¹ And death came to Samuel; and all Israel came together, weeping for him, and put his body in its resting-place in his house at Ramah. Then David went down to the waste land of Maon.

² Now there was a man in Maon whose business was in Carmel; he was a great man and had three thousand sheep and a thousand goats: and he was cutting the wool of his sheep in Carmel.

³ Now this man was named Nabal, and his wife's name was Abigail: she was a woman of good sense and pleasing looks: but the man was cruel and evil in his ways; he was of the family of Caleb.

⁴ And David had word in the waste land that Nabal was cutting the wool of his sheep.

⁵ And David sent ten young men, and said to them, Go up to Carmel and go to Nabal, and say kind words to him in my name;

⁶ And say this to my brother, May all be well for you: peace be to you and your house and all you have.

⁷ I have had word that you have wool-cutters: now the keepers of your sheep have been with us, and we have done them no evil, and taken nothing of theirs while they were in Carmel.

⁸ If your young men are questioned they will say the same thing. So now, let my young men have grace in your eyes, for we are come at a good time; please give anything you may have by you to your servants and to your son David.

⁹ And when David's young men came, they said all this to Nabal, in David's name, and said nothing more.

¹⁰ And Nabal gave them his answer and said, Who is David? who is the son of Jesse? there are a number of servants in these days running away from their masters.

¹¹ Am I to take my bread and my wine and the meat I have got ready for my wool-cutters and give it to men coming from I have no idea where?

¹² So David's young men, turning away, went back and gave him an account of everything he had said.

¹³ And David said to his men, Put on your swords, every one of you. And every man Put on his sword; and David did the same; and about four hundred men went up with David, and two hundred kept watch over their goods.

¹⁴ But one of the young men said to Nabal's wife Abigail, David sent men from the waste land to say kind words to our master, and he gave them a rough answer.

¹⁵ But these men have been very good to us; they did us no wrong and nothing of ours was touched while we were with them in the fields:

¹⁶ But day and night they were like a wall round us while we were with them, looking after the sheep.

¹⁷ So now, give thought to what you are going to do; for evil is in store for our master and all his house: for he is such a good-for-nothing person that it is not possible to say anything to him.

¹⁸ Then Abigail quickly took two hundred cakes of bread and two skins full of wine and five sheep ready for cooking and five measures of dry grain and a hundred parcels of dry grapes and two hundred cakes of figs, and put them on asses.

¹⁹ And she said to her young men, Go on in front of me and I will come after you. But she said nothing to her husband Nabal.

²⁰ Now while she was going down under cover of the mountain on her ass, David and his men came down against her, and suddenly she came face to face with them.

²¹ Now David had said, What was the use of my taking care of this man's goods in the waste land, so that there was no loss of anything which was his? he has only given me back evil for good.

²² May God's punishment be on David, if when morning comes there is so much as one male of his people still living.

²³ And when Abigail saw David, she quickly got off her ass, falling down on her face before him.

²⁴ And falling at his feet she said, May the wrong be on me, my lord, on me: let your servant say a word to you, and give ear to the words of your servant.

²⁵ Let my lord give no attention to Nabal, that good-for-nothing: for as his name is, so is he, a man without sense: but I, your servant, did not see the young men whom my lord sent.

²⁶ So now, my lord, by the living God and by your living soul, seeing that the Lord has kept you from the crime of blood and from taking into your hands the punishment for your wrongs, may all your haters, and those who would do evil to my lord, be like Nabal.

²⁷ And let this offering, which your servant gives to my lord, be given to the young men who are with my lord.

²⁸ And may the sin of your servant have forgiveness: for the Lord will certainly make your family strong, because my lord is fighting in the Lord's war; and no evil will be seen in you all your days.

²⁹ And though a man has taken up arms against you, putting your life in danger, still the soul of my lord will be kept safe among the band of the living with the Lord your God; and the souls of those who are against you he will send violently away from him, like stones from a bag.

³⁰ And when the Lord has done for my lord all those good things which he has said he will do for you, and has made you a ruler over Israel;

³¹ Then you will have no cause for grief, and my lord's heart will not be troubled because you have taken life without cause and have yourself given punishment for your wrongs: and when the Lord has been good to you, then give a thought to your servant.

³² And David said to Abigail, May the Lord, the God of Israel, be praised, who sent you to me today:

³³ A blessing on your good sense and on you, who have kept me today from the crime of blood and from taking into my hands the punishment for my wrongs.

³⁴ For truly, by the living Lord, the God of Israel, who has kept me from doing you evil, if you had not been so quick in coming to me and meeting me, by dawn there would not have been in Nabal's house so much as one male living.

³⁵ Then David took from her hands her offering: and he said to her, Go back to your house in peace; see, I have given ear to your voice, and taken your offering with respect.

³⁶ And Abigail went back to Nabal; and he was feasting in his house like a king; and Nabal's heart was full of joy, for he had taken much wine; so she said nothing to him till dawn came.

³⁷ And in the morning, when the effect of the wine was gone, Nabal's wife gave him an account of all these things, and all the heart went out of him, and he became like stone.

³⁸ And about ten days after, the Lord sent disease on Nabal and death came to him.

³⁹ And David, hearing that Nabal was dead, said, May the Lord be praised, who has taken up my cause against Nabal for the shame which he put on me, and has kept back his servant from evil, and has sent on Nabal's head the reward of his evil-doing. And David sent word to Abigail, desiring to take her as his wife.

