My, oh my, did David learn a lesson! “Blessed be God. He kept me from murdering this man—from doing evil. I don’t have to fight that kind of battle, that’s God’s job. If vengeance is required, it is God’s to do.”

AbigaiI knew her husband, didn’t she? Everyone knew what he was like, so why hide it? Why try to cover up what he had done? She didn’t. And yet she took the responsibility upon herself. “When you sent those ten men and they had that interaction with my husband, I wasn’t there to give another kind of response.

Four hundred men! That’ll probably handle Nabal, don’t you think? When you overdo something in our house, we have a saying, “You’re killing a roach with a shotgun.” You kill the roach all right, but you blow the wall out at the same time. Hey, nobody puts on a sword just to have a discussion, so we have a pretty good idea what’s going through David’s mind here.

All this brings me to three helpful principles to live by when it comes to life’s most subtle temptation. Each is worth remembering when we are mistreated.

David told Saul the whole unvarnished truth; he told it to the person to whom it mattered most. Not to his comrades or to Saul’s friends or to the people of Israel but to Saul himself. He came to terms with the individual with whom there was the battle.

Here we see a guy who did the right thing and brought a whole group with him. He persuaded them with his words. The literal meaning here, strange as it may seem, is “tore apart.” He tore them apart with his words. The same Hebrew word is used in Isaiah 53 where we read, “He was wounded for our transgressions.” It means pierced through, torn apart, ripped up.

What a friend Jonathan was! No pettiness, no envy, no jealousy. Remember, as Saul’s son, Jonathan would have been the heir apparent. He might have wanted the praise of the people, yet here was this kid from the hills of Bethlehem garnering all of it.