of Caleb." Caleb
was Joshua's friend, who had conquered all that land in Joshua's time.
Nabal, therefore, had all the pride of a man of most ancient and noble
family--and no shame to him if he had had a noble, courteous, and
generous heart therewith, instead of being, as he was, a stupid and
brutal person.

"And David heard in the wilderness that Nabal did shear his sheep. And
David sent out ten young men, and David said unto the young men, Get you
up to Carmel, and go to Nabal, and greet him in my name: And thus shall
ye say unto him that liveth in prosperity, Peace be to thee, and peace be
to thine house, and peace be to all that thou hast. And now I have heard
that thou hast shearers: now thy shepherds which were with us, we hurt
them not, neither was there ought missing unto them, all the while they
were in Carmel. Ask the young men, and they will show thee. Wherefore
let the young men find favour in thine eyes: for we come in a good day:
give, I pray thee, whatsoever cometh to thine hand unto thy servants, and
unto thy son David. And when David's young men came, they spake to
Nabal, according to all thee words of David, and ceased."

Nabal refuses; and in a way that shows, as his wife says of him, how well
his name fits him--a fool is his name, and folly is with him. Insolently
and brutally he refuses, as fools are wont to do. "And Nabal answered
David's servants, and said, Who is David? and who is the son of Jesse?
there be many servants now-a-days that break away every man from his
master. Shall I then take my bread, and my water, and my flesh that I
have killed for my shearers, and give it unto men whom I know not whence
they be?"

"As slaves break away from their master." This was an intolerable
insult. To taunt a free-born man, as David was, with having been a slave
and a runaway. It is hard to conceive how Nabal dared to say such a
thing of a fierce chieftain like David, with six hundred armed men at his
back; but there is no saying what a fool will not do when the spirit of
the Lord is gone from him, and his own fancy and passions lead him
captive.

So David's young men came and told David. "And David said to his men,
Gird every man on his sword. And they girded on every man his sword; and
David also girded on his sword: and there went up after David about four
hundred men; and two hundred abode by the stuff."

That is a grand passage--grand, because it is true to human nature, true
to t