Women mentioned in the Bible: Abigail: This blog, God willing, will muse about important women mentioned in the Bible, over the next several posts. Scripture quoted will be from the World English Bible, public domain, and is in this color.
Even though the culture generally relegated women to a subservient role, and they seem to have seldom been consulted about important decisions, there are a number of Bible women who did take various leading roles.
I am not going to mention any woman from Revelation, or Song of Solomon, because they may not have been actual historical women.
In English alphabetical order, the first such woman is Abigail. Most of her story is in 1 Samuel 25. Abigail was married to a fool, but a rich one. Her husband, Nabal, refused to show common courtesy to David and his men. Abigail found out about this, and took it upon herself to calm David down, by bringing food to his band. She told David that he shouldn't attack Nabal, because that would harm David's reputation. When Nabal learned about this, he got sick (a stroke?) and died. David took Abigail as his own wife, one of a few such, at that time. There were more later.
Years later, a couple of David's sons by other wives rebelled, and tried to take over the kingdom from David. It doesn't seem that Abigail's son, by David, Chileab, tried to do this, even though some of his half-brothers did. Perhaps the wisdom of Abigail, who defused the situation with Nabal, trained her son to also be a peacemaker.
On the day I began this, the weather person on a TV station we watched was named Abigail. Many of the names of important Bible women are in use today. Some, like Jezebel's name, are seldom or ever used. Abigail is used frequently.
Thanks for reading.
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