Women in white raiment

by John Lemley

Abigail—Churlish Nabal—Chivalrous Appreciation—David’s Messengers—Saul’s Daughters—His Treachery—Michal’s Stratagem—Rizpah—Her Heroic Endurance and Loving Fidelity—The Queen of Sheba—Her Visit to Jerusalem—The Glory and Wisdom of Solomon—The Half Not Told—The Queen’s Royal Gifts.

Passing out from under the Theocracy, or rule of the Judges, the first woman in White Raiment that appears on the page of the Sacred Record is Abigail. She was the wife of Nabal, a wealthy owner of goats and sheep in Carmel, not the Mount Carmel of Central Palestine, between the maritime plain of Sharon on the south, and the great inland expanse known as the plain of Esdraelon on the north, but a town in the mountainous country of Judah, to the west of the lower end of the Dead Sea. She was a woman of good understanding and of a beautiful countenance—a fit combination.

Her character had written its legend on her face. The two things do not always go together. There are many beautiful women wholly destitute of good understanding, just as birds of rarest plumage are commonly deficient in the power of song. But a good understanding, which is moral rather than intellectual, casts a glow of beauty over the plainest features.

But Abigail’s husband was a churl. The great establishment over which she presided would be called, in our modern times, a sheep ranch, and, under the management of such a man as Nabal, the servants doubtless often echoed the ill-temper of their master, and her wits would be often sharpened to the utmost to keep all within the limits of safety and comfort.

Evidently, at her birth, Abigail had been a welcomed child in a happy home, amid plenty and even luxury, such as the times in that rude age of the world could give. Her parents named her “Source of joy.” She had grown up in a glad, breezy confidence that made her equal to any emergency. Since God has floods of glory for the gloomiest souls, why will not parents keep their children in the clear, warm sunshine of joyful love? Many drudge early and late to provide culture and comfort; but they withhold a better, richer gift. They becloud hopelessly the dear young lives with their own disappointments, and foredoom them to despondency.

This sprightly, happy, beautiful Abigail at length married the selfish, churlish Nabal. When we look over society to-day, it is remarkable how many Abigails get married to Nabals. God-fearing women, tender and gentle in their sensibilities, high-minded and noble in their ideals, become tied in an indissoluble union with men for whom they can have no true affinity, even if they have not an unconquerable repugnance. In Abigail’s case this relationship was, in all probability, not of her choosing, but the product of the Oriental custom which compelled a girl to take her father’s choice in the matter of marriage. As a mere child she may have come into Nabal’s home, and become bound to him by an apparently inevitable fate. In other ways which involve equally little personal choice, compelled by the pressure of inexorable circumstances, misled by the deceitful tongue of flattery, her instinctive hesitancy overcome by the urgency of friends, a woman may still find herself in Abigail’s pitiful plight. To such a one there is but one advice—you must stay where you are. The dissimilarity in taste and temperament does not constitute a sufficient reason for leaving your husband to drift. You must believe that God has permitted you to enter on this awful heritage, partly because this fiery ordeal was required by your character, and partly that you might act as a counteractive influence. It may be that some day your opportunity will come, as it came to Abigail. In the meantime do not allow your purer nature to be bespotted or besmeared. You can always keep the soul clean and pure. Bide your time; and, amid the weltering waste of inky water, be like a pure fountain rising from the ocean depths.

But if any young girl of good sense and earnest aspirations, who reads these lines, secretly knows that, if she had the chance, she would wed a carriage and pair, a good position, or broad acres, irrespective of character, let her remember that to enter the marriage bond with a man, deliberately and advisedly, for such a purpose, is a profanation of the Divine ideal, and can end only in one way. She will not raise him to her level, but she will sink to his.

There came a time when Nabal had an opportunity to show kindness, to pay back, in part at least, his appreciation for the protection David and his men had given Nabal’s shepherds from Bedouin and other desert robbers. It was sheep-shearing time, a season of gladness and of feasting. David and his men were shut up in the wilderness of Engedi, driven thither by the persecutions of Saul. Doubtless they were in need of food, and David thought that the owner of three thousand sheep, and a thousand goats, in the very midst of the sheep-shearing festivities, could send him a token of remembrance in his hunger and need. So David sent ten of his young men with salutations of peace and prosperity, and a request for any favor he felt disposed to give. But Nabal answered the young men saying, “Who is David? and who is the son of Jesse? there be many servants nowadays 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?”

The young men returned to David with the message of Nabal, and, naturally enough, David felt insulted and outraged. Taking a band of four hundred men, he resolved to impress upon Nabal who the “son of Jesse” was, and to make him pay dearly for his foolhardy conduct.

But, in the meantime, one of Nabal’s servants told Abigail how David’s young men had been treated. Evidently this thoughtful and prudent servant knew the excellency of his mistress, and could trust her to act wisely in the emergency which was upon them. So he told her all. Told how David and his men had been “a wall” unto the shepherds “both by night and by day,” and for all this kindness Nabal, his master, had “railed” upon David’s messengers.