by Brian Godawa
She could not look at him. It hurt her more than Nabal’s punch. She could only rush back to her donkey and run back up the hill to her prison of suffering.
When Abigail returned to her home, she entered the dining hall to find Nabal knocked out drunk at a table filled with the feast that David and his men should have been eating. She walked past him and went to her bedchamber to weep the night away.
The next morning, she entered the dining hall to find Nabal awakening from his previous night’s stupor. His mouth and clothes were covered in his own vomit. He could not raise his fat body from the floor.
“Help me up, wench!” He spit out.
Abigail helped him up, gagging herself from the stench of his sweat and vomit. Maybe she should end it all. What else could she see in her future but more of this same misery, only worse? Her encounter with David mocked her heart with the manly leader she could not have.
She no longer cared what Nabal did to her. She said, “I met David and his men at the foot of the hill last night. He is not a rogue as you claim.”
Nabal grumbled, “Well he is no ‘chosen one’ as that dead seer called him.” Then Nabal grew suspicious. “What was he doing at the foot of the hill?”
“He was approaching our home with four hundred men to slaughter you and all the males of your household. But I bribed him with a guilt offering for your offense.”
Nabal’s eyes went wide with shock. “Four hundred men? He was going to kill us all?”
“Not us all. Just you and the men of the household.”
Nabal gasped. He stumbled and fell backward on a cushion. His left hand trembled from some physical malady. He could not speak. He could only gasp for air.
Abigail looked at him and thought he looked like he had turned to stone. In that instant, she knew that Yahweh was finally judging this evil man.
He didn’t die. He just became like stone, staring up at the sky, breathing shallowly. His servants placed him on his bed and prayed for a hasty death.
Chapter 50
Mikael drew his sword. It was made of steel that had not been revealed to mankind yet, so it seemed like magic when it cut bronze and some iron weapons in two. An archangel with such powerful weaponry could take on a regiment of one hundred of the mightiest gibborim.
But the four beings standing before him on the ledge of a precipice were not going to be as easy to withstand. They were Watcher gods and each one singly was his equal.
Four times that power was overkill. With Ba’alzebul fully healed, it was more like five times overkill.
So why would they be here, instead of at the battle they were leading against Gibeah? His mind raced with confusion to find an answer.
Then it came to him. This was not the diversion, the battle of Gibeah was the diversion. The real goal was to capture Mikael himself, the prince of Israel.
Well, he thought, they picked the wrong archangel to mess with. I have a chosen nation to protect.
He pulled out his horn to call for help, but Ba’alzebul’s mace smashed it out of his hands.
Dagon assaulted him with a barrage of sword slashes and strikes.
Mikael kept him at bay, but almost got stung by Asherah’s javelin from the other side.
He dodged and kept moving. His Karabu training was his only hope. It was the heavenly battle technique of Yahweh’s archangels developed to protect the Garden of Eden in primordial days. They had taught the human giant killers Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, and Caleb the Way of Karabu, but now he would need to call upon his training to survive this ordeal.
He flipped, spun, and danced around the four attacking gods and their weapons. It frustrated the malevolent beings, which was to Mikael’s advantage.
But archangels were still created beings. He began to grow tired. They were wearing him down.
Dagon’s sword grazed Mikael’s arm, cutting through his tunic.
He was not going to be able to keep it up. He would have to do something drastic.
Ba’alzebul moved in on Mikael.
The biggest, meanest, mightiest of the gods had been waiting for his opportune moment when Mikael was just weary enough, just worn enough, to be incapable of expecting the unexpected.
Ba’alzebul took the lead and pounded Mikael’s sword with his mace and backed him up against the ledge.
Mikael looked down to the chasm floor. Saul and his forces made their way through the chasm below after slaughtering the priests of Molech. It wasn’t a fair fight.
And neither was this fight. But Saul was safe. He had made it through and went north toward Gibeah.
But the gods were not here for Saul. They were here for Mikael.
Ba’alzebul suddenly threw down his mace and rushed Mikael like a bull goring its prey.
Mikael didn’t register why, until Ba’alzebul hit him. The two of them launched off into space, plummeting toward the chasm floor two hundred feet below.
Angels and gods could not die. But they were not mere spirits. They were enfleshed spirits. While it was unique flesh that would heal miraculously, it was still flesh that could be hurt — as Ba’alzebul knew all too well from his own painful experience in the molten earth.
They hit the ground with a powerful thud and sank several feet into the dirt.
Every bone in Mikael’s body was broken in the fall. He was paralyzed in excruciating pain.
Ba’alzebul had been on top of Mikael, so while he too would be somewhat incapacitated, it would not be as bad for him, having used Mikael’s body as a cushion in the fall.
As Mikael slipped into a state of delirious pain, he knew that their goal had been to capture him this way. To ambush him and therefore make both Saul and David more vulnerable to human attack. But what did they plan for Mikael? He could not begin to imagine.