⁴⁰ And when David's servants came to Carmel, to Abigail, they said to her, David has sent us to you to take you to him as his wife.

⁴¹ And she got up, and going down on her face to the earth, said, See, I am ready to be a servant-girl, washing the feet of the servants of my lord.

⁴² Then Abigail got up quickly and went on her ass, with five of her young women, after the men whom David had sent; and she became David's wife.

⁴³ And David had taken Ahinoam of Jezreel, to be his wife; these two were his wives.

⁴⁴ Now Saul had given his daughter Michal, David's wife, to Palti the son of Laish of Gallim.

¹ Now these are the names of the tribes: From the north end, beside the way of Hethlon to the entrance of Hamath, Hazar Enan at the border of Damascus, northward beside Hamath, (and they shall have their sides east [and] west), Dan, one [portion].

² By the border of Dan, from the east side to the west side, Asher, one [portion].

³ By the border of Asher, from the east side even to the west side, Naphtali, one [portion].

⁴ By the border of Naphtali, from the east side to the west side, Manasseh, one [portion].

⁵ By the border of Manasseh, from the east side to the west side, Ephraim, one [portion].

⁶ By the border of Ephraim, from the east side even to the west side, Reuben, one [portion].

⁷ By the border of Reuben, from the east side to the west side, Judah, one [portion].

⁸ By the border of Judah, from the east side to the west side, shall be the offering which you shall offer, twenty-five thousand [reeds] in breadth, and in length as one of the portions, from the east side to the west side: and the sanctuary shall be in its midst.

⁹ The offering that you shall offer to Yahweh shall be twenty-five thousand [reeds] in length, and ten thousand in breadth.

¹⁰ For these, even for the priests, shall be the holy offering: toward the north twenty-five thousand [in length], and toward the west ten thousand in breadth, and toward the east ten thousand in breadth, and toward the south twenty-five thousand in length: and the sanctuary of Yahweh shall be in its midst.

¹¹ [It shall be] for the priests who are sanctified of the sons of Zadok, who have kept my instruction, who didn't go astray when the children of Israel went astray, as the Levites went astray.

¹² It shall be to them an offering from the offering of the land, a thing most holy, by the border of the Levites.

¹³ Answerable to the border of the priests, the Levites shall have twenty-five thousand in length, and ten thousand in breadth: all the length shall be twenty-five thousand, and the breadth ten thousand.

¹⁴ They shall sell none of it, nor exchange it, nor shall the first fruits of the land be alienated; for it is holy to Yahweh.

¹⁵ The five thousand that are left in the breadth, in front of the twenty-five thousand, shall be for common use, for the city, for dwelling and for suburbs; and the city shall be in its midst.

¹⁶ These shall be its measures: the north side four thousand and five hundred, and the south side four thousand and five hundred, and on the east side four thousand and five hundred, and the west side four thousand and five hundred.

¹⁷ The city shall have suburbs: toward the north two hundred fifty, and toward the south two hundred fifty, and toward the east two hundred fifty, and toward the west two hundred fifty.

¹⁸ The remainder in the length, answerable to the holy offering, shall be ten thousand eastward, and ten thousand westward; and it shall be answerable to the holy offering; and its increase shall be for food to those who labor in the city.

¹⁹ Those who labor in the city, out of all the tribes of Israel, shall cultivate it.

²⁰ All the offering shall be twenty-five thousand by twenty-five thousand: you shall offer the holy offering foursquare, with the possession of the city.

²¹ The residue shall be for the prince, on the one side and on the other of the holy offering and of the possession of the city; in front of the twenty-five thousand of the offering toward the east border, and westward in front of the twenty-five thousand toward the west border, answerable to the portions, it shall be for the prince: and the holy offering and the sanctuary of the house shall be in its midst.

²² Moreover from the possession of the Levites, and from the possession of the city, being in the midst of that which is the prince's, between the border of Judah and the border of Benjamin, it shall be for the prince.

²³ As for the rest of the tribes: from the east side to the west side, Benjamin, one [portion].

²⁴ By the border of Benjamin, from the east side to the west side, Simeon, one [portion].

²⁵ By the border of Simeon, from the east side to the west side, Issachar, one [portion].

²⁶ By the border of Issachar, from the east side to the west side, Zebulun, one [portion].

²⁷ By the border of Zebulun, from the east side to the west side, Gad, one [portion].

²⁸ By the border of Gad, at the south side southward, the border shall be even from Tamar to the waters of Meribath Kadesh, to the brook [of Egypt], to the great sea.

²⁹ This is the land which you shall divide by lot to the tribes of Israel for inheritance, and these are their several portions, says the Lord Yahweh.

³⁰ These are the exits of the city: On the north side four thousand and five hundred [reeds] by measure;

³¹ and the gates of the city shall be after the names of the tribes of Israel, three gates northward: the gate of Reuben, one; the gate of Judah, one; the gate of Levi, one.

³² At the east side four thousand and five hundred [reeds], and three gates: even the gate of Joseph, one; the gate of Benjamin, one; the gate of Dan, one.

³³ At the south side four thousand and five hundred [reeds] by measure, and three gates: the gate of Simeon, one; the gate of Issachar, one; the gate of Zebulun, one.

³⁴ At the west side four thousand and five hundred [reeds], with their three gates: the gate of Gad, one; the gate of Asher, one; the gate of Naphtali, one.

³⁵ It shall be eighteen thousand [reeds] around: and the name of the city from that day shall be, Yahweh is there.