1 Samuel 25:36–44

Now Abigail went to Nabal, and there he was, holding a feast in his house, like the feast of a king. And Nabal’s heart was merry within him, for he was very drunk; therefore she told him nothing, little or much, until morning light. So it was, in the morning, when the wine had gone from Nabal, and his wife had told him these things, that his heart died within him, and he became like a stone. Then it happened, after about ten days, that the LORD struck Nabal, and he died.

So when David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, “Blessed be the Lord, who has pleaded the cause of my reproach from the hand of Nabal, and has kept His servant from evil! For the Lord has returned the wickedness of Nabal on his own head.”

And David sent and proposed to Abigail, to take her as his wife. When the servants of David had come to Abigail at Carmel, they spoke to her saying, “David sent us to you, to ask you to become his wife.”

Then she arose, bowed her face to the earth, and said, “Here is your maidservant, a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my lord.” So Abigail rose in haste and rode on a donkey, attended by five of her maidens; and she followed the messengers of David, and became his wife. David also took Ahinoam of Jezreel, and so both of them were his wives.

But Saul had given Michal his daughter, David’s wife, to Palti the son of Laish, who was from Gallim.

Abigail returns home from her fateful encounter with David to find her husband oblivious to the danger she just delivered him from. In fact, he’s drunkenly oblivious to everything. So Abigail holds her tongue.

But when Nabal sobers up in the morning, she drops the whole update on him. This turns out to be more than he can handle, and he goes catatonic.

Just as we saw that Abigail’s character included courage, now we see that Nabal’s lack thereof leads to complete collapse under stress.

It’s curious how emotional things are described in terms of the heart: “hardhearted,” “fainthearted,” “braveheart,” “lionheart,” etc. But the heart’s just an organ that pumps blood, right?

Obviously not. Yes, it’s a euphemism, but there’s something to it, and that something is correlated with other aspects of character. Fools don’t appreciate blessings, they don’t listen, they’re morally deficient, and they’re cowards. Conversely, wisdom is typically packaged with the opposites. This isn’t my field, so I’ll let C.S. Lewis have the last word. In The Abolition of Man, Lewis describes “men without chests.”

They are not distinguished from other men by any unusual skill in finding truth nor any virginal ardour to pursue her. Indeed it would be strange if they were: a persevering devotion to truth, a nice sense of intellectual honor, cannot be long maintained without the aid of a sentiment [they] would debunk just as easily as any other. It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks them out. Their heads are no bigger than ordinary: it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so.

To forward this devotional, see the link in green below.

These weekday DEEPs are written by Mike Slay. The Saturday ones are written by Matt Richardson. To subscribe to the DEEP click here: https://www.ailbe.org/resources/community

The weekly study guides, which include questions for discussion or meditation, can be downloaded here: https://www.ailbe.org/resources/itemlist/category/91-deep-studies

Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV stands for the English Standard Version. © Copyright 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved. NIV stands for The Holy Bible, New International Version®. © Copyright 1973 by International Bible Society. Used by permission. All rights reserved. KJV stands for the King James Version.