• • • • •
Ten days passed after the rich man Nabal had been struck by an attack in his internal organs when he learned about his deliverance from the hand of David by the word of his wife Abigail. At first, he had become like a stone. But he began to get well with each day. He had lost much of his strength and retained tremors in his hands. The left side of his body seemed weakened along with the left side of his face. But his bitter, ornery spirit remained, and even deepened. Through sheer will power, he was able to get up and limp around. Abigail sought to help him, but he berated her and insulted her with foul language. It was as if the sickness that was intended by God to humble him made him worse in his bitter resolve to defy Yahweh’s Chosen One.
Abigail brought him food. He threw it in her face.
She tried to wash him and help him change clothes, but he pushed her away and damned her.
On the tenth evening of his recuperation, Abigail brought him a pheasant to eat. He finally decided to consume some food and took out his knife to cut it up. He would not let her help him cut up the food, so it took him twice as long and he dropped as many pieces of the fowl on the floor as he placed in his mouth.
Finally, he stopped and glared at her, watching him. “What are you staring at? You think I am pathetic?”
“No, my lord.”
“Where do you go at night as I lay here?”
“I retire to my bedchamber.”
“No, you do not.”
“Where else would I go, my lord? It is where I have always slept.”
“You are sneaking down to that camp of brigands aren’t you?”
“My lord?”
“I remember the look you gave that messenger of David. You wanted him, did you not?”
“You are my husband. I remain faithful.”
“You are a faithless no-good slut and you are sleeping with him behind my back, are you not?”
“My lord, I am not.”
“Come here, you whore.” Nabal dropped his food and grabbed Abigail’s neck with his greasy hands.
She choked and gasped for air.
“Admit it! Admit it, you slut whore! You are not faithful to me!”
She could not speak
because his grip had fastened around her wind pipe. He did not have his usual strength, but it was still enough to strangle the life out of her.
Her hands desperately sought anything to use as a weapon to protect herself. She felt dizzy and on the verge of losing consciousness.
His screaming at her began to fade in her ears. She could only think of dying at the hands of this impotent, worthless scrap of human debris.
Then, her hand fortuitously fastened upon the knife he had been using to cut into his meat.
She swung upward with the blade. It sunk deep into his neck. She withdrew it to plunge it again.
But his grip loosened. His hands reached up to hold his neck wound that spurted blood faster than he could stop it.
She must have hit his artery.
She was not finished. He was not going to have the chance to hurt her ever again. She plunged the knife into his belly and slid the blade to the side like gutting a fish. His rolling fat was difficult to penetrate, but her blade had gone deep enough to open a cavity from which his bowels now spilled out onto the ground.
He groaned with his last words, “You self-righteous bitch.”
And he died.
She turned to see two manservants at the door. They had seen it all. They rushed to her side. One pulled her to safety and the other began to clean up the mess. They would make sure this would not become a scandal. The fat old hog deserved every ounce of pain, which was nowhere near the retribution for the lifetime of pain he had inflicted upon Abigail and the entire household.
But now he was finally gone. Abigail was free.
When David received word of Nabal’s demise, he praised Yahweh for the merciful rescue of Abigail. He immediately sent for her to ask her hand in marriage.
Though she was a most desirable woman, and though they had been drawn to each other with intense attraction, it was still a political move for them both. For her, she would have the protection of a husband whom she was sure would be the next king. For him, he gained the wealth and resources of a rich, landowning widow, who was a high-ranking member of the clan that controlled the Hebron area, a target for his eventual proclamation of kingship.
In this world of blood and iron, romantic attraction was a luxury in the politics of kingdoms and dynasties. David was overwhelmed with gratitude to Yahweh for giving him far beyond what he deserved with this amazing woman he was about unite with in holy matrimony.
Chapter 51
David and Abigail performed a wedding ceremony as quickly as possible. But the particular formality of a celebration would not be so hurried. David’s men had traveled long, fought hard, and suffered many losses for their leader. He wanted them to feel appreciated.
So Abigail set up a feast to last for several days at her home on the hilltop for the six hundred of David’s company. She gave above and beyond what Nabal had withheld from David’s request. There was much meat to fill their bellies, and much beer and wine to make their hearts glad. It was a welcome respite from the endless chase they had been engaged in, avoiding Saul’s malevolent intent.
Late in the first evening, David and Abigail left for their first night together in the shepherd’s quarters at the base of the hill. As strong as David’s desire was to share their bodies, he felt a deeper necessity to first share their souls. She made him feel young again, almost innocent. But he also knew that she had suffered greatly under Nabal’s abuse, and he wanted to treat her with the kindness and gentleness she had always deserved but had never known.
