Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Samuel 25-27.

I have a Youtube video of me reading the Scripture passage and my comments. Please check it out and let me know your thoughts.

Also, here is the link for my Patreon page

Today’s passage contains three stories which tell us something about how David became the king that he was: the account of Nabal and Abigail, the account of David sparing King Saul’s life again, and the account of David’s time among the Philistines.  Over the years, I have written various things which we can learn from the account of Nabal and Abigail, but I still feel like there is something about that interaction that I am missing.  So, I am going to mention things which I noticed today and see where that takes me.  I never noticed before, but the passage seems to make a comment on the character of Caleb’s descendants.  It says that Abigail was discerning and beautiful, but that Nabal was “harsh and badly behaved, he was a Calebite.”  That seems to me to suggest that Calebites had a reputation for being harsh and lacking in tact.  Almost as if the descendants of Caleb took pride in their lack of tact to the point of being needlessly offensive.  Which reveals to me a lesson for us.

Some people speak plainly and accidentally offend others.  This passage indicates that Nabal went beyond that.  He likely prided himself on being a “plain speaker”, when he actually purposely spoke in ways which offended others.   We see how Nabal did this when he responded to David’s messengers.  Nabal implied that David was powerless to do him either good or harm because David was but a rebellious servant of King Saul.  Then the passage seems to imply that Nabal had a stroke, which led to his death a few days later, when he learned what had almost happened to him because of his rudeness.  Alternatively, it may mean to suggest that his harshness and bad behavior led to his stroke and death.  In either case, the passage clearly shows that being intentionally rude is bad.  Nabal would have called himself “blunt”, when in fact he was rude.  It is not wrong to be blunt and direct.  In fact, it is probably good.  However, there is a difference between being blunt and direct and being rude.  It is wrong to be rude.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.