7. I have heard that you have shearers. Now your shepherds have been with us and we did them no harm, and they missed nothing all the time they were in Carmel.
8. Ask your young men and they will tell you. Therefore let my young men find favor in your sight, for we come at an opportune time. I pray you, give whatever you have at hand to your servants and to your son David.
9. And when David's young men came, they said all this to Nabal in the name of David, and then paused.
10. And Nabal answered David's servants and said, Who is David? Who is the son of Jesse? There are many servants nowadays who are each breaking away from his master.
11. Shall I then take my bread and my water, and my meat that I have killed for my shearers, and give it to men when I do not know where they belong?
12. So David's young men turned away, and came and told him all that was said.
13. And David said to his men, Every man gird on his sword. And they did so, and David also girded on his sword; and there went up after David about 400 men, and 200 remained with the baggage.
14. But one of Nabal's young men told Abigail, Nabal's wife, Behold, David sent messengers out of the wilderness to salute our master, and he railed at them.
15. But David's men were very good to us, and we were not harmed, nor did we miss anything as long as we went with them, when we were in the fields.
16. They were a wall to us night and day, all the time we were with them keeping the sheep.
17. So know this and consider what you will do, for evil is determined against our master and all his house. For he is such a wicked man that one cannot speak to him.
18. Then Abigail made haste and took 200 loaves, two skins of wine, five sheep already dressed, five measures of parched grain, 100 clusters of raisins, and 200 cakes of figs, and laid them on donkeys.
19. And she said to her servants, Go on before me; behold, I come after you. But she did not tell her husband Nabal.
20. As she rode on her donkey, she came down hidden by the mountain, and behold, David and his men came down opposite her, and she met them.
21. Now David had said, Surely in vain have I protected all that this fellow has in the wilderness, so that nothing was missed of all that belonged to him; and he has repaid me evil for good.