The aged prophet Samuel died and after a national mourning, he was buried at Ramah. Perhaps fearing now that the last restraint was removed which might have held Saul back from pursuing him to death, David went beyond the ordinary boundaries of Canaan to the wilderness of Paran in the peninsula of Sinai. But he sent ten of his young men back to the region west of the Dead Sea where he had been much of the time since leaving Keilah (chapter 23:13), to call on the great Nabal, owner of three thousand sheep and a thousand goats, and a descendant of that outstanding man of faith, Caleb (Numbers 13-14; Joshua 14).
But faith is not inherited, and great possessions are often a snare, as Scripture abundantly shows,
The meanings of the names Maon (habitation), and Carmen (fruitful place), and Nabal (fool), are strongly suggestive of the parable of Luke 12:16-2116And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully: 17And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits? 18And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. 19And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. 20But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? 21So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God. (Luke 12:16‑21). Self and time, and not God and eternity, were the rule of Nabars life. He "minded earthly things,"—the brief and pointed comment of the Holy Spirit in Philippians 3:19,19Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.) (Philippians 3:19) and his end was destruction, as his god was himself and his desires. So Nabal answered the young men, "Who is David? and who is the son of Jesse? There be many servants now-a-days that break away every man from his master. . . . and sent them away empty handed.
Thereupon David failed; had he been permitted by God to do as he at once proposed, viz., to kill Nabal, he would have entirely departed from the typical character—typical of our blessed Lord as He trod this earth—in which we have with much consistency seen him. His followers were yet but six hundred,—the number given in .chapter 23:13; not many were attached to him in the time of his rejection, but in the time of his exaltation they were exalted too (see 2 Sam. 23).
Nabal was spared by the intervention of his wife Abigail, who went out to meet David and his men. Abigail saw in 'David the rightful occupant of the throne of Israel; faith had taught her that the Lord would make him a "sure house," because he fought the "battles of the Lord," and evil had not been found in him. "Let thine enemies," she said, "and they that seek evil to my lord, be as Nabal" (to be disregarded), and though Saul was seeking to bring about David's death, "the soul of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of life with the Lord thy God."
Abigail, as one has said, thought nothing of Saul, the rejected of God; Samuel was dead, and David was now everything to her. She took a much more humble place than Jonathan, one that answers in the present day to the attitude of the true Christian to his Lord; while Jonathan answers to the Jewish remnant. David received her homage in the character accredited to him by Abigail (verse 35), and she returned to her husband. Nabal's end speedily came as God's judgment because of his treatment of His anointed, and the close of the chapter presents Abigail as the bride of David.