7. I hear that your sheepshearers are with you. Your shepherds have been with us, ⌊and⌋ we have not mistreated them. Nothing of theirs has been missing as long as they’ve been in Carmel.
8. Ask your young men, and let them tell you. Be kind to my young men, since we have come on a special occasion. Please give us and your son David anything you can ⌊spare⌋.’ ”
9. When David’s young men came to Nabal, they repeated all of this to him for David, and then they waited.
10. “Who is David?” Nabal answered David’s servants. “Who is Jesse’s son? So many servants nowadays are leaving their masters.
11. Should I take my bread, my water, and my meat that I butchered for my shearers and give them to men coming from who knows where?”
12. David’s young men returned and told him all this.
13. “Each of you put on your swords!” David told his men. And everyone, including David, put on his sword. About four hundred men went with David, while two hundred men stayed with the supplies.
14. One of the young men told Abigail, Nabal’s wife, “David sent messengers from the desert to greet our master, who yelled at them.
15. Those men were very good to us. They didn’t mistreat us, and we found that nothing was missing wherever we went with them when we were in the fields.