I Shmuel 25: Heartbreaker

Chapter 25 tells the sidebar story of Avigail and Nabal. David’s band of warriors protects the wealthy Nabal and his shepherds from danger. At the time of shearing, David sends messengers to Nabal asking for food and wool as repayment for David’s protection. Nabal refuses, and David plans to massacre everyone in Nabal’s household (וַיֹּאמֶר דָּוִד חִגְרוּ־אִישׁ אֶת־חַרְבּוֹ וַיַּחְגְּרוּ אִישׁ אֶת־חַרְבּוֹ...) (I Samuel 25:13). The identical reaction of David to Nabal and Saul to Achimelech and Nov cannot be missed. But this time, the story has a somewhat happy ending. Avigail, Nabal’s wife, intervenes and explains that her husband is a curmudgeon who does not speak for everyone else in the household (כִּי כִשְׁמוֹ כֶּן־הוּא נָבָל שְׁמוֹ וּנְבָלָה עִמּוֹ) (I Samuel 25:25). Avigail is eternally grateful to David for all he did for her household.She blesses him with a phrase that is used on many Jewish gravestones and said at all Jewish funerals: “the life of my master will be bound up in the bundle of life in the care of the LORD” (וְהָיְתָה נֶפֶשׁ אֲדֹנִי צְרוּרָה בִּצְרוֹר הַחַיִּים אֵת ה׳ אֱלֹהֶיךָ) (verse 29). Her blessing of gratitude is that David’s soul will be bound together with God’s for eternal protection.Avigail returns home to a drunk Nabal and “the next morning, when Nabal had slept off the wine, his wife told him everything that had happened; and his heart died within him, and he became like a stone” (וַיְהִי בַבֹּקֶר וַיֵּצֵא הַיַּיִן מִנָּבָל וַתַּגֶּד־לוֹ אִשְׁתּוֹ אֶת־הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה וַיָּמׇת לִבּוֹ בְּקִרְבּוֹ וְהוּא הָיָה לְאָבֶן) (verse 37). What does “his heart died within him and he became like a stone” mean?There are two camps. Rashi believes that Nabal was upset that his wife had presented David with a gift. Radak adds that he was so upset that he basically went silent like a dead person. In the other camp, Malbim believes that Nabal’s heart sank because he was fearful of David. Ralbag fuses the two and explains that Nabal was upset about the gift, but he was also upset and fearful of David.The Rashi camp focuses on Nabal as the miser until the very end. Nabal’s eventual death is caused by his extreme sadness over his wife’s expensive gift to David. The Malbim camp perhaps affords Nabal a bit of remorse. Once he hears how close he was to being overrun by David and his forces, he realizes that his miserly ways almost cost him everything. This fear and guilt is too much to carry, and in the end it kills him anyway. Nabal’s death also allows for God to mete out punishment directly to the individual responsible for David’s hardship without David’s burn-it-to-the-ground strategy. Indeed, David later acknowledges that God Himself acted on his behalf: “Blessed be the LORD, who championed my cause against the insults of Nabal and held back His servant from wrongdoing” (בָּרוּךְ ה׳ אֲשֶׁר רָב אֶת־רִיב חֶרְפָּתִי מִיַּד נָבָל וְאֶת־עַבְדּוֹ חָשַׂךְ מֵרָעָה) (I Samuel 25:39).