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Home > Magazines > Bible Review > October 2002

David’s Threat to Nabal

How a little vulgarity got the point across

By Peter J. Leithart

When David first meets Abigail, his second wife-to-be, she is married to another man, a prosperous farmer named Nabal. In Hebrew, Nabal’s name means “Fool,”1 a clear sign that he won’t amount to much in the biblical world. Indeed, Nabal dies almost as soon as he is introduced (and David’s wedding plans are then set in motion). Yet Nabal the Fool still plays an important part in the narrative. An understanding of his role has been lost over the years, however, due to the common misreading of two key, yet rather crude, phrases that have been “cleaned up” by […]

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Endnotes

1.

Or “boor” (New Jewish Publication Society) or “churl” (Revised English Bible) or “brute” (New Jerusalem Bible).

2.

The Hebrew has “may God do thus and more to the enemies of David.” The italicized words are lacking in the Greek Septuagint, on which many Christian Bibles are based.

3.

The translation “male” appears in the New American Standard Bible, the New Revised Standard Version, the New International Version and the New King James Version. The American Standard Version, unaccountably, has “man-child.” But P. Kyle McCarter gets it right in his 1 Samuel, Anchor Bible Series 8 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980), p. 390.

4.

For other examples, see Genesis 41:46 and Joshua 5:13.

5.

Jon D. Levenson, “1 Samuel 25 as Literature and History,” in Literary Interpretations of Biblical Narratives, ed. Kenneth R.R. Gros Louis (Nashville: Abingdon, 1982), vol. 2, p. 227.

6.

This pun is suggested by Ronald Youngblood, 1, 2 Samuel, Expositor’s Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992), and others.

7.

See Joyce Baldwin, 1 & 2 Samuel: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale Old Testament Commentary (Leicester, UK: InterVarsity, 1998), p. 147; Robert D. Bergen, 1, 2 Samuel, New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1996), p. 252 n. 131; Youngblood, 1, 2 Samuel, p. 752; and especially Moshe J. Garsiel, The First Book of Samuel: A Literary Study of Comparative Structures, Analogies and Parallels (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1990), pp. 129–130.