9. When David’s young men arrived, they delivered the entire message to Nabal in David’s name, and then waited.
10. But Nabal answered the servants of David: “Who is David? Who is the son of Jesse? Nowadays there are many servants who run away from their masters.
11. Must I take my bread, my wine, my meat that I have slaughtered for my own shearers, and give them to men who come from who knows where?”
12. So David’s young men retraced their steps and on their return reported to him all that had been said.
13. Thereupon David said to his men, “Let everyone strap on his sword.” And everyone did so, and David put on his own sword. About four hundred men went up after David, while two hundred remained with the baggage.
14. Abigail, Nabal’s wife, was informed of this by one of the servants, who said: “From the wilderness David sent messengers to greet our master, but he screamed at them.
15. Yet these men were very good to us. We were not harmed, neither did we miss anything all the while we were living among them during our stay in the open country.
16. Day and night they were a wall of protection for us, the whole time we were pasturing the sheep near them.
17. Now, see what you can do, for you must realize that otherwise disaster is in store for our master and for his whole house. He is such a scoundrel that no one can talk to him.”
18. Abigail quickly got together two hundred loaves, two skins of wine, five dressed sheep, five seahs of roasted grain, a hundred cakes of pressed raisins, and two hundred cakes of pressed figs, and loaded them on donkeys.