1 Samuel 25:36-38

1 Samuel 25:36-38

[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.  [37] But it came to pass in the morning,  when the wine  was gone out  of Nabal,  and his wife  had told  him these things,  that his heart  died  within  him, and he became as a stone.  [38] And it came to pass about ten  days  after, that the LORD  smote  Nabal,  that he died. 

What does 1 Samuel 25:36-38 Mean?

Contextual Meaning

When she returned home, Abigail discovered that her foolish husband was drunk from celebrating. He was totally oblivious to his mortal danger. He was feasting rather than fasting. He was behaving like a king, the ultimate authority, rather than as a servant of the next king (cf. 1 Samuel 25:24). Here is another allusion to the similarity between Nabal and Saul who both viewed themselves proudly as kings. Pride was the root of Nabal"s folly as well as Saul"s folly, and it preceded destruction in both of their cases.
Abigail wisely waited until morning before telling her husband what a close brush he had had with death. By then the wine had gone out of him. The writer made a clever play on words here. The Hebrew word for wineskin is nebel. It is as though he was suggesting that Nabal was a nebel. When the wine had gone out of him, he was nothing. The writer may even have been suggesting that all there was to Nabal was his bladder, his personal wineskin. David had earlier vowed, literally, that he would not leave anyone who urinated against the wall (i.e, any male) in Nabal"s household alive ( 1 Samuel 25:22). The writer pictured Nabal in the most uncomplimentary terms.
Nabal"s heart died within him when he finally realized what a fool he had been. The Hebrews used the heart metaphorically to describe the seat of courage. No courage remained in him. Nabal further appears to have gone catatonic; when he realized what had happened, the shock immobilized him. Ten days later he died, perhaps of a stroke. The writer gave God the credit for terminating his life prematurely. Sometimes people who fail to respond to the will of God die prematurely (cf. ch31; Numbers 3:2; Numbers 16:32; Joshua 7:25; 1 Corinthians 11:30; 1 John 5:16).
God struck Nabal dead for his pride and opposition to the Lord"s anointed. God would do the same to Saul for the same reasons. Nabal"s death undoubtedly encouraged David to believe that God would take vengeance on Saul. David"s experiences with Nabal were a microcosm of all that he had been enduring for so long with Saul, another fool. Saul admitted he was a fool in 1 Samuel 26:21.