A Harem or Compassion
[39] When David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, “Blessed be the LORD who has avenged the insult I received at the hand of Nabal, and has kept back his servant from wrongdoing. The LORD has returned the evil of Nabal on his own head.” Then David sent and spoke to Abigail, to take her as his wife. [40] When the servants of David came to Abigail at Carmel, they said to her, “David has sent us to you to take you to him as his wife.” [41] And she rose and bowed with her face to the ground and said, “Behold, your handmaid is a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my lord.” [42] And Abigail hurried and rose and mounted a donkey, and her five young women attended her. She followed the messengers of David and became his wife.
[43] David also took Ahinoam of Jezreel, and both of them became his wives. [44] Saul had given Michal his daughter, David’s wife, to Palti the son of Laish, who was of Gallim.
1 Samuel 25:39–44 Read More
When you read that David took these women as his wives, in our current culture we might think “Dang, bro is building himself a harem!” But that isn’t quite the whole case. Yes, women’s rights were pretty poor in those days, like in much of the eastern world today, and yes, they were treated a lot like objects, but there is more to it than all of that. Not only were they treated as objects to be taken and used at will, they were also completely defenseless if no man would speak up for them.
If David were to leave Abigail here, the men of Nabal would soon fight over her, take her and her husband’s property, and she may be worse off than before. By taking her and her 5 maidens, David is pulling them out of a worse disaster than life under Nabal.
The honorable thing that really happens here is that David is caring for widows in their distress. He is taking responsibility for something that he didn’t do (he didn’t kill Nabal, the Lord did) and working whatever he can here to make it right.
How many times do we see a mess of a family, or an awful civic situation, and everyone’s reaction is “Not my problem!” or the even better “Not my circus, not my monkeys!”
David didn’t have to send for Abigail to be his wife, and she didn’t have to go with him. David saw that the Lord had worked here and that God used Abigail to do that work. It is far too easy and too common to ‘let people be’ as an excuse to really preserve my own cushy life. Once Abigail would come to David, he would be responsible for her and her 5 maidens. He would be obligated to protect and provide for them just as he did Ahinoam.
Compassion’s roots break down into sharing pain with another person. By putting himself under more of a burden, David carried upon himself the tough life that Abigail had lived. Both of these women would go on to bear children for David and be close to him for years to come. Like so often when we show compassion and take on another person’s pain, the Holy Spirit turns that pain into a greater shared joy than either party imagined. This is the fruit of honorable men and women showing compassion in the Lord.
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