They sat just outside the quarters with the silent sheep sleeping in the field beneath the full moon. They could hear the distant sounds of his men enjoying themselves in the residence at the top of the hill.
David sighed, looking up at the sky, and said, “I miss those days, as a shepherd boy, with nothing but my staff and lyre. The quiet at night. The peace. Looking up at the vault of heaven and imagining what the waters above it looked like and what the heavenly temple above the waters was like.”
“I would be bored,” said Abigail. “And lonely. As much as I love the beauty of Yahweh’s creation, I much prefer people.”
“Ah, but that is where you are wrong,” he said. “With Yahweh you are never alone.”
“Then why did Yahweh say that Adam was alone when the two of them were in the Garden together?”
David thought for a moment. “I had never thought of that.”
“Forgive me, my lord,” she said. “I did not mean to offend you.”
He looked over at her, surprised. His surprise melted when he saw her bruised face. She had been beaten down for so long by her worthless husband that she did not feel she could express herself without being reproached.
He touched her face with his fingertip—her precious, beautiful face. He wanted to feel the bruise so he could absorb it, take it away from her and onto himself, but he could not.
“You did not offend me, my lovely wife. You just blessed me. You made me wiser.”
He could see her eyes tearing up. She had never been adored. The irony was that he adored her and appreciated her even more than he had his first wife Michal, now lost to him. Abigail was more mature, compared with Michal’s youth. Abigail was a deeper, fuller woman because of her age—because of her suffering. David could see in her eyes that there were entire worlds to explore inside this wonderful woman of mystery. At the age of thirty, he had finally found someone he felt could understand him, could stand up to him, a woman who knew who she was, who could support him from strength instead of weakness, a woman instead of a girl. He had finally found his equal.
He could not ignore the painful marks on her face. He touched them again and said, “I will never hurt you.”
Through her tears she responded, “I will never hurt you.”
He said, “I will woo you. And I will tend you, like a loving shepherd, or like a bee that draws the honey from a flower. You are the most beautiful blossom I have ever had the privilege to experience in my entire life.”
She returned his praise with a knowing smile, and said, “Well, then, woo me, why don’t you, shepherd boy?”
David smiled back, held his lyre, and began to play a song — a very familiar song for him.
Hear, O daughter, and consider, and incline your ear:
forget your people and your father’s house,
and the king will desire your beauty.
Since he is your lord, bow to him.
All glorious is the princess in her chamber…
He stopped playing right in the middle of the bridal hymn. It was the song he had used over the years to get what he wanted from women. He would play it and they would melt and become like clay in his hands. It was a trick he used to manipulate, and in the presence of this wise and goodly woman, he could no longer play it.
“Why did you stop?” she asked.
“I think there is a better song to sing.”
He began to play. It was a song that united both of their hearts.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,
and by night, but I find no rest.
Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.
In you our fathers trusted;
they trusted, and you delivered them.
To you they cried and were rescued;
in you they trusted and were not put to shame.
It was not a song of seduction, but a song of suffering. It was in her suffering that he could touch her. For they had both felt the pangs of oppression, and yet the words were transcendent, pointing to something much higher, something beyond them.
For dogs encompass me;
a company of evildoers encircles me;
they have pierced my hands and feet—
I can count all my bones—
they stare and gloat over me;
they divide my garments among them,
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and for my clothing they cast lots.
But you, O Yahweh, do not be far off!
O you my help, come quickly to my aid!
Deliver my soul from the sword,
my precious life from the power of the dog!
Save me from the mouth of the lion!
It was not through the childish fun and shallow pleasures of youth that a man and woman would become one soul and plumb the depths of intimacy. It was through mutual pain and suffering. It was in sharing hope in the midst of pain that they touched the very presence of God.
You who fear Yahweh, praise him!
All you Seed of Jacob, glorify him,
and stand in awe of him,
all you Seed of Israel!
All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to Yahweh,
and all the families of the nations shall worship before you.
For kingship belongs to Yahweh,
and he rules over the nations.
His music melted her heart. Not through manipulation or artifice, but through truth. Because the way to capture the heart of a woman of God was to be a man after God’s own heart.
He kissed her, as he had never kissed a woman before.
Chapter 52
David’s six hundred were a hearty lot. They were mighty gibborim warriors who fought hard and played harder. Many of them had been outlaws or rebellious men, so the combination of a wedding party with plenty of flowing wine and beer, carried the potential for getting out of control.
Up at Nabal’s hilltop residence, now Abigail’s, men sang songs, told battle stories, and competed in feats of strength with one another. Their rowdiness was held in check by some of the commanders of the Three and the Thirty who watched over the festivities like archangels.
Two of those watchers were Joab and Abishai, who refused to lose their wits or give in to their fleshly desires ever again, because of the secret guilt over their past betrayal. They remained sober and alert this evening, like a couple of sheep dogs.
