8. Just ask them, and they will tell you. We have come on a feast day, and David asks you to receive us kindly. Please give what you can to us your servants and to your dear friend David.”
9. David's men delivered this message to Nabal in David's name. Then they waited there,
10. and Nabal finally answered, “David? Who is he? I've never heard of him! The country is full of runaway slaves nowadays!
11. I'm not going to take my bread and water, and the animals I have slaughtered for my shearers, and give them to people who come from I don't know where!”
12. David's men went back to him and told him what Nabal had said.
13. “Buckle on your swords!” he ordered, and they all did. David also buckled on his sword and left with about 400 of his men, leaving 200 behind with the supplies.
14. One of Nabal's servants said to Nabal's wife Abigail, “Have you heard? David sent some messengers from the wilderness with greetings for our master, but he insulted them.
15. Yet they were very good to us; they never bothered us, and all the time we were with them in the fields, nothing that belonged to us was stolen.
16. They protected us day and night the whole time we were with them looking after our flocks.
17. Please think this over and decide what to do. This could be disastrous for our master and all his family. He is so pigheaded that he won't listen to anybody!”
18. Abigail quickly collected 200 loaves of bread, two leather bags full of wine, five roasted sheep, seventeen kilogrammes of roasted grain, a hundred bunches of raisins, and 200 cakes of dried figs, and loaded them on donkeys.
19. Then she said to the servants, “You go on ahead and I will follow you.” But she said nothing to her husband.
20. She was riding her donkey round a bend on a hillside when suddenly she met David and his men coming towards her.