He held a feast in his house. — This completes the picture of the wealthy sheep-master. The contrast between him and his wife, the high-minded and wise Abigail, is very striking. The husband, churlish, obstinate, a friend of Saul and the old disorderly state of things, haughty, unyielding, selfish, and indulging to excess in the coarse pleasures of the table, falling a victim in the end to his own untamed passions; the wife — “the good angel of the household,” as Stanley phrases it — thoughtful, prudent, far-seeing, a patient listener, and an apt pupil evidently of the new masters of learning and culture in Israel, a beautiful example of the highest type of the devout Hebrew woman who during the long chequered story of the chosen race exercised so often a holy influence on the life of the people. Nabal may be taken as an extreme, though not an uncommon, example of the leading Israelites of the days before Samuel; Abigail as the representative of the nobler spirit among the higher classes after the spirit of Samuel had influenced the inhabitants of the land.
Related Commentaries of 1 Samuel 25:36
1 Samuel 25:36
36 And Abigail came to Nabal; and, behold, he held a feast in his house, like the feast of a king; and Nabal's heart was merry within him, for he was very drunken: wherefore she told him nothing, less or more, until the morning light.