his army, were sleeping inside a ring
formed by the slumbering warriors. “Who will volunteer to go in there
with me?” David asked Ahimelech the Hittite and Abishai son of Zerui ah,
Joab’s brother.
“I’ll go with you,” Abishai replied. So David and Abishai went right into
Saul’s camp and found him asleep, with his spear stuck in the ground beside his head. Abner and the soldiers were lying asleep around him.
“God has surely handed your enemy over to you this time!” Abishai
whispered to David. “Let me pin him to the ground with one thrust of the
spear; I won’t need to strike twice!”