¹⁸ Abigail acted quickly. She took two hundred loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five dressed sheep, five seahs^[a] of roasted grain,^(A) a hundred cakes of raisins^(B) and two hundred cakes of pressed figs, and loaded them on donkeys.^{(C) 19} Then she told her servants, “Go on ahead;^(D) I’ll follow you.” But she did not tell^(E) her husband Nabal.

²⁰ As she came riding her donkey into a mountain ravine, there were David and his men descending toward her, and she met them. ²¹ David had just said, “It’s been useless—all my watching over this fellow’s property in the wilderness so that nothing of his was missing.^(F) He has paid^(G) me back evil^(H) for good. ²² May God deal with David,^[b] be it ever so severely,^(I) if by morning I leave alive one male^(J) of all who belong to him!”

²⁶ And now, my lord, as surely as the Lord your God lives and as you live, since the Lord has kept you from bloodshed^(A) and from avenging^(B) yourself with your own hands, may your enemies and all who are intent on harming my lord be like Nabal.^{(C) 27} And let this gift,^(D) which your servant has brought to my lord, be given to the men who follow